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Material changes will be highlighted on this page or communicated to members directly where appropriate. ### About URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/about/ Last updated: 2024-05-22T05:35:07.000Z Our mission is to narrate Asia's story from our unique perspective, positioning ourselves as the premier multi-channel network for key insights and core ideas about Asia, catering to decision-makers worldwide. Asia, home to 4.4 billion people and three of the world's major economies—China, India, and Indonesia—is the growth engine driving global business. With its rich tapestry of histories, cultures, and social practices, Asia offers a wealth of stories that educate, inform, and empower our audience. From rising executives to CEOs making critical business decisions, we provide the knowledge needed to navigate and succeed in the Asia Pacific market. Our journey began nine years ago as a pioneering podcast project, aiming to share compelling business, technology, and media stories from Asia with the world. Today, we continue to deliver high-quality content, recognized as the leading podcast in our field. We explore fascinating trends and events through the perspectives of: (a) Industry watchers, authors, and correspondents covering Asia and global mega-trends, (b) Business leaders within the technology and media sectors operating in Asia, (c) Prominent global thought leaders from startups, investment, and business ecosystems. Join us on this ever-evolving journey to understand the fast-growing and dynamic region of Asia through the lens of those shaping its future. **Official Disclaimer:** *The opinions and thoughts expressed by the hosts of the show and his guests are strictly their own and do not represent the views of the organizations in which they work, represent or invest in.* ### Media URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/media/ Last updated: 2026-03-22T04:46:49.000Z We are featured in various major publications and podcasts over the years. You can contact us at hello (at) analyse.asia if you want to interview our hosts or feature our podcast on your shows. - [悉看大势：本地播主开麦侃侃而谈 无奈市场太小赚钱太难](https://www.zaobao.com.sg/finance/singapore/story20260322-8751393?utm%5Fsource=ios-share&utm%5Fmedium=app), 联合早报, 22 March 2026\. (Translation: Understanding the big picture: Local streamers speak confidently and at length, but the market is too small, and making money is too difficult, Lianhe Zaobao - Singapore's Top Chinese Newspaper - Requires subscription) - [Bernard Leong:](https://www.bravesea.com/blog/bernard-leong?ref=analysepodcast.com) Astrophysics PhD to Serial Founder, Disrupting Extractive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems & Startup vs. Family Career Decisions - E393 on Brave Podcast with Jeremy Au. - [Bernard Leong - Analyse Asia Ep 51](https://compoundingpodcast.com/ep51/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in [Compounding Curiosity](https://compoundingpodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with Kalani Scarrott. - Emerging Trends, Episodes [22](https://www.charlesreedanderson.com/techburst-asia-podcast/episode/3a0eabb0/038-emerging-trends-pt-13-smart-cities-and-5g-with-bernard-leong-interviewing-cra?ref=analysepodcast.com), [23](https://www.charlesreedanderson.com/techburst-asia-podcast/episode/26077842/039-emerging-trends-pt-23-drones-ai-and-digital-transformation-with-analyse-asias-bernard-leong?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [24](https://www.charlesreedanderson.com/techburst-asia-podcast/episode/3e78052e/040-emerging-trends-pt-33-crypto-nfts-and-what-the-hell-is-going-on-in-china-with-analyse-asias-bernard-leong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Techburst Asia Podcast ](https://www.charlesreedanderson.com/techburst-asia-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com)with Charles Reed Anderson episodes, Sep-Oct 2021. - [The Podcasts Every Founder in Asia Should Dream of Guesting O](https://ambidextr.media/startup-podcasts-in-asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com)n, Ambidextr July 2019 - "[The future is electric, connected & more autonomous](https://asean.nissannews.com/en/releases/analyse-asia-podcast-the-future-iselectric-connected-and-more-autonomous?ref=analysepodcast.com)", Nissan official ASEAN newsroom, 22 Oct 2018. - [China Tech Investor Episode 14](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/14-alibabas-earnings-chinese-e-commerce-in-southeast/id1440576420?i=1000429056420&ref=analysepodcast.com), China Tech Investor Podcast, Technode - [China Tech Talk Episode 13](https://technode.com/2017/07/21/china-tech-talk-13-ats-southeast-asia-entrance-with-bernard-leong/?ref=analysepodcast.com), China Tech Talk Podcast, Technode - [Podcaster Interviews: Deep dive into business, technology and media in Asia Pacific ecosystem](https://www.listennotes.com/podcaster-interviews/deep-dive-into-business-technology-and-media-in-zxOyYeUbjFH/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Listen Notes, 4 July 2021 - [Interview with Great Owls](https://greatowls.com/interview/bernard-leong/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Episode 31, Jay Kim Show](https://www.jaykimshow.com/podcast/31-bernard-leong/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2017/10/27/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Software Engineering Daily, 27 Oct 2017 - [Podcasts: A sound investment for advertisers?](https://www.campaignasia.com/article/podcasts-a-sound-investment-for-advertisers/439826?ref=analysepodcast.com) Campaign Asia, 22 Sep 2017 - [Podcasts on E27](https://e27.co/podcast-analyse-asia-foxconn-group-tim-cuplan-20151105/?ref=analysepodcast.com), 2016 - [Analyse Asia on Tech in Asia, Tech in Asia](https://www.techinasia.com/talk/analyse-asia-tech-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com), 11 Jul 2015 - [Singapore Rising: The Plot to Be the Next Big Tech Hub](https://www.vox.com/2015/6/16/11563586/singapore-rising-the-plot-to-be-the-next-big-tech-hub?ref=analysepodcast.com), Recode, 16 June 2015 Here are our official key social media channels for you to subscribe to: - [ YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](https://twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Tik Tok](https://www.tiktok.com/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) ## Posts ### Simular AI and Computer Use is the Final Frontier in AI with Ang Li URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/simular-ai-and-computer-use-is-the-final-frontier-in-ai-with-ang-li/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T12:54:43.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Ang Li, CEO and co-founder of Simular and previously a research scientist at Google DeepMind, joins us to explore why computer use is the last mile to AGI. Ang traces his path from studying catastrophic forgetting and continual learning at DeepMind to founding a company on a single conviction: models break in production because the data distribution never stops moving, and the only place to close that loop is the real world. He explains why the chatbot metaphor misleads enterprise buyers, why the right unit of measurement is tokens per task rather than price per token, and how the power law of practice should make an agent cheaper every time it repeats the same work. He separates capability from reliability and argues that deterministic work belongs in code rather than in a model, and makes the case that frontier labs exist to sell tokens while Simular exists to remove them. On frontier AI, Ang shares his test for AGI — one you feel rather than see — and what it will take to bring autonomous work down to the cost of water. Last but not least, he shares what great looks like for Simular AI in the future. --- > "So when I go to the gym, \[doing\] the same workout everyday, as I do this more and more, more reps, more sets, I don't even need to think. It's called muscle memory. I just do the same in a standard way, my consumption or my tokens in my brain dramatically drops. And there's a term describing this behavior in human cognition called 'the Power Law of Practice'. So that's the whole idea. Do we see power law practice in AI agents? We don't have that yet." - **Ang Li, CEO and co-founder of Simular AI** **Profile:** **Ang Li**, CEO and co-founder of [Simular AI](https://www.simular.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([X](https://x.com/angli%5Fai?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/angli-ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Simular AI](https://www.simular.ai/angli?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premium podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and last December, a computer use agent crossed the human threshold for the first time — 72.6% against a human baseline of 72.36%. Yet the agent that succeeds once often fails the second time it runs. That gap between capability and reliability is where the entire enterprise opportunity now sits. Today we take three angles: what an autonomous computer actually is, the economics of the agent token, and whether computer use is the last mile of AGI. With me today is [**Ang Li**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/angli-ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com), CEO and co-founder of [Simular](https://simular.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and previously a research scientist at Google DeepMind. We recently had a very good panel at SuperAI, and the feedback was really good. We will discuss where computer use agents go over the next three years. Ang, welcome to the show. **Ang Li:** Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's a great pleasure to be here. **Bernard Leong:** We are starting with a new format, so the first thing I'm going to ask you is this. *Everyone pictures AGI as a humanoid robot or a smarter chatbot. You say it arrives when a machine can fully use a computer. Why are the mouse and the keyboard the last mile?* **Ang Li:** That's a good question. The goal is to let computers do all the work on their own in the digital world — I'm not going to talk about the physical world. We see a lot of people sitting in front of a computer, working all day long. I believe that's not a natural way for humans to work. The natural way is that we should be able to move around, without having to think about where we are. We can go into nature and do the work. That's the goal: a general purpose computer that can do all of the work for us. Then the question is what the technical limitation is — what kind of technical problem we need to solve to reach that goal. In the digital world, people write code, they build apps, and they want their code to be useful to downstream applications, so they build APIs. An API is a protocol you can call directly to get the job done. When we looked at this problem, we realised that even with all the APIs and all the code we have, it is still not good enough. There are so many pieces of software living in our daily life and our daily work that people have to operate with a mouse and keyboard. Take the legacy systems in most traditional industries — transportation and logistics, insurance, regulated industries that require compliance. The evolution of that software is extremely slow. We're still using software from maybe 30 years ago running on a Windows operating system. It has no API, and there is no plan to expose one for you to use. That occupies a huge percentage of the digital workflows we use nowadays. **Bernard Leong:** I recently had Aneesh Raman, the Chief Economic Opportunity Officer from LinkedIn, here. One of the comments he left on my podcast was that we actually never left the industrial age. The way you describe it to me is almost that the way our work is structured around the keyboard and mouse is factory work, except it is knowledge workers doing it. What you're saying is that computer use is the next frontier of the user interface. **Ang Li:** Exactly. That's the headline I want to mention. Computer use is the next frontier in AI. It is the last mile for us to achieve AGI, because only when the agent has the capability to use the mouse and the keyboard can we accomplish all human activity in the digital world. Otherwise we cannot. **Bernard Leong:** I'm a fan of the anime Solo Leveling. The protagonist always snaps his fingers, says "arise," and his shadow army comes. What I really want is for you to provide me that too — when I snap my fingers and say "arise," my AI agents show up. Is that going to happen? **Ang Li:** Everything will show up. For now I use my phone more, so what I would say is that if your computers are fully autonomous, then I don't need a computer. An iPad is fine. It's something I can carry, I can read everything on it. You should just have one device you use to communicate with your agents. You might have a hundred agents in the cloud working on different tasks for you. You communicate with all of them, get the jobs done, and they send the results back to you. **Bernard Leong:** You have a very grand vision, but I want to take a step back. I want to know your background. You joined DeepMind in 2017, when Google engineers were still saying machine learning never works in production. What did that room teach you that research papers did not? **Ang Li:** That was a very interesting observation about the whole industry. I did my PhD in computer vision, and during that time there was still a division between computer vision and natural language. No one really talked about AI. It felt like a buzzword. I was a researcher, so I published a lot of papers, then I went to Google DeepMind as a research scientist. People knew you had papers, that you did research on this or that method for training machine learning models to be better. The reality is that these methods seldom work in practice. That's actually one of the core topics I worked on at Google, because I represented DeepMind while sitting in Google headquarters in Mountain View. I had the opportunity to talk to all of the Google production teams. This was the biggest phenomenon we found — a gap between applied work and research. The question was why, so we had to study it. We studied all of the products, and it turns out there's a fundamental thing no one really talked about. Today's machine learning is based on statistics. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Ang Li:** Statistics. There's no causal inference. **Bernard Leong:** I used to do it as supervised machine learning. **Ang Li:** That's right. Everything is co-occurrence, correlations. If it's based on statistics, then there's a very important concept underlying most of the methods, called i.i.d. Let me use plain English to explain it. The idea is that you collect a fixed data set, and when you train the model you randomly draw samples as the training data. **Bernard Leong:** It's a sampling mechanism. **Ang Li:** It's the same mechanism. The important part is that you have a fixed set of data that has already been collected. Even today this is still happening. Everyone still collects a bunch of data as a benchmark or a training data set and trains models by randomly drawing from it. There's a problem: in real world applications, you don't have a fixed data set. Everything is changing. The real world is changing. I still remember the day a certain keyword in Google Search suddenly rose to become the dominant keyword. It was called Covid. **Bernard Leong:** Oh yes. **Ang Li:** Suddenly it went up. Can you imagine language models knowing this keyword before that day? They didn't. That's the problem. **Bernard Leong:** The way I would think about it is that your DNA is this: models break in production because the data distribution never stops moving. When you decided to build Simular, how much of that was a direct answer to that problem? **Ang Li:** That's the direct answer to the problem. The first half of my time was spent thinking about why, and then we figured out why. I led the research agenda in DeepMind called evolving learning over evolving distributions. Exactly what you mentioned — evolving distribution. How do you learn over that? The technical term is continual learning. How do you let machines continually learn? I believe this is also the last mile to AGI. I was training large models even in 2016\. We knew the scaling law was going to work. It gives you a pretty good model. But is that going to be AGI? It's not, because if you have a model that works today, how do I guarantee the model works next month or next year? I have to keep training the model, and whenever I need to train, I need to break the i.i.d. assumption. I need to ensure our models can adapt to the evolving distributions over time. There's an interesting concept here. When we train neural networks, there's an important problem no one has a solution for: catastrophic forgetting. Whenever you train models, the weights change, and the model catastrophically forgets what it learned in the past. This is the core problem we tried to solve by proposing continual learning approaches — the model doesn't forget catastrophically while you're feeding it more data on different data distributions. Our research agenda is about whether we can have this kind of feedback loop. You have a system that actively collects data reflecting the real world data distribution, feeds that data back to the model, the model learns continually without forgetting, and the system deploys that model to interact with the real world. What's the best way to do this? The loop only works by putting your AI system into the real world, which means you need a product. **Bernard Leong:** I see. **Ang Li:** If you look at the company right now, we are building this continual closed loop. **Bernard Leong:** Just to make sure, because I have a lot of audience who watch the show — can you help us with what i.i.d. means? The terminology. **Ang Li:** Independent and identically distributed. Every time you draw a sample from the distribution, the probability is independent each time, and it's identically distributed. **Bernard Leong:** Most of the traditional sampling methods are Markov chain Monte Carlo. There are three other sampling techniques as well. Now, your line is that AGI can only be achieved in real life, not in a lab. What convinced you that the learning loop has to be commercial rather than academic? That's the point where you decided to take the bold step and build a company. **Ang Li:** In academia, most of the time you have a curated environment, benchmark and data set that's fixed. Only in the real world is the data distribution evolving. I don't have a choice. In order to solve this problem, I have to go to the real world. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/08/angli-bl-analyse-podcast.jpg) **Bernard Leong:** Which brings us to the main subject we want to talk about: Simular. We want to talk about autonomous computing, agent reliability, and the economics of computer use. Most people now hear the word "AI agent" and picture a chatbot with tools bolted on. I know that's totally the wrong frame, because I teach AI on both the engineering and the business side. The correct frame is a computer. How do you convince people that the chatbot metaphor is wrong? **Ang Li:** This is a very interesting topic that I've brought up a lot recently. My argument is that chat is fundamentally different from work. You're in a company. You might see two types of people, introverts and extroverts. You might also see another two types: some people always go to meetings and talk about things, and another type always sits in front of the computer doing things and never talks. **Bernard Leong:** Yes — individual contributors, they call it. **Ang Li:** Naturally this happens in the human world. A chatbot only chats. It doesn't actually do things for you. What is the work? The AI worker is about getting things done. If that happens, does it also have to have the best communication? It's hard to have both in the best shape. That's why we need multiple agents to collaborate. This is the future form of the AI system I see. If you just want to chat, you have a communication channel between each other. **Bernard Leong:** Your view is that this autonomous computer is what triggers the workflow, triggers whatever action the company's real world use case requires. **Ang Li:** Correct. We have to look at the fundamental work every company is trying to build. Every company is trying to build a repeatable playbook so they can scale. We have to look at the playbook — your work needs to be recurring and repeatable. Everyone is trying to figure that out so they can scale quickly. That's the compounding factor of your company: everything you do, next time you spend less energy doing it. Chat is one time. Chat is more like, I just chat with you, I can talk about random keywords, and I don't have to be the same each time. The properties of these two types of applications are fundamentally different. This is the opportunity for us to see whether there's an AI system that allows us to accomplish this kind of recurring task — almost the same task every day — in a reliable way, because chatbots are not reliable. **Bernard Leong:** Also non-deterministic output, because of the... **Ang Li:** Non-deterministic, because of the neural nets. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting thing is that we're right at the period where people are talking about token maxing. Everybody is now freaked out about the Chinese models being cheaper, so the industry argues that everything is price per token. One thing that came out of our conversation earlier at the conference was that the correct metric, in your view, is tokens per task. If efficiency rather than scale is the real axis, what changes for the people or the customers who are buying agents from you? **Ang Li:** That's a very interesting question. You're asking how this token economy would change in our setting. My point of view is that the current industry is still focused on chat. When people talk about open source models, or about Anthropic's Claude and token usage, they are still focused on chat, because chat is about having a model, you ask it something, it responds. There is no notion of recurring in anyone's conversation about the cost of work. We have to focus on recurring. We have to look at it this way. Suppose I have a task and it costs this amount of tokens, and I repeat this task. What's the amount of tokens I spend? Repeat the task again — what's the amount of tokens again? We did a measurement for the current agents. For most of the current agents in the industry, if you do the same task 100 times, the token usage is basically 100 multiplied by the total tokens for one. **Bernard Leong:** That's the average number you worked out for that task. **Ang Li:** I used an analogy a few days ago when I gave a talk. Suppose I go to the gym. When I go to the gym, I'm doing the same workout every day. The first time, I may want to look at YouTube and ask a personal coach what kind of posture I should have. As I do more and more reps, more sets, I don't even need to think. It becomes muscle memory. I just do the same thing in a standard way. My consumption, my tokens in my brain, dramatically drops. There's a term describing this behaviour in human cognition, called the power law of practice. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Ang Li:** That's the whole idea. Do we see this kind of power law of practice in AI agents? We don't have that yet. Then the next question is whether we can build this type of system. The first time, I don't care about the token usage — you just maximise the trials to get the best result. The second time, you have already succeeded. Why do you have to spend the same amount of tokens over and over again? Is there a way for you to learn on the fly, so that next time you spend far fewer tokens? **Bernard Leong:** Nowadays you also have things like prompt caching, or some form of caching of the task, which I assume is what you're thinking of. There's also the other question. Every model release is now bigger and better — that's what they say. Your position is that agents actually need more discipline rather than more skill. **Ang Li:** More than just model improvement. **Bernard Leong:** Where does the scaling frame actually break for computer use, then? **Ang Li:** The scaling... **Bernard Leong:** Scaling laws. Bigger is better. Every time a new model comes out, they tell me it will be much better. What you're trying to do now is find the reference frame to say: if I do this task ten times, and we can measure the same task ten times while the model is getting better, does that mean your concept of tokens per task scales as well? **Ang Li:** I don't think so, because chat is different. Chat is more creative. The tasks we are dealing with are more deterministic. If you know how to do the task, you know how to do the task, and you don't actually need better models. There will be a point. **Bernard Leong:** There are certain tasks — that is why they're called automation tasks. It doesn't matter whether the model gets better, as long as the task is done. **Ang Li:** I don't need to use better models. That's the behaviour I see in the current industry. They use the best model to make it work, and if it works, they try to see whether they can use a cheaper model to handle the same work. My argument is that even the cheaper models may not be necessary, because if the task is so deterministic, you should store it in code. Code is deterministic. Another phenomenon we see is that these tasks are a long chain of decision making based on neural nets. Each time you have some error rate, and the aggregation of the error rate will be huge. If I'm talking about a long task, do you want to risk your recurring task, every day, on that amount of accumulated error? If you store the majority of the actions as code, it becomes deterministic, and you have minimal risk in performing your task. **Bernard Leong:** One question I want to ask you is this. What's the most counter-intuitive lesson you have learned about building agents — something you think most people still get wrong? **Ang Li:** I believe AGI is not going to be a single model. It's not going to be a single neural net model, because there are so many fundamental things neural nets cannot solve. Many years ago people worked on symbolic AI, and I think those concepts are still useful. We try to figure out a way to build an AI system with all of those concepts together, to maximise the user experience, instead of betting on a single neural net to do everything. **Bernard Leong:** What I like about that is this. The strongest case against you is that the 72.6% on OSWorld was a best-of-N peak, while your own reliability paper puts repeated-run success closer to 45%. Where is that argument wrong? **Ang Li:** The point is that the frontier labs' models are even worse on the reliability test. I have to explain some terminology again. The first metric we look at is the capability metric, called pass@k, meaning I run the same task k times, and if one of them succeeds, I'm capable of doing that. The first human performance we achieved was based on this capability metric, because we wanted to see whether an agent has the capability to reach human level. We demonstrated it is capable. Once it's capable, you have to see whether the agent can do the task reliably in a recurring manner. It's like wanting to hire a person in your company. You do an interview one time. In the interview, you can see whether the person is capable of the job. Once the person joins the company, you still have to measure whether they can perform the job reliably every day. **Bernard Leong:** But you can run reinforcement learning, giving human feedback, and the person gets better at the job. **Ang Li:** That's actually the point. The whole i.i.d. data distribution question is how you learn on the fly. It's not a predefined data set where you let the person train themselves all at once and sit one exam to pass the bar. That's just the beginning of the work. We're talking about the long lasting part of the work, which is recurring. That metric is called the reliability metric, and it's called pass^k — pass to the power of k. I still run k times, but I need you to be successful every time in order to pass. That kind of measurement is much harder. We can see there is a divergence between the two metrics when you evaluate on the same task in the same benchmark, just over ten times. **Bernard Leong:** In that case, would there be a power law of practice in agents — the same curve that governs human skill acquisition? Does the moat become the practice data rather than the model itself? **Ang Li:** A model is a compression of a fixed data set, from my perspective. A model is a compression. A model is a database. It's a database with a higher error rate. **Bernard Leong:** I can't believe that — well, I did it using machine learning in the Human Genome Project, which is what I used to do. You're probably right about that. **Ang Li:** Fundamentally a model is a database, and it's a more efficient database than a traditional one. Everything is about data. If you have good data, the model will be better. Then we have to look at how you utilise the data, because for work the task is exactly the same. We don't actually need you to generalise on the prompt. This is the first problem we try to solve — the problem is exactly the same every time. If that's the case, the traditional index and method in a database will be more accurate than a neural net, because I know exactly what happened for these tasks in the past. Now I just retrieve the description of the actions and replay it. As I collect more and more experience from a task, it becomes more and more deterministic and more and more reliable, so I should see improvement in the trajectory accuracy. Suppose k increases — I should see pass^k improve over time. Because most of the behaviours become codified, the token consumption should drop as well. **Bernard Leong:** Your task will also hit what I call marginal utility, because in economics you're getting so good at the task that you are always near achieving it. You eventually will achieve the task, if I understand correctly. **Ang Li:** Yes. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one thing you know about computer use agents that very few people do? **Ang Li:** The concept of the power law of practice is not something people talk about. To my knowledge, we are the first company trying to talk about this. **Bernard Leong:** Which also means that AI still has a lot of problems to solve. **Ang Li:** I believe this is the last one. For now, we have demonstrated that foundation models are capable. The agents built on foundation models are capable of doing most of the tasks. Then, as I mentioned, there's a shift from chat to work, and a shift from one time to many times. What's the remaining part? Can you improve your reliability during the work every day? Can you make the work more economically affordable? **Bernard Leong:** Do you think we will settle into a state where the boring work we need to do for knowledge work is taken away from us, and we have the creative work to pursue in our own time? **Ang Li:** There will be more and more of a shift to creative work. That's what we want to see. We don't feel it's valuable time for you to do the boring stuff that's so deterministic, so robotic. We want more and more humans to participate in creativity and innovation, and to make the world expansive by discovering new concepts. I personally believe that's the best way for humanity to move forward. **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you. People used to tell us in school that whatever you study in university, when you go out it's a totally different world. That's because you're held back by all the rote learning, all the manual tasks and all the reporting tasks you need to do. Now suddenly AI shows up and says all these tasks can be automated away, and what is left is actually the original thing you studied — the creative work you were supposed to do. **Ang Li:** Human value is being creative. **Bernard Leong:** I want to get a bit more in depth on Simular. Simular lets the models explore, and I think it freezes the successful path into deterministic code. The bad case is that the frozen code becomes a liability once the next model generation is simply good enough. What does it take for you to be right in three years? **Ang Li:** Our goal is to democratise autonomous computers to everyone — democratising autonomous work to everyone. That means we need to make this available to people in an economical way, to bring the price down. In the end it's like water, like the cost of water. Everyone can easily access it. We don't worry about spending $10,000 to have this kind of luxury. It's not a luxury; it's a fundamental thing for everyone to have. That's one of the goals for us. Once we have that, since we have all of the workflows, we should have the best knowledge about how all of the workflows work in the digital world. Once we have that, we create the loop that further drops the price for all of the work. **Bernard Leong:** I took a look at your site, and please correct me if I get the prices wrong. Simular Pro is currently $500 a month, in insurance and healthcare. You also have a product that starts at $20\. Looking back, what did that teach you about who is actually paying for computer use — the product you're offering to do the automation? **Ang Li:** The biggest customer base, the biggest market pool, is coming from small and medium businesses. That's the real problem, because a lot of companies, like the traditional RPA companies, are targeting enterprises. They need human engineers to write the automations for the companies, and human engineers naturally cost more money to hire. It's not something small and medium businesses can afford. There's a gap in the whole market. Do we have a solution around $500 every month that a small or medium business can still afford? Their real problem is that it's extremely hard for them to hire people. It's hard for them to find a skilled person to do these kinds of tasks. They cannot even find college students to do the task. It's not that they don't want to hire a human — they don't have enough supply. They are also not especially tech savvy. They don't go to LinkedIn, they don't go to a job website, so it's hard to find people. We have an opportunity to fill the gap, because they need to get the work done immediately, before they have someone. Or some of their team members can do more creative work, so they feel their work is more meaningful. There was a VC in the US — a VC is also a small or medium business — telling me they have an admin who absolutely hated her job, because there are just so many emails. If we have an agent that can help the admin finish the boring stuff, she can do the creative part of the job. You get dragged into those tedious tasks every day, so you have minimal time to do the creative work. The admin can enjoy her work better. She can control the agents to do all the different kinds of scheduling tasks, and do something more creative herself. **Bernard Leong:** In healthcare and insurance as well, since this is where you offer your products — what kind of use cases are there? **Ang Li:** Healthcare and insurance are more natural. It's not something we offer them, because we are a general computer infrastructure company. We put a product out, and these categories are natural. They reach out to us. Some of them keep sending me emails every day, every month. **Bernard Leong:** Isn't that good, because healthcare is very customised and high touch, and now there is actually a computer use case for them? **Ang Li:** If you look at these categories, they are naturally regulated or compliance-heavy industries. Because they have that kind of regulation, it's hard for software to move in this industry. Their software is traditional, running on a Windows machine. In the beginning, our first version still worked on a Mac. We saw a lot of people in traditional industries using Windows, and we had to set up Mac virtual machines for them to run our Mac app to do their job. Then the question was, why not just do a Windows version? This year we started a new product called Sai, which has Windows virtual machines that speak more directly to their needs. **Bernard Leong:** The customers did tell you something on that. One interesting part is that you have this comment that big players usually buy solutions, not tools. You have also developed Simulang, a language you're handing to developers, I assume to have people help you scale the functions and take the concept further. How does Simulang sit together with your existing business? **Ang Li:** This is going to be a more philosophical concept. I once wrote a blog post about how in computer use there are lots of unities of opposites. Neural and symbolic are opposites, so we need to find a system that unifies them. Simulang is the symbolic layer for computer use, and the neural net is the reasoning engine for computer use. Simulang is naturally deterministic and reliable. The idea is whether we can move the information, the knowledge, from the neural net to the symbolic layer, make it reliable as work, and eventually deliver the work. You're not delivering the agent. People only care about whether their work is done. **Bernard Leong:** A skeptic would say you're building a thin layer on top of two labs that are most likely to absorb it, since your best results run on their models. What is actually the space between you and the frontier labs? **Ang Li:** That goes back to the neuro-symbolic infrastructure I described. You have to understand that the frontier labs' business model is to sell tokens. What I'm talking about is how to reduce the tokens. **Bernard Leong:** And how to turn those tokens into useful work. **Ang Li:** Make the tokens useful and reduce the tokens over time, so it's more economically sustainable. The goals for the two types of company are not the same. We're not operating with the same goal, so we're not competing with each other. I'm complementing them. I use the foundation model to build agents that have the capability to gradually make whatever should be deterministic — the boring part — deterministic and almost zero cost, and to expose only the creative part of the work to what a large language model is supposed to do. Nowadays most agents ask large language models to do everything, even when the work doesn't have to spend any tokens. That's why I said everyone seems to be wasting a lot of money without realising it. **Bernard Leong:** I always make this joke to my students. Why do you ask the LLM to do two times two? It costs you 20 cents. **Ang Li:** I can give you an example. We have a customer who wants to generate a hundred invoices in QuickBooks — QuickBooks is accounting software — and it costs absolutely zero dollars for that to work. It's still recurring; the person triggers it almost every day. You can imagine there are a lot of people in this category still running it through the model, costing hundreds of dollars every day to do the processing. **Bernard Leong:** How are you squaring this? Some enterprises now believe they should just download an open source model — it doesn't matter where it comes from, China, the US, wherever — host it on their own premises, and run it as if it's the same thing, still getting the token usage. Actually they forget they are paying the electricity bill. **Ang Li:** And the CapEx. The reason you need to pay per usage is this. People who say they can just buy the hardware and put a model on it so it's free have never done anything related to data centres. They don't know. You have to understand that your time is also valuable. Your time, even the mental cost of thinking about whether this machine is still up, converts into some level of money. It's a distraction from your own focus and intelligence. To me, if you can just pay a smaller amount of token cost, offloading everything for convenience, that's actually better, because the demand here can be even bigger in the future. **Bernard Leong:** You have said that intelligence needs a body, and the bottleneck is the CPU and memory rather than the GPU. Play that out for me in Asia. Who in this region is best positioned for the agent era? You've been in the region for a while — I'm trying to catch you before you get back to the US. **Ang Li:** I'm not a semiconductor expert. I'm a software person. What I see is that because we are working on this system, which follows whatever humans can do — even the law of practice — the cost of work is dropping, and the dependency on foundation models, on GPU-operated models, becomes less and less. What's important in the end? Suppose most of my work is becoming deterministic and I don't rely on LLMs to do the work. Then what's important is your memory and the CPU in the operating system. Memory is understandable, because that's your context. CPU is how you take actions on the operating system. That's why I believe Asia has a huge opportunity right now. It's just starting, because in the past everyone believed the GPU is the dominating hardware. Now we do see more and more of a transition, and we are getting a lot of virtual computers. We see this could grow, because we host the machines for you and you don't need a computer to sign up. If you have a phone, you can use the product. What we notice is that people didn't realise that in the past you were boxed into a single computer, because physically you only have two hands. You can only have one device in front of you. You can't have ten, because you only have two hands. You cannot handle so many — people can only focus on one. This is the physical constraint most of us didn't even realise. Once you have a phone, you can talk to a virtual computer to finish the work autonomously. People will start to think: can I have ten? With nine clicks, you have ten computers doing the work for you. You can see the supply and the demand. The demand is going to explode, because we are getting more freedom. We're not constrained in the physical world anymore. I don't even think having one computer is productive anymore. **Bernard Leong:** That's what we were talking about just now. If I snap a finger and the agent shows up as a hologram, I can tell the agent to do whatever it takes, and it's translated into code. **Ang Li:** That's right. That's the goal here. **Bernard Leong:** Coming back to where we started, you defined AGI as a machine that can do all the work you do. What is the test for you to settle whether we are there? My definition of AGI, when people ask me this question, is that I know it when I see it. Maybe for you it's different. **Ang Li:** How do you see it? My definition is that I can follow your definition when I can feel it, not see it. When I feel I'm doing all the work in the exact way I would if I were talking to a colleague in my company. The channel could be text messaging, a very simple text message. Suppose my whole day I just text, and all of my work is done. It's a fundamental Turing test. If I text one of my colleagues and things get done, and if I text the agent in the same way and things get done, how do I know the other side is AGI or human? That's basically my test, from an emotional feeling perspective, because there's no way for me to see it. Everything becomes more virtual. **Bernard Leong:** We're touching the physical now. I think we are getting to the point where bits are going towards atoms, where there are going to be humanoid robots. **Ang Li:** It doesn't matter. **Bernard Leong:** It doesn't have to be human form. It could be something else. Do you foresee that even if that physical closeness is there — because now it's still very digital — it would be the same exact test, where you say you feel the test? **Ang Li:** When there is a humanoid... I don't believe in humanoids, and I believe it's going to be a longer time horizon for that to be achieved, because I used to work on perception in cars. I know the hardware iteration is way slower than the digital world. That's why I believe it should occur in the digital world first, and the infrastructure might be similar. It's the same: I'm talking to you as a human, and maybe one day I'm talking to a humanoid. Do I feel the same? If I feel the same, that's AGI. If I don't feel the same, then it's not. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one question you wish more people would ask you about autonomous computers and Simular, but they don't? **Ang Li:** That's a very interesting question. There's one thing — the fundamental motivation for doing this. **Bernard Leong:** Tell me, what is the motivation? **Ang Li:** It's more from a humanities perspective. We are surrounded by so much technology and so many devices, and I don't feel that's natural for humans, because we come from nature. Nowadays people spend more time away from nature. That doesn't seem to be the right form of lifestyle. Personally, when I go to the forest, I feel more relaxed, less stressed. Suppose I can do my work in that kind of environment — why not? Why not make sure everyone has the opportunity to enjoy their life while the whole of humanity stays productive? It naturally becomes a separation of workforce and humans. The workforce should be fully autonomous, instead of you babysitting and handholding all the time. They should have a communication channel with you, so they can report to you if something happens. That's basically the fundamental future vision we are looking at. Potentially we won't be doing podcasts in an office space in the future. **Bernard Leong:** I hope I can still do this, but you're probably right. My traditional closing question: what does it look like for Simular over the next decade? **Ang Li:** Achieving our goal. I think AGI is coming very soon, especially in our own definition, in the digital world. I'm constantly worried that the arrival of AGI creates a huge gap between humans. Personally I want this type of technology to empower everyone, not just the one who has a huge amount of money. That's why we open source a lot of our technology, and we really try to drop the price. From $500, we now try to see whether it's doable at $20, maybe free. Is it possible for us to democratise this type of intelligence into everyone's life, to empower everyone? I think that's going to be a huge success. Everyone will feel far more productive. If they want to do something, the machines will handle it for them, and everyone will focus on what they are truly passionate about. Find your own passion and follow it. Follow your heart. Do the work as part of your life, because life is so short. **Bernard Leong:** Ang, many thanks for coming on the show. A really interesting conversation. I haven't had this kind of thinking about data distribution and machine learning for a while. I have two more short closing questions. The first one: any recommendations that have inspired you recently, like a movie or a book? **Ang Li:** It's not something very recent, but I always remember this from when I first joined Google DeepMind. We had a product manager, Gabe, who was very good. We used to do one-on-ones, and he recommended a book called *Range*. The book studies different athletes, and the core argument is whether we should be generalists or specialists — whether humans should be generalists or specialists. It's debatable and controversial, but the general conclusion is that generalists usually win. That concept matches my own understanding. I've been working with a lot of really smart people, experts in the world, and almost all of them know a lot of concepts everywhere. They have very broad knowledge. They are specialists in their own domain, but they also have a very wide breadth of knowledge. That inspired me about agents — how agents will be shaped, and what the human role in society will be in the future. I do see situations where humans are forced to be specialists in a narrow domain, because society needs that. You need to be a specialist. We often forget that being general is also important. This is also connected to your hiring standards. What I usually call it is T-shaped capability. People ask me, if AGI comes, will there be only one AGI system? I say no, because everything is T-shaped. This is general intelligence — artificial general intelligence — so everyone is a generalist, but in the end they still need to differentiate in terms of their own specialty. There will be one agent that's really good at calling APIs or doing all the tasks. There will be another general AGI system really good at moving the mouse. You need to be general and a specialist at the same time, not just one. You don't want to be general with no specialty at all — that's not useful. You don't want to be a specialist who doesn't generalise, because you're stuck in a certain area. Then it becomes a question: suppose AGI comes, what's the human role? I believe humans are extremely good at being creative, at being innovative. I don't see an opportunity for machines to take that part away. That becomes the specialist part. It's not about subject matter anymore. Humans will be more general, because you can use the tools. Everyone will be a very general generalist, because you have your agents working with you, and the creative part is actually the specialist part for humans. All of the remaining work can potentially be handled by machines — the boring job. **Bernard Leong:** Where can my audience find you and Simular? **Ang Li:** LinkedIn and X. I'm always there. A lot of people send me an email, but apologies in advance if I cannot reply, because it's a big volume. I still try to write back manually, because I believe that even in the AI world — AI is going to help us — it's important for me to still reply in a human way, to show some level of respect to my peers in the human world. On LinkedIn and X, feel free to reach out to me, send me messages. I always see them and I will try my best to reply if the request is legitimate. **Bernard Leong:** Great to have you here. **Ang Li:** Thank you so much for having me. **Bernard Leong:** This did more justice than the panel we had at SuperAI. It's really great to have you here. You can find us everywhere — do subscribe. Thank you for coming on the show. Let's talk again sometime soon. **Ang Li:** Thank you. Exciting to be here. [Simular AI and Computer Use is the Final Frontier in AI with Ang LiPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · August 20 · 54m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-32-76186f84-69f0-49df-aba1-8a376e46e87e.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-3d180832-a171-4133-b09b-42fc9bf8e546.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/simular-ai-and-computer-use-is-the-final-frontier-in/id914868245?i=1000784490728&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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Steve argues that narrative belongs at the top of the AI pyramid, not the bottom — in an era when models generate more material than any organisation can absorb, the story a company can credibly tell becomes the scarce asset, not the technology itself. He explains why the truth lies in the field rather than at global headquarters, how regional dynamics reshape where a story lands, and walks through Cisco's advances in silicon and quantum computing networking. Showing a real customer deployment, he argues, is what earns permission to talk about security and trust at all. Last but not least, he shares what great look like for Cisco to build their story in the age of AI. --- > "Take your phone and switch it into airplane mode and see how much you can do on your phone. Very little. You can use the calculator, but you can't use an AI model. You can't surf the web, you can't send messages. And people get excited about GPUs and data centers and models and applications and devices. But sitting at the center of all of that is the network. And that's what Cisco is all about. So that's our job, is to help people understand the value of the network and to realize that AI, as exciting as it is, it simply doesn't happen without the network." **\- Steve Clayton, SVP & Chief Communications Officer, Cisco** **Profile: Steve Clayton**, SVP & Chief Communications Officer, [**Cisco**](https://www.cisco.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevecla/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Friday Note Newsletter](https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-friday-thing-7412856034161229824/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premium podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and today we explore a different but critical layer of the AI conversation — not just the models, but the infrastructure, trust and storytelling required for AI to scale inside enterprises. With me today is Steve Clayton, Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer at Cisco. Steve previously spent more than 28 years at Microsoft, including as Chief Storyteller, helping shape the company's technology narrative, culture and executive communications during a major period of transformation. He now [leads communications at Cisco](https://blogs.cisco.com/news/steve-clayton-joins-cisco-as-chief-communications-officer?ref=analysepodcast.com) as the company frames its role in networking, security and AI. Steve, welcome to the show. **Steve Clayton:** It's great to be with you, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** To start the conversation, I did some background research on you. You spent more than 28 years in the tech industry, including as Chief Storyteller and later as Vice President of Communications Strategy, before becoming [Cisco](https://cisco.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)'s Chief Communications Officer. Your career has involved translating complex technology into stories that employees, customers, policymakers and markets can understand. What did your journey teach you about making technology feel more human, and what feels different at Cisco now, in the AI era? **Steve Clayton:** I strongly believe that storytelling is a very human thing. It started with cavemen around campfires. Once they invented fire, they had nothing else to do — they no longer had to keep the ferocious animals away. So they sat around campfires and started to tell each other stories. We are biologically predisposed for stories. When we meet people, we tell them stories. We ask them about journeys they have been on. We ask them what books they have read. We ask them what music they listen to. The language of humanity is stories. In the world of technology, we tend to get very excited about the technology. But the thing that I think is important is telling stories about the impact that technology has on people's lives. That is what I spent a lot of time doing at [Microsoft](https://microsoft.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and it is why I am at Cisco — because there is a huge opportunity to help people understand not technology for the sake of technology, but what the role of technology is. What impact can it have on people's lives? How does it make our world better? That is why storytelling is, and always will be, incredibly important. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/08/DSC01896.jpeg) Photo Taken in Poddster Singapore **Bernard Leong:** Especially now, with stories being so important to the AI debate itself. Let me get straight into the subject. One way to frame the AI debate is that the first wave focused heavily on model capability, but the next wave will be about whether AI can be deployed safely, securely and at scale. So the question I will start with is this: from Cisco's current vantage point, why does the public conversation still over-index on models and under-index on infrastructure? Every other week we get a wave of announcements on AI models, but we hear very little on the infrastructure side. **Steve Clayton:** When we come to a city — here I am visiting Singapore — when I get here, I am more interested in which restaurants I should go to, which bars I should go to, which hotel I should stay in. I do not think about how I am going to get there. I am going to get there on the roads. I am going to get there with transport. The network is the same sort of analogy. In some ways they sit in our subconscious. We take them for granted, but nothing would happen without them. If there was not a road between the airport and the city centre, I would not get to my hotel or get to the restaurant. We have a similar phenomenon going on with AI. The media like to report on models, on the latest devices, on the latest applications, on the competition between the model makers. But things are changing a little, and the reason I say that is the same analogy — nothing happens without the network. I said to people this week at events I was presenting at: take your phone and switch it into airplane mode, and see how much you can do on your phone. Very little. You can use the calculator, but you cannot use an AI model. You cannot surf the web. You cannot send messages. The network is this crucial component that is fundamental to all of AI. People get excited about GPUs and data centres and models and applications and devices. But sitting at the centre of all of that is the network. That is what Cisco is all about. Our job is to help people understand the value of the network, and to realise that AI, as exciting as it is, simply does not happen without the network. **Bernard Leong:** I can definitely relate to that. Recently, at my son's chess competition, I had to tether my phone to the nearest network, and it was still running, and I was hoping the phone signal would not die. That is when you really appreciate that infrastructure is core to what we are doing. I want to test a simple mental model with you. Capability determines what AI can do. Infrastructure determines whether we can scale. Trust determines whether and how organisations will deploy. Narrative determines whether people understand what is actually changing. Does that model hold up from where you sit, or where would you refine it? **Steve Clayton:** The model holds up completely. If you think about it as a pyramid, the one thing I would do is switch the pyramid around. Often we start by talking about the models, and as I mentioned earlier, the models are exciting, the technology is exciting — I come from a technology background. But what I am really interested in is what it is going to do for people: for a company, for an individual, for a country, for an organisation. So I would prefer to put the narrative on top of the pyramid, versus the bottom of the pyramid. **Bernard Leong:** If you think about the top and the bottom of the pyramid being inverted, can you talk a little more about how organisations need to change the paradigm in terms of how they communicate this? **Steve Clayton:** It depends on the organisation. From a communications view, the way I have always approached things is: let us not talk about technology for technology's sake. When I think about narrative and storytelling — and I look at my time at Microsoft, and even the six months I have been at Cisco — what matters is how you tell a story to somebody you are meeting for the first time. Being able to tell it in very human terms means not starting with the technology, not leading with the product, but talking about what this thing does. What is the impact it is going to have on somebody's life? How do we enable somebody to do things they could never do before? That is why I am in the business of storytelling. In some ways, in the technology industry, it is counterintuitive. Technology companies — and I have worked for a few of them now — like to celebrate the technology. We like to talk about products and features and capability. But what I have learned over the years is what really breaks through, because everybody is doing that. Maybe another way to answer your question, Bernard, is that oftentimes the way to break through in a very busy, noisy communications and media environment is to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. **Bernard Leong:** You describe communications as evolving from a content provider into a business architect. What mental model do you use to explain that shift? **Steve Clayton:** One of the models I use is that I try to reject the word content, because content has just become a very bland term for anything that is now in our digital ecosystem. A podcast — I think it diminishes the value of this podcast to call it content. It is a conversation between two people. When you create a video and call it content, or create a website, or a magazine, whatever it may be — content is this unbelievably vague and valueless word. I reject the notion of content and really try to celebrate all of the different forms of communication, whether that is a podcast or a radio show or a book or a movie or a written piece, whatever it may be. That is my philosophy. Content has become a bad word in our industry. **Bernard Leong:** If that is the case, how does it change the way communications leaders engage with product engineering, policy, security, and even customer strategy? Storytelling becomes more important, as you alluded to earlier — you are trying to give people the story on what this does for them. How does that work? **Steve Clayton:** The way I think about it is always to take an audience-first mindset. Who is the audience — whether it is a policymaker, or a school kid, or a technologist, or a colleague, or an employee? Start with the audience, and then establish where that audience is right now. What is their mindset? Let us say it is a policymaker with a different point of view around sovereign AI. Our job is to say, where do we want to move them from and to? That is the gap communications can help with. Very often what I have seen in communications is that people run to a tactic: well, I have a slide deck, and I am going to present you my slide deck and tell you all about my technology. A policymaker probably does not care about the technology. They probably care about the implications of that technology on the government, on the country, on the sovereign. **Bernard Leong:** Security, for example? **Steve Clayton:** Exactly. You have to meet people where they are, versus assuming they are just going to be ready to consume what you want to talk about. I talk with my team a lot about this — you always have to start with the audience and then work back from there. A lot of people fall into the trap of just filling the pipeline with content that is not relevant to the audience. **Bernard Leong:** So the medium is the message. **Steve Clayton:** Exactly. [Marshall McLuhan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall%5FMcLuhan?ref=analysepodcast.com) had it right all those years ago. **Bernard Leong:** In an era where AI can generate more content than any organisation can consume, is the scarce resource creativity? Or is it judgment — knowing what not to say, what to simplify? Or is it attention? **Steve Clayton:** We will come back to judgment. The scarce resource is attention. That is why storytelling is important, because we are bombarded with information whether we like it or not. On my journey to work this morning, I was bombarded with billboards, with TV, with radio, with email, with WhatsApp messages, with blogs, with news, with newspapers. The most scarce resource — maybe it is time, but you cannot manufacture time. The one thing you cannot buy on Amazon.com is time. That is what I keep telling my kids. But the scarce resource, I think, is attention. It is this thing we have to cherish and pay attention to as communicators. How do we get permission to capture people's attention? The way to do that is through careful curation, and through judgment. In a world where the internet is increasingly filled with so-called AI slop, the thing that will break through is stories that a human created — that show judgment, and show a deep appreciation for people's attention. **Bernard Leong:** So attention comes first, and judgment is the next part, where you try to sort out the stories. **Steve Clayton:** Attention is the thing we just have to be aware of. We are not entitled to people's attention. We have to create something that is worthy of their attention. In order to do that, one of the ways is to apply great judgment, and not to just create a story using an AI model. **Bernard Leong:** Which goes back to your other point about working backwards from what the audience wants. A quick question on this: what is the one thing you know about Cisco's role in the AI era that very few people outside the company fully appreciate? **Steve Clayton:** There are many ways to answer that question, but I will give you one that has been quite profound for me since I joined the company. I have been in the technology industry for over 30 years, and Cisco has been in the technology industry for over 40 years. Cisco has always been there in my journey in technology. I thought I knew Cisco, and I do, but I did not know everything about it. When I joined the company, one of the first things I learned about was [Silicon One](https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/products/networking/silicon-one/index.html?ref=analysepodcast.com). It is a set of silicon technology that came from a company we acquired over ten years ago, an Israeli company, and Cisco really had the foresight to say that in the future, owning your own silicon design and that silicon is going to be incredibly important to the future of the business. That has proven to be the case, and will continue to prove to be the case. If you had asked me six months ago, before I joined Cisco, whether Cisco was in the silicon business, I would have said no. I would have said they are in the networking and switching business, and they own a company called Splunk. That has been a real revelation for me. I am also going to give you a second answer. I am fascinated by quantum computing, and I had no idea that Cisco was in the quantum business — in particular, creating a [universal quantum switch](https://investor.cisco.com/news/news-details/2026/Cisco-Introduces-Universal-Quantum-Switch-Advancing-the-Path-to-a-Quantum-Network/default.aspx?ref=analysepodcast.com), which can allow different types of exotic quantum computers from different manufacturers to be connected together at room temperature. Maybe that is the way to actually accelerate and unlock the speed of getting to a scalable quantum computer more quickly — through the network, versus trying to scale up the computers themselves. **Bernard Leong:** We live in interesting times. Now we have AI, and quantum computing is going to take a square root of the speed and go much, much faster. There is always a tension in technology communications. The story has to be ambitious enough to lead the market — sometimes we have to think big — but it also has to be grounded in order to be credible. How do you manage that line when talking about agentic AI, security and network readiness? These are three different things. People are wowed by the agentic AI demo, but they sometimes do not see that security matters too, because we are in an enterprise environment, or that network readiness matters, as we alluded to earlier — especially when the technology is moving faster than most organisations can absorb. **Steve Clayton:** It is about keeping ourselves grounded in reality. The technology industry has a bit of a reputation for hyperbole, and sometimes for overuse of the word innovation. That is what I talk to my team about. Let us keep ourselves grounded. Let us be ambitious, but let us also be honest, and let us be realistic. What that means to me is going beyond just talking about the art of the possible, and showing people the possible. One of the things I really enjoyed doing in my time at Microsoft was building technical demos and putting them into keynotes. Instead of just talking about things or putting them on a slide deck, show them — and ideally show them in real-world use cases. Take people behind the scenes at a customer and say, here is how this company is actually using agentic technology. Once you have got people hooked on that story, you can then say: in order to do this, it needs to be done in a secure way. That gives you permission to talk about security and to talk about trust. As you can probably gather, a lot of my philosophy around storytelling is that we have to capture people's attention and get permission to tell them these stories — not just the ones they want to hear about all the depths of the technology. **Bernard Leong:** Let us switch subjects and talk about diversity in the region. How do you ensure the story resonates across different markets, when different parts of the world have different cultures and look at these things so differently? **Steve Clayton:** The most important thing — and I say this to my team — is that the truth lies in the field. Let me explain what I mean by that. Working for globally headquartered technology companies, and I have now worked for two, it can sometimes be very easy to only see the world through the lens of a global headquarters in the United States. For me, the most important thing is to step outside of that. It is part of the reason I am in the region this week. I have been in Hong Kong for a few days, I am here in Singapore for a few days — not to come and talk at people, but to come and listen. To come and understand the dynamics of the region. What does the partner environment look like here? What is the geopolitical environment? What is the IT environment? Understand the region, but then also be on the lookout for stories. Who is the small company in Singapore doing something incredibly innovative with Cisco's technology? How do we take that story, help them tell it, and help them tell it on a large stage, maybe at one of Cisco's keynote events? I am constantly on the lookout for big stories with big-name brands, of course. We have great partnerships with lots of big companies. We have this amazing [partnership with the McLaren Formula One team](https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/about/why-cisco/mclaren-racing.html?ref=analysepodcast.com), and in some ways it is the easiest story to tell, because everybody knows who McLaren are, and it is a great story. But there are also great stories about young entrepreneurs who have just joined the [Cisco Networking Academy](https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/learn/training-certifications/training/netacad/index.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) and have been able to create entire new careers for themselves, supported on their journey in life by Cisco. The short answer is that I am constantly on the lookout, and encouraging our teams to look, for stories that go beyond the most obvious use cases. **Bernard Leong:** I hope you found a lot of stories moving across Hong Kong. **Steve Clayton:** New stories every day. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about communications, trust and enterprise AI, but do not? **Steve Clayton:** The one question I wish people asked is: how do you break through? **Bernard Leong:** How do you break through? **Steve Clayton:** How do you break through. I said this to my team yesterday. One of my favourite books — I forget the precise title, but I will make sure to send it to you — is essentially, whatever you think, do the exact opposite. That has proven very successful for me in a lot of the communications tactics I have used over the years. The analogy I will give you is this. Imagine you are stood on a beach looking into the distance, and there is a sailing regatta. You see a set of sailboats all sailing in one direction, and then there is one boat sailing in the other direction. I look at that and I say, what is that other boat doing? What the other boat is doing is that the captain has realised the wind has just changed, and he is ahead of the game. So he has started to tack in the opposite direction. That is going to be the boat that wins the race, because it is thinking differently to everybody else in the race, and getting ahead of the game. That is what I am constantly doing — looking for the ways we can communicate that are not the same as everybody else. If we just do the same as everybody else, we fall into this blandness of communications, and we look the same as everybody else. It is not about being different just for the sake of being different. It continues to come back to this: how do we earn the permission to capture people's attention? **Bernard Leong:** It sounds a lot like using AI tools. You should not ask the AI tools to generate the marketing message. You should be testing your marketing messages, doing the opposite, and trying to figure out what the best messaging is. Did I get that right? **Steve Clayton:** I did this literally this morning. I write a thing every Friday and publish it on LinkedIn — it is called The [Friday Thing](https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-friday-thing-7412856034161229824/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I always write the first draft. I write the first draft, and then I use AI as my editor, to ask: how can I make it better? Does this flow well? It has proven to be a real craft for me. It has made me a better writer. But I am never going to give up the profession of writing — of being the person who always writes the first draft. **Bernard Leong:** Also the ability to be creative, as we humans do. **Steve Clayton:** AI is an incredible tool. I think it is phenomenal. I use it all day long, on my phone or my computer. But ultimately it is humans who come up with novel ideas, and humans who bring the creativity. AI is a great ideation tool and support system, but it is humans who are creative, not AI. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what does it look like for Cisco in the agentic AI era — not just as a networking company, but as a company shaping how enterprises build trusted AI infrastructure? **Steve Clayton:** I will answer your question with my own observation from earlier: it depends on the audience. What do I want businesses to think about when they think about Cisco? I want them to think about Cisco as the company building the critical infrastructure for the AI era. But what do I want my sixteen-year-old daughter to think about when she thinks about Cisco? She is not a customer of Cisco. I want her to say, my dad works at Cisco and they do amazing things in the world. They help bring education to people. They help connect people. They help me do things on my devices. It really depends on the audience. I would not recognise who Cisco are today. We are a different company than the company we were 40 years ago, yet we still have a lot of the original heritage. We are a networking company, securely connecting every device on the planet — hopefully making AI become reality for people anywhere in the world, hopefully improving people's lives, improving economic outcomes, helping businesses, helping governments, helping countries. That is what I really want people to know about Cisco. **Bernard Leong:** I think there will be a lot more stories for you to tell. **Steve Clayton:** So many more stories. **Bernard Leong:** Steve, many thanks for coming on the show. In closing, I just have two quick ones. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Steve Clayton:** I am going to recommend a book. I am reading it right now, and I am going to write about it in a few weeks. It is called [*Without Reservation*, by Jeremy King](https://www.amazon.sg/Without-Reservation-Lessons-Life-Restaurants/dp/0008599025?ref=analysepodcast.com), the British restaurateur. You might think that is a very odd thing for me to recommend when I am here talking about storytelling. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting — I have read the book. **Steve Clayton:** It is an incredible book. It teaches you a lot about humanity, about storytelling, about dignity, and about life. **Bernard Leong:** The book talks about hospitality as well. That is a good book. Where can my audience find you? **Steve Clayton:** I have LinkedIn, so you can find me there. My handle almost everywhere is Steve Clay. I am on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/stevecla/?ref=analysepodcast.com), I am on [X](https://x.com/stevecla?ref=analysepodcast.com), I am on LinkedIn. I publish this thing every Friday — I literally just finished the draft of today's before I arrived here, and it is all about gratitude. That newsletter is called The Friday Thing. You can find me on all of those platforms under stevecla. **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks for spending this quality time with me. You can find the podcast everywhere. Many thanks for the conversation, and let us talk again sometime in the future. **Steve Clayton:** It is a real pleasure. Thanks. [Attention Is the Scarce Resource, Not Creativity in the Age of AI with Steve ClaytonPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · August 6 · 24m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-32-f0b518c2-c1a6-47ad-85e0-c7f072a13091.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-ddfab64b-bbd5-4908-a085-d87717c4ba2d.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/attention-is-the-scarce-resource-not-creativity-in/id914868245?i=1000780158803&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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Sophie Dionnet, Senior Vice President of Product and Business Solutions at Dataiku, lays out the three ingredients behind enterprise AI value — people, orchestration, and controls — and argues governance is a scaling mechanism, not a brake, pointing to Roche, where a patent lawyer built a working system of agents. Nur Hafiza Mutalif, Assistant Head of International Affairs at the Singapore Red Cross, explains why her sector's caution is a feature rather than a lag: humanitarian work must clear its do-no-harm standard before any business case. Dataiku's pro bono experts earned that trust by teaching the models and letting the Red Cross set the boundaries — freeing four staff from daily data collation and enabling a Thailand leptospirosis forecasting model. Two sectors, one lesson: trust is what lets AI scale. --- > "A lot of the changes that organizations need to do today actually don't require the latest model. That's not really the problem. It's about doing the hard thing, the change, the things that we talked about. It's easier to be excited by the new toy than by trying to use it. And so yes, I think this is why there is a bit of a gold rush of trying to figure out where is it going to end. We don't know." - Sophie Dionnet > *"We cannot see efficiency, too, I think what I should see, as a humanitarian organization, is datasets and the different cases around the world be compressed into something that simplifies value and help us better serve communities." -* Nur Hafiza Mutalif **Profiles:** - **Sophie Dionnet,** Senior Vice President of Product and Business Solutions at [Dataiku](https://www.linkedin.com/company/dataiku/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-dionnet-a176894/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - **Nur Hafiza Mutalif,** Assistant Head of International Affairs, [Singapore Red Cross](https://redcross.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nurhafizaab/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) **Author's Note:* Our transcripts are edited to be readable.* ### **Part 1: Sophie Dionnet from Dataiku** [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premium podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong. Enterprises have spent the last three years of budgets on AI, and yet most cannot point to the business value of it. The question is no longer whether the models work. It is where the value sits between the pilot and the P&L. We take that apart across three angles: the domain knowledge models cannot supply; the orchestration problem, now that agents multiply faster than anyone can count; and the case that governance accelerates AI rather than slows it. With me today, Sophie Dionnet, Senior Vice President of Product and Business Solutions at Dataiku, who has spent six years building the platform and owns its AI governance line. We discuss why AI investment fails to become value, and what has to change. With that — Sophie, many thanks for hosting me at the Dataiku Summit here in Singapore, and welcome to the show. **Sophie Dionnet:** Thanks so much. It's an important moment for us. It's one of those moments where we have different customers and different partners coming together to have this discussion, so having someone like you here is awesome. **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks. You've just come straight off the keynote, so I want to ask you: you have been with Dataiku for the past six years and you own product and business solutions. What has changed most about what enterprises ask you about enterprise data platforms and AI between 2019 and today? **Sophie Dionnet:** Oh my God. If I try to summarise this, it could take us a bit of time. On the one hand, a lot of things have changed, and some have not. I will start with what hasn't changed, if I may, because I think it will create the baseline. What hasn't changed is the importance of data. Data consciousness has continued to rise in organisations. Interestingly, there has been almost an acceleration of that over the past twelve months. There is a deep understanding now, from every single type of organisation — in the private sector, in the public sector — that if they don't have data access and if they don't have good data, they're simply not going to be able to use and develop AI. That has been a continuous investment since I started at Dataiku. It was there at that time and we have seen this continuing to accelerate. It's not an easy problem to tackle. I get very scared, usually, when I have organisations in front of me telling me, oh my God, we've solved it all. I'm not entirely sure that's true. That area of focus has remained. The piece that has drastically changed is the arrival of LLMs, and the new power we have seen exploding, especially since December, is massive. It raises tons of questions for organisations around what they do with this raw power. How much is it about productivity? How much is it about task automation? How much is it about redesigning their entire processes? We get a lot of questions around that. We do indeed get a lot of questions around control, also. This is a new technology, it's fascinating — but do I trust surrounding decisions to it? Open question. **Bernard Leong:** I suppose one of the things I'm pretty sure you and I both feel is that this AI wave seems to come much more fast and furious. Most importantly, there's governance. You built the AI governance line within Dataiku. What made you push the company towards governance before most of the market was really asking for it? **Sophie Dionnet:** I come from a financial services background. I used to work in asset management and I started my career in 2005, just before the financial crisis. What we saw with the financial crisis was, to some extent, a risk modelling problem happening at sector scale. Then very specifically in the company I was part of — I was at AXA Investment Managers — we had a particular incident happening in our quantitative equity activities, and that really highlighted the importance of deep model supervision. When you think about what you're doing with AI, we can talk about machine learning, we can talk about LLMs, we can talk about whatever statistics — at some point in time you are modelling an activity. There is a deep correlation between trust, controls and the capacity for people to scale. That's very simple. It's usually one of the main blockers you see between organisations that manage to do two or three use cases in a very centralised manner. Usually when they do two or three use cases — very tight, tight, tight control — that doesn't scale. If you want to start scaling out, you need the type of governance environment that will allow that scaling mechanism to happen. There's a bit of deep conviction in the background. **Bernard Leong:** The Dataiku line is "Everyday AI, Extraordinary People." I'd ask you to first give my audience an introduction to Dataiku — and also, what's the lesson about people that you didn't believe when you started, after you'd built the product? **Sophie Dionnet:** Yeah, after we built the product. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe we should start with the introduction to Dataiku. **Sophie Dionnet:** It's always interesting to explain what Dataiku is in Asia. You are probably familiar with the concept of haiku. The name Dataiku comes from the idea of making data simple. Data, data science — and haiku, which are very small but very powerful poems. You put this together and that gives you the idea of the platform. The idea of Dataiku is really: how can we facilitate, for any organisation, the transformation of data into outcomes, by bringing to the table three key ingredients? The right people — people who have both technical knowledge and business knowledge. The capacity to stitch technologies together, which we can call orchestration. The right type of supporting controls. That has been Dataiku's position for fourteen years, and this is what continues to drive us today. **Bernard Leong:** After six years building the product, what's the lesson about people you didn't believe when you started? **Sophie Dionnet:** That's another good question, and I haven't really thought about it. What's quite interesting is that we end up finding the best use cases in the hands of people we would not necessarily have thought would be the drivers of these use cases. The platform was designed to break that barrier to entry. One of the best use cases we've found is coming from Roche. Roche is a big pharmaceutical company. One of the people working in their legal department, in charge of patents, has taken it as a task to completely revamp how his team operates — making decisions around patentability and answering requests from different law firms. What has been fascinating with him is to see how much he has been able to dissect his own professional expertise, encode it through a system of prompts, and create the supporting agents. Probably ninety percent of it was done completely by himself, with a little bit of IT support. I would never have bet that one of the best use cases would have come from lawyers. Seeing this in motion — he's someone with a lot of depth, very intelligent, very smart, super dedicated to making that change happen. Knowing that he wouldn't have been able to do it without our technology is fascinating. **Bernard Leong:** This is a very interesting use case. But if you look out at a lot of enterprises, they have spent the last three years putting serious money into AI, and some of them — maybe even most of them — cannot tie it to value. Is that a technology failure, an organisational failure, or a measurement failure? Which one do you see happening the most in the market today? **Sophie Dionnet:** The biggest gap for me today is clearly more on the change management side than anything else. When you want to monitor value, there are many different ways of doing it. It doesn't mean that all organisations are well geared to do that. But when you know you have value, you don't necessarily need complex measurements to recognise it. The pure potential of machine learning, of LLMs — it's here, it's established. We know machine learning can allow you to predict. We know LLMs can do tons of things. The hard bit for anyone is taking something as raw potential and putting it in motion. Anyone who has done a software installation, or who has done change management, knows how daunting it is to go from the moment you take a decision to the actual implementation. Taking the decision is one hour. Putting it in place is like two years. It's that journey that is actually ahead of everyone. Unfortunately, it's not magical. It's not as simple as it sounds. For me, that's the biggest missing link. **Bernard Leong:** Being in enterprise AI myself, every week I'm inundated with the latest model releases. There's a point you made when we were having a conversation — that the real barrier isn't model performance or infrastructure, it's connecting AI to everyday business domain knowledge. Why is that the hard part, when so much of the attention from enterprises seems to be focused on the models themselves? **Sophie Dionnet:** Because when you look at these models, they're fascinating. It's the first time, I think, that you have a technology so easy for people to touch. It's the first time I've been able to explain to my parents what I do on a day-to-day basis, because I was able to sit down with them around a computer and say, this is what it is. **Bernard Leong:** They can basically ask questions, right? **Sophie Dionnet:** The second part is: is it designed to answer questions accurately? Yes, no. What does it do? How do you impact that? It's the first time I did that — I think it was a year ago. My parents are both translators, and for them, because of what they used to do, the arrival of LLMs is also a bit scary. They spent years learning languages. It raises a question: do you still learn languages? Anyway, it's a technology everyone can touch, everyone can manipulate. It's so easy, and so suddenly you have a buzz of, oh yes, but this one can do this, and this one can do that, and this and this and this. Probably a lot of the changes organisations need to do today don't require the latest models. That's not really the problem. It's about doing the hard thing — the change, the things we talked about. But for people, it's easier to be excited by the new toy than by trying to use it. This is why there is a bit of a gold rush of trying to figure out where it's going to end. We don't know. **Bernard Leong:** I think we're still at the very early stages. So what's the one belief about scaling AI that most of the industry seems to think is correct, but you think might not be the right direction? **Sophie Dionnet:** There has been an ongoing debate for the past twenty years around what needs to be IT-led versus what needs to be business-led. **Bernard Leong:** That's a good point. **Sophie Dionnet:** Similarly, as you look at the organisation of companies, they move from centralisation to decentralisation to centralisation to decentralisation. It's a bit of the same. The answer is probably a balance. If you suddenly decide, oh, business is going to do it on its own, it's probably going to be a bit of a mess down the line. If you say it's only IT that can know, that can build the standards, that can do it all on its own — it doesn't work either. I do think that over the past two years there has been a bit of a centralised move towards IT, and it can create a risk of slowdown — not of the biggest use cases, but a slowdown of the actual transformation that needs to happen on the business side, plus a risk of new types of shadow IT and shadow AI. I don't think anyone would tell you, oh yes, of course IT needs to do everything. But there needs to be a continuous balance between what is done and by whom, and I'm not sure the right balance has been figured out yet. **Bernard Leong:** I've seen this happen quite a lot, where IT is in charge of the tools and, because of worries about risk and governance, they actually shut down some of the features. Then when the business teams say we need this, the IT teams say, no, sorry, we can't have it. It's almost as if they purchase a very powerful solution and then limit what it can do. Let's get back to what you're most familiar with — governance. Throughout this conversation, I hear that what you think governance is, is a question of balance. The simplest way to act is to do nothing, but that's not an option. Where do you see leaders still quietly choosing to do nothing? **Sophie Dionnet:** There are different ways of doing nothing. You have the doing nothing which is: I'm very scared to be hit by a car, so I'm never going to go out of my home. That's one way. Then you have the second way of doing nothing, which is: I know I could be hit by a car if I have my headphones on, and I'm still going to keep them on. Two ways of doing nothing. If you play this out in an organisation, there's one way, which is to say, I'm going to have security principles that are so high no one is going to be able to do anything. Then you have the second one, which is not putting guardrails in place at all — I'm just letting it go and we'll see after the fact. We've seen quite a bit of the first at the beginning of the wave, with some companies doing a full shutdown, trying to keep things under control that way. The permissive part, letting people do anything they wanted, has been happening also in some organisations. What's interesting is that in both cases, the outcomes are not really here. I'm not sure that a completely decentralised, uncontrolled exercise creates maximum value in an organisation, simply because it's not just about individual innovation. Down the line, for a company to work, or a public sector organisation to work, you need to have people who take decisions. If suddenly you have people randomly vibe coding bits and pieces of everything and having conflicting information on stuff — how the hell do you expect them to still reach consensus? To come back to your question: there is a risk if people put governance too early in the cycle, because you need to get started somewhere. There's also a risk if you don't put governance as part of your journey, or if you do it too late, because there's going to be a big dilution of effort for some, and unwanted impacts that are going to pop up. **Bernard Leong:** So you think the stage at which governance is inserted is very important? **Sophie Dionnet:** Yes, and it's the same thing — it's a question of balance. You can't go all in with just governance principles at the very beginning, because then it blocks everything and people are like, oh my God, I don't know what the hell I can do. If you wait too late, there's a cost of peeling back the onion that is super, super, super expensive. The people who had the joy of working on GDPR implementation understood it the right way. When your compliance officer says, okay, so now you have to identify every single file — I'm not even talking about a spreadsheet — where you have personal data, like the name of an employee. That's going to be interesting. There have been some lessons learned on that, which is that the cost of ex-post compliance can be very, very, very expensive. **Bernard Leong:** One thing you alluded to earlier is that AI success is really about people, orchestration and governance. Which of the three do enterprises consistently underinvest in, and why that one? **Sophie Dionnet:** I would say people and governance. Orchestration sounds like a simple topic, and it's an IT-led topic — how do you stitch the ecosystem together. You have teams dedicated to that; it's their job. You have IT architects, you have infrastructure people. Probably they think about this a little bit too much, even from an ecosystem standpoint. The two pieces that are hard, actually, are again that balance of governance and that balance of skill sets. That would be my answer, in any case. **Bernard Leong:** That's a very good answer — simple and concise. Dataiku also has things like Mesh and Agent Connect to stop agent sprawl. Nowadays you talk to anyone and they probably have many, many agents within them, and they have no control over which department owns which agents. So a company may have expected 500 AI agents, but ended up discovering 2,000 agents running around — which, as you nicely put it, could be a cause of shadow AI. Is that a governance failure or a success signal? How would you advise a board to tell the difference? **Sophie Dionnet:** Interestingly, that question usually starts with the board, because the moment where consciousness rises in the company is when you have a board member saying, how many things do you have? Let's call them things for the moment. **Bernard Leong:** Because of the audit committee. **Sophie Dionnet:** Because of the audit committee — or it either comes from the audit committee, or it can come from the board from a strategic P&L management standpoint. AI is supposed to be transformative for P&L. So you could have a board saying, how many do you have, and are you impacting the right processes? I don't know — your marketing hasn't been that efficient, how many agents do you have supporting marketing today? Or you can have your risk committee or your audit committee saying, we have the EU AI Act arriving, you're supposed to be able to qualify how many agents you have and how much they're exposed to this pyramid of risk. Are you able to do that today? Two different angles, same question, and it's complicated. The starting point can be a lot around that. Then indeed, it's a pretty complicated thing to answer today. With machine learning it was much simpler, because realistically you usually don't have twenty-five different spaces where you're building ML. Agents today, you could summarise as being just a new type of API. You can have new types of APIs popping up from every single type of business system, or being manufactured by the companies, so they can pop up in many, many different places. We see a missing link today, which is why we're working on agent management, which we're launching in October — specifically for that. Providing a space where you have all the right connectors, all the right data integration, all the right type of visibility factors to start addressing those complicated problems. **Bernard Leong:** One question for a board would be: are agents a technology problem or an organisational design problem? **Sophie Dionnet:** I think it's a problem that is led by technology, because right now there's a big incentive in the market for everyone to be agentic-native. We all produce agents — some of us because it's our core business, which is what we do, some simply because you need to integrate these new types of API into your activities. There has been a push by the technology market because there's a belief that AI can be transformative. I don't think we can blame the companies for being in front of that sprawl. There's not much they can do about it, unless they shut everything down, which I'm not sure is exactly a solution today. What I think is our collective responsibility on the tech side is that we simply need to answer the problem and arrive with meaningful, impactful answers. This is what we're working on at the moment. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one thing you know about what separates enterprises that scale AI from those stuck in pilots, that very few people know? **Sophie Dionnet:** On the AI scaling side, it's an interesting topic. Most of the companies we've seen being successful with AI, it started for them with having a few different successes. You need that to build trust. You need those first three or four pilots to actually move to production and to move to meaningful P&L, because unless you've delivered that, you haven't been able to completely demonstrate that it works in motion. Once you have that, you need a way to recognise that there are different shades of impact of AI. Not everything is going to be as big. Not everything is going to necessarily deliver ten millions of P&L. That's okay. To some extent, the use cases that deliver ten million are subsidising the other ones. The problem is, if you don't do the other ones, you almost create an imbalance in your organisation. You create a space where you are over-investing, and then some others that you leave behind. The space you're leaving behind can then become almost a legacy for your organisation. It requires a bit of maturity and self-consciousness to recognise that not every effort has the same yield, and that it is okay — then you need to calibrate your efforts to make this happen. **Bernard Leong:** I want to move the conversation now to where the platform goes. There is a view out there — the bear case on orchestration platforms — that the foundation labs are going to absorb the middle layer, and enterprises will build directly on OpenAI or Anthropic. Where is that argument going wrong? **Sophie Dionnet:** OpenAI and Anthropic are fantastic companies that are building a new type of infrastructure that is going to become critical for organisations, which can create some sovereignty considerations and some business continuity conversations. We can't ignore the fact that they are bringing innovation to the market, and that innovation is a good thing. Consequently, it's also good if some other players are on the side and can diversify those risks for everyone. As with any company that is leading with a new technology, it's a little bit self-centred. Suddenly, because you own that raw power, you're putting it forward as the answer to everything. It's the only thing you talk about, and you suddenly say this technology is going to solve everything else. It's going to solve data quality, it's going to solve analytics, it's going to solve how autonomous cars need to work — everything. That's true and untrue. [The Three Ingredients That Turn AI Into Value with Sophie DionnetPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · July 29 · 31m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-32-61e74415-807d-4b1e-964a-9d0d4e56566b.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-5326438e-3192-4d1a-9592-4d5d2158c11e.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-three-ingredients-that-turn-ai-into-value-with/id914868245?i=1000779000309&ref=analysepodcast.com) It's the job of those who are part of the ecosystem to rebalance that and bring a bit of sense into it. If you take a bank, I make a bet that in ten years a bank will still be doing credit modelling in the same way, from a precise modelling capability standpoint, because regulators will still want perfect auditability of these models. If suddenly you were asking an LLM to do it, you would completely lose this. There are some activities that will not change and some others that will. I don't think it's Anthropic or OpenAI that will make that operationalisation move. Their job is to continue to innovate, and it's our job to make sure that operations actually matter. **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you. A lot of people keep saying, I can vibe code a Salesforce out of nowhere. The problem is that people are not using Salesforce for that. In this case it's the same with Dataiku — I'm using Dataiku for a very specific business purpose, and to make me change that, it actually overhauls my entire purpose of what we need to do for the enterprise. In the enterprise you have a lot of customisations that I think customers don't realise you need to do. **Sophie Dionnet:** There's that. Sorry, I'm going to use a bit of a stupid analogy, but if you take your kids to a pet store, they're going to see a new pet and be like, oh my God, I want the pet. It doesn't mean that they want to take out the dog every single day. Build versus buy in software is exactly the same thing. You can do a first version and it can be nice and funny. Then there's the run, there's the continuous education, there's the continuous reinforcement of that software. The debate between build and buy has always been: when do you delegate, and when do you keep it on your side? Today, yes, there's a frenzy around vibe coding. I would be surprised if each and every single company decides to completely redesign their own IT, just because it will have a massive cost. There's a reason you have software vendors — because you have companies deciding to delegate software-building capabilities, because it makes more sense. **Bernard Leong:** I also find that a lot of the automation is around the systems of record. It's actually quite difficult to get the enterprise to switch out. The switching cost is just too high. **Sophie Dionnet:** Completely agree. **Bernard Leong:** If I were to ask you this question: what's the one question you wish more people would ask you about Dataiku, about building the platform for AI success, but they don't ask you about? **Sophie Dionnet:** You're asking a very hard question. **Bernard Leong:** Take your time to think about it. **Sophie Dionnet:** It's a hard question, because we do get a lot of questions about what we do. **Bernard Leong:** What was the one question you just wish people would ask you, but they usually don't? **Sophie Dionnet:** I'm trying to think of a decent answer, because we get so many different questions. I think, at least over the past two years, there have been so many new technologies that sometimes you lose a bit of the sense of why you're making a piece of software. It almost comes down to that. **Bernard Leong:** The "why" of making this software for this reason. **Sophie Dionnet:** Why is the core philosophy behind it? Why do we genuinely believe companies need that? There has been such a sprawl of new technologies that you get into a room and it's like — do you do semantics? Yes, no. Do you do MCP? Yes, no. Do you do knowledge graphs? Yes, no. Do you do ontologies? Yes, no. What do you think about A2A? It's almost as if you were going to buy a car and you're like, oh yes, do you have shift gears? Yes, no. At some point, we designed that software for a reason, and for a belief about how you make change in organisations. We always manage to get the conversation back to that. But sometimes I would like people to think about it a bit more this way, instead of being in the supermarket of technologies. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what does it look like for Dataiku in Asia Pacific over the next three years, and where are we going? **Sophie Dionnet:** We've had a really good take-off in Asia over the past years, and it's been great to see — a lot of banks, a lot of public sector. Public sector is always interesting because there's a mission behind it; it's not just here to serve a P&L purpose. We've seen a good acceleration. I think we need a few more of these flagship organisations to step up and be vocal about what they do, because they are the ones who can be the trendsetters. I do think that the partnerships we can bring are a powerful accelerator that can make sure there's this reconsolidation between what I was talking about — AI's pure capabilities and actual outcomes. The only thing I can hope: today we have twenty customers speaking at our events. Maybe next year we have forty. **Bernard Leong:** I'm actually going to be talking to one of your customers later. **Sophie Dionnet:** Oh, who are you going to be talking to? **Bernard Leong:** She heads international affairs at Singapore Red Cross, and I think she's also a user of your solution. Usually most of these organisations are quite afraid of using AI, so I'd like to know what got her into it. Sophie, many thanks for coming on the show. I have just two very quick questions to close. First, any recommendations that have inspired you recently — a book, a movie, or something? **Sophie Dionnet:** That's a very different one. We went to the movies. It's a French movie, so I don't know how much it's going to echo for everyone. They released a two-part film tied to the Second World War, on de Gaulle. We went to see the first one last Sunday, and we're going to see the second one this Sunday. It's really good. It's a nice way of putting in perspective the choices some people made during the war, and how much it sometimes relies a bit on luck, and a bit on some people being bold. **Bernard Leong:** Where can my audience find you and Dataiku? **Sophie Dionnet:** If you ask my partner, he will tell you not at home enough, because I've been travelling a lot lately. Over the next few weeks I will be in France. We have our offices in central Paris, and we have the pleasure of welcoming a lot of Asian customers as they come to Paris. Don't hesitate to come and meet us. **Bernard Leong:** It's a beautiful city. Sophie, many thanks for coming on the show, and I look forward to speaking to you again. **Sophie Dionnet:** Thanks so much. - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/Dt2ZvjxlRCg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-three-ingredients-that-turn-ai-into-value-with/id914868245?i=1000779000309&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5VHvVxpF3IeM0bNLpuDYFN?si=YPFY%5FzumTT-Z8h7zO-l8%5Fg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/three-ingredients-turn-ai-value-dataiku-sophie-dionnet?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvcwVzM?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### **Part 2:** Nur Hafiza Mutalif **from Singapore Red Cross** [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premium podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I am Bernard. The humanitarian sector has been slower to adopt AI than almost any other. Not from a lack of need, but from a scepticism that the technology industry rarely takes seriously. That scepticism deserves a hearing — and so does the evidence against it. We take this apart across three angles: why the sector distrusts AI; what the Singapore Red Cross built, from disaster surveillance pipelines to a model predicting leptospirosis outbreaks in Thailand from climate data; and where the line sits that AI must not cross. With me today is Nur Hafiza Mutalif, Assistant Head of International Affairs at the [Singapore Red Cross](https://redcross.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com), who came to this from international law, not data science. We are very thankful to be hosted here at the Dataiku Summit, and I know you are giving a talk shortly, so we will get into what AI for good actually buys you. Many thanks for coming on the show. Welcome. **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** Thank you. **Bernard Leong:** I want to start with your background, which is very interesting. Your background is in international law and political science. How did you end up leading an AI project at the Red Cross? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** That is a good question. I ask myself the same thing. To give some context: within the International Affairs team, we used to have a Humanitarian Innovation and Technology Committee, which now sits within the Singapore Red Cross organisation more broadly. I was in charge of that committee. Part of the committee's work is to sit down with the team, look into the different humanitarian challenges and trends, and come up with a solution together. One of those is this programme — how we can use AI to make our work better and create more impact with the communities we work with. That is how I ended up going into it. **Bernard Leong:** What was the moment where you personally went from observer, or sceptic, to sponsoring the project itself? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** To be honest, it took a while for us to become fully comfortable with implementing AI. One thing that was encouraging was that the AI for Good programme comes with pro bono experts. They really sit down with us to explain how things work, and that built the confidence of the team. Apart from that, the experts do not impose their views on us — on the communities we work with, or on the ethical boundaries we hold. From there we started to see that if we use AI properly, it is actually quite beneficial for everyone. **Bernard Leong:** So the team from Dataiku could take your input and build something you genuinely needed, rather than something force-fed onto you, as some other technology companies do. Your work is to keep global challenges in view long before public attention arrives. What have you learned about attention that now shapes how you use AI? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** Attention is a luxury for humanitarian organisations, especially organisations like the Singapore Red Cross. With everything happening around the world, and the increase in different conflicts, the attention we have is very limited. That is also because of the availability of resources. The way we use AI is to ensure nothing gets left behind. For protracted crises, or for regions that are forgotten, the model allows us to make sure we pick up every single case or story. At the same time, how we use AI in the Singapore Red Cross in this area is that we curate — we do not create. There is already a lot of information out there about humanitarian challenges, and it creates compassion fatigue for the public. We decided that if we were going to go into AI, it needed to help us with this attention deficit and this compassion fatigue. It helps us make things simpler. All the complex data, the complex emergencies — we put it into a form that actually makes sense for the public to give their attention to. **Bernard Leong:** One thing I understand is that the humanitarian sector is openly sceptical of AI. Steelman the sceptics for me. What is the strongest version of the case against bringing AI into humanitarian work? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** It is a very valid scepticism. **Bernard Leong:** I think it is valid too. **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** In any humanitarian setting, or any humanitarian organisation, we work from the foundation that we do no harm, and from neutrality. When we bring in new technologies — or any solution, for that matter — we need to make sure it does not do harm to our communities, or to the humanitarian workers in the field. Looking at it this way, there is a reason we might be slower with the adoption of technology. We need to innovate with care, making sure the communities are always at the forefront of our solutions. **Bernard Leong:** How the community thinks about it matters a great deal for how technology gets adopted. Now that you have built with it — what belief about AI do your peers in the sector hold that you think is not correct, about how this technology is actually being deployed? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** Before we went into AI, we were also hesitant. One thing I probably want to share with my peers in the sector is that we cannot see AI as an efficiency tool. It should not be. What AI should be seen as, as a humanitarian organisation, is how it helps us make sure that the datasets, the stories and all the different cases around the world get compressed into something that helps us with an evidence base, and helps us build better trust with the communities. If you ask me to choose one thing — they should not see it as an efficiency tool. **Bernard Leong:** That is a very interesting point. It is about designing the solution to solve the problem, rather than starting from efficiency gains. I want to talk about what you actually built. You have a disaster surveillance project that cut manual collection and collation work which used to occupy four people daily, freeing up roughly six to eight days a quarter. Walk me through what those people do instead now. **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** The staff in charge and the volunteers are still very much doing disaster surveillance. But because the data collection and cleaning are automated, it has moved them into more strategic contributions. The volunteers are also now able to contribute according to their interests. For instance, some of them are interested in producing social media material. Out of the datasets, they are able to come up with good infographics and then post them out to media. There is a shift from doing purely manual work to contributing more strategically, and much more impactfully. **Bernard Leong:** Recently I had the Chief Economic Opportunity Officer of Indeed on the show, and we were talking about AI and job displacement. One of the conclusions we came to is that AI automates the boring work, while the creative work that we as humans do is still there. People conflate the two and assume the whole thing is being taken away. Coming back to your case — does automating the grunt work also change who inside the organisation has the power to think about what to do with the data? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** By automating this, two things change. One is of course the power of the data — now everyone has access to it. That brings me to the second point, on access. Previously it was mostly the volunteers looking at the raw data, and then the staff in charge would look only at what the volunteers had contributed. Now everyone has access to the reports that come out of the model we built. It allows everyone to assess the data and use it effectively. **Bernard Leong:** I thought the Thailand leptospirosis model was interesting. It predicts outbreaks by combining case records with climate data — something like 2,800 to 5,500 cases a year. What can you now do that you simply could not do before it existed? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** Previously, most of the monitoring we did was on cases that had already happened, or we could not pinpoint the factors contributing to an increase in outbreaks. What is being done differently now is that we can say the probability of it happening in three months is this much, and you can prepare accordingly. That is the difference between what we were able to do previously and what we can do now with the historical data. **Bernard Leong:** This is a very interesting point. You have anticipatory action, which means you can commit resources before an outbreak is confirmed. How do you get humanitarian organisations comfortable acting on a prediction? Predictions are, as you said, just probabilities. How do you convince them to allocate resources against one? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** First of all, to be comfortable, we cannot depend on the probability alone. **Bernard Leong:** Emotions are involved too, right? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** With any decision we make, we do not rely on one factor alone. Having expert judgment, having the communities involved so they can tell us we are missing a factor — that helps humanitarian organisations become more confident about using predictions. When we act on predictions, the actions we take and the resources we commit need to be what we call low regret. The first thing that comes to mind would be monetary or physical items. But there are also resources such as upskilling the community's preparedness, making sure everyone is trained in how to get out of an earthquake. Those are resources where, either way — even if the prediction does not come true — it leaves the community better off. **Bernard Leong:** In a disaster cycle you have prevention, detection, then response. Where does AI genuinely change the humanitarian's job, and where does it genuinely assist them in getting better? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** With the model we built, it has an impact on every part of the cycle. But if I had to say where it leaves the most impact, I think it is the detection part. We are now able to see trends better. We can see the environmental factors, and the different things that are actually making it worse or better for communities. Those are things that make a bit more sense to us now. **Bernard Leong:** This is one question I really want to ask. What is the one thing you know about deploying AI in a humanitarian setting that very few people outside the field do? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** With a lot of the tech people we speak to, there is always this term they use — data efficiency. But within a humanitarian setting, data efficiency may not necessarily be a positive thing. There is a lot of risk. When we have full information, it can put our communities at risk, it can put humanitarians at risk. This is something I would share with colleagues from outside the sector: data efficiency is not everything, especially when it comes to humanitarian organisations. **Bernard Leong:** Especially since you collect a great deal of unstructured data, which requires thinking about what signal these models can actually give you. Here is another question. The Red Cross runs on neutrality and on doing no harm. What is the line you will not let AI cross, even if it works? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** All of the work we do, regardless of the thematic area, is based on the seven fundamental principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Whatever solutions we put out, AI or not, as long as they do not cross the boundaries of our principles, we are still open to exploring. A lot of our work involves vulnerable communities. As the Singapore Red Cross, it is difficult for us to adopt certain technologies or solutions that might put those people at risk. **Bernard Leong:** Since we are here at the Dataiku Summit — you partnered with them in 2025, and you now have two certified designers in-house. Was building internal capability more important than the models themselves, and why? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** Before we started this conversation, we talked about how AI has suddenly become the topic among everything. It is something that, as humanitarian organisations, we cannot run away from. Having this internal capacity within us is a long-term solution, rather than just having the models — which might change in a few months. The models might need to be updated, the data we look at changes, but the skills and the capacity we now have within the Singapore Red Cross are the asset for the organisation. **Bernard Leong:** For an NGO \[non-government organization\] with no data team and no budget — where do they even start? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** We are not technically an NGO, but the advice is the same for everyone within the sector: look at what the organisation's needs are, and what the organisation can or cannot do. Once you have that laid out, you will see what needs to be done first. Are you ready for AI implementation, or is there a foundational issue you need to solve in order to implement AI at all? **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about AI for good, but they don't? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** Most of them ask whether it is really free. **Bernard Leong:** Is it really free? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** It is. Most people ask whether it is free, how much it costs, what the platform does. But I hope to have more conversations about how it builds the capacity of your organisation. It changes a lot about how we think about data, about data workflow, about how data science actually contributes to our work. Those are the things I hope to have more conversations about. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question, then. What does the next five years look like for the Singapore Red Cross's use of AI, and for its humanitarian missions? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** We hope to have AI as a cross-cutting theme. The way we see climate or gender issues as cross-cutting thematic areas of our work, I hope AI can be a cross-cutting area for all the work we do — whether in a big way or a small way. [AI Is Not an Efficiency Tool for Humanitarian Causes with Nur Hafiza MutalifPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · July 30 · 19m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-32-885d3256-2839-428b-99bc-ac5c928b2108.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-d91cca75-4a4d-4ec8-83cb-a9b39ceaaf54.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-is-not-an-efficiency-tool-for-humanitarian-causes/id914868245?i=1000779187780&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks for coming on the show and sharing how humanitarian organisations really think about the use of AI. It is not clear cut. I have learned a lot simply from understanding that this is not about efficiency — it is about trying to solve real-world problems. In closing, I have two last questions. Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** I recently started reading the new Robert Langdon book, [*The Secret of Secrets*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FSecret%5Fof%5FSecrets%5F%28novel%29?ref=analysepodcast.com). I know it is a bit late. I really like it, and it inspired me to think about the different ways you can think about something. Everyone has a different perspective on a very foundational thing. That made me think. **Bernard Leong:** That is the Dan Brown fiction book. Where can my audience find you, and the work the Singapore Red Cross is doing across the world? **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** We are on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/sgredcross/?hl=en&ref=analysepodcast.com) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sgredcross?ref=analysepodcast.com). You can find us at [Singapore Red Cross](https://redcross.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks for coming on the show. I look forward to hearing what you have to say later at the conference. Thank you. **Nur Hafiza Mutalif:** Thank you. - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/b2OKYwwBxLs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-is-not-an-efficiency-tool-for-humanitarian-causes/id914868245?i=1000779187780&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2EGuyDkytbgP3YunnXYsjM?si=uyeMDw4NSRmq1RWslsOiJw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/why-the-aid-sector-adopts-ai?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuzIoD0?ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [LinkedIn Newsletter](https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7149559878934540288&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/analysepod) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analysepodcast.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@analysepod?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) ### Inside the War on Southeast Asia's Industrial Scam Economy with Rafael Frankel URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/inside-the-war-on-southeast-asias-industrial-scam-economy-with-rafael-frankel/ Last updated: 2026-07-23T00:50:56.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Dr. Rafael Frankel, Head of Public Policy for Asia Pacific at Meta, joins us to unpack how Meta is stepping up on the fight against scam syndicates in Southeast Asia along with a coalition of partners. He explains why today's syndicates operate with state-like capabilities and forced labor at scale and how AI has become both the scammers' sword and Meta's shield, powering the removal of hundred million scam accounts in 2025\. Frankel walks through the disruption-sprint model that took down the million accounts in a single week alongside the FBI, Microsoft and Starlink, and argues that beating scams demands a coalition matched to the criminal supply chain. Closing out, he reminds us that crime is never zero — but through sustained, collective pressure, it can be cut by orders of magnitude. --- > "I think that people underestimate the criminals that are the drivers of the scams. Mostly what we're talking about at this point is extremely well-financed, highly sophisticated transnational criminal networks that have turnover in the billions, tens of billions, and have the finances, the technological know-how, the sophistication to really be trying to scam people 24/7, 365 days a year. That's a tough adversary to be up against." - **Dr Rafael Frankel** **Profile: Dr Rafael Frankel**, Head of Asia-Pacific Public Policy at [Meta](https://www.meta.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-frankel/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premium podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com), and today we are examining how Southeast Asia's scam economies have shifted from opportunistic fraud into industrialized cross-border enterprise — complete with scam-as-a-service kits and sanctioned conglomerates like the Prince Group — and why defeating it now takes platforms, banks, telcos and governments moving together. With me today is Dr. Rafael Frankel, the newly appointed Head of Public Policy for Asia Pacific at [Meta](https://www.meta.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), a 25-year veteran in the region as a journalist, academic and policy leader, who will unpack where the fight stands today and where he sees it heading. So, Rafael, welcome to the show. **Rafael Frankel:** Thanks, Bernard. I'm really happy to be here. **Bernard Leong:** I want to kick off with your background — your origin story. You spent years as a foreign correspondent in Bangkok and Jerusalem before moving into tech policy. What instinct from chasing stories did you carry into fighting scam networks? **Rafael Frankel:** Searching for the truth and the ground reality of what's going on is a pretty strong through line from those two things. Understanding what's really happening on the ground — the local environment, how people are using technology and interacting with each other, how the politics comes into play — all of that is highly transferable to the work we're doing now to fight scams. **Bernard Leong:** From the different roles you've undertaken over these past few years, what are the lessons from your career journey that you can share with my audience? **Rafael Frankel:** I love the way Steve Jobs put it at the [Stanford commencement address](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&ref=analysepodcast.com) — you can only connect the dots going backwards. Having said that, one thing I really relied on over the years is my gut instinct — what I was feeling deep down about certain career opportunities and whether to seize them, and the willingness to take risks: to move to different parts of the world, to try new things, to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, and always be ready for change because it could come any second. If you put yourself in that mindset, always looking for growth and where the trend lines are going, you can get yourself into some pretty interesting situations — a fun career, and a highly varied one. **Bernard Leong:** You've now been appointed as Meta's Head of Public Policy for all of Asia Pacific. What drew you to this role at the current moment? **Rafael Frankel:** I can scarcely think of a better role to have right now. It's a moment where politics, technology, social development and economic development are all intersecting — and they're all intersecting here in the Asia Pacific, which is the clear growth region of the world, both in population and economy. In many ways, technology in the realm I work in — public policy — very much as well. We're talking about scams today, but it's not just true of scams. It's also true of AI, and of how people are using digital platforms, not just ours. When you put all those things together, and you're the kind of person I am — interested in all those things and in the policy and political environment that underlines technological development — then it becomes a really fascinating place to work. I'm always up for a good challenge. It's very hard, very challenging, but to me the intellectual stimulation is a positive. **Bernard Leong:** You're also in a pretty complex market — reading policy across a very diverse set of markets, from India to Japan, Australia, the Philippines. They can be developing, emerging, or even frontier. How does that diversity shape how you think about the challenges we're going to discuss today? **Rafael Frankel:** You have to think about the challenges from different points of view and the different people experiencing them, because they come at these issues from different places — different levels of knowledge, different cultural experiences, different vulnerabilities and different strengths. Political systems are different. There are many countries in the region where we can work really well and collaborate on a policy and law enforcement basis. There are other countries, unfortunately, like Myanmar, which are in the middle of a civil war and have a different type of government, where that kind of collaboration is really hard. So it forces you to think about the issue from all sorts of angles, and to come up with solutions you want to be as scalable as possible — while recognizing you'll sometimes have to adapt on a country-by-country basis. **Bernard Leong:** I want to go specifically into how Meta is currently dealing with the scams situation. I had the fortune of [interviewing Wong Sue Lin](https://www.analysepodcast.com/scam-inc-how-a-500b-underground-industry-is-impacting-the-world-the-economist-sue-lin-wong-2/), the correspondent from The Economist who created the famous scam podcast series — it was really great. So when we look at scams from your perspective, what is the one thing people don't understand about the challenge itself? **Rafael Frankel:** I think people underestimate the criminals that are the drivers of the scams we mostly experience. It's a big world — there are individuals just sitting in their basement trying to scam. But mostly what we're talking about at this point is extremely well-financed, highly sophisticated transnational criminal networks with turnover in the billions, tens of billions of dollars. They have the finances, the technology, the technological know-how, the sophistication to be trying to scam people 24/7, 365 days a year. When that's your adversary — and in many ways they have state-like capabilities — that's a tough adversary to be up against. We'll get into this in a bit, but what it means is that when you mount the most aggressive response you can, you can't go alone. You have to [have a lot of partners](https://services.google.com/fh/files/newsletters/industryaccord.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com) to go up against it. **Bernard Leong:** Online scams in Southeast Asia have gone from basic opportunistic fraud to something quite industrial in scale. Coming from Meta's vantage point, what has fundamentally changed in recent years? **Rafael Frankel:** As you put it, the industrial-scale aspect is certainly different. We see in Cambodia — and there's obviously a ton of reporting on this — these scam centers where tens of thousands of people operate huge industrial complexes. That was not there a few years ago. When you have that kind of scale, and you have the forced-criminality aspect of it, it's really sad. There are around 300,000 people, studies say, trafficked to these centers and forced to engage in criminal behavior and scams. That is new as of a few years ago. A few other things worth noting: connectivity around the globe continues to get better. For the most part that's great — it connects people, drives economic opportunity, and Asia Pacific is one of the regions that has experienced this the most. But it does mean there are more opportunities for the criminals to connect. Crypto is another thing that has come on the scene in a bigger way in the last four or five years — it's harder to move money if you use established mainstream financial institutions. Crypto has very positive uses too; I'm not suggesting any of these technologies are inherently bad. But with technological development there are very strong benefits, and often the unfortunate parts you also have to take care of. That's the way technology develops. **Bernard Leong:** Since you mentioned technology — how is AI now being used as both a sword and a shield, from the policy perspective you come from? **Rafael Frankel:** AI is certainly one of those tools scammers use as well. It allows them to manipulate images and voices in ways that previously weren't available to them — impersonation. The flip side is that, for us, AI is a really extraordinary tool to use against the scammers. We can ingest billions of signals from our platforms, and we fortunately have access to some of the best AI systems and models ever deployed. That gives us the ability to deploy AI as a great shield. We use it to look at how people are using our platforms, and we can identify certain patterns that allow us to take down accounts at scale. Last year, in 2025, we removed [159 million scam accounts on our platforms](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/03/fighting-scammers-protecting-people-with-new-technology-and-partnerships/?ref=analysepodcast.com). There's no way we can do that without AI. These systems are getting better and better, so we're going to continue to deploy them as a really strong tool to combat scams. **Bernard Leong:** Very few people know — and I actually found this out in preparation for this interview — that Meta led two major disruption operations this year, in March and June, working with law enforcement from around the world. Can you walk me through what coordination with Meta actually looks like in practice? **Rafael Frankel:** Let me go back even further, to the genesis of this. It was basically Bangkok, November 2024, if I'm not mistaken, when we hosted for the first time a group of civil society, law enforcement and policy people — mostly from around the Asia Pacific, but including other places; I think there were a couple from Africa, the Middle East, the United States — to really focus the problem on what we saw at the time as this emerging scam issue around our region. It was when the public consciousness first started to be trained on the fact that there were these industrial-scale scam centers, mostly in Cambodia and Myanmar. We convened it as Meta to make a first effort at putting heads together and thinking: what can we do to collectively solve this problem? Because when this is the adversary you're up against, it's an all-hands-on-deck fight. That got everyone thinking about what could be done collectively. It took some months, and then in December of last year we had our first real major disruption in Bangkok, where we brought together law enforcement from around the region and some policymakers. We focused the problem in Thailand on the surrounding scam center areas, working with the US FBI and Justice Department and a few other partners. We saw it was a really effective collaborating model — in that first disruption, we were able to take down about 59,000 accounts and issue six arrest warrants. We saw that was a really effective model, so we said, let's make this even bigger. Then we had another disruption sprint in March — one week long — and another in June, which started in Washington and then moved to Bangkok. The model has been the same, and each time we try to expand the number of partners we're working with. If you fast-forward to the last one in June, we had a huge number of law enforcement agencies — not just from Asia Pacific, but also Europe and the United States: Japan, Singapore, Australia, Korea, Thailand, obviously the FBI, the Justice Department, the scam strike force, UK law enforcement, and a number of others. This time, for the first time, we also convinced some of our tech partners to come join the fun — we had Microsoft there, Starlink joined. This time around, we were able to take down 1.5 million accounts in just one week on our platforms, 20,000 Microsoft accounts, and thousands of Starlink kits. The Royal Thai Police made 63 arrests. So you can see how, over just a six-month period, we were able to really scale that up. **Bernard Leong:** The coalition now actually mirrors the criminal supply chain itself — matching the coalition to the chain. Is that the blueprint for making these operations work, from your point of view? **Rafael Frankel:** It has to be, and it's got to be an always-on exercise. We're talking about specific scam-sprint disruptions, which are pointed and have a specific target — really these scam centers in Southeast Asia. But if we're talking about the always-on work, then yes, we have to collaborate with the telcos, the financial institutions, law enforcement and policymakers. There are a couple of pieces we should mention to the public. We have to have public awareness. We have to have everyone in civil society involved. You've got to put all that together, because the scam chain involves — in many cases, not all — the digital platforms, the telcos and the financial institutions. Then you've got to have law enforcement to put them behind bars. You've got to have governments to create the right policy framework and political cooperation to make this actually happen. Then you've got to have civil society and the public involved, to make sure people are aware and know what they can do to help. **Bernard Leong:** I would not underestimate the effort required to coordinate between these organizations. So how are you actually building trust between them to share intelligence or approach the issue as a collective? And what challenges do you face? Three disruptions is not easy — from the planning all the way to the operations. **Rafael Frankel:** We're really proud of the disruptions work — it's amazing what we've achieved. But we should be talking about the larger effort that's always on and ongoing. Is it challenging? What builds trust? Results. Results build trust. If you can show that you can take down scammers and put them behind bars, and you can have offline law enforcement action that takes down these scam centers and denies the scammers the impunity of operating in broad daylight — and you've done that because you've collaborated, because you've shared intelligence, because you've put all the pieces together — then you get the results, and that is a positive snowball effect. You create a positive feedback loop, and then more people want to join and more people share intelligence. That's why, every time we do one of these disruptions, the number of stakeholders participating grows. On the always-on work, we've also established the Global Signal Exchange to combat scams, where the digital platforms, the financial institutions and law enforcement are all sharing data signals. So if someone's operating as a scammer on Facebook and we have some identifying information, we can put it in the signal exchange. The banks get that information, the telcos get that information — hopefully that means they'll be denied the use of those services too, so they can't use any of us. We have the FIRE program, where we share information with the banks to help ensure scam transactions don't go through. Then there's the work we do with civil society — the public service announcements and campaigns we run with governments so people are educated and know how to spot a scam, so they're aware of scammers' techniques and the different types of scams, and can identify them and not fall prey. That's always-on work we've been doing for a number of years now. When you put all that together, it's a really big collaborative effort — but it requires all those different stakeholders to make it work and make a good dent in it. **Bernard Leong:** There was one part of the conversation where the FBI laid out that this isn't really a country-specific problem — compounds simply relocate whenever pressure eases. Is disrupting these scam networks fundamentally a game of whack-a-mole, or do you need source-level pressure that can actually shrink the market itself? **Rafael Frankel:** Both are true. You need both. You do need the source-level pressure — I 100% agree with the FBI on that. But it was also really important that this action against the scam centers was taken, because you just got to the situation where you had these massive industrial-scale scam compounds operating in broad daylight with total immunity. Everyone knows where they are. Everyone knows there are 10,000 people sitting there day after day scamming people. You have to put that to a stop. You have to raise the cost to the scammers of engaging in this activity, and tell them that if you try, you're going to get thrown behind bars. It doesn't mean scam centers or scammers won't pop up in different places — that comes back to the source pressure. But it means that's how you squeeze them from both ends. One or the other isn't sufficient, but if you pressure it from both sides, you can make some headway. **Bernard Leong:** What was the most counter-intuitive lesson you've learned from being inside Meta's fight against these syndicates? **Rafael Frankel:** One thing people probably assume — and I understand why — is that because our platforms are so big, so many people use them, and we ingest a lot of data, we know everything. But we don't. There's a limit to what we know, and the limit is what's on our platform. Anything that's not on our platform, we don't know. So when scammers are operating on other digital platforms, using telcos, the banks, the crypto exchanges — that's beyond our ability to know. It drives home the point about the need for collaboration. We can see our part of the scam chain, but we can't see beyond it. That's why you need the collaboration. **Bernard Leong:** The Asia Pacific region is probably described as the front line of the scam problem. But could the argument also be made that it's actually the front line of the solution? What do you see happening in this region that isn't happening elsewhere? **Rafael Frankel:** I certainly hope so. I think we've been really innovative in the way we've approached it. The scam disruptions are the best example — that entire model started out here, through the dogged pursuit by people in this company. I give the Royal Thai Police a lot of credit, the Department of Justice in the United States, the Singapore Police Force — that core group of partners that really got the effort off the ground, and that tied in the real government too, just to be clear, not just the police. So what we've done out here is demonstrate a proof of concept that works. Now the question is how you scale it up and do it in other places around the world. The other thing is what we've been able to identify as scam types out here — for better or worse, a lot of the scam types we see also, to some degree, originated out here. When we can pass that knowledge along to other regions and say, here's the activity we're seeing, here's how scammers operate — then if they see them in the US, Europe, Latin America or Africa, they already have that point of reference from the work we did. I also want to say there's a really highly collaborative effort and spirit among most of the governments and law enforcement agencies out here — they really are trying to pull on the same rope on this one. That's another thing I hope we've been able to demonstrate around the world: we can all work on this together, even if there are other things we disagree about. **Bernard Leong:** The fact that all these different governments are working with you is a testament to humanity — the positive of what we should do. But how does Meta calibrate its approach across such different markets? Clearly what works in Singapore is very different from other countries around the region. **Rafael Frankel:** We obviously prefer to have really strong government and law enforcement relationships everywhere. There are some countries where the circumstances make that challenging — I already highlighted Myanmar. But the other part is that scams are different in different places. One thing in the Philippines is the POGO centers — that's been something very specific to the Philippines, and we've put a lot of work into helping the Philippine National Police shut down those centers where there's criminal activity operating from them. That's in some ways a uniquely Philippines thing. We've talked about the scam centers in Cambodia. Thankfully, we don't have anything like that here in Singapore. But in Singapore you've had different criminal groups operating, some of which were sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, and then the collaboration becomes really pinpointed police action. You mentioned the Prince Group — that's one example. In Thailand, one thing we see is that the Thais don't have a lot of people setting up and scamming from Thailand, but it's a point of transit. So one thing we've been able to do with the Royal Thai Police is catch people when they're transiting through Thailand. Those are examples of the different ways we work with different law enforcement agencies and governments, based on the local exigencies and the ways we can get at people. **Bernard Leong:** The skeptic's case is that sanctioning a Prince Group, or extraditing a kingpin, is theatre — the compounds, the trafficking and the laundering rails still survive intact. Where does that argument go wrong? **Rafael Frankel:** If that were the end of the action and not the beginning, then you might have a point. But I really give a lot of credit to the US Treasury Department and the OFAC office. They put a lot of effort into tracking down the financial networks these criminal syndicates use, and they've thrown a few waves now of sanctions on the criminal groups that have established themselves in this part of the world. Those are really effective at giving law enforcement out here the tools they need to go make arrests. Sure, if they had started and stopped with that one action, it wouldn't be sufficient — but that's not what's happening. In fact, we're seeing an expansion of that work all the time. The DOJ strike force is very active now in this part of the world, and I think they're pretty committed to staying active. What you need is sustained pressure over a long period of time to tackle any criminal enterprise. I'm American — go back to the 1920s and the gangsters that used to roam around Chicago; you don't get them overnight. You get them over a long period of putting a lot of pressure on them, a lot of sustained law enforcement and prosecutorial action. In a similar way, we've just got to keep the pressure up. Over time, if you can raise the cost and lower the profit through the collective actions everyone is taking, then eventually — you're never going to get to zero. Crime is never zero. But you can reduce it a lot. You can get it down by orders of magnitude, and that's where we should be shooting for. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one question you wish more people would ask you about the scam landscape in Southeast Asia and Meta's efforts to fight it? **Rafael Frankel:** Going back to the theme that this is a collective-action environment — what I sometimes wish people would ask is: what can I do to help? My answer would be that there is a lot of material out there now that we've developed in cooperation with the Singaporean government and other governments in the region, law enforcement, the banks, the telcos. We've all put out a lot of material to help citizens around the region and globally identify scams — to understand and start thinking critically when they see certain messages on SMS, when they're asked to engage in a suspicious financial transaction, or they get an approach on Telegram — to identify that and really educate themselves so they don't fall victim when it happens. We're going to keep doing our best, together with our partners, to deny scammers the ability to use our platforms and others. But it's an incredibly strong tool when the citizen him or herself knows when to say, "I'm not falling for that." **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what does success look like for this fight, say three years from now? **Rafael Frankel:** We've done a lot of work building up the institutional capacity to collaborate across the different sectors I've mentioned. There's still more we can do. We must have had a dozen government and law enforcement agencies in the last disruption — but we can always bring that number higher, and continue to expand the partners we work with. So looking forward, what we'd want to see in a few years is even stronger institutional, collaborative tissue developed over time. A year or two ago, someone was talking to me about this and said it reminded them of the early days of the effort to combat terrorism content online, which we now call GIFCT. I thought that was a really interesting analogy, because at this point that capacity — that muscle — has been built up across the platforms, governments and law enforcement agencies. Everyone knows who to talk to and how to share intelligence, and it's really effective. So in another few years, we should hope we're in that same kind of space when it comes to anti-scams work. **Bernard Leong:** I find it very refreshing. From first covering that story on scams to now hearing Meta take action together with your partners, this has come a very long way. I'm sure the road ahead is still pretty tough in order to really bring this down to near zero. Please check out [Meta's scam protection centre](https://www.meta.com/safety/scam-protection-center?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Rafael Frankel:** It takes a sustained effort among a lot of people. **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks for sharing the story today with me — and, of course, for hosting me here. **Rafael Frankel:** I hope you've enjoyed our library here in our Asia Pacific headquarters. **Bernard Leong:** I totally enjoyed looking at the books. Just two quick closing questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Rafael Frankel:** For books — it's completely off topic, though. One of the last books I read that I really loved was [The Ministry for the Future](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FMinistry%5Ffor%5Fthe%5FFuture?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Kim Stanley Robinson. Have you read it? **Bernard Leong:** I haven't read that, but I read his famous [Mars trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars%5Ftrilogy?ref=analysepodcast.com) — Red, Blue and Green Mars. **Rafael Frankel:** I strongly recommend it. It's also a little scary — the vision of where things could head with global warming and everything. But what he does as an author is always show you how things can get better. In some ways that's on topic for what we're talking about. That's my recent recommendation. **Bernard Leong:** Where can my audience find you, and the resources you can share so people can help you get the word out? **Rafael Frankel:** I'm on LinkedIn — somewhat active there — and I welcome people to follow me. I post a significant amount about our anti-scams work, but also about the AI models we're developing and the tools we're bringing to market that are incredible for economic impact around the region, supporting SMEs. If you want to talk about driving economic growth and potential — some of the tools we're rolling out for small and medium-sized enterprises, and how they interact with our platforms and others, are really impressive. They're going to continue to drive opportunity in this part of the world, which is so digital-native at this point, and also forward-looking and dynamic. So you can find me there — I'm often talking about how we can combat scams and how we can use AI for good, and all these awesome topics. **Bernard Leong:** You can find us anywhere — subscribe to our newsletter, on LinkedIn, on our main site. And of course, give us your feedback. So Rafael, many thanks for coming on the show. **Rafael Frankel:** Thank you very much for having me. [Inside the War on Southeast Asia’s Industrial Scam Economy with Rafael FrankelPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · July 22 · 35m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-32-3ebf5498-0015-4fd5-a0f3-ed1d37a883e1.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-1e6d5e53-6808-4f1e-81d3-6bceece37f18.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-war-on-southeast-asias-industrial-scam/id914868245?i=1000777929749&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/GQNlXuHnEQE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-war-on-southeast-asias-industrial-scam/id914868245?i=1000777929749&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3zgSeFGC8eVe7mLhCuTIvn?si=aCTO508OSXOfiJlE7jsCCQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/inside-war-southeast-asia-industrial-scam-economy-rafael-frankel-meta?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuwWWqo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [LinkedIn Newsletter](https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7149559878934540288&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/analysepod) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analysepodcast.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@analysepod?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) ### How to Actually Read China's AI Ecosystem with Jing Yang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/how-to-actually-read-chinas-ai-ecosystem-with-jing-yang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:53:02.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief at The Information, joins us to explore how China is building frontier AI under chip constraints, state capital, and open source ambition. Jing breaks down her scoop on DeepSeek's $7.4 billion round at a $50 billion valuation, unpacking a deal structure in which the founder wrote two-fifths of the check and outside investors got no voting rights. She explains why Chinese AI valuations trail US labs, why seven to eight language model players refuse to consolidate, and why DeepSeek chose Huawei chips before Huawei knew about it. Last but not least, Jing shares the indicators she is watching from now to 2027. --- > "This is one of the things that really surprised me when I was working on this story: DeepSeek had spent a lot of time last year retrofitting their models and software with Huawei chips. I think a lot of people assumed it's because the government ordered DeepSeek to work with Huawei to embrace the domestic ecosystem, but it's actually the opposite. It was DeepSeek that voluntarily started using Huawei, experimenting with the Huawei chips, and Huawei actually only found out after. Then they started sending people to DeepSeek to help..." **\- Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief, The Information** **Profile:** [**Jing Yang**](https://www.theinformation.com/u/Jing%20Yang?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analyse.asia)**,** Asia Bureau Chief from TheInformation ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/?ref=analyse.asia), [@jingyanghk](https://twitter.com/jingyanghk?ref=analyse.asia), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/u/Jing%20Yang?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com), and the last time we spoke, the story was Chinese AI startups going global. Since then, the map has shifted. [DeepSeek](https://deepseek.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) has raised more than [7.4 billion](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/deepseek-closes-record-7-billion-plus-funding-unusual-deal-structure?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) in its first external funding round, valuing the company at more than 50 billion. Meanwhile, Junyang Lin, the former lead researcher on Alibaba's [Qwen models](https://www.alibabacloud.com/en/campaign/qwen-ai-landing-page?ref=analysepodcast.com), has launched a new AI lab that has reportedly completed its first fundraising round at a post-money valuation of around 2 billion US dollars. These stories raise a bigger question: how is China building their frontier AI under chip constraints, state capital, open source ambition, and scarce elite talent? With me today is Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief at The Information, who has been reporting these stories from Hong Kong, and I think she probably goes into China all the time. So Jing Yang, welcome back. **Jing Yang:** Thank you for having me again. Just for the purpose of legal compliance — no, I don't go to China all the time. **Bernard Leong:** Really? Okay, I'm just joking. All right. Since we last spoke, we were in studio together. What have you been up to since? **Jing Yang:** I was actually reviewing our last conversation, because that was in September last year, I believe. So much has changed. The one thing — not really a correction, but if you recall, we talked about how we don't know what ByteDance is up to, how they stopped participating in the AI model leaderboard, and how they hadn't at the time open sourced any of their big models. It was a bit of a mystery. Now we all know. With [Seedance](https://www.byteplus.com/en/activity/seedance2-0?ref=analysepodcast.com) making waves and controversies, we know what they're doing. **Bernard Leong:** That was fast. **Jing Yang:** This is a way of saying that with the development of AI in today's age, everything is developing and iterating at such an unprecedented pace. I definitely struggle to follow and make sense of things. I don't know about you — if you have any tips, I'd love to hear them. **Bernard Leong:** Every few days there's a change, and I am not surprised anymore by any changes. In fact, when Seedance came out, until today I think we can't even use the API on Seedance. You actually have to subscribe to their models as a consumer user. They have another model called [Lumina](https://ai.byteplus.com/lumina/en?ref=analysepodcast.com). But if you look at the leaderboard, Seedance is now number one, followed by [Google's Veo](https://aistudio.google.com/models/veo?ref=analysepodcast.com) models, I think, if I'm not wrong. This whole space is really moving so fast. I used to think that China AI is like, every once in a while they make an announcement and it will shock everybody. That's why I got you here today — to help our audience understand how China's ecosystem is developing on its own terms, not simply as a reaction to the US, but as a distinct model of frontier AI development shaped by their talent, open weight models, chips, capital, and developer adoption. Of course, UBTech is going to launch their first [humanoid robots](https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3358884/ubtechs-lifelike-humanoid-robots-built-companionship-arriving-homes-across-china?ref=analysepodcast.com), and we know this is where all of this is going. So I want to first start off with [DeepSeek](https://deepseek.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), because this is the most interesting company ever. Earlier it was seen as a capital-efficient research outlier, a lab funded by Liang Wenfeng and High-Flyer, known for pushing frontier performance with unusually efficient model design. Usually when people ask me, "Where should I learn all the tricks to do open source AI?" I think you should just go to [DeepSeek's GitHub repository](https://github.com/deepseek-ai?ref=analysepodcast.com). They just let out so many things that people don't know about. Now the reports are that DeepSeek has raised more than 7.4 billion in its first external financing round, valuing the company at more than 50 billion US dollars, making it China's most valuable AI startup — if I'm correct, and maybe something has changed today. How should we understand DeepSeek's evolution from a highly efficient research lab into one of the most closely watched AI companies in China and globally? **Jing Yang:** That's quite a big question you have there for me. Let's try to break it down piece by piece. One, we were the first to report that DeepSeek was doing fundraising for the first time ever, and that was in mid-April. I still remember it vividly. It was a Friday night. One of the reporters on my team, Chen Anlu, got the first tip at around 8:00 PM. I was going to wind down and start my weekend, and obviously then Chen, me, and Drew — the three of us quickly mobilised and tried to reach out to sources and people we thought might know this. Within an hour and a half we had the story out. But in all of the hustle, I was reporting and writing the story in a state of huge disbelief. You know how, as a journalist, when you're covering something that is breaking, you have to put your own personal feelings and opinions aside and just try to get the news out first? In the ensuing two months, we covered very closely almost every major step of the road with the fundraising, and we saw how the valuation started to multiply. Our initial story said they were seeking to raise about $300 million at a $10 billion-plus valuation, which was considered quite low. Then it quickly became 20, and then quickly we now know how much it is. When I was drafting the story — because we wanted to get it out as soon as we could — I needed to make sense of all of this. The first draft I had was actually pretty unintelligible. It wasn't until after I finished writing the whole thing that it dawned on me: actually, I should have written it this way. So I went back to change it. The editor who was editing the story said, "I cannot edit a story if you keep making changes." I said, "I'm sorry, my brain literally shut down for five minutes because I don't know how to make sense of this." That shows you how unusual this is. I got a team, including myself, to start preparing for a step-back story. In my vision, by the time we could report the funding had closed, we also needed to start right away on a story to review the whole process — what really happened behind the scenes that made this such a notable strategy shift. A week later we had that story, and we can talk about all of this. But the first thing — the whole two-month-ish reporting process on this story — I personally just feel a little bit sad, if that makes sense. I know that nobody cares if I'm sad or not. I guess my point is that as journalists we sometimes have romantic or idealistic thinking when we look at the things we cover. With DeepSeek, they came out of nowhere to a large part of the world. Remember, this is a lab that became famous, became a global superstar, for *not* embracing the scaling law pioneered by OpenAI — this endless chase after compute and therefore capital. They were so refreshing, so different from the dominant trend, from the path that everybody was on. For them to be the holdout to external capital and to this race to secure more compute to scale up — they were the holdout for almost a year and a half since they became famous. If you trace back to when they were founded, then it's several years. For that last holdout to also have a change of course, a complete U-turn, and then embrace what seems like the mainstream way of developing frontier AI models, is quite striking. As someone who's watching this closely from the peanut gallery, I secretly, personally hoped that they would not have done that — that they could stay being this really special lab and existence in the development of frontier AI models. But it looks like they are going to join. **Bernard Leong:** One thing you alluded to just now was the unusual deal structure. Do you want to talk a little bit about the unusual deal structure behind this deal? **Jing Yang:** Yes. There's quite a lot to unpack there. In order to talk about the structure, I would first categorise the investors in this round into four types. The first is the CEO, Liang Wenfeng himself, who wrote the biggest check — two-fifths of the entire fundraising amount. The second type is the corporate VCs, the who's who in China's tech land: Tencent, JD.com, [CATL](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinese-ev-battery-giant-catl-plans-invest-deepseek?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com), et cetera. The third type is the typical VC firms — IDG Capital and a couple of others. The fourth type is China's National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. I just want to make sure I get the name right. Within these four groups of investors, Liang — it's his money and essentially his company. I don't think anyone would have anything to say about how he wants to use his money. **Bernard Leong:** He put his money where his mouth is. He's probably one of the largest shareholders. **Jing Yang:** He was before the fundraising and he continues to be. So we can put that pocket of money aside. We don't care how he uses it. For the second type, the corporate VCs, and the third, the typical VC firms — they both have to invest their money into a limited partnership solely created for the purpose of this fundraising. These two types of investors wired the money into that LP structure, which is managed by Liang himself. Only the National AI Fund — which, by the way, has China's Big Fund, the big semiconductor fund, as one of its anchor investors — [can invest in DeepSeek's corporate entity directly](https://www.thewirechina.com/2026/06/21/are-government-stakes-the-key-to-ai-sovereignty/?ref=analysepodcast.com). For the type two and type three investors, they have to invest in this LP. What this means is that they will not have any voting rights, because you are not investing in the company that you are funding. All the voting rights are still controlled by the GP of that LP structure, which is Liang himself. They also all have to agree to a five-year lock-up period. One of the few exceptions to this lock-up would be if DeepSeek goes public within the five-year period. What this lock-up really means is that you cannot sell your shares to another party. This is quite unusual, because in ginormous VC deals — whether those raised by ByteDance before, or OpenAI and Anthropic — usually you have the investors investing, but behind them there could be different layers of SPVs set up for other investors to have an opportunity to invest indirectly in the round, and also usually after the round is closed. If you don't want to wait for the IPO exit, if you want to do some partial taking, you can sell these shares on the secondary market. You see, for example, ByteDance's private shares being traded fairly actively all throughout these years on the secondary market. Because of this lock-up, it's unlikely we'll see DeepSeek shares being peddled on the secondary market. As we were reviewing the story — this structure is all to ensure that DeepSeek will only attract investors that are in here along for the ride to AGI in the long run, not people who just want a quick gain or a quick exit. One more thing that is also unusual within this deal structure: during the deal-making process the company also did — I guess you can call it reverse due diligence — on the investors' LPs. They were adamant, because this is such a hot deal. You can imagine a lot of people would want to get in, and there are people who may not have direct access to funding, so they will be pooling together some money, maybe in a newly established fund, and then try to squeeze in. A lot of murky arrangements could happen, which by the way is quite common in large deals. However, in this case DeepSeek was adamant that if you want to invest, it cannot be a new fund, or a fund with new LPs. If I'm letting you, this GP, invest in me, that's because I know you and your track record and who your backers are. This is an attempt to eliminate strange actors, unfamiliar faces trying to ride on the deal. They were asked to provide a list of all the LPs that were going to invest in the fund, to see who they are and whether they are credible people — to really make sure who really owns DeepSeek's shares. If you combine this with the lock-up requirement — they have this lock-up also because if private shares change hands on the secondary market, oftentimes some companies may not know who ends up really owning their shares. That's exactly what they want to avoid as well. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting, because the deal would have taken a bit of a long time to come together. They have to first do reverse due diligence, then construct such complicated SPVs in order to structure the deal. The founder is so deeply immersed in it. Another way I can frame this is that DeepSeek is trying to balance three things at once. They have their open source ambition, they want to do long-term AGI research, and then there are the realities of operating in a strategically important sector where everybody's going to IPO and somebody's going to tell him, "Hey, you should IPO too, because Anthropic and OpenAI are going to IPO." From your reporting, how does the founder, Liang Wenfeng, appear to balance these priorities? **Jing Yang:** Well, obviously I wouldn't claim that I really know him. **Bernard Leong:** But just from your perspective, when you look at how DeepSeek has evolved in the last one and a half years since its rise. **Jing Yang:** The deal structure tells you a lot about how he's trying to balance that. The irony is definitely not lost on me. His AI vision is that any advancement of AI should be made available to all and benefit all. I sort of summarise it as: AI should be inclusive. However, in order to ensure that you get to that goal, you have to actually have the opposite of an inclusive deal structure, and really grip control of the company firmly within your hands. A similar irony I can think of is that when OpenAI was founded with a similar ambition — and therefore the word "Open" in their company's name — they pretty early on realised that we actually cannot open source our technologies, because we are so great and so far ahead of everyone else. We cannot afford our technologies ending up in the hands of the wrong people, therefore we have to close everything. Does the end justify these kinds of means? I don't know. What I kept thinking while reporting everything I just shared with you is this paralleled irony. I feel like we're in such an unprecedented and crazy era that these kinds of ironies are — I don't know if people talk about it, if it bothers people. But as someone who's not in AI but watches it from the sideline closely, I can't help but think about these ironies. **Bernard Leong:** There is a Chinese phrase for that: 人在江湖，身不由己。 **Jing Yang:** Well, I'm not sure. Obviously it's easy to criticise. It's easy to say, "Oh, you should have done this or that." So I'm not saying they should or should not have done this. I'm just pointing out the irony. Whether the ends justify the means they are using — the jury's still out, or we'll just have to see. **Bernard Leong:** I wanted to point to one of your articles after the reporting of the funding. It's about Anthropic's Mythos preview. I think it really changed Liang Wenfeng's view of what DeepSeek needed — that frontier AI is no longer about efficiency, but about having sufficient capital, compute, and talent to stay in the race. Just look at the last few months while you're reporting on DeepSeek. You have Andrej Karpathy joining Anthropic. You have John Jumper from Google DeepMind, a Nobel Prize winner, also joining Anthropic. What does that actually tell us now in this next phase of frontier development? Specifically thinking about it from China's perspective — I think a lot of people know what the West's perspective looks like, but very few people really understand the Chinese side. **Jing Yang:** We reported that it was the [preview of Mythos](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropics-mythos-spooked-deepseek-prompting-7-4-billion-fundraising?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) in early April that prompted Liang Wenfeng's change of heart and change of strategy. The kind of advancements that Mythos demonstrated made him realise that the scaling law, for lack of a better alternative, still exists and still works, and has proven to be working. There was a period of time last year when people were not sure if that is still the way to go, if you remember. So that reaffirmed, or maybe showed him, that yes — DeepSeek needs a lot of data and compute. That's why they need the capital. It's not just compute, but also data. I understand that we are marvelling at how this DeepSeek fundraising, the money they raised and the valuation they have now, is a landmark event in China AI. However, when I was sharing my stories on X, there were also a lot of people saying how this is just tiny compared to what US AI labs have been raising. For sure. The valuations in China, not just in the AI space but also in robotics, compared to the US definitely seem super undervalued. Right now, Zhipu ([or Z AI now](https://finance.biggo.com/news/8cf4443a-f6bc-407a-a0d1-153e7cbd638e?ref=analysepodcast.com)) is probably the most valuable — around $100 billion in market cap — which is still a fraction of Anthropic and OpenAI. But I would like to point out — there's a whole three-hour conversation we could have about why there is such a discrepancy in the valuations. **Bernard Leong:** But— **Jing Yang:** The one thing I would point out, which will hopefully answer your question, is that a lot of times companies are valued based on expectation, based on their future projection. There are two things going on here. The enterprise software market in China is just so underdeveloped. It's gotten a little bit better since this generative AI wave, but it's still very underdeveloped. It's still super hard to make money from enterprise customers compared to the US. By the way, this is one of the reasons why you see a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs, when they launch some kind of agentic product overseas, go to the consumer market. Very few people in Silicon Valley are doing that, because there's already a lot of money to be made doing agentic AI applications serving enterprise customers, while doing something for consumers is considered quite hard in terms of monetisation. I think one of the underlying reasons is exactly this. There's been this hope among the VCs and the tech people I talk to that hopefully this will change — that hopefully when the technology really advances to a point that Chinese AI model developers can start to shape the habit of paying for software, paying for services that are value-add. I mean enterprise customers doing that. You must know this. In China, everybody's been trying, from the dawn of the internet age, from Web 1.0, to find the pirated version of software. I remember growing up using a pirated version of Microsoft Word — and it's not that I wouldn't pay. I don't think it was even possible to find a licensed version at that time. They were just not sold on the market. This shows you how endemic the problem is. To answer your question, this lack of a sophisticated enterprise software customer base — customers who are willing to pay, who recognise the usefulness of technology. **Bernard Leong:** It's a bit weird from my point of view. Okay, I understand why enterprise SaaS doesn't work in China, because there's a tendency for companies to build their own. Now with generative AI — let's say GLM 5.2 from Zhipu — is as good as what it claims to be, as good as the frontier labs can do. That means more people would be able to build out their own software without that reliance. That should have also increased their token usage. Plus, of course, US companies are quietly not admitting it, but they are all routing to Chinese models as well. They do have a significant user base from that point of view. Sometimes China to me is a big paradox, because I find that they are probably going to dominate the models despite how good the frontier models are for Anthropic and OpenAI. I wouldn't even be guilty to say that I route to all the models. First, I would try everything on Anthropic and OpenAI, and if they get good results — and if things are just as good in the Chinese AI, I would just route the task to the Chinese AI because of one-tenth of the cost. So it does really make it very strange to me why they are also focusing — I can understand why they're focusing on consumer, but I see products like Kimi, I see stuff from Moonshot and a couple of other Chinese AI companies, because I see their use in my part of the world, Southeast Asia. I find it actually quite strange that the willingness to pay is still not there, given such high usage. **Jing Yang:** It's not just that Chinese companies want to build on their own. It's also that they are super price sensitive — the worst of customers. Whenever you get a cheaper option, they immediately go. There's no loyalty. **Bernard Leong:** But that's the same with all the rest of Asia's customers too. If you are saying exactly that to me, I will tell you: if you're in Southeast Asia, that's the same situation here too. **Jing Yang:** I wonder — maybe you could investigate and tell me what you find out, since you are also a startup founder yourself. At some point I thought it's because enterprise SaaS is still too commoditised. Product A that charges 10% more than product B is not really 10% better than product B. But now in the AI era that didn't seem to be the case anymore. Some of the models are much better than others. Going back to the second thing I wanted to talk about, about the valuation — you asked me how things are different in China. Another common difficulty facing all the Chinese AI labs is the lack of compute. Combined with the much less lucrative prospect on the customer end and this huge constraint of compute on the supply end — that's why I think collectively you see the valuations much lower. This is something that people outside China may not necessarily fully appreciate. In terms of the lack of compute, this has also really limited the possibilities for Chinese new labs. You asked me earlier about Junyang Lin's new lab. If you look at what the US new labs are doing — some of them, it's up to them what they want to do — but at least from the day they are born they are not facing a lack of compute. For new labs in China, from day one they immediately have to think about, "Where do I get compute?" And for new labs or any startups in the US, if I fail, at least my goal would be to try to get acquired by a big tech giant. In China, that's also much harder. So basically, on one hand you are building with substantially weaker infrastructure and supply, and on the other hand, your exit also looks a lot more challenging for you. **Bernard Leong:** But the energy and the infrastructure part — they can build faster. What they are lacking, the only constraint, is the chips. **Jing Yang:** That's what I meant. **Bernard Leong:** If I may just ask — for example, the only thing that constrains China now is chips. As of today, I saw The Information headline this morning in my newsletter that the Chinese government is going to allow them to purchase NVIDIA H200 chips. So they have the energy. They have the data centre infrastructure build, definitely more sophisticated than what the US have. The US on the other hand has the frontier labs on the software side and very, very good chip designs, but they are lacking in energy and infrastructure. It's almost like they have each other's strengths, and where they're limited is where the differences are between them. Do I read this correctly, or is it that things are in a way that is also advantageous for the Chinese ecosystem — that maybe they could figure out a way to leapfrog at some point? Because you can only throw so many algorithms at the problem, and most of these state-of-the-art algorithms are actually quite publicly known among the AI researchers themselves. **Jing Yang:** The leapfrog thing has always been there. If the entire Chinese engineering base along the AI stack is being pushed to a corner, then you just have to innovate. That's been proven the case with DeepSeek last year. But on the chip front we still haven't seen it, and I think it's because of the constraint in the manufacturing equipment. You can engineer your way out of having — for example, if you look at Huawei recently with their new process, they can achieve the efficiency without the EUV machine and all that. But that doesn't mean they don't need other types of advanced manufacturing equipment that are also under export restriction. When you are talking about the hardware, it is a lot harder to have that leapfrog moment exactly because of this. **Bernard Leong:** I want to talk about something else in the latest DeepSeek round about this unusual structure. One interesting thing is that only a state-linked fund invested directly and has voting rights. How should we be reading this kind of funding structure? Can you see this as conventional startup financing, strategic ecosystem building, or maybe something distinctive to China's AI market? I always say something like, you know, fundraising with Chinese characteristics. Government state capital is also involved. **Jing Yang:** The fact that the National AI Fund can invest in a company directly is because government funds come with — you can think of it this way — even stricter compliance. That's why they cannot follow the LP structure. They have to put their money, because it's essentially taxpayers' money, into the company itself. You can say yes, that the government-backed fund in the round gets special treatment. But the reason for that special treatment is not because the government fund or the officials just muscled their way into DeepSeek's office and said, "Hey, I'm not going to follow this." That's not why. **Bernard Leong:** There's this big misconception from the US side. That's what they think. **Jing Yang:** It's because the government-backed fund is essentially public money, fiscal money, taxpayer money, and it has to follow a set of much stricter compliance rules — otherwise the government's auditor will not let this pass. You tell me that this 1 billion yuan is invested in DeepSeek, but I don't see that's the case on paper. It seems like you're investing in the sky instead. When you look at Tencent or the VCs — private enterprises, private investment funds — they have much more discretion, or flexibility, in participating in a less conventional structure. **Bernard Leong:** I'm glad you actually talk about this, because I have been trying to explain to people that it's not the way they think, the way the American media is putting that perception through. But I want to get to another side of it, because Liang Wenfeng invested quite a lot of his own money inside. What does that also tell us about founder power now in China's AI sector? What I'm alluding to is how founder control works differently when a company's operating in a field where investors, industry players, and policymakers all see this as strategically important. No guesses here — when Ke Jie lost the match to AlphaGo, that was the Sputnik moment for China's AI development. **Jing Yang:** Obviously I don't have to be the one telling you this. When you talk about founder control — founders of big startups, superstar startup companies in China have a very difficult tightrope to walk. Including in Liang's case and many others before him. You really are not only the one calling all the shots. As you get bigger, your orbit will inevitably be pulled closer to the central government. You may have to do things that you don't necessarily want to do, or prioritise things not necessarily strictly in the order that you want. You just have to walk this really fine line. That's the one thing that makes it very different. But we also see increasingly, I guess, in the US, this contentious relationship at times — for example, between the White House and Anthropic, and also OpenAI. OpenAI wasn't allowed initially to release GPT 5.6 to the public. So I guess this is probably a year in which founder control is getting less pure. It's getting more complicated. There are more fingers in the pie than previously. **Bernard Leong:** I wanted to also spend a little time on the other story, which is Junyang Lin, the former Alibaba Qwen leader, who was [seeking a 2 billion valuation for his AI lab](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/former-alibaba-star-researcher-starts-new-ai-lab-seeks-2-billion-valuation?ref=analysepodcast.com), and I think now he has already raised it. Does this give us any indicator about the scarcity premium on elite AI researchers in China? He's the one who built the original Qwen models, just for our audience's understanding. **Jing Yang:** His title when he was at Alibaba was the tech lead of Qwen, just to be specific. He was considered instrumental in making Qwen — after DeepSeek — probably the most popular open source models. He's also known as someone who really believes in the open source mission. I think this funding definitely shows the scarcity of elite researchers. We've seen several companies being funded this year, all fetching similar valuations in their first round — a billion or $2 billion. But I think it also shows a lot of FOMO by investors too. **Bernard Leong:** I guess FOMO happens everywhere, including China. **Jing Yang:** Oh, absolutely. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting thing — you probably also know that Alibaba's Qwen models have now become one of China's strongest open source AI efforts. One of the things that has been talked about a lot is that his departure followed Alibaba thinking of going towards proprietary AI products. How are you thinking about Chinese AI companies, or maybe including the BAT, balancing this open source influence with the need to build sustainable commercial models? **Jing Yang:** We can see ByteDance — with the exception of some versions of Seedance, their large language models they have not open sourced. I would say this balance is much more acute for the smaller companies. Within the BAT they all have cash cow businesses. They can afford to open source if they want to. For them, open source also generates more users, therefore more data, and then makes their models smarter. But it's the smaller labs, especially the ones that have already gone public — Zhipu and MiniMax — that probably have to face this problem. If you look at Zhipu — we also reported earlier this week that Zhipu is actually thinking of finding a partner to design its own custom inference chip, which is something that, as you know, a lot of other companies are doing. When Zhipu and MiniMax went public within two days of each other — Zhipu was two days ahead — back in December when people were comparing these two companies, the overarching feeling or commentary I got was that they thought MiniMax was the better bet. That was the sentiment at the time, and it has already shifted, which is reflected in the diverging stock price trends between the two companies. People were not optimistic about Zhipu back then because more than 80% of the revenue at the time came from what they call private, on-premise deployment. These are basically largely one-off revenue. You go to a customer's data centre, you help them install your model, and then bye-bye, I won't see you for another 10 years. **Bernard Leong:** But then you forgot there's also maintenance, and these models will get better. There's actually what I call maintenance and run cost that a lot of people don't think about. They think they're very commoditised, but actually the on-prem market is a little bit more fluid than that. I'm speaking as a practitioner dealing with on-prem sites now. A lot of my clients are asking me — I have more clients talking to me on on-prem AI than on cloud-based AI. **Jing Yang:** That's very interesting, because that's not the direction that Zhipu is travelling in right now. If you look at what has happened since they've gone public in the last six months — they published the annual results of 2025, and you can see the clear direction of travel. They are trying to sell more cloud-based API access and trying to rely less on on-prem deployment. I don't know how much you can charge for maintenance in China. But what's interesting is that you see companies like Zhipu, clearly now one of the leaders in open source AI models, also trying to generate more recurring revenue from cloud-based API access. That again is where the lack of compute probably emerges as a big bottleneck. I actually talked to a startup founder recently who was building some kind of agentic application. His team traditionally preferred OpenAI and Anthropic models. But GLM 5.2's recent explosion made them think of trying it. Then he told me that they couldn't actually buy the access from Zhipu, because it's running so short. Zhipu actually cannot supply the growing demand that is out there. **Bernard Leong:** GLM 5.2 is still not on any of the major cloud providers on the US side. Case in point, Amazon Bedrock or the other parts. But I have one more question. I thought I'd get your sense of it, because you look across today at DeepSeek, Zhipu or Z.AI, Qwen, MiniMax, Moonshot, Kling, Manus. What is the best mental map for you when you look at China's AI ecosystem? Is it useful to divide the market into foundation models, application companies, and infrastructure? That's the US way of thinking. Or do you need a much more China-specific framework? **Jing Yang:** That framework that you mentioned is definitely one of the ways. Another one would be the upstarts versus the tier one tech giants versus the tier two tech giants. I would put Kuaishou and Pinduoduo under tier two. One thing I was actually going to say earlier is that I don't know about you, but I am actually really surprised that by now we still haven't seen actual serious consolidation happening. How can this go on? You asked me about the need to balance commercial and open source. We've seen in the US that basically now, in terms of frontier models, it's just consolidated within three or four companies. Llama is pretty much out, I think. But in China, you still have BAT — and the B here means ByteDance. **Bernard Leong:** I feel bad for Baidu, but they are also an AI player too. **Jing Yang:** Obviously it's in the race. If you look at just the language models, there's already the BAT. If you look at the video models, then there is— **Bernard Leong:** Owned by ByteDance. **Jing Yang:** No, there's also BAT plus — Alibaba and Tencent also have their own video models too. Tencent's video model is actually not that bad, because they have a lot of applications in gaming. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Jing Yang:** So in the video models, there's also BAT, and then there is Kling, and then there are also some startups. Let's go to the startups. On the startup side, on the language model, there are four serious ones: Z.AI, MiniMax, Moonshot. On the video models, there is PixVerse and Shengshu and a bunch of others. I just can't imagine this going on. After Kai-Fu Lee's Zero One essentially got folded into Alibaba, people thought that consolidation was going to happen — but that was over a year ago. We still haven't seen that happening. Now it looks like Moonshot is also preparing for an IPO, likely next year. DeepSeek is definitely going to stay here. So basically, within language models we already have seven to eight serious players that are still in the race, and no one wants to give up. I think that's pretty interesting. **Bernard Leong:** What you are alluding to is that probably in the next six to 12 months, if there is some activity happening in consolidation, then something is happening to the ecosystem. **Jing Yang:** I don't see any trends emerging right now that could lead to consolidation. I can tell you that I have reporting — I never wrote about this — that say 18 months ago, 24 months ago, one of the BATs wanted to buy one of the other four companies I was talking about. The deal didn't happen because the price was considered too low by the to-be-bought company. This shows you the big reason why the consolidation hasn't happened. When you look at how many companies SpaceX, or NVIDIA, and all the others have bought — it's very different. Even though the valuation here in China is already considered a lot cheaper, the willingness to acquire a company at a slight premium is still not there. **Bernard Leong:** Since we have a bit of limited time left, I only have two more questions before we close. What is the one thing that you wish more people would ask you about the Chinese AI ecosystem that they don't? I think the misconception we have identified — but what's the one thing that you wish more people would ask you about the Chinese internet ecosystem? **Jing Yang:** I'll use an example to answer that question. Until our story came out, there was a lot of reporting — including by myself, and others too — that DeepSeek had spent a lot of time last year retrofitting their models and software with Huawei chips, which is what caused a — I wouldn't call it a delay, because they never said they had a target — but which is what caused them to take so long to release. I think a lot of people assumed it's because the government ordered DeepSeek to work with Huawei, to embrace the domestic ecosystem. But what we revealed with the latest story is actually the opposite direction. It was DeepSeek that voluntarily started using Huawei, experimenting with the Huawei chips. Huawei actually only found out afterwards, and then they started sending people to DeepSeek to help them. This is one of the things that really surprised me when I was working on this story. Why did Liang want to do this? Because he believes the so-called AI stack cannot just be — you cannot just have one NVIDIA-dominated AI stack. There should be more. There should be room for more. He wants to play his part in charting a different ecosystem, a different path alongside the NVIDIA-dominated order. What this tells you is that even I could sometimes have some kind of misconception when it comes to the relationship between the government, the regulators, the companies, and the founders. One thing I will point out is that we and others also reported that the National AI Fund was going to invest a much bigger amount in DeepSeek. At one point there was an article — not us, but some other outlet — reporting that this National AI Fund was going to be one of the lead investors in this round. Now that the jury is out, we see that the National AI Fund actually wrote the smallest check. What does that tell you? It tells you that it's not as if the government can just say one thing and then do whatever they want. It's also not that frontier labs like DeepSeek resist. If they are collaborating with domestic AI stacks, it's not because they are necessarily told to. It's because they actually see the need to do that for the longer-term survivability and sustainability of China's AI development. **Bernard Leong:** That is a great insight. This is something a lot of people don't realise. My final traditional closing question, and I'm going to phrase it differently this time. We're going to have the next six months all the way to 2027\. What are the key indicators you'll be watching? No need to predict this time — we are not in the prediction zone anymore, because anything can come out almost the next week. So what will be the things you look at? Is it model releases? Chip adaptation? Funding rounds? IPOs? Regulation? Developer adoption? Talent movement? **Jing Yang:** I think talent is definitely one of them — the direction of travel by top talent. I don't know if you noticed this, but there's a trend of academic talent, ethnic Chinese or Chinese-born researchers working in big US companies moving back to China. A lot of them are in Hong Kong. A lot of them have come to Hong Kong. That's one thing to watch. The other would be on the chip front. Supposedly Huawei's Ascend 960, coming out next year, would have a capability on par with the H200\. That's something we definitely need to watch for. One thing I would also want to know is the popularity — can Chinese models sustain their popularity in the open source world? One of the things we haven't talked about, but maybe we can use this as a forward-looking ending: I'm sure you've seen that Anthropic had this geolocation tracking code in their software, and then the Chinese government came out and said, "You are aware of these security risks from Claude, and you should try to uninstall all of that." Alibaba was the first one to tell all of their employees to uninstall this from your computer and everything. So if that's the case, if more Chinese AI model makers are uninstalling Claude, and if that were to continue, what will happen? Because so far, let's just say that distillation is very commonplace, which is why you see Chinese open source models always playing catch-up. It's always whether you say it's a one-month distance, three months, or six months. But because you rely, to some extent at least, on distilling from the best model, that means you can never overtake the best. If the Chinese government can really order, or strongly discourage, all the model makers to not use Claude and Claude Code anymore, what will happen to model development in the next six months? I'm very curious about that. **Bernard Leong:** I actually have a slightly different take. Being an academic, and having read the original DeepSeek paper myself, I find that one of the most under-thought discussion points on the Chinese AI models is that they are pretty capable of building their own AI algorithms. I think this is very under-appreciated in the US, which keeps having the perception that they are not innovative and are distilling from them. One of the biggest advances in the last three years is in reinforcement learning. That's why your AI model seems to be getting better. Part of it was because it was the DeepSeek team that generalised the reinforcement learning formulas so that the rest could use them. If they can make that kind of algorithmic progress — in fact, I saw a pretty interesting paper by DeepSeek early this year about optimisation across different network paths. It was quite surprising, because one of the formulas they used was a Russian math formula that is pretty unknown. The reason why was that there were research collaborations between Russia and China, so they were aware of this kind of algorithmic advance. What I think is really the limiting factor now is the chip. If that is a problem they can circumvent, given the circumstances, I think there is still a leapfrogging path. That was the surprise when DeepSeek came out, and I thought this would be a much more optimistic way of looking at this conversation. **Jing Yang:** Actually, what you said and what I said can totally coexist. I cannot name any names, since I don't want to get into trouble. But if you have friends working in any of these models we've talked about — from Anthropic, OpenAI — and you ask them to do this, you will know what I'm talking about. **Bernard Leong:** I do know some of them, so yeah. We used to be colleagues in research in machine learning before, so I know what you're talking about from that point of view. Okay. Jing, many thanks for coming on the show. I'm going to quickly ask you: any recommendations — a book that you enjoyed reading recently? **Jing Yang:** Not AI related, though. Is that okay? **Bernard Leong:** Sure. I think people like all the other recommendations you do. **Jing Yang:** The last book I just finished reading, which was last week — you must know Wang [Gungwu](https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3341831/his-singapore-book-launch-sinologist-wang-gungwu-recounts-own-journey-through-history?ref=analysepodcast.com). I only got to know about him recently. I visited Penang for the second time in May. I really like it there. I like the whole Nanyang history, and I like how the Chinese culture and traditions were preserved so well in that part of Southeast Asia. I picked up a few books from a little bookstore in Penang, and one of them is Wang Gungwu's memoir called [*Home Is Not Here*](https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/home-is-not-here?srsltid=AfmBOooBBtGaX78Ck1sIuHSf-9kxJKTBU9fDTaPlPUtNp8ThnJvshJbE&ref=analysepodcast.com). In the book, he details how he grew up in Ipoh, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and also how he briefly studied at the National Central University in Nanjing right before the civil war expanded to Nanjing. He also included diaries he translated into English from his mother, talking about how, when World War II spread to Southeast Asia, they were fearing for their lives, and how the sentiment changed in Southeast Asia as well. It's a really good read. I like reading history books that are told from— **Bernard Leong:** —a different perspective. **Jing Yang:** —a very personalised one. **Bernard Leong:** Where can my audience find you? The Information — that's where I read my articles these days. **Jing Yang:** I'm on X, or Twitter, at [jingyanghk](https://x.com/jingyanghk?ref=analysepodcast.com), and jing (at) theinformation (dot) com is my email address. I'm on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/?ref=analysepodcast.com) as well. **Bernard Leong:** Definitely can find us anywhere. Jing, many thanks for coming on the show. We'll talk again — maybe either I come to Hong Kong or you come by Singapore again. **Jing Yang:** Yes, let's do that. Thank you. [Analyse PodcastBusiness Podcast · Updated Weekly · A weekly podcast exploring the pulse of business, technology, and media worldwide. Hosted by Bernard Leong, the show features in-depth conversations with leading journalists, executives, entrepreneurs…![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-32-54aac527-2158-427b-b4cd-aa05fc23c1ad.png)Apple Podcastsgtsp1257![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200bf-60-8433ad29-46f5-4c0d-aa75-640e44365cac.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-actually-read-the-chinas-ai-ecosystem-with-jing-yang/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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His counter-thesis: **work is changing, not ending** — and we never truly left the industrial age, only traded the factory floor for the office floor. Aneesh walks through his three-bucket framework for auditing your week, the move from the career ladder to the career wall, and why the org chart is giving way to the work chart. He closes by reframing the current AI moment as a battle of belief, urging leaders and workers to move from anxiety to agency and bet on themselves. --- > "We are in a battle of belief right now more than anything else. So stories matter a lot to humans. It's not just the tools we create, it's the stories we tell that have allowed us to become everything we've become. But whether it leads to better or worse... depends on the story we tell now. If we tell ourselves a story that it's going to lead to worse, it's more likely going to lead to worse. Because we have to unwind a lot of what the industrial age has told us to think about ourselves. A lot of industrial age work was about deficit management. I don't have the degree yet, I need to get it. I don't have the job title yet, I need to get it. We all started from a place of what we don't have, that we needed to get, in order to feel of value and succeed. This world..." - **Aneesh Raman** **Profile: Aneesh Raman**, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer and co-author of "[Open to Work](https://www.linkedin.com/opentowork/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aneeshraman/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com), and the labour market is going through a structural rewiring that most public narratives flatten into "*AI is taking away jobs.*" The deeper shift is from pedigree to skills, from static job titles to dynamic tasks, and from the industrial-era organisation chart to something more fluid. With me today is Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn and co-author of [*Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI*](https://www.linkedin.com/opentowork/?ref=analysepodcast.com). We'll cover three angles together: why the bottom rung of the career ladder is breaking, what skills-first hiring actually requires inside real organisations, and how leaders and workers move from anxiety to agency in this transition. So, Aneesh, welcome to the show. **Aneesh Raman:** Thank you for having me. **Bernard Leong:** This is a very interesting topic, but as always, I want to find the origin story about my guest. How did you start your career? **Aneesh Raman:** Well, I started my career as a journalist. I was a war correspondent, a CNN Middle East correspondent, but I started journalism in middle school. It started because I grew up in a family with really loud talkers, especially on my mom's side. I was always terrified of talking, because I would get told to speak, tell a story, make a joke, and I would shut down and get really quiet. So I found, through television, an ability to build this skill that is now core to who I am — talking — but by looking at a camera. Eventually I wrote speeches for President Obama, and now we've written a book. The through line is storytelling. But it started because I was afraid to talk. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting. You did war correspondence in Iraq — those are life-and-death situations. Then you worked as a speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during the financial crisis, which is enormously stressful. And subsequently you worked with Governor Gavin Newsom. What was the through line? In retrospect, what do you see — how did your personal history shape the way you think about the current AI transition? **Aneesh Raman:** It's a great question. I grew up, more than anything else, as the child of immigrants. My parents came from India in the 70s because America was meant to be this land of opportunity. So it was very conscious from my earliest days that my life was in the shadow of their sacrifice, that I was in this country of opportunity, and I should go take advantage of it. I lived a life that delivered on that. The harder I worked, the further I could go — to Harvard, to a job as a reporter, to the White House. But across those phases, when you're in a war zone, you see human agency at its worst. You see people smarter than you, trapped in the rubble of literal war, who can't go as far as their talent or tenacity will take them. You get into the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, and you see people who are suddenly bankrupt, losing their homes. They can't go as far as their tenacity and talent will take them. So a lot of the early parts of my career started with this presumption that the world, as it should be, is one where everyone can exercise agency and access opportunity. The world as it was had a lot of places where people lacked that agency, lacked that access. Then, as I got to LinkedIn, it became clear that was true in the labour market. The labour market is one of the least efficient, least transparent, least dynamic markets humans have ever created. If the job of the labour market is to match talent and opportunity, it does a horrible job of that. It generally indexes, based on guesswork, on pedigree signals. Did you get the right degree from the right school? Did you get the right job at the right employer? Do you know the right people? That isn't access to opportunity. That's agency-reducing, if you're not born in the right circumstance. So before AI hit, a lot of the work — with Ryan, too — was about how we bring skills to the centre of the labour market, so we can change how people access jobs. It should be the skills you have, and the question of what skills a job needs. That was dogged work, but incremental, honestly, because it was still easier to filter by degree for recruiters. The world around work was still very much indexing on pedigree signals. We could make the case, we could even provide different tools with LinkedIn, but it was only ever chipping away at the margins. So when AI showed up, it quickly became clear to us that it was going to change work at a definitional level. There were parts of it we saw as a solution to a problem, not a challenge to a status quo we wanted to protect — which a lot of us felt, because work is going to change, and that's scary. We saw it as a potential provocation for systems change, for systems redesign around how work exists. That has started to play out, and that led to the book. **Bernard Leong:** If you look back, and I asked you to prescribe some career advice to people today, what would it be? **Aneesh Raman:** My advice to people today is: don't worry about all the things we don't know. How is this going to play out? Who's going to be okay, who's not? Worry about what you can control today. A lot of this book is about agency and control — what we can all control, not just at the early stage of a career. We're all at the early stage of a career now, because all of our careers are restarting, because work is changing. All of us can control what we do every day with our time and energy. Are we using these tools to better understand them? These are the most democratising tools for access to knowledge, to expertise, to building and creating that humans have ever made. Are we, with these tools, figuring out new things we can do? Are we starting to shore up the human capabilities we argue are going to move to the centre of work — resiliency, adaptability, taking risk, being uncomfortable? Are we doing that more and more each day? That is what we can control, and that's where we have to start. That doesn't mean the job market isn't tough. It doesn't mean it isn't exceptionally difficult for someone coming out of university right now to find a job. That's all true. A lot of that, our data shows, is the macro — interest rates, the macroeconomic data, where hiring changes as demand changes. That has always been true. But underneath it is the greatest disruption to work in human history. That's going to create a lot of agency and opportunity for people willing to go grab it. And that work, you can start today. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/07/opentowork-book.jpg) **Bernard Leong:** Getting to the main subject — I want to talk about your book, *Open to Work*, and the reorganisation of human capability in the age of AI. You've laid out how misaligned the labour market is. What is the one most counter-intuitive lesson you've learned about labour markets from sitting on top of LinkedIn's data — something that runs against the consensus view held by most of your peers in workforce strategy? **Aneesh Raman:** A couple of years ago, the counterintuitive idea was that work is changing, not ending. The dominant narrative was that for some of us, many of us, maybe all of us, work was ending. We had data — it's in the book — that 70% of the skills in the average job will have changed by 2030\. So work is going to change in big ways for everyone. But it's changing, not ending. We believed that early on, when it was an open question. We've now seen it play out enough. Look at software engineers, or entry-level work — those job categories haven't disappeared. They've fundamentally changed. Software engineers do less coding and more systems thinking, more customer relations. Entry-level work is now elevated: you've got to bring more AI aptitude, more entrepreneurial mindset, but you get to meet with customers, you get to be in strategy conversations. So two years ago, it was the idea that work is changing, not ending. Everyone's coming around to that now. The counterintuitive idea now — and it was a surprise, revelatory, as we pulled the threads on the book — is that we never left the industrial age. What I mean is, we thought when we left the factory floor for the offices, we entered a new, enlightened arena of work. White-collar work represented an escape for workers from the menial, mundane, routinised tasks of the factory floor, or the farming before that, into this enlightened office work. Some of the most compelling data was the amount of time we spend in white-collar work chasing things down and answering emails — doing work about the work. We never left the assembly line. We just went from the factory floor to the office floor. We went from fixing things in terms of sockets or cogs to the laptop and emails. That started to liberate our thinking about what's possible. **Bernard Leong:** You mention this because I had Benedict Evans on, and we agreed that one big misconception — clarify this for me — is that AI doesn't replace the job. What you've identified is that a lot of knowledge work still lives in the industrial age, not the AI age. So what's really happening looks like it's automating all the work — the boring operational work — but the creative work is different. The simple example I use: everybody can write a non-disclosure agreement, but that's not what you're hiring a lawyer for. You're hiring a lawyer for the complexity of an M&A transaction. That's the most exciting part of the job. But people conflate it. Why do people fall into this misconception? **Aneesh Raman:** One of the early advantages we had with our argument was that we understood jobs were about tasks, not titles, early on — because we were doing the dogged work of skills. We were saying: jobs are tasks, people are skills, how do we match better? So when AI hit, we already started from the presumption that jobs are tasks, not titles. Take software engineer as an example. If you think all software engineers do is code, then yes, you think AI is about to end software engineering — and that was a lot of the energy early on. But if you think about what's involved in coding, it's looking for the comma. It's a very routinised task of going through and checking for bugs. If AI starts to remove that, software engineers still exist — they're doing more client-facing work, more systems-architect work. So, to answer your question, most people think a job title is fully and absolutely descriptive of what the job is. We have a chapter on this. The hardest thing everyone can do, that makes everything else easier, is to pretend you don't have a job title — pretend you've never had any job title — and define yourself by the skills you have and the tasks you do well. We have three buckets in the book. Bucket one is tasks that AI can do more and more of. If you're a software engineer and 90% of your time is coding, that's a lot of bucket-one work that's about to go. What do you do with the other 10%? Bucket two is new things you're doing with AI — not just human review, but are you learning something new, are you building something new? This is where creativity comes in. Bucket three is that now we have more time to be more human at work. As machine-like work gets outsourced to machines, the machines allow us to be machinists — we're not machines. The human brain has been around far longer than the steam engine, in its ability to do big things and imagine things. So you're going to spend more time thinking critically about your work, more time collaborating, being imaginative about what you build. As you do that, it's like a conveyor belt — you move tasks into buckets two and three. As we do that across the labour market, we're going to value skills that are more about our entrepreneurialism as humans than the routinised memorisation of facts and efficient processing of information the past eras valued, because the machines are going to out-machine us on those. **Bernard Leong:** It seems a lot of people are conflating the boring and the creative parts. There's this distinction between doing things better — improving efficiency — and doing better things, which is the creative part. I want to talk about your prescription for the broken bottom rung, which is redesign: elevating juniors to higher-value work with AI doing the compilation beneath. But that prescription also requires the affected cohort to embrace AI. What does LinkedIn's current data show about how, say, Gen Z is responding — toward adoption or resistance? **Aneesh Raman:** We just did a survey in Singapore — the generation with the highest confidence about AI is Gen Z. This is a generation that, even where it has scepticism about how the technology sector is rolling out AI, or how the leaders of AI are talking about it, is using these tools because they're available. Like any generation, the youngest are often the most eager and open to using new technology. So we know that's true, and that's partly why entry-level work is sustaining itself. IBM isn't exiting its entry-level hiring. Salesforce is creating a new builder programme. LinkedIn too — based on a couple of presumptions about Gen Z. One, they have pretty good AI fluency, because they don't overcomplicate it. It's not "I need to go get a course." It's "I just need to use these tools — use it, ask it questions, have it help me, have it build stuff." Two, they're more entrepreneurial-minded as a generation, a lot of it out of survival. They don't trust that they're going to get one job at one company and be okay. They don't trust that one degree means they're set for life. They're betting on themselves, because they have to, and they're betting on multiple income streams, because they have to. They're becoming creators. They've got the gig economy, freelance work. You don't have to go far up the generations to where the presumption was: you get a degree, you're set for life; you get a job at a company, you're set for your career. That era is done, and they're coming of age recognising that already. So in some ways the job market is really tough right now globally for new grads, but over time they're going to have an easier time adjusting to the new world of work, because it's going to build around them as they build their careers. What I don't think we're talking about enough are the mid-career and later-stage professionals who think they're far enough along that this change won't hit them. This change is hitting all of us at once. If you've never known the career ladder, it's not a big deal to start climbing the career wall, which is a big shift we talk about in the book. If you've spent years or decades on the career ladder, it's a lot to now jump off it onto a climbing wall, where there isn't a set of rules telling you how to get ahead. You've got to figure it out on your own. So we've got to help everyone, at every stage. **Bernard Leong:** If the younger generation, hit hardest by the broken bottom rung, is also the most AI-sceptical, then does your redesign theory have a foundation problem? You've seen it recently — at commencement speeches, there was a lot of booing of AI. But I don't know whether that reflects the actual job market. What are your thoughts? **Aneesh Raman:** You can be using the tool and sceptical about how societies are rolling it out. That's the story of Gen Z adoption — you aren't seeing mass rejection of the tool. In fact, you're seeing slower adoption as you get further up the generations. So I don't think it's a generation that is anti-AI. They're using the tools, just like we all should, because they're easy to use and helpful, and they're trying to be thoughtful about how to use them. They recognise that if you overuse it, you'll have cognitive debt, and you've got to correct for that — and teachers like you are calling that out and helping them figure it out. But they're also justifiably looking to leaders for a better conversation about AI. Part of why we wrote this book is that the conversation around AI and work has gotten so charged, so emotional. For years it has been fuelling so much fear, anxiety and uncertainty — and worst of all, which is what Gen Z is rejecting, it has been fuelling fatalism. This sense that everything's predetermined, that you and I, as individual workers, have no control. The CEOs know what's coming. AI knows what's coming. We're just along for the ride. Gen Z is rejecting that story. They're not going to give in to the fatalism that just because someone says it's so, it's so — and none of us should give in to that fatalism. Part of the cause of the book is that we have more agency than we think. When we say your job is going to change, your career is going to change — no one else is figuring that out and then coming to you to say, "here's how it's changed." You don't have to hunker down in fear waiting for that knock on the door. You have to figure it out, starting now: by how you use the tools, how you do new work, how you shape your job and your career. That can sound scary at first, because it means no one else is worrying about your career — no one's coming to save you in that sense. But as you do that work, you get to have control over your job and career in a way that wasn't true for workers in the past. **Bernard Leong:** In the book you introduce a three-bucket framing — automated, augmented, and uniquely human tasks. Take me through what these three buckets are, and what they mean for how workers should audit their week. **Aneesh Raman:** We try to make this big, complex moment of change as accessible as possible. One way we did that is to say: forget everything you're worried about. Forget every question about whole categories of jobs going away. Whether you're a CEO or an entry-level worker, what are the twelve things you do every week? Put your job title aside. What do you actually do every week? List twelve tasks. Now, there are three buckets. Bucket one: tasks AI can already do. If you have anything about quick summaries, coding, first drafts, quick research — that goes in bucket one. Bucket two: what new things can you do with AI? Part of bucket two is reviewing AI's work, because you're not just going to copy-paste its answers to your boss — that's cognitive debt, you haven't checked the work. But what's something new? What could you do better with AI? Say you do a lot of presentations with customers. Now you can learn more, more quickly, about the customers before those meetings. You can create better visuals — a video instead of a PowerPoint, or a better PowerPoint instead of one slide. What's new stuff you couldn't do before that you're now doing with these tools? And now that you have some time saved from the efficiency work — hopefully you're working less on the weekends and at night trying to catch up — are you protecting time to think more critically, more creatively, to meet with people across your company and come up with new ways to go at the problems your company faces? When you map that out, you get a good sense of things. If more than 50% of your work is in bucket one, you need to start thinking about shifting your job. You probably have something in bucket two or three — how do you index on that more? How do you push for more opportunities to build it out? Very few of us have 100% of our jobs in bucket one. So that gives you a sense of both your vulnerability and the places you can start to build toward where work is going. **Bernard Leong:** Does the framework implicitly assume there's a cognitive ceiling everyone can reach? Is there a risk of excluding those without an obvious pathway to, say, bucket two? **Aneesh Raman:** Anyone who's human has opportunity in bucket two. If you think about this tool as democratising access to knowledge, you can now drive your own learning every day in all sorts of new ways. And it democratises access to building — you can build an app, a website, a video, a PowerPoint, whatever you want. You've now got help to build it. There's no one — unless you don't have access to the tools, which is where we get to the Global South and the digital divide — there's no limit to who can really push themselves in bucket two. It's interesting. There's this term, AGI — the idea of AI getting to a level beyond anything human intelligence could be. The thing I'd say is that anything we're judging AI against, in terms of human capability, is a fraction of human capability. Human work to date has only allowed us to bring a fraction of our potential. It's been about IQ, technical skills, analytic skills. Those are important, but they aren't everything. So the idea that we even have a sense of what humans can do, based on what work has been, is faulty. As AI gets better, humans are going to get better, because we're going to bring more of who we are. And the missing thing people often get wrong: it's not human versus AI. It's human with AI. As AI gets better, and we have this more expanded view of human capability, the key unlock — an explosion of entrepreneurialism and innovation — is the intersection of those two things. Steve Jobs used to have this line: the thing about humans is that we create tools to do things. A human running isn't the fastest, but a human on a bike is faster than any other animal. So it's us with a tool that leads to these big new things. This is another version of the human with a bicycle. **Bernard Leong:** Given this augmentation between human and AI, the industrial era you alluded to earlier is pretty incompatible with AI — and as an AI practitioner myself, I think exactly the same way. You cite evidence in the book about low measurable returns despite high pilot adoption, in places like Canada. Can you describe your work-chart alternative — the fluid, project-based model you've tested in LinkedIn — and how it differs from traditional hierarchy? Last week I was at a SuperAI conference moderating a panel called "[The 100x Company](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4beyIW%5Fi3RI&ref=analysepodcast.com)," and one question no one seemed to have a good answer to was how to work out how much is humans, how much is AI agents, and what the reason for that 100x actually is. **Aneesh Raman:** If you're a company hoping someone has the answer to what you should do — stop hoping for that. It doesn't exist. You've got to start doing the work on your own. If you're a company that wants to be a fast follower of someone else who's figured it out, that's a dangerous place to be, because this is all going to be based on what you need to do uniquely as a company, based on your sector, your society — **Bernard Leong:** Company values, as well. **Aneesh Raman:** Yes. Our argument is that your org chart is done. The org chart and the career ladder emerged out of the industrial age, for logical reasons, from the steam engine. Over 300 years we went from 1 billion to 8 billion people, and the cause of business growth was entirely the speed and scale of production of goods and services, based on the technology of the time. The story of work is largely a story of technology, not humans — steam engine, electricity, internet, now AI. The org chart first was a tree drawn by someone running a big railroad, to show information going up from leaders. Then it became the classic pyramid, with not just information but accountability flowing down from the top. All of it was about predictability, stability, order — because everything was building quickly, companies generally knew what they were trying to do, and they were just trying to do it more efficiently, with more people and more complexity. Now it's about innovation at your company. You can use these tools to get more efficient, but eventually these tools, which everyone has, help everyone be more efficient. It's really going to be a race for innovation. Who's coming up with new ideas? Who's launching new business products? And the same tools that help you do that are available to everyone. So you need differentiated humans who are invested in your culture, invested in the creation of ideas. Now you've got to create what we call a work chart, which is very sensibly about the work. What are you trying to do that's new, that's hard? How are you bringing people together in new ways around that work? How are you giving them agency, autonomy, permission to fail, permission to experiment their way to what comes next? In the book we talk about some principles. Lead by design, not command from the top — it's not a pyramid anymore, it's more like a massive startup. You set some contours, but you let innovation build from the workers who are using these tools to change their jobs. You've got to see people as capabilities, not categories. Someone in marketing might help engineering build a product, because they'd use it. Someone in engineering might help marketing sell to a community, because they grew up in it. You've got to figure out a way for that to happen. And managers have to be coaches — you're not managing people's tasks anymore, you're managing people as a team, trying to get them to come up with new ideas. A couple of early indicators from LinkedIn of how this will play out. One, you're starting to see this forward-deployed engineer, or builder — new terms that are essentially about someone, with these tools, being able to merge product, design and engineering. They can come up with stuff, test it, try it. You take an engineer, put them in with a business problem, with customers or internally, and they build a solution. I'm an example. I'm what's called a super IC — a super individual contributor. It used to be that to get a chief title, to rise up at a company, you had to manage more people. I didn't grow up in corporate America — I've been all around except corporate, except now. But now I don't manage anyone. I produce individual contribution, like doing a book with our CEO. That's become more of a norm. So if you're a mid-level manager, and what you spend most of your day doing is managing a team, you've got to start thinking about how you're going to adapt, because that's going to be less necessary. What do I uniquely bring to this company to move something forward? What's the work product I produce, beyond just a summary of what the people who work for me have done? You're starting to see these new, blurred-line roles emerge. In most companies, sales and marketing will be completely different in five years. You're starting to hear some term where they've already started merging. **Bernard Leong:** It isn't a marketing role as much. And then you have forward-deployed engineers — another new term. **Aneesh Raman:** Yes. You're starting to see the signal. **Bernard Leong:** You've been in the Asia Pacific. Given the diagnosis and this institutional reconfiguration, and from going around different countries — Singapore, India, Indonesia — what does a concrete, responsible AI-era workforce strategy look like for these governments and industry bodies? **Aneesh Raman:** Singapore is in many ways best-in-class at the foundational level, which is that before anything else is possible, AI adoption has to be there, AI awareness has to be there. In countries like India, you're seeing great work — we have a nonprofit we call out in the book — where you can't just say, "here's the AI tool based on the English large language model," because you've got so many different cultures and languages. So there's work to be done to bring people from those communities into building language models that speak to them and their cultural know-how. There's a lot of basic stuff — the digital divide, the Global South — we have to make sure we're on that. In Singapore there's a lot happening around universal skilling, around the National AI Council. The second stack is helping people adapt now. In some governments, for good reason, because of how it played out in the past, they're expecting and waiting for layoffs to hit. Once those layoffs hit, they'll look for employers to signal new demand — what are the new skills, the new jobs? Once they have that, they'll build new skilling around it. That's not how this is going to play out, because we don't have to wait for layoffs. People can adapt in the job they're in, on the job search they're on. And two: employers have no idea what demand they're going to need. They just know they need — as we argue in the book — entrepreneurialism, people who can figure it out, people who can be resilient. That's true for at least the next five years. Beyond that we might get more specific, but we don't know yet. So Singapore is doing good work there, with GRIT — how they're helping entry-level workers figure out how to adapt now. **Bernard Leong:** [GRIT](https://www.swda.gov.sg/home/individuals/attachment-placement-programmes/graduate-industry-traineeships?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[manpower policy in Singapore\] was actually a COVID-pandemic-era policy, now reintroduced. **Aneesh Raman:** It's really about how we help you adapt, not just wait for everything to get worse before we build back. Where I'd push Singapore, and all economies — even those with the foundational level — is that AI has to be a means to an end. It isn't just "get everyone AI and then you're done." It's "get everyone AI, and then what?" My bet is that if you want the best, safest plan to create a net gain in employment in any society, start encouraging new business starts. Start encouraging entrepreneurialism. You need to build a culture that, with these tools, is helping people build. In Singapore, we were talking about this across the visit — that cultural shift is what's next. Helping everyone who has grown up in a culture that says there's a right path. There are different five Cs in Singapore than ours, right? Condo, Cash, credit card, Country Club, Car. Now it's curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage, communication. Take risks. Be uncomfortable. Do it responsibly, but push yourself. That's where Singapore's got to go next. No country starts with an absolute advantage or disadvantage, and no individual does. We talked about how Gen Z has certain advantages and disadvantages, and so do mid-career people. Other cultures have a lot of the hustle — I just came from India before here, and it's all about this Indian idea of resiliency, of entrepreneurialism — but they're still building a lot of those foundational AI pieces. So every country starts with some strengths and some things they've got to work on. **Bernard Leong:** What are the top one or two specific interventions needed to empower businesses, across segments, or even early-career workers, to move from anxiety to agency? **Aneesh Raman:** The book — it's kind of why we wrote it. **Bernard Leong:** I have to finish reading it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/07/bl-aneeshraman-analysepodcast1.jpg) Photo taken at Poddster Singapore **Aneesh Raman:** We'd love more people to join us in simply telling the story we tell in the book: that there is agency to be had in the midst of the anxiety. There are steps you can take — small steps you can start now, wherever you're at. We are in a battle of belief right now, more than anything else. Stories matter a lot to humans. It's not just the tools we create; it's the stories we tell that have allowed us to become everything we've become. Singapore is a story, right? It's called intersubjectivity, as Yuval \[Noah Hariri\] writes in [*Sapiens*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:%5FA%5FBrief%5FHistory%5Fof%5FHumankind?ref=analysepodcast.com). Everyone inside Singapore, and around Singapore, has a story of what Singapore is that gives it its reality. But it's a story. Our story itself is a story. Who are we? What are we capable of? What are we good at, what are we not? It's all a story. Right now, we start the book with Kevin Scott, the CTO of Microsoft, saying: look, AI is a big deal, it's going to change everything, and it's going to take time, and it should. But whether it leads to better or worse depends on the story we tell. If we tell ourselves a story that it's going to lead to worse, it's more likely to lead to worse. If we tell ourselves it's going to lead to better, it's more likely to lead to better. So we're in a battle of belief, and that belief starts within each of us. We write, to anyone who wants us to sign the book, "bet on yourself." That's an instruction as much as a North Star. There's work to be done for us all to bet on ourselves, because we have to unwind a lot of what the industrial age told us to think about ourselves. A lot of industrial-age work was about deficit management — I don't have the degree yet, I need to get it; I don't have the job title yet, I need to get it. We all started from a place of what we don't have that we need to get, in order to feel valuable and succeed. This world is actually about asset inventory. What strengths do I start with? What's unique about me, no matter what stage of career I'm at? I traveled a lot as a kid, we moved around — I'm really good at translating across cultures. That'll help in a company, across functions. We all start with strengths. So you've got to articulate those, so you can bet on yourself and believe in yourself. The intervention that matters most right now is a belief intervention. And that's really on leaders as much as anyone. You cannot tell a story of AI that is just about AI, because that isn't even how this is going to work. You've got to tell a story about what AI makes possible for people. **Bernard Leong:** I have one question. There's the famous analogy of the ATM machine — banks opened more branches, and teller employment doubled into the 2010s. But you also point to the darker corollary that gets left out: smartphones eventually decimated the same role decades later. That suggests the current period might be a temporary adaptation window, not a permanent expansion. So for the 45-year-old mid-career professional, whose specialised expertise is being absorbed into AI tools faster than they can pivot — looking at it honestly, how long is that window, and what should they be doing this year, not in 2030? **Aneesh Raman:** The most important thing is that we all have time. We're not late. We're not rushing out of a flooding house or a house on fire. You could be mid-career, early career, a CEO — anyone, everywhere — we have time right now. We can get ahead of this. But now is the time to get ahead of it. Five years from now, it's going to feel more urgent if you haven't started the work. So put the fear aside, put the anxiety aside, and do the honest accounting of your job. We have ways to do that in the book. How many of your tasks are vulnerable to AI right now? What are the ways you can pivot to the skills and strengths that are unique to you and unique to humans? What are the new things you can do with these tools? If you look at it this way, we're in an amazing moment of experimentation. That's going to be true for about five years, because workers are going to lead the way. In every past moment of disruption — steam engine, electricity, internet — the transition played out over years and was top-down. By the time you, as a worker, found out what the steam engine, or electricity, or the internet, or the computer meant for you, your boss was showing up and saying, "you're laid off, you're redeployed, you've got to get this new certification in CRM management." This is different, because it's a populist technology. Everyone has access to it. The CEO at the biggest company has the same tools available as the university grad. As long as you have a phone and a laptop, you have the same technology. We're all able to experiment with it in real time. That's partly why companies are unsure how to proceed — they recognise it's not a top-down solution. They've got to create opportunities for the people in the jobs to test and try. So it's a period of experimentation. Think of it that way — not a period of disruption, a period of experimentation. Go experiment. If you do that a little bit more every day, you have time. You've got a good five-year period. Do that, do it more, do it more by the day, and you're going to be okay. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one question you wish more people would ask you about the future of work in this AI transition, but they don't? **Aneesh Raman:** What's possible? The way I think about it is an innovation explosion. If you think about human history — part of the book is about anthropology — humans have been around for millennia. The human brain we have, by shape, is 300,000 years old; by its ability for complex thought, 40,000 to 70,000 years old. Most of what we know of the world is 300 years old. Everything emerges maybe 500 years ago, from the printing press on. Everything about our world — from the structures we build, to the hot showers we take, to computers, the smartphone, AI — is 500 years old. With AI, what's powerful — and we have a chapter called "The Lost Einsteins" — is that the ability to come up with new ideas, and test and try new businesses, is now going to be available to everyone. If you think about innovation in the past, we've done a horrible job of it. Very few people got to actually innovate, because you needed money to build a prototype, to launch a business — whether it was electricity, railroads, or software and an app. Now anyone can build with these tools. You have the ability — say I have an idea for my community — to build a company that just helps us get around better, or helps us figure out who's got the best of something. You can build for your community and make some money, without having to be a billion-dollar business. You can also build businesses that aren't just about consumer convenience and enterprise productivity, which is generally what businesses have been built around to date. If you're coming of age as an entrepreneur, you can go after climate change, after social causes like poverty or mobility. You can apply technology and entrepreneurialism to the entire gamut of human ideas and human needs. So to me, whether it's cancer and health care, or climate change — what's possible, if we do this right, roll it out right, and give everyone the right way to approach AI, is an explosion of innovation. We should be able to do, in the next 50 years, better and more than we've done in the last 500 as humans. And — oh my God — what a world that would be. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what does success mean for LinkedIn, navigating the AI transition globally, and for your book, *Open to Work*? **Aneesh Raman:** It's to help people do more, to help people see what's possible. We're a platform that has always had, as a vision, to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce — all 3 billion-plus people. Prior to AI, a lot of that was helping people better understand how to get jobs, identify the skills off their profile, have recruiters find them around those skills — just creating a better match between talent and opportunity, with the feed helping people connect, learn and partner in new ways. With AI, it's what we've always been about, but with a more urgent responsibility and opportunity: to really help people understand and navigate this moment of change, and everything I talked about in terms of what's possible. I do feel that, hopefully, it's possible in unique ways because of LinkedIn. In every other moment of disruption, everyone was kind of on their own. In this one, there's one place where the largest network of professionals ever assembled exists, where every day people are learning, testing, trying. One of the most exciting things on LinkedIn to me is that we've seen a 4.5x increase in people building in public — posting, "I tried this agent, it didn't work, has anyone done it better?" or "I built this thing, it's kind of cool, does anyone want to build on it with me?" That's a whole different reality for people trying to figure this out and get to better. So that's my hope for us. **Bernard Leong:** I hope it's the same thing. I like the point you made about the stories we tell. *Every day — whether I teach, whether I build my own enterprise AI company, whether I'm doing a podcast, thinking about a deep subject — I think this is a very exciting period of time. Everyone now has the privilege of their lifetime: to be themselves in the age of AI.* That's a good place to close. So, Aneesh, many thanks for coming on the show — but I have to give you two closing questions. First: any recommendations that have inspired you recently? Books, podcasts, anything? **Aneesh Raman:** Well, there's a great book called [*Open to Work*](https://www.linkedin.com/opentowork/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Aside from that, two books I finished — I like them because, if I went back to college, I'd study neuroscience. The human brain is about to be at the centre of work. We know so little of it, but what we know is amazing — neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to rewire itself. There's a book called [*Tiny Experiments*](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/214268997-tiny-experiments?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Anne-Laure Le Cunff](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18587449.Anne%5FLaure%5FLe%5FCunff?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is all about rewiring your brain around habits, and another called [*Little Bets*](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10822774-little-bets?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is about how many businesses start with little bets. What's powerful about that for everyone is that it all starts small. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. How can my audience find you — through the book, or what else? **Aneesh Raman:** There's this platform called [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). One of the great sleeper realities of LinkedIn — my favourite part — is that you can follow people. It used to be that you had to know someone, connect with them, have them accept your connection, to see what they were saying. Now, whether it's a big business personality or someone you just heard on a podcast, you go follow them, and what they put out, you see in your feed. So it's not just who you know, as we often say — it's what they know. It's that sharing of knowledge. Go on LinkedIn and follow a bunch of people. What I do is follow people, X out posts I don't like, engage with posts I do, so the algorithm gives me a feed where every day I'm learning something new. Every six months or so, I change who I follow — I'll unfollow some people because my curiosities have moved somewhere else, and follow others. Let it feed your curiosity. **Bernard Leong:** Nice. I got the tip. So, Aneesh, many thanks for coming on the show. I look forward to the success of the book, and of course the success of the correct narrative that will carry us into the age of AI. **Aneesh Raman:** Thanks so much. [We Never Left the Industrial Age: AI and the Future of Work with Aneesh RamanPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · July 1 · 42m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-180-49f4873e-6b32-4558-a181-fef1681a4e52.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-d18967b7-4e0f-487c-8d4c-c4a4e82beec2.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-never-left-the-industrial-age-ai-and-the/id914868245?i=1000775060618&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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Benedict argues there is no winner-takes-all effect in models yet, drawing parallels to telecoms, cloud, chips and the fiber bubble to ask where durable value actually accrues when everyone runs similar infrastructure on similar tokens. He unpacks why the chatbot remains a poor interface, introduces the "blank screen" and "jagged frontier" problems that keep software companies alive, and explains why large language models inherently give you "the average." Closing the conversation, Benedict reflects on the indicators that would show AI has truly eaten the world — and why the answer is better products, not better models. --- > "When you automate away work, you can always see the jobs that are going away because they're right there. And you don't know what the new jobs are going to be. Human needs are infinite. How many people are earning a living from making podcasts now? Imagine predicting that 10 years ago. There's a stage in the evolution of the market where like if you're still arguing about that, you're an idiot. But there's a stage at the beginning where you might have opinions about some of these questions, you're probably not even asking the right questions. That, I think, is where we are with this stuff today." — **Benedict Evans** **Profile: Benedict Evans**, Independent Technology Analyst ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Blog](https://www.ben-evans.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Newsletter](https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premium podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong. The AI cycle is no longer just about better models. It is becoming a capital markets test of infrastructure, distribution and energy. [Anthropic](https://anthropic.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [OpenAI](https://openai.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) are moving towards public markets. [SpaceX](https://www.spacex.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is preparing one of the most consequential listings in technology, and the launch this morning of [Claude Fable-5](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5?ref=analysepodcast.com) (*Note that: Fable-5 is no longer available now*) shows how frontier capability now comes bundled with safety, access and governance questions. These headlines point to the same deeper story: massive CapEx, increasingly commoditized models, shallow but enormous usage, and a new battle over who controls the curation layer over infinite intelligence. Today we test whether the model layer becomes a utility, where durable value actually accrues, and how AI reshapes work and competition globally. With me today, recurring guest Benedict Evans, the independent technology analyst behind AI Eats the World. Benedict, welcome back. **Benedict Evans:** Thanks for having me. **Bernard Leong:** Since our last conversation, what have you been up to recently? **Benedict Evans:** Been on lots of airplanes. People want to know about this AI thing. You may have heard about it. **Bernard Leong:** I want to go straight to the question. Early this year you started updating your presentation every six months, and AI Eats the World is now in its 2026 edition. So I want to start with the biggest question: OpenAI, Anthropic, and the public market test. One article I really enjoyed, since I'm a subscriber to your newsletter, was on how the frontier models are near commoditization with no network effects. Everybody is now trying to buy compute time, and that is not a moat. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are heading towards public market capitalizations near a trillion dollars. So what is the public investor actually buying, if not a moat? **Benedict Evans:** Well, there are several different questions embedded in that. The first is that at the moment there's no apparent winner-takes-all effect in models. This is a subtle but important distinction. Are there things you're doing that no one else can do, no matter how hard they try, that they won't be able to catch up on no matter how much money they spend? That's where Google is in search. It doesn't matter how much money Microsoft spent, they can't catch up. That's what happened with YouTube, with iOS, with Windows, with Instagram. There are inherent structural reasons why it's really difficult for them to lose their position. We don't see equivalents of those in large language models yet. The big challenge, of course, is that we don't know how this market is going to evolve. Some people have a problem with that statement too, but you're at the very early stage of this market. You don't know how it's going to evolve. We also don't know how the science works, and we don't know how the science will change. So things may happen that mean there are network effects, but right now there aren't. You're in a situation where you've got three to six companies spending a lot of money, and then maybe up to a dozen companies willing to be three to six months behind. But there's no mechanic that means if one of them gets ahead, they'll get further ahead. What we see now is that Anthropic got coding working with product market fit. There's no inherent reason why it's impossible for Google and OpenAI to catch up with that and get their own things working. They may do. They may fail to execute. But you can't predict that. The models are all kind of the same, with the same benchmark scores and the same evals, because they're using the same infrastructure, the same training data, the same algorithm. That's what you'd expect. So then you get to a question. Firstly, would there be mechanisms — for example, a use of capital — that would allow one of them to pull ahead? Secondly, how far up the stack do they go? Is the model the whole experience? Is the model what we use? Does the chatbot become the universal user interface, which is a question we've been asking for three years? Or does mainstream mass-market adoption — not using it once a week or a couple of times a month, but using it all the time, every day — need this to be wrapped in apps, use cases, tooling, go-to-market, data and everything else we think of when we see software? Your phone runs 50 different databases every day, but they're all different. They run on SQL or whatever, but that's not the point. That's not what the product is. So how far up the stack can the models go? Or do the models have to be APIs used by software built by other people? In the end, if there are 500 of these things, they can't all be built by Anthropic and OpenAI. Not because you can't get the model to write the code, but because you've got to build the business, work out what it would be, build a Salesforce, do go-to-market, and do all the other things that happen after you've written the code. I don't know why they would be able to do that any more than Microsoft could, or Apple could. That gets you to a preliminary thesis: models are a crappy UX. Chat is a crappy UX. Models are commodities. There need to be loads of apps. The model company can't build all of those. So the models look like they're going to end up as commodity infrastructure. Now you get a bunch of questions. To your point about pricing, clearly right now we're in a moment of extreme pricing crunch. But all the multipliers in that are going to get flung all over the place in the next year. You've got a trillion dollars of CapEx coming down the pipe. The models get fifty, a hundred, two hundred times more efficient. The chips keep getting better. You don't know what the next model will be. The next models, on past history, use way more tokens. The only thing that's really, really got product market fit is coding. Imagine if we had something with product market fit that lots of people wanted, rather than coding, which is in the end tens of millions of people, not hundreds of millions of people. So all those levers are going to get swung all over the place. Where might it settle out in the end? You can throw analogies out there. What happened in telecoms — in mobile — is that mobile has marginal cost. A lot of people don't get this. Mobile networks have marginal cost. More users using it more means you have to build more network, and that costs money. So basically we went to paying fifty or a hundred dollars a month, every month, for twenty years. Not quite as simple as that, but we pay roughly the same amount of money, and we now use a thousand to two thousand times more data. It's a trillion-dollar annual revenue industry that pays two hundred billion dollars a year in CapEx, and the stocks have gone nowhere in twenty years. So it's a very big industry that spends a lot of money on CapEx and earns a lot of money, but there isn't really any profit. There's not much profit, and it's not a great investment as an investor, because all the value went up the stack. All the cool stuff was built by other people. Now there are other comparisons you can make. You can point to cloud, where there's a pretty good return, and there's differentiation between Google, Microsoft and Amazon. But there again there's no network effect. **Bernard Leong:** Obviously there too, all the businesses are using everyone \[every AI Model\]. **Benedict Evans:** You run on AWS, but AWS doesn't get a percentage of your Uber trip. They don't get that much value or leverage further up the stack. They're an essential component. You could point to chips, and the value of the chip comparison is that it gets more expensive within a generation. I don't mean Nvidia. I mean TSMC, Samsung — semiconductor manufacturing. Because of Rock's Law it gets more expensive with every generation. So now there are basically three chip companies — or two, or one, however you want to count it — as opposed to thirty or forty years ago when there were dozens. Because with each generation it gets progressively harder. So it might look like telecoms, it might look like cloud, it might look like semis. The fiber comparison is interesting. At first sight the fiber comparison is dumb, because the fiber bubble twenty-five years ago was built out way ahead of demand. **Bernard Leong:** Nobody was using it \[fibre\] then. **Benedict Evans:** There was all this empty fiber, whereas this is being built out behind demand. You can sell every token you can make. However, the interesting part of the fiber comparison is the massive disaggregation. What happened with fiber was that it got split up: you had ducts, dark fiber, lit fiber, wavelength, IP streams and probably some other stuff. Then you had people trading bandwidth on top, and there's always somebody with slightly newer equipment with slightly lower costs. So everyone ends up selling it at marginal cost or less. **Bernard Leong:** It feels like tokens to fiber. **Benedict Evans:** That's the question. The more the market gets disaggregated — you've got Mark Zuckerberg saying, if I've got spare capacity I'll sell that, and people trying to trade it and building ETFs on top of it — the more the market gets fragmented. In parallel there's this other question of how long you need the newest model. I'm being slightly unsystematic in how I'm explaining this, but how long do you have to have the newest full-fat model, and at what point, and how many use cases, can you use a six-month-old model, or a three-month-old model, or the open-source model? Or run it much more slowly, or even run it on your own equipment? How many use cases have to have the full intelligence, the full model running in the cloud at the massive price, using lots of tokens? All of which is to say, it's like the bell-curve IQ meme — the person at 50 IQ and the person at 150 IQ agree: commodities tend not to be high-margin products, and compute tends to get cheaper over time. Then you can sit in the middle trying to analyze how many TPUs Google has this year. I'm being slightly unfair, because that's the hard thing to do. But what does that actually tell you? There's a story that occurred to me. I'm sorry, I'm monologuing. When I was a baby technology analyst back in 1999, there was a company that sold computer components. Chips, memory, keyboards, monitors, printers, all of this, sold online. It had been converted from one of those companies that had twenty pages in the back of a computer magazine, if you remember. **Bernard Leong:** The catalog. **Benedict Evans:** The back of a computer magazine in the nineties was a 300-page magazine, and the back 150 pages were one insert after another — twenty, thirty, forty pages from different resellers, basically selling the same stuff. You'd page back and forth and say, they've got the printer I want for $260, and they're selling it for $250\. Anyway, they make a website. They're doing — I'm making this up — a hundred million a year in revenue. We all go up to see the company, and an investment banker got a mandate to float it at seven or eight hundred million. All the way back we're discussing it, and this veteran banker says: it's a low-margin reseller, one-time sales. You can spend a lot of time talking about Amazon and the internet and consumer adoption and broadband and HTML and returns and pricing and the management team. But it's a low-margin reseller, one-time sales. That's the thesis. The question I'm asking is: explain to me why people who are using similar infrastructure, similar models, similar tokens to deliver a similar product — and there are going to be three to six of them, and it's going to get fragmented with better and faster and newer and older and cheaper and more expensive — why is there pricing power here? **Bernard Leong:** That's the point. I really come to your point on that. You're also very clear that the only UI, even with agentic AI happening this year, is still the chatbot interface. It's still not much change. **Benedict Evans:** It still doesn't change. There's another strand worth pulling on here. If you think about the classic S-curve framing of how technology evolves — the way it worked with mobile, the way it worked with the internet — there's a period at the beginning where it's flat and not working, and no one cares, and it's dumb and stupid. Then there's a period where everything starts working and the curve shoots up, and it's really exciting. Then there's a period where it's all happened and it's been done, and it flattens out and gets boring. That's where smartphones are now. It's where airliners are now. It's where cars were until electric happened. There's not much difference between this year's model and the model from five years ago. Everything's been done, and it's become a mature, boring product. The reason I mention this: when you're at the beginning of that phase, it's very unclear how this is going to work, and there are many potential paths. Take a car in 1905\. You need to choose the spark plugs, and you drive along with a bundle of fifty tires on the back because you get a puncture every three miles, and you generally have a mechanic with you — if you're rich enough to own a car, you're rich enough to have a mechanic on staff, and you need it because the car breaks down every twenty minutes. It's incredibly exciting, but nothing works. Same with PCs in the late seventies and early eighties. Incredibly exciting. If you were using one then, you thought, this is great — what do you mean it doesn't work? The normal experience when we were kids was you'd be tapping away and you'd look up and the screen had frozen, and you'd crawl under the desk and unplug it and plug it in again and hope you hadn't lost more than ten minutes of work. So everything's amazing and nothing works. The stuff that has to happen for it to work doesn't exist, and you don't quite know how that's going to evolve. That's where mobile was in 2005. **Bernard Leong:** When do you feel this cycle is? **Benedict Evans:** The cycle is faster. But my point is, yes, the cycle is faster — are you completely confident that in 2005 you would have predicted how mobile was going to work? No. Even in 2010, a lot of really clever people in tech were convinced this was going to play out like Windows versus Apple: Apple was closed, Apple would get obliterated. **Bernard Leong:** That didn't work out. **Benedict Evans:** That was just not what happened, and we could explain why. I didn't think it was going to happen, and I was right. But I'd been wrong about plenty of other things. I thought Windows Phone might have a chance, and it didn't, and I can explain why too. The reason I'm saying this is that there's a stage in the evolution of a market where you can have strong, clear opinions about how it's going to work. And there's a stage where, if you're still arguing about that, you're an idiot — if you're still arguing about why anyone would use an iPhone, or that you should be able to install any software you want on it, that was an argument from ten years ago, pay attention. But there's a stage at the beginning where you might have opinions about some of these questions, and you're probably not even asking the right questions. That, I think, is where we are with this stuff today — where the PC was in the eighties, where the internet was in the mid-nineties, say 1997, where mobile was in 2006 or 2010\. You just don't know how this is going to work, and you don't know what the levers are going to be. The funny thing about mobile was that we thought it was working before the iPhone. It just wasn't growing very fast. It seemed like it was kind of working. **Bernard Leong:** We thought Nokia was going to dominate it. **Benedict Evans:** Nokia, Windows, BlackBerry. It wasn't clear that something was going to come along and blow the roof off. We all thought mobile was basically a PC accessory — what do you do on the mobile internet, what are the mobile use cases? What actually happened is that now you say "desktop internet," and mobile made the PC a smartphone accessory. The smartphone became the center of tech and the center of most people's usage. No one in 2000 was saying that. Or 2005. **Bernard Leong:** Because they couldn't imagine that the mobile phone was actually the personal computer, and that it could grow to that large a market size. **Benedict Evans:** Almost literally. There's a great quote from one of the co-founders of BlackBerry. He looked at the iPhone and said: if this thing works, we're competing with a Mac. Because it's still quite hard, if you're not in tech, to understand that the iPhone is a Mac — it's a PC in the general sense. It was competing with phones that had some compute added, and then suddenly, no, this is a whole PC, and it had four or eight gigs of storage, which was a ludicrously large amount, and it was running a PC operating system. That's why BlackBerry and Nokia were completely screwed. The analogy I used to give: it was like you were in the ocean liner business, and then you look at jet airliners and think, I don't have any relevant skills at all for making that thing. **Bernard Leong:** Let me put it another way. From my observation, as someone living between East and West, this batch of US companies — your Anthropic and OpenAI — are behaving more like Chinese companies. Let me give you some features. They work 996, and these last two years all the companies are expanding into Saturdays. People are working like crazy. Some of the AI researchers I know are in China. Alibaba is not just eBay, it's also PayPal, and all the other services too. **Benedict Evans:** Much more horizontal. **Bernard Leong:** Horizontal and vertical. **Benedict Evans:** You've got a much wider matrix, with many rows and columns, and lots of companies have lots of cells filled in. **Bernard Leong:** This batch of AI companies don't just supply, say, Cursor — Anthropic supplies Cursor, but now it's also coming in to compete with Cursor. **Benedict Evans:** I'm not sure about that. On the 996 thing, the contrast is: what was the Valley like in 2015 or 2020, when Google had won and had a phase of cash, and there were a lot of people there not — **Bernard Leong:** Working for the perks? **Benedict Evans:** A lot of people weren't working very hard, because the money was just there. I'm not sure that was anything other than the nature of that S-curve — when is everything amazing and exciting, and you have to build everything yesterday? There's also an interesting contrast worth pointing out. Put this very simplistically: incumbents always make it a feature. Google's response will be to make it a feature. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. Search is a feature. **Benedict Evans:** They'll add it to search, add it to Gmail. It empowers new capabilities and makes the existing stuff better. This is also what Apple is doing now. Whereas if you're not the incumbent — **Bernard Leong:** Anthropic uses Cowork. **Benedict Evans:** You don't have places to add it as a feature. So for Anthropic and OpenAI, the question is: what are the use cases for this? What do you do with it? How do you communicate to people what they would do with it? The position at OpenAI late last year was, everything everywhere yesterday. We'll try a social video app. We'll try an app store. We'll try another app store. We'll try a checkout, an e-commerce checkout flow. We'll try an ad business — all sorts of stuff, because we don't know what it is, so we'll try all of them and double down on the one that works. It turned out the one that works is software development. At least that's the first one that's working, and Anthropic got that working first. So OpenAI is pivoting to go into that one. **Bernard Leong:** But Anthropic also indirectly starts to kill off Cursor usage. So you get this cannibalization. This is very different from the US internet, where you're always in your lane — **Benedict Evans:** That's not true. That's title horseshit. People have spent the last twenty years saying Google is killing this startup, or Apple is killing that startup. If you're making a platform — this was a whole five years of people arguing about big tech companies killing startups. Go back and look at the way Microsoft and Windows evolved. There was a program called Sideways that you could buy in the late eighties. It was a hundred and fifty dollars in late-eighties dollars, so three hundred now, whatever the inflation is. What Sideways does is let you print out in landscape. That's it. It lets you print your spreadsheet in landscape. **Bernard Leong:** I remember Sideways. **Benedict Evans:** That's a hundred and fifty dollars, and today it's a checkbox in the print dialog box in Windows and macOS. It's the same thing if you bought a spellchecker — another, less absurd example. Spellchecking was a whole software category. You might buy PC magazines and they'd have a group test of ten different spellchecking programs, all two or three hundred dollars. The way it worked: you'd write your document, save it, then open the spellchecking program and point it at your document, and it would run the spellcheck. So there's a whole bunch of classes of stuff that naturally gets integrated. The question is how far that integration goes for an LLM. How far up the stack do you go? Is it agentic coding? Is that inherent to the thing? You could take the maximalist view and say the way these models will be able to do, quote unquote, everything is because they'll be able to write their own code to do stuff. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Benedict Evans:** You won't have the model doing everything itself from first principles in tokens. Instead it'll make a Perl script to do it. The model will write a piece of conventional, traditional software to do that thing, so everything will be done through models generating their own intermediate layers of code. **Bernard Leong:** So I come back to your favorite analogy. In the 1980s, people were given a spreadsheet but didn't know what to do with it. Essentially the spreadsheet became Tableau and all the different kinds of software people built on top, because they discovered they knew how to use a spreadsheet. To me, Cowork is the equivalent of a spreadsheet today, except that it could create a Word document, create a coding script, do exactly what you were saying. Is that maybe the change in UI? Or is it that you still have to orchestrate it by telling it what you want, which makes it difficult to visualize what's going on? **Benedict Evans:** Cowork, in a sense, is what I'm describing — you want the model to do a thing for you, and the way it does that thing might be using git, or writing an Excel macro. **Bernard Leong:** It's not doing all of that for me. **Benedict Evans:** It's not doing everything in the LLM as the LLM. The LLM is using a tool. However, I don't think that solves the underlying problem of a chatbot as UX. There are two fundamental problems here that drive software creation, company creation: the blank-screen problem and the jagged-frontier problem. The blank-screen problem is, how do you know what you need? You don't sit down and know how. How do you know what buttons there should be, what the questions are, what the flows are? Most people couldn't sit down and draw a flowchart of precisely how they're going to do a job. When you buy software, what you're buying is a whole bunch of institutional knowledge and a whole bunch of thought about what the problem is, what the workflow should be, how it should work, what options you should be given at each step — none of which you're working out from first principles, sitting there with your eyes shut thinking, okay, how am I going to explain what I want? When you buy software, that's what you're getting. They worked that out for you. Most people are not tool creators in that sense. The person who's a really good graphic designer is not also the person to design InDesign. The second is the jagged frontier, which I think is a better phrasing than hallucination. These models do some things very well and other things not very well. **Bernard Leong:** Right. **Benedict Evans:** Each new model maybe has the jagged bits in different places. Some people say hallucinations are solved, and you think, well, for you they are, but not for my use cases. **Bernard Leong:** Actually, no — **Benedict Evans:** Let me finish the point. Clearly we do not have AGI. There's stuff these can do and stuff they can't, and that comes in unpredictable ways. We don't necessarily know why it does this and not that. You can't tell from the command line which is going to work and which isn't. As a normal user, if you're not reading AI papers every day, you're not going to know — of course that task will work brilliantly, and this task you've got to ask in a completely different way, and it may still not be right. So you've got this jagged frontier of what the models are good at. Then there's a jagged frontier of what we can intuitively understand it's going to be good at or not. Then there's a jagged frontier of what actual use cases I have that are important and valuable. With software development, those all line up. But there are a bunch of others where they don't line up. Never mind what the tokens cost, which is another thing — this use case might use way more tokens than that one, and you might not realize why, or we might not even know why. The one that uses loads of tokens might not be worth very much either. So there's all this jaggedness in how the bits fit together. That's why you hire a software developer — you hire a software company that sat down and worked out, this is how it's going to work. It will work if you do it like this, if you give it this data, if you frame it like that, if you pre-load it with this context, and we'll make sure to tell you if you ask it something that won't work, or that you probably want to check that number. You wrap it in tooling, use case, go-to-market and deep thought about what the actual problem is. The hard part of building a software company is not writing the code. **Bernard Leong:** It's the distribution, and it's everything. **Benedict Evans:** It's realizing that the problem exists, because very often the people who have the problem don't see it. The people the software is solving the problem for do not realize that's the problem. And the way you're solving it — maybe three or four other people have tried to solve it before and failed, and you've worked out the right way by turning it into a different problem that didn't look like that problem. You worked out the right go-to-market and the right way to get the data to make the whole thing work. If you're doing accounts payable, or color grading in a video editing shop, those aren't your skills. You're great at color grading. You're not great at working out the right insertion point, or even seeing that the problem exists. That, to me, is the challenge to the whole thesis that the model will just go all the way up to the top. If you believe the models will scale to be super-general — whatever terminology we're using now — if you believe they'll understand everything I've just said, know all of it and do it all unprompted, then fine. But then we've got bigger problems than wondering about the future of enterprise software. **Bernard Leong:** The bigger problem, speaking as a practitioner doing this every day, is exactly what you said about the jagged piece. I like that analogy — I couldn't articulate it. The way I'd put it differently: AI software is very good at deceiving you with an output you think you want. The demo is great, but once you get into a production situation, you start to see where the flaws come up. **Benedict Evans:** It's very good — there are all sorts of ways to describe this — it's very good at giving you what a good answer would probably look like. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. But it's not the best answer. **Benedict Evans:** That may or may not be what you want. It depends on the use case, on who you are, on why you asked. A trivial example: a couple of years ago, when this had just started working, I went to speak at an event and they asked me for a long biography, and I didn't have one, so they made one in ChatGPT, and it was full of mistakes. But the thing that occurred to me is, if I'd used ChatGPT to do that, I could have fixed it in thirty seconds, because I'm an expert on myself. I can read the biography and say, no, not that company, not this company, change this, delete that paragraph, great. If you didn't know anything about me, it wouldn't be very useful for you. So, what is a good answer? There are some questions that don't need a precisely correct answer, or where there is no precisely correct answer. Here's a picture of a new CPG product — suggest ten advertising slogans for it. That doesn't have a right answer. It has better and worse answers, but there's no precisely correct answer you require. So the question is, how do you turn things into generative AI questions? If you think about the last ten or fifteen years of machine learning, there was a bunch of stuff that was obviously a machine learning question. There were also companies that said, we realized we could turn this into pattern recognition. Or, we realized we could turn this into image recognition — it didn't look like image recognition, but we worked out a way to turn it into image recognition, and then you can automate it. So there's a whole question of the stuff that's obviously an LLM use case, versus the stuff that right now looks like it's really not an LLM use case, like law. Or maybe that's the wrong way of putting it — it looks like it should be, except that it's really hard, because you need to get it right. Then there's the question of how you manage all those problems. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/06/AnalysePodcast-BenedictEvans.jpeg) Picture taken in Poddster Singapore **Bernard Leong:** Can I ask you this. When people start talking about job displacement, I always argue in the following manner. The problem is that the part of a lawyer's job that's manual, repeatable tasks gets taken away by the AI. But the creative aspect of being a lawyer — putting in the correct clause, knowing how to defend the client as a solicitor — that part stays in the system, because the AI is not going to give you the best answer. It gives you an answer that looks deceptively like the real answer, but is not the correct answer. Am I right? **Benedict Evans:** Two things here. Firstly, it's very hard to predict this. You see this if you try to backtest it. You could say half the purpose of computing in the twentieth century was to automate accounting. We had adding machines, punch cards, mainframes, databases, data processing, spreadsheets, ERPs. It's all trying to automate accounting and bookkeeping. Go and look at the US census data: the number of people called an accountant or a bookkeeper basically goes up in a straight line all through the twentieth century. This is where people pull up the Wikipedia entry for Jevons paradox, which is basically price elasticity — if you make it cheaper to do something, do you do the same work for less money, or more work for the same money? Or maybe you do more work for more money, because you've got a new ROI. But if you stop and think for a minute, that's not quite what happened, because an accountant today doesn't do the work they would have been doing fifty years ago, only more of it. They're doing a whole bunch of other things they wouldn't have done then, because it would have been impossible. **Bernard Leong:** It makes them able to do more work. **Benedict Evans:** It also enables different work, a different character of work. If you were an investment banker forty years ago and you wanted to do a DCF, that would take all week. Now you can type it in and you've got a new DCF. So the stuff accountants are doing now is not what they were doing fifty years ago, and the fact that you could automate what they were doing fifty years ago unlocked all sorts of other stuff. The inverse of this is what happened most obviously to newspapers, where the internet didn't really change what it was to be a journalist, but journalists were being paid through a light manufacturing and trucking business that had a monopoly on local advertising. **Bernard Leong:** That was going away. **Benedict Evans:** If you'd looked at the job of a copy editor and asked, does the internet change the job of a copy editor, the answer is no. Zero exposure to the internet — except that the salary was being paid by something completely different. That wouldn't show up in any analysis of whether the job is exposed. Same thing with Uber. If you'd asked what jobs were exposed to smartphones, everyone was talking about GPS. No one was talking about taxis. So in a sense what I'm saying is: why don't we just only buy the stocks that go up? You can't predict this stuff. We don't have perfect knowledge of the future. There's a second answer, which is even simpler — the lump-of-labour fallacy. When you automate work away, you can always see the jobs that are going to go away, because they're right there, and you don't know what the new jobs are going to be. But the fact that you've automated that work away has unlocked new economic demand, new economics that allow the consumption of new things, and human needs are infinite. How many people are earning a living making podcasts now? Imagine predicting that ten years ago. You don't know what the new jobs will be, but there will be new jobs. So yes, it will be painful, and there will be jobs that go away, but that's what's happened continuously over the last two hundred years. Two hundred years ago, ninety percent of us were peasants, worried the crops would fail. We spent the last two hundred and fifty years automating that away, and yet there are just as many jobs. So you need a theory for why this is different, and at that point there's a lot of hand-waving, because you can say this is happening way quicker — but is it? We're three years in and nothing's happened yet. **Bernard Leong:** But you see less hiring — **Benedict Evans:** At best you'll get a lot of argument amongst economists about what's really going on. I don't think there's any sense amongst economists that we're clearly seeing a decline in hiring yet. The broader job question — I want to come back to where you started, which is, what is the actual job? What are you actually hiring them for? Why did you hire the law firm? Did you hire them to make the contract? Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is, I hire them to make a plain-vanilla contract that does what all the contracts say. And somehow, when you actually hire a lawyer, there's always a reason why it's not that. The analogy I was thinking about is Amazon and retailers, because Amazon can get you the thing. Set aside that there's a bunch of stuff not on Amazon, like luxury goods. But for the sake of argument — books would be the best example. If you know exactly what book you want, Amazon can get you that book. But how do you know you want that book? **Bernard Leong:** You have to search for it. **Benedict Evans:** When you go to a bookshop, you generally walk out with books you didn't know existed. **Bernard Leong:** I still go to bookshops. **Benedict Evans:** So the question is, is the purpose of the retailer to be the most efficient endpoint to a logistics chain — in which case Amazon is probably more efficient, though not necessarily for groceries; it's probably more efficient to go to the shop on the ground floor of your apartment building and buy milk than to order it from Amazon. But if you don't know that the thing exists, the shop is doing something else. Book buying is a leisure activity. It's about service and experience and suggestion and curation and recommendation. Amazon has eight or nine hundred million SKUs. You can't go to Amazon and say, I feel like buying something nice for my house. That's not a SQL query. **Bernard Leong:** So the bookstore's job has changed so much. **Benedict Evans:** My point is the function has separated. Is it just to get you the thing in the most efficient way possible, or is it something else? Amazon can get you the thing, but it can't really do the something else. The LLM can make you the thing, but can it do the something else? Another way to think about it: what LLMs do, absolutely inherently, is give you the average. They tell you, this is what most people would probably say. Is that what you want? **Bernard Leong:** Maybe, if you have — **Benedict Evans:** It depends. You go to your lawyer: I want an NDA for my company. Do you want a different NDA from what everyone else has, or do you just want the same NDA as everyone else? **Bernard Leong:** It's probably the same NDA. **Benedict Evans:** Maybe you want a lawyer to check it, but you probably won't be paying the lawyer to write a document that's exactly the same as the one everyone else uses. You probably shouldn't be, even now — and certainly with AI you won't be. But the question is, is that what you were getting from them? Were you getting something else? My point is, do you want the average? Do you want the mean of what everybody would probably do, what everybody would probably say? The answer very often is yes. How do I make a risotto? How long should I cook the rice for? I'm not looking for an original answer. But then you can extend that — here's a picture of my fridge, what should I cook for supper? That will work now. Try it. It will work, probably better than you'd expect. **Bernard Leong:** I believe you. **Benedict Evans:** It won't give you some radical, weird new thing you'd never thought of. It'll say, I can see some spinach, I can see some ricotta. But do you want the average? That's the point. Why do you go to the lawyer? Why do you go to Bain or BCG or McKinsey? Is it that you just want the deck? There's a dumb and stupid version of this, because LinkedIn is full of people who'll say, look, Claude made me this deck. The narrow criticism is that the deck is terrible — if McKinsey gave you that, you'd throw them out. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Benedict Evans:** But you have to distinguish between the things that will get fixed and improve, and the things that are a different question. That's not why you hired them. Sometimes it is — maybe if you're doing a plain-vanilla private equity due diligence and you just want a deck that says this is the market structure and these are the competitors, then yes, Claude can do that for you, or you can do it vastly quicker, and you won't pay them as much. But maybe that's not what you're paying them for. I was talking to a friend the other day who was at one of the big four accounting firms, and he said: the CIO at the client wants to migrate from one version of Oracle to another, and has paid one of the big four to do a study on whether they should do this. The answer was yes. The CEO says, this is a lot of money, is this really the best way to spend it? So the CEO hires another of the big four for a second opinion — on the basis that they won't get the conversion work, so they're free to give an honest opinion on whether they should actually do this. The answer is yes, maybe, if you double the normal depreciation life. And also you should realize: number one, the partner at the first firm is best friends with the CIO. Number two, the CEO really wants a big shiny project. Number three, the CEO is about to retire and doesn't have much political capital. So what the CEO actually wants is a document to tell the board what he and the board already know. **Bernard Leong:** It's never about the problem. **Benedict Evans:** That's an extreme case. But what is it that you're hiring them for? Sometimes you're just hiring them to get the deck. You're just hiring them to get the code, to get the thing. You just want what everybody would probably make. At the extreme — the people most upset about AI — it's like using AI to write romance fiction, because it follows some very straightforward, well-understood conventions. **Bernard Leong:** It follows good writers' form, a style of writing. **Benedict Evans:** The challenge is, do you want something that isn't the average? This is an interesting theoretical question. An LLM can make you more prog rock, or more punk, or more new wave, or more stuff that sounds like not-very-good Nirvana. But it won't know that everyone is really bored of disco and prog rock, and the economy is terrible, and we're worried about this and that, and so we want a completely different kind of sound, and punk will do that. Maybe that's not why people wanted punk, but it won't know people want something different like that, and what it would be. If it did, that would be very different — maybe a different amplitude. It's easy to see that you can use AI to make more of the stuff we've got now. It's a different problem for it to know that we would want something different, and what we would want. How will it know? By default, that would be something outside the training data. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Benedict Evans:** So it's a long way of circling around your question: how often is it that you hire something because you want the average of the training data, and how often is it that you want something out of the training data, something that's not the normal suggestion? **Bernard Leong:** Correct. If you're a hedge fund manager, you're looking for the alpha, so you wouldn't be looking for what everybody agrees on. You'd be looking at what everybody disagrees on. **Benedict Evans:** But you can't just go to ChatGPT and say, give me some really stupid investment ideas. **Bernard Leong:** Of course not. What you're saying is that the LLM is solving a lot of tasks where most people could agree this is the right way to do it — except we don't know what the new paths are. **Benedict Evans:** This comes back to automation, doesn't it? The point of automation, right back to the nineteenth century, is: take this one task and do it exactly the same way, over and over again. So now with AI you can take a bunch of tasks you previously needed people for and say, do the same task — maybe not in exactly the same way, because it's a probabilistic system — do the same thing over and over again. **Bernard Leong:** And redesign it in a different way so that it's efficient. **Benedict Evans:** It's like McDonald's making the hamburgers look artificially irregular. Do you want it done exactly the same way every single time? The answer is sometimes yes, but not necessarily. That's not necessarily why you're going to somebody. **Bernard Leong:** But if I take your point, then creators will still have a job, whether we have AI tools or not, because there's always a human need to create new things, build new things, come up with new angles. I'll use the example of people saying Go is dead because AI plays it. But we've been seeing a lot of Go masters now playing moves that previously were taboo. **Benedict Evans:** I think that's a bad analogy. It's like saying no one will go running anymore because we have cars. **Bernard Leong:** Of course people still go running. But all I'm saying is, does that mean nothing really changes — it's only the reconfiguration of what we think? **Benedict Evans:** I'd argue against everything I've just said. There's a view that says what we've actually been doing for the last two hundred years is automating higher and higher-level human functions. You start by automating human beings as beasts of burden — hauling things, carrying things. You automate legs first. **Bernard Leong:** And then you automate arms, and fingers. **Benedict Evans:** Now you go to the brain. So you'll reach the top, and there'll be nothing left. It's a neat framing. I'm not sure it's very convincing. How would you know that's what it is? **Bernard Leong:** They're not doing very well yet. **Benedict Evans:** How is it that the things it's automating are all the things people want, all the things people need? **Bernard Leong:** That is the underlying question, I suppose. **Benedict Evans:** It is, and it's a sort of unanswerable thing, because unlike every other platform shift, we don't understand the science of this. You didn't know how the internet was going to evolve, but at a deep level you did — you knew PCs cost two or three thousand dollars and there were only a hundred million of them in the world, and there weren't going to be five billion people with a PC next year, and the telcos weren't going to give everybody in the world fiber by the end of 1998\. You knew some basic constraints of what could happen. Same with mobile. You didn't know what the iPhone 4 would look like, but you knew it wouldn't have a retinal implant. You knew the basic physical constraints of where this could go, roughly what it cost, roughly how many were getting sold every year. Whereas with LLMs, because we don't have a good theoretical description of why they work so well — this is the scaling thing — we know empirically that they have scaled, but we don't have a good theoretical explanation of whether that continues, or how long. So we can't predict what we'll be able to do with this stuff. Same with cost. Maybe we have a paper tomorrow that says you can get the same results for five percent of the compute. It's maybe unlikely, but we don't have a way to state that definitively. **Bernard Leong:** The theoretical physicist's way of answering why they work so well: it just happens that you put a billion tokens in, you get the best gradient descents of AI working. That's probably how I'd look at it. But I'll have one final question. Listening to you and going through your work over the last ten years, I think asking you for predictions is the wrong question. I have a different question this time. What are the indicators that would tell you AI has actually eaten the world, or is still eating the world — where we are on the S-curve? Do we have to see something very unpredictable that hasn't shown up yet, or are these things always incrementally changing? **Benedict Evans:** You could get a bunch of people agreeing and disagreeing on whether we've had a step change in capabilities, or continuous improvement of the same thing in principle. Have we had some radical acceleration, or is it just that we got coding to work? It's certainly the case that people who only test this every couple of months, and haven't looked at it since the beginning of the year, do not really understand what we have now. But — I don't know. It's tough to make these statements of magnitude. It's like asking whether mobile was a bigger deal than the internet. I don't really know how one would answer that. **Bernard Leong:** That's a meaningless question. **Benedict Evans:** I don't really know how one would answer it. I'm trying to think how to put this. Imagine you're an accountant seeing the first spreadsheets in the late seventies. It's life-changing. It does a week of work in an hour. That's what it's like to be a software developer looking at Claude Code now — it's mind-blowing. It completely changes what it is to do the job. However, now imagine you're a lawyer looking at a spreadsheet in 1978\. Okay, this is very clever, my accountant should see this, but that's not what I do. Word processors exist at the same time. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Benedict Evans:** If you were a lawyer looking at a spreadsheet, you'd think, this is very clever, I might use it next week to do my timesheet. Set aside that you needed fifteen grand worth of computer to run a spreadsheet in 1978 — literally, an Apple II with enough memory and the disk drives was ten or fifteen thousand dollars. But set that aside. You're a lawyer looking at this thinking, that's great, I could use it to do my timesheet next week, but I'm not going to use it every day. That's not what I do all day. It's the same now with LLMs. Some people are the accountant looking at the spreadsheet. Most people are weekly active users and monthly active users, not daily active users. Even with thirteen-to-nineteen-year-olds, more people are weekly or monthly active users than daily active users. So most people are still the lawyer looking at the spreadsheet, saying: this is very clever, it's quite useful, maybe next week. And I'm not sure the solution to that is a better model. I think the solution is that now you have to wrap it in different products, and think about how you create a use case where it's set up so that — I've realized you have this thing you didn't notice you were doing every day, and I've made a thing that solves it for you. **Bernard Leong:** Because the interface isn't a do-everything interface. **Benedict Evans:** It isn't, and making it work is still fiddly. Take an example. I travel a lot, so I need to put my expenses together. What's the right way to do that? I can look at the flight, the taxi, the hotel and type them into a spreadsheet. Option one: I put all the receipts together myself. Option two: Gmail could look at all those receipts as they come into email and automatically drop them into a Google Sheet. Am I going to set that up? Shouldn't that be Google's job? Option three: I could use a fintech or a corporate card that does it automatically. I sign up to a new card, and that's one of their features — they've built it, using machine learning, just as Google would. The one thing I'm not going to do is load up Claude Code and say, hey, can you log into my bank and my Gmail, and here's my Uber account, can you calculate which of these are expenses. That would be insane. That would be a really, really stupid way of doing it. You could. But why on earth would you? **Bernard Leong:** Good point. That's a good place to wrap. Many thanks for coming on the show. Very simple question: where do my audience find you? I'm a subscriber to your newsletter, so I'm just going to recommend it. **Benedict Evans:** I need to check whether you're a paying subscriber. **Bernard Leong:** I can send you the order receipts. **Benedict Evans:** Over the last ten years. My parents had good SEO, so if you Google ["Benedict Evans," there's my website](https://www.ben-evans.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I publish a presentation twice a year about what I'm thinking about, and then there's a weekly newsletter, which is my notes for the week on what's going on, what was interesting, and what it meant. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you for the spreadsheet analogy. I think about it every time I think about product. **Benedict Evans:** Thank you. [If AI Models Have No Moat, What Are Investors Buying? with Benedict EvansPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · June 24 · 58m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-180-c685cbfa-b74c-4dd7-980c-3e2a67c33f31.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-ee8af286-c334-462f-89ee-4406c8655531.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-ai-models-have-no-moat-what-are-investors-buying/id914868245?i=1000774091541&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/2HDYlKxM-Hw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-ai-models-have-no-moat-what-are-investors-buying/id914868245?i=1000774091541&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3iDzx7txzsWEQyJHv6ahf2?si=VNISaEiQRWKwOPsHqVpzUw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/ai-models-no-moat-what-investors-buying-benedict-evans?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFspuk8o?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [LinkedIn Newsletter](https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7149559878934540288&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/analysepod) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analysepodcast.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@analysepod?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) ### Inside "Defending Taiwan": How to prevent a war between China and the US with Eyck Freymann URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/inside-defending-taiwan-how-to-prevent-a-war-between-china-and-the-us-with-eyck-freymann/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:53:01.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Eyck Freymann, Hoover fellow at Stanford and author of *Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China*, joins us to explore why the Taiwan question will be decided by economics and coercion, not by invasion. Eyck unpacks the Thucydides Trap as a warning, not a prophecy, traces how Chinese President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road statecraft shapes his approach to Taiwan, and contrasts a kinetic invasion with the "quarantine" scenario he fears most. He reframes 2027 as a capability milestone, recasts TSMC as a "silicon magnet" binding America to Taiwan, and flags Taiwan's 2028 election as the real flashpoint. Last but not least, Eyck argues the real task is to deter the crisis, not the war. --- > "For Beijing, I hope they will say: the United States actually does have a strategy to use every element of its national power to preserve peace and stability without provoking us, and we should not assume the United States is incapable of an effective response. In Taiwan, I think the lesson is: the United States trusts the people of Taiwan to choose the best future for themselves, and ultimately Taiwan's fate is up to the people of Taiwan to choose. That is the heart of what the American One China policy is about and must be about. The people of Taiwan must choose, and the United States will respect their choices. That is a profound insight that doesn't get said often enough." - **Eyck Freymann** **Profile:** [**Eyck Freymann**](https://www.eyckfreymann.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**,** author, "[Defending Taiwan](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/defending-taiwan-9780197823842?ref=analysepodcast.com)" ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyck-freymann/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Site](https://www.eyckfreymann.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. I am [Bernard Leong](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com), and the rivalry between the United States and China has become the defining strategic question of this century. Most debates default to Cold War analogies, containment blocs, and an inevitable clash between superpowers. But a growing group of historians and strategists argues that the deeper danger lies in the [Thucydides Trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides%5FTrap?ref=analysepodcast.com). When a rising power challenges an established one, fear, miscalculation, and domestic politics can turn competition into conflict. Today, we examine whether Washington and Beijing are destined for confrontation, or whether diplomacy, deterrence, interdependence, or technological governance can bend the curve away from war. With me today is Eyck Freymann, Hoover fellow at Stanford, and author of a new book which I really enjoyed reading, [*Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China*](https://www.amazon.com/Defending-Taiwan-Strategy-Prevent-China/dp/019782384X?ref=analysepodcast.com). We will discuss the great power rivalry, Taiwan, technology, ally coordination across Asia, and Xi Jinping's 2049 horizon. Eyck, welcome to the show. **Eyck Freymann:** Thank you so much, Bernard, for having me on. Really looking forward to getting into it. **Bernard Leong:** We share some common origin story, but I want to start from yours. How did you start your career? **Eyck Freymann:** How did I start my career? I got interested in China as an undergraduate. In my freshman year I took a seminar about ancient Chinese history and was captivated by the civilization. I spent a summer backpacking around China, did a short home stay, and was enchanted by the language, which I still really struggle with, by the food, by the warmth of the people, by the depth of the history, and most importantly, by the politics, which seemed to be trending in a self-confident and assertive direction. I came back and took classes on Chinese politics — this is at Harvard as an undergraduate — and I was struck by the fact that what I was hearing in those classes on campus was increasingly diverging from the China I would see when I went back over the summers. This was the beginning of Xi Jinping's first term. The anti-corruption campaign was getting going. The media and political environment was tightening, and it became increasingly clear to me that the peaceful coexistence or convergence the United States and China had seemed to be on through the '80s, the '90s, and the aughts, was breaking down — because Xi Jinping had a very different idea, a much more rigid Leninist ideological idea of what he wanted China to be. I was fascinated by that because I'm interested in how power works, and very interested in how propaganda works. But I also wanted to do international affairs without having to specialize in just one country, and it seemed to me that if China continued on this trajectory, they would touch everyone, and everyone would have to understand them. So if I did China and the world, I could specialize without specializing, and that has been my great professional bet. One project after another, trying to help translate China for others — that has been the goal: to specialize without specializing. **Bernard Leong:** Your path is pretty unusual. Harvard, Cambridge — fellow alumnus as well — Oxford in Chinese history, research assistant roles for [Graham Allison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%5FAllison?ref=analysepodcast.com) at Harvard, whose famous book I read, Niall Ferguson at Stanford, and Shi Zhiqing at Tsinghua, then Greenmantle on the market side, and now Hoover on grand strategy. So when did Taiwan deterrence become the question that pulled all these threads together? **Eyck Freymann:** Late. My first job out of college was as a research assistant to Graham Allison, where I helped research and draft chapters of the Thucydides Trap book. **Bernard Leong:** *Destined for War.* **Eyck Freymann:** With a couple of other RAs, I worked on the Athens and Sparta chapter and also the China chapters. I'm actually a defender of the book, which is widely criticized by people who haven't read it. One of the difficulties about writing a popular book with a slogan as the tagline is that the slogan takes on a life of its own that often has very little to do with what the author meant. A famous example is Francis Fukuyama's *The End of History*. Fukuyama meant something very different from what people took it to mean. Similarly, the Thucydides Trap idea is a warning, not a prophecy. In fact, the original title was *Destined for War*, question mark — and the editor knocked off the question mark. One of my early moments of education that sometimes editors are more interested in sensationalism than accuracy. But Graham reached a very insightful observation: when a rising power confronts a ruling power — and that is what we are seeing in the US-China relationship — both sides develop completely incompatible worldviews. The ruling power believes it is entitled to certain privileges, the rising power believes it is entitled to certain privileges, and one sees history trending in a very different direction than the other. They can read the same historical facts and extrapolate onto them a very different future. It's the misalignment between those two understandings that can make conflicts very difficult to resolve and can turn small disputes into big ones. Now, the difficulty with the Thucydides Trap concept is that from the very beginning of Graham's use of the term, even before he published the book, Xi Jinping personally took an interest in the slogan. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. He brought it up recently as well, during the visit to China. **Eyck Freymann:** So why is the CCP propaganda apparatus so taken by this concept? Why does Graham visit China and meet with all the great and the powerful? The reason is that China has realized there is a way it can spin the Thucydides Trap as an example, drawn from Western political history, of ruling powers being too rigid and unwilling to move aside to create space for a rising power to grow. In the Chinese analysis, that's the great lesson of Thucydides. That's not my lesson of Thucydides, by the way. One of the key themes in the book is how a rising power can develop wildly unrealistic ideas about the rights and privileges it deserves — ideas incompatible with the norms that other countries, not just the single ruling great power, are willing to accept. **Bernard Leong:** I want to draw back to your first book, on One Belt One Road, because one of the interesting parts is that the Belt and Road Initiative cannot be understood simply as some form of centrally controlled master plan, but more as a decentralized political campaign — one that draws a lot on Chinese traditions of hierarchy, patronage, and symbolic recognition while operating through modern institutions and incentives. How did that interpretation of Beijing's statecraft shape how you now think about pressure, persuasion, or coercion in the Taiwan context? **Eyck Freymann:** Thanks for asking about my first book. I came to this Taiwan issue through a circuitous path of thinking about how China uses economic power for political means. This is another innovation of the early Xi Jinping period that set China on a very different trajectory. When Xi Jinping took power between late 2012 and early 2013, China had already been investing vast sums of money around the world for a decade or so — both as private enterprises diversifying, and because state-owned enterprises needed to acquire their own supplies of natural resources. At this point, China was consuming close to half, and in some cases more than half, of the global supply of a whole range of commodities. If you're consuming at that scale, you need to find your tungsten, you need to find your manganese, and you need not only to figure out where it's in the ground, but to build all the supporting infrastructure — the power, the roads, the ports — to get it out and safely to China. But this had been happening in a largely uncoordinated way. You had this misalignment where China was already the largest trading partner of dozens of countries and an enormous force in global commodity markets, yet it didn't have any soft power or political influence to match. The Xi Jinping idea was that if you reorganize all of this activity that's basically already happening, and expand it in a more strategic way, you can cash in the chips of China's economic relationships for political influence too. That is what the Belt and Road was about. It was a co-optation of an existing development trajectory in pursuit of a much more ideological project. At home, it had another function: it helped Xi Jinping consolidate power. Here was a man who had come to power with most of the people who supported him along the way not realizing that he wanted to be a strongman at the head of a personalistic dictatorship. So he had a lot of house-cleaning to do — going after political enemies with his anti-corruption campaign, but also bringing provincial governments, local governments, and state-owned enterprises under his control. How better to do this than to recast all of this foreign investment that's already happening as a sort of patronage campaign, and say, "You're allowed to do it, you're encouraged to do it, but only on the terms the leader likes," cloaking yourself in the slogan that is the leader's slogan. So the first few years of Belt and Road become this scramble to reorganize the patronage system of the CCP around Xi Jinping, and to do it in a way that casts him as a sort of new emperor. This was essential to how he got control over the system. It's also how he learned that economic coercion, in various forms, is sometimes China's most powerful way to get what it wants — more so than military pressure or other tools — and I think he applies those lessons to Taiwan. Finally, it's how we learned a lot about how the man thinks about his own place in history, and this is probably the most important reason to take Xi Jinping seriously on Taiwan. He sees himself as an agent of a grand historical restoration of China returning to its rightful place atop the hierarchy of nations, and that narrative requires Taiwan to be brought into the fold — by force or by coercion if necessary. He has now built the tools, and he has made clear the legacy project, and Taiwan, to me, clearly is what comes next. **Bernard Leong:** You've done a lot of fieldwork and primary-source work in Chinese for years, and reviewers consistently single out your use of untranslated Chinese sources. What is the single most important thing about how Beijing thinks about Taiwan that gets lost when policymakers rely on translated material? **Eyck Freymann:** This is a disappointing answer, but on this particular issue, there's not much you can say with open-source commentary. If you're trying to understand China's strategy for breaking a choke-point dependency in some particular technology — like robots that can zoom around on the seafloor — or you're trying to understand China's diplomatic strategy in Greenland, or some issue like that, it can be very helpful to draw on commentaries from scholars, officials, and think-tank people. There will be a big debate. Many of those people expressing views will not have particular influence or insight into the policymaking system, but maybe some of them will. There are various methods we learn in the craft — and this is an art, not a science — for identifying who probably actually knows what's going on. When it comes to Taiwan, the system is guessing, because the decision lies in the hands of a single man who is inscrutable even to his own close advisors. No one knows what he will do, any more than people know what Donald Trump will do on this particular issue, because of the control he has developed over the military and other things. There are useful studies. My friend and colleague Jude Blanchette and Richard McGregor have a piece out a few days ago about how the debate in China is evolving — thinking about ideological re-education, what will have to happen to the people in Taiwan if and when they are absorbed. But I don't know how much we can read into that, simply because I don't know whether these people have insight into what Xi Jinping thinks. Another key issue where the open sources are useless is understanding China's nuclear strategy. Clearly, something has changed in China's nuclear doctrine, because from the mid-1960s, when China first acquired nuclear weapons, through Xi Jinping's taking power, China was satisfied to have what they called a minimum nuclear deterrent of a few dozen to a couple of hundred warheads. They believed: we don't have to take on the cost and difficulty of competing with the Americans and the Russians warhead for warhead. A few dozen to a couple of hundred is plenty to deter anyone from striking us. Well, under Xi Jinping, they have been undertaking the most breathtaking nuclear breakout since the Cold War. They're now over 600 warheads. They're headed toward over 1,000 by 2030, possibly to 1,500 and beyond. None of the open-source commentaries can provide any coherent explanation for what they're trying to do. The reason, I think, is that no one knows what the doctrine is, because there is no doctrine. The doctrine is that the big guy wants more nukes. When we think about the Taiwan issue, that is a profound insight we all have to grapple with. We're not deterring a country, or a party, or a military. We're deterring a single man who has his own idea of how power works. We can still learn things about how China's system has used economics for political benefit, has used nuclear threats for coercion. We can understand features of the system — but you need to organize a deterrent strategy around the man. **Bernard Leong:** You've worked with very interesting people — Graham Allison, Niall Ferguson, and Shi Zhiqing — who exposed you to applied history, great-power transitions, and the insight of Chinese policy thinking. Three very different lenses. Which lesson from any one of them do you test your own arguments against, especially when you're writing something as consequential as a Taiwan crisis that may become the sparking point for this whole rivalry to unravel? **Eyck Freymann:** Niall and Graham are both fans of an approach called applied history. Applied history describes a whole basket of techniques for using history to illuminate our understanding of contemporary challenges. History is not a crystal ball, because the past doesn't repeat itself, but the past sometimes rhymes with the future, and there are lessons and trends that, if you study and understand them, can help you act more effectively in uncertain times. Niall and Graham have two different ways of thinking about applied history, and those are not the only two. One thing I've been lucky to have, as I've come up as a young scholar, is the ability to participate in a community of historians, political scientists, and practitioners that they bring together regularly to talk about these methods, and I have my own ideas, developed in conversation with them, about how it works. My book, *Defending Taiwan*, is not a history book, but it uses history in a couple of ways. First, to understand how we got here — because often, when you're trying to make sense of a complex foreign policy problem, if you don't have a sense of its genealogy, the history of the present, you will be flying blind. A great example is the One China policy in the United States. Why can the United States not easily change its longstanding policy? You have to understand how often, in the recent past, we have insisted that it hasn't changed and won't change. Similarly, if you want to understand how to read Xi Jinping's statements and signals, you have to look at what he's doing and compare it against what his predecessors said and did — because some of it may not be that different, but other aspects are different and might therefore be concerning. There's another way you can use history, which is as analogy: to ask, "Where have we seen this before, and what is similar and what is different?" There's no single incandescent analogy — as Graham would call it — that lights up this whole problem, because the Taiwan problem is the most complex, multifaceted foreign policy challenge the United States has ever faced. But if you decompose the situation into parts, and look at particular aspects of the scenario, often those aspects have useful historical parallels. You work those analogies one at a time, then try to recompose them into a picture of the whole. **Bernard Leong:** I want to get into your book. I haven't seen a book that lays out the entire historical background of how this situation came to be, along with the potential scenarios. Most analysis of Taiwan starts with a timeline: will it happen by 2027, 2030, 2035? One thing I take from your book is that you reframe the question — 2027 is a capability milestone, not an invasion deadline. The real binding horizon is somewhere around 2049, the centenary of the People's Republic of China. So the operational question isn't "when will China invade," but "how will China coerce." Walk me through why you think Washington has been asking the wrong question for the last decade. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/06/defendingtaiwan.webp) **Eyck Freymann:** I wouldn't say they've been asking the wrong question. The origins of this date go back a decade or more, because we have long known that 2027 — the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the PLA — is seen internally as a key capability-development goal. The PLA has been speaking to itself internally for over a decade about the milestones it hopes to achieve en route to 2049. 2049 is obviously the big one, but 2027 and 2035 are milestone years with significant dates in CCP history. The question is what the goals, or key performance indicators, are for the PLA planners thinking about those deadlines, and what political pressure is being brought to bear on the institution to shape their choices about what they buy, how they exercise, and how they organize. In 2021, Admiral Davidson, the US Indo-Pacific Commander, testified to Congress that the US intelligence community had reason to believe Xi Jinping saw 2027 as a capability goal. Various US officials subsequently explained what that meant, some speaking in a more disciplined way than others. The clearest explication, I think, was from the CIA director, Bill Burns, who explained on *Face the Nation* that Xi Jinping has not decided to use force by 2027 or any other date, but he sees 2027 as an internal readiness deadline. One way to interpret that is that Xi Jinping was quite sure, as of 2021 or 2022, that at that point he was not able to take and hold Taiwan by force. Moreover, the fact that he needed a deadline meant he was concerned that without external pressure, the PLA wouldn't be ready by 2027 either. One of the points I make in the book is that when the United States decided to declassify that assessment, it shone a great big spotlight on the PLA as it got closer to 2027. So now this is not just an internal deadline. It's a deadline that everyone in the world assumes, because everyone who follows this now knows about the Davidson window. By 2027, the PLA will say to Xi Jinping, "We've done it, sir, we're ready." The question is what you can do to create sources of uncertainty in the big guy's head so he won't actually believe his generals when they say they're ready to go. This is a key point. China has never fought a naval war of the kind it would have to fight over Taiwan. The military leadership is not combat-tested. How do you seek new sources of uncertainty that can make a leader — who can order his military to do certain preparations and can allocate vast resources — believe that his system actually isn't combat-ready? From what I understand, the United States has made significant steps over the last five years that it probably would not have made otherwise, because this deadline was on the table. Therefore, I would not be surprised if we pushed that deadline back. **Bernard Leong:** If I triangulate from my own reading — I've read Xi Jinping's books on governance, including the Chinese versions — there are always three things he's focused on. One is internal: the anti-corruption campaign. The second is the expansion of China's influence across the world, the Belt and Road. The third is Taiwan. There's a very clear line that says this problem should not be extended from generation to generation. So is 2049 bound by that resolution — that the problem doesn't get passed on to the next person in the line of succession? **Eyck Freymann:** Probably, but the CCP is very good at using language games to avoid responsibility and move the goalposts. We can give many examples in recent history where they have failed to meet targets and then redefined the targets to declare victory anyway. They have left very vague what it means for Taiwan to be, quote-unquote, reunified. If Taiwan were to sign some meaningless boilerplate political statement, some MOU agreeing in principle to the idea of one China — even if Taiwan then tells itself it has its own respective interpretation, with a wink — that might be good enough, in a pinch, for Xi Jinping to declare victory. Of course, his ambitions will change. His hunger, his appetite, will grow with the eating. If he thinks he has no choice but to fight, or if he thinks that by fighting, or by threatening to fight, he could induce a humiliating American collapse, then he may do that. The key argument of the book is that this situation is more likely to be settled by a crisis than by a war — because if the United States continues to send mixed signals to Xi Jinping, they invite him to push and push in this gray zone short of war until the United States faces a choice to escalate or to capitulate. But if he thinks he is not equipped to fight the US militarily, if he thinks the economic and political consequences would be too risky, too unpredictable, then he will find a way to punt. There is a reason he has not promised unequivocally that he will be the one who takes Taiwan: he has a very ambitious, sweeping legacy he's trying to protect, and I don't think he's going to let the Taiwan issue be the thing that takes that legacy down. **Bernard Leong:** This whole thing started off on quite a good path. When Xi Jinping took power, he met with the then-president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, in my hometown, Singapore. There are still different political points of view within Taiwan on China. So what's the most counterintuitive lesson you've learned about how Beijing thinks about Taiwan from reading Chinese-language sources — something that really contradicts the consensus view within the Washington strategic community? **Eyck Freymann:** Let me think. There are a few of these. There is a strategic patience Beijing has applied to this issue for decades, because there's a sense of weakness relative to the United States. Even though the US is acting erratically, even though many people think its relative power is declining, it has formidable assets to bring to bear in a Taiwan contingency. But it's also because the CCP really believes this is an internal matter that can be resolved with the diplomatic and political techniques the CCP uses on Chinese people. The return to cross-strait dialogue under the new KMT chair, Cheng Li-wun, is very encouraging for Beijing, because they are playing a long game for hearts and minds in Taiwan. This is not just a military problem from their point of view. **Bernard Leong:** I want to get into the book's second part, which is the scenario planning — if I don't talk about that, I won't get to the essence of the book. You frame the threat manual as two dominant scenarios. One is a kinetic amphibious invasion, where the casus belli is clear-cut. The other is a customs quarantine, where ambiguity is the weapon. Take me inside the first 72 hours of a quarantine scenario. What is the Chinese Coast Guard doing? What happens to insurance markets for merchant ships transiting the strait? What happens when the Taiwan Stock Exchange opens the next morning? And what is the realistic manual of choices in the White House Situation Room? I hope this will only ever be a *West Wing* episode and not a real-world situation. **Eyck Freymann:** The first thing to observe is that, as I said, this is not just a military problem. The question of Taiwan deterrence, and of scenario planning, involves every instrument of national power — the diplomatic, the political, the technological, the industrial, the economic, the financial, the strategic, which includes nuclear, cyber, and space, all bound together. Under Xi Jinping, the CCP is developing a range of options for moving against Taiwan in crisis or war, and these options can be taken in combination or in sequence. Each has many different flavors. So we're really talking about a rainbow of scenarios. One of the things that's intellectually challenging about this problem is that you have to reduce the number of scenarios to a small enough number that you can wrap your head around them. But everyone imagines them slightly differently, so it's easy to talk past each other, because people have different ideas of what is politically possible. My view is that the only way to approach deterrence responsibly is to be truly systematic — because, as I say, we don't really understand how Xi Jinping thinks about this issue. His political and official statements are ambiguous. I'm not saying the gray-zone scenarios are more likely, although I suspect they are. You have to prepare for all of them. But if he starts pushing in a gray-zone crisis, this may be the big one. In other words, he may plan to escalate to war, or he may just plan to take us to the brink. We have to be able to deal with both at once. If he takes us to the brink, there are two ways he can do this. The first is to mobilize his forces for what may or may not be an invasion and see what happens — which would reduce our early-warning time if he then decides to move, and could potentially break morale on Taiwan, break morale in the United States, or freak out the financial markets. The other thing he can do is use some kind of coercion against the flow of people and goods in and out of Taiwan. That sounds like a blockade, but the quarantine is not a blockade. There are basically two ways he can pressure the people and goods coming and going. He can do it in a way that meaningfully disrupts the supplies in and out of Taiwan, including the chips, or he can do it in a way that isn't actually designed to force Taiwan's immediate surrender. The first is a blockade. Taiwan imports almost all of its energy and food. If he goes after that, he's going after the civilian population. That would be trying to force Taiwan's immediate surrender, and he might do that — but I think it's a bad opening move, because it's an act of war against civilians. It's a gross violation of international law. Under the American Taiwan Relations Act, it's pretty clear-cut: that's tantamount to an invasion. So if the United States doesn't respond decisively to that, we are essentially abandoning Taiwan in the most public way possible, and all of these nasty consequences would follow for other US alliances and partnerships globally. Here's the key point. If the supply routes in and out of Taiwan are disrupted for any reason, that's an automatic financial-market shock, because TSMC is a $2 trillion company, and right now seven companies representing over 40% of the S&P 500 are all TSMC customers, and their valuations are inflated wildly because of expectations of future AI profits. If you disrupt the flows out of TSMC, the Nasdaq re-rates down, and potentially you have financial contagion — how many retail investors, banks, and asset managers are super-long tech and get caught with their pants down? So whoever disrupts the supply chains is causing that financial shock plus a supply-chain shock, which would affect production of autos, electronics, and all kinds of other things — and that's not even assuming there are US-China sanctions. That's just the Taiwan supply chain. If China's opening move causes that shock, I think they make things easier for the United States, because the US, as we all know, is politically polarized and dysfunctional. Many people in the United States don't understand why Taiwan matters. If you want to explain very quickly to the American people why Taiwan matters, break the supply chains in and out of Taiwan, and then everyone will understand. Their retirement savings are down. They won't be able to get an iPhone for 10 years. It's easy to make the argument: China has done this terrible thing, we have to go fix it. The quarantine scenario is one where China doesn't offer the Americans that opportunity. China is not trying to force Taiwan's imminent capitulation. They just want to establish the principle that they get to control who and what comes and goes. They will say to United Airlines, "The next flight that takes off from San Francisco to Taipei — we want you to tell us who's on it before you take off. Terribly sorry, Eyck is on the flight. Would you make a pit stop at Shanghai?" If they start doing that to the private companies that carry people and goods in and out, it's hard to know exactly what constitutes a proportionate response for the United States. But if China is able to establish that principle and face no pushback, they then have a new tool to coerce Taiwan's submission. That is the kind of scenario I worry about, because if the burden is on the United States to take the actions that cause the shock — are America's political leaders really ready for that? **Bernard Leong:** I should thank you for helping me understand the blockade and the quarantine scenario, because I hadn't thought about it that way despite reading so many sources on geopolitical matters in my spare time. One interesting thing in the first part of the book is strategic ambiguity, which has traditionally been US doctrine since 1979 — keeping Beijing from guessing and keeping Taipei restrained. You propose something called structured ambiguity instead. To a skeptic, that sounds like strategic ambiguity with sharper signaling. What is materially different in the policy? What would Washington actually say or do under structured ambiguity that it does not say or do today? Your book is the only one I've read that actually laid out what the original strategic ambiguity was, and the six clauses, if I recall correctly. Take me through that reasoning. **Eyck Freymann:** Strategic ambiguity is actually not a term the US government formally uses. Formally, the US government has a One China policy guided by the Three Communiqués, the Six Assurances, and the Taiwan Relations Act, dot, dot, dot. There are a few paragraphs. **Bernard Leong:** And you write all the paragraphs down, laid out in the book. Agreed. **Eyck Freymann:** It's almost like religion — it's like reciting catechism. Generations of diplomats have learned that this has profound stabilizing power when the United States reiterates its commitment to this position. But if you read between the lines of the policy, you get something we call strategic ambiguity. Let's clarify: US policy is ambiguous on multiple points, including, for example, what Taiwan's legal status actually is. That's not what people mean when they talk about strategic ambiguity. Strategic ambiguity, when you study it in a political science seminar in graduate school, is: what would the United States do in a high-end contingency if China used force or economic coercion? It's really referring to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which says the United States would regard any attempt to change the status quo by force — including blockades or embargoes — as a grave threat to peace and stability in the region. That strongly implies the US would get involved, but what does "get involved" mean? That's the question of strategic ambiguity. If they surprise the United States with a Pearl Harbor-type strike on US bases and then move against Taiwan, or if they move against Taiwan and threaten the Pearl Harbor strike — what do we do? The argument I'm making in the book is that this isn't enough. If you present your policy as "start shooting and then you'll find out what we do," you're inviting Xi Jinping to change the status quo through small steps, through salami-slicing, to discover how much he can actually get away with. If you say he's not going to find out what we do until the big one starts, you're inviting him to keep pushing and pushing until he's at your red line, where there is a great risk of miscalculation. The idea of structured ambiguity is: we're still going to be ambiguous about what we would do in the high-end scenarios, but that's not an invitation for you to push us into crisis, Mr. Xi. Rather, what we will do — in the spirit of our policy, which is all about maintaining peace and stability — is this: if you try to change the status quo through small steps, we will change the status quo through small steps as well, in a manner that is proportionate, that shows our resolve. Do not test us. But it also shows our restraint. In other words, the spirit of the policy is maintaining an overall balanced equilibrium of peace and stability. To put this in the context of the US-China relationship: the only part of the One China policy that is actually agreed on with Beijing is the three joint communiqués, agreed between the '70s and the early '80s, and these are ambiguous. They're actually translated differently between English and Chinese. But in them, we each make commitments to each other, and one of Beijing's commitments is that they will approach this issue in a peaceful way. My view is that using coercion — if you put a gun to someone's head on the street and say, "Give me all of your stuff, give me your watch and your wallet" — that's not peaceful. It may not be bloody, but it's violent. Beijing is making a mockery of this word "peaceful" through this incremental intensification of coercive force. That's not a reason for the United States to abandon its prior commitments, but it should point out to Beijing that if Beijing is trying to wiggle out of its prior commitments one little step at a time, the United States should take proportionate responses. That is what structured ambiguity means. By the way, I think we're already doing this. But explaining it using a term will help the academic community, the people who do doctrine in the military, wrestle with the question of what actually constitutes proportionate responses to China's gray-zone pressure. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one thing you know about Taiwan deterrence that very few people on the policy side or in the business community actually understand? **Eyck Freymann:** It's all economic. If you understand that the thing holding global equities up is the AI boom, which is ultimately just a Taiwan story, and you recognize that whoever breaks the supply chains is the bad guy who impoverishes everyone and throws the world into a recession or worse — then you understand that what this is really about is a game to shape a favorable situation while daring the other side to break the supply chains. I don't think China will make it easy for the United States by being the bad guy. Let me put it this way: the United States is a big place. I'm not sure everyone who works on this problem — some people do, some don't — understands that it may not be politically acceptable to any American president, particularly this one, but really any American president, to press the big red button that says, "We are breaking all the supply chains in and out of Taiwan and China." We saw on Liberation Day the kind of thing that happens. If that is not a political option in the United States, then very different approaches become necessary. I think this is likely to be decided by a crisis in which the United States and China go close to the edge. Both have to think very carefully about what happens if there's a crisis and it's their fault. It is in that context that the future of Taiwan will be decided. This is not just a military problem. **Bernard Leong:** Think about not just the US and China, but everyone else — Japan, Australia, the UK, Canada, who form an alliance with the US, and then the relatively neutral states: South Korea, the Southeast Asian states with deep economic exposure to China, Taiwan, and the US at the same time — Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia. They're conspicuously absent from your architecture. From where I sit, this is the binding regional question: what is the right ask from the Western coalition to any Southeast Asian capital that has determined neutrality as the price of growth, and what is the wrong ask? **Eyck Freymann:** The wrong ask is to say "pre-commit to what you would do and choose sides," because if the big one happens, the neutrals are going to do what is in their interest, and the United States will not have the luxury of putting a gun to any country's head and telling them to choose — least of all in Southeast Asia. The neutrals will have agency, and the lesson of history is that when great powers go to economic war, the most profitable thing to be is a neutral who can arbitrage and trade with both sides. Every country in the region needs to make its own choices based on its own sovereign interests. The United States should recognize that the fact that many countries would be fully or partially neutral is a benefit to be harnessed, not an obstacle to be fought. The question the United States should be asking itself, and ultimately discussing with its regional partners, is: if US-China relations do fall apart, what is the minimum bar of cooperation we would ask all neutral countries to clear, so that we can continue to have a productive relationship with you — recognizing that we are not going to force you to decouple from China, but that we may want cooperation with you on specific issues? I hope that within that, there is a core coalition of US allies that shares the US perception of risk and interests. They include Japan, Australia, and hopefully some others, and the United States should build that core coalition out into an economic and security architecture. But we cannot simply have a club with a very high wall, because if we do, many countries, including Singapore, will be forced to remain on the outside — and I don't think that would be in anyone's interest other than China's. **Bernard Leong:** I want to come back to TSMC — a $2 trillion market-cap company, with the seven most powerful companies representing 40% of the entire S&P 500\. There's an apparent paradox in the silicon shield argument. Taiwan produces almost 99% of the cutting-edge silicon for training frontier AI, and chip dependency is now the strategic constraint on China. But if TSMC's Phoenix expansion succeeds and the CHIPS Act delivers, the West reduces that dependence, and by our own logic erodes the material cost of losing Taiwan. So does successful chip onshoring paradoxically weaken Taiwan's strategic value to a Western coalition over the next decade? How do you keep that calculation aligned with Taipei? **Eyck Freymann:** I do not think it weakens deterrence. I think it strengthens deterrence. I think the silicon shield argument is outdated, because now Taiwan's most advanced chips can't be exported to the PRC. As the United States economy becomes increasingly dependent on one big AI bet, the US equity market and sustained US growth depend on continued access to Taiwan's chips. The strategic calculus is shifting, as anyone can see. The views within the Trump administration vary, but if you actually believe we are 12 to 18 months away from superintelligence — getting to AGI, to the country of geniuses in the data center, whatever — and you need TSMC chips to get there, then you can think the arguments about Taiwan's democracy and a free and open Indo-Pacific are fuzzy and woke, but you still need Taiwan for the chips. I think Beijing recognizes that, despite the public performance of détente and good feelings, the US commitment to Taiwan is actually structurally hardening, partly as a result of this AI story, because of the economic shock the United States would face if it lost that supply. So I think TSMC is more like a silicon magnet that is keeping the United States committed to Taiwan than a shield protecting Taiwan against a mainland attack. Second point: the CHIPS Act. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, TSMC says they will make something like 25% to 30% of their global chip supply in Arizona by the end of the decade. I think that is very optimistic, and it depends on many factors, including Taiwan's elected leadership remaining friendly to TSMC in Arizona. If you assume demand for these advanced GPUs will continue to outstrip supply — and that has been the case so far — it may continue to be the case that compute is the bottleneck. We will need as many chips as we can get, for the lowest possible price, and the marginal chip at the lowest price is always going to be made in Taiwan. Reducing US dependency a little bit makes the US less vulnerable to coercion if China tries to restrict the US ability to access these chips. That's really what the quarantine scenario is about. It makes no sense, given the risk that these supplies could be disrupted, for the US and its allies to have no fallback supply. But it is not a long-term substitute for Hsinchu. **Bernard Leong:** I'm curious. You've argued that President Xi's near-term play isn't going to be kinetic — it's going to be political. The objective, as you reason in the book, is to use gray-zone pressure to erode Taiwanese confidence in US support, or to shift the January 2028 presidential election in Taiwan toward the Kuomintang, which is more pro-China. Looking back at the last 12 months of diplomacy, including the recent US-China summit where the US president visited China, what specific moves do you think Beijing has already read as a license to escalate in the gray zone — or are there none? **Eyck Freymann:** As we get closer to 2027, I get more confident that we have until early 2028, because 2027 is a party congress year. Xi Jinping has a lot of personnel work to do. Remember, he's just fired all of his senior military commanders. He needs to find replacements. You can't just hire people you don't know to those roles. He also has to shake up the Central Committee. Many people are aging off. He needs to continue to disrupt factions he thinks could be threatening to his rule. Personnel work takes a lot of time — ask anyone who's had to manage a large organization — and he does not want to be handling a Taiwan crisis at the same time. Witness how he handled the Nancy Pelosi visit heading into his last party congress — a very clear signal to Washington: "Do not test me during this sensitive time in my calendar." Now, in 2028, the situation may change. Taiwan has a presidential election. The Philippines has a presidential election. So does the United States. This will be a time of turmoil and transition in our own domestic politics. If he is inclined to push, that would be a better time, when he's fresh with a new mandate. That means the United States does have time to do whatever preparations it is doing — breaking its dependence on critical minerals, accelerating its lead in AI, whatever it's doing quietly in defense preparations — to buy time. China, of course, is using that time as well. I don't think any particular date is set in stone, but I see the January 2028 Taiwan election as a risk point, partly because we don't know what Xi Jinping will conclude if the DPP wins a fourth consecutive term. No party has ever won four consecutive terms since Taiwan's transition to democracy. If Xi Jinping reads the results of that election as the people of Taiwan doubling down on separatism, that may harden his heart, or persuade him he's running out of time. On the other hand, depending on how the United States handles the election, it could give him confidence that Taiwan's democratic institutions are breaking down and that he has space to negotiate with a potential new KMT leader. It's very hard to see how this election will go, because Taiwan has November 2026 municipal elections in between. But one thing is for sure: Xi Jinping is very focused on the Taiwan election, and the United States needs to be extremely careful in how it handles its public communications going into it. I think 2028 is a very disturbing year, because I don't know where President Trump's head will be as he looks toward his legacy and his retirement. On the one hand, maybe that will make him more risk-tolerant. On the other hand, maybe he'll want the deal of the century. As the summit diplomacy continues, I think we're okay through 2027. **Bernard Leong:** They're going to meet three more times this year, so we'll know a lot more moving forward. Two quick questions, and you give me your thoughts. My penultimate question: what's the one question you wish more people would ask you about *Defending Taiwan*, but don't? **Eyck Freymann:** We don't pay nearly enough attention to domestic politics in Taiwan. And domestic politics in Taiwan don't happen in a vacuum — they're constantly responsive to signals from the United States. There are very few good sources of English-language analysis, and the think-tank community in Taiwan is polarized, where almost every think tank is either blue or green, KMT or DPP. Especially as we go through election seasons and the two parties caricature each other's views, it's very hard, as an American, to understand what is actually happening. So the question I ask is: what kinds of US signals would actually cause a nonlinear or discontinuous change in Taiwan's morale and willingness to resist? So far, despite the Trump administration taking a softer line toward Beijing, it seems the DPP's support is holding up reasonably well in opinion polls. It doesn't seem the Taiwan public believes they're being abandoned by the United States. It doesn't seem they believe they're being forced to the negotiating table. But it's possible the surface of the water looks calm while something is happening underneath. When a tsunami comes, it's because the terrain at the sea floor changes. I think we should be on the lookout for sudden changes in Taiwan public opinion that take the United States by surprise. History has bequeathed the United States a democratic ally with a very vibrant and dynamic democracy. That means the United States must be willing to work with whoever Taiwan elects, but also recognize that those people live in a very volatile political context. I wish I had more time to spend on Taiwan talking to people and familiarizing myself, but I certainly think members of Congress and American commentators who work on these issues need to spend more time engaging with Taiwanese perspectives. **Bernard Leong:** I hope it will be a peaceful resolution. My traditional closing question: what does success mean for your book? What would you want a policymaker in Washington and Beijing, a CEO, or a sovereign wealth fund allocator — and the Taiwanese as well — to each take away from *Defending Taiwan*? **Eyck Freymann:** For Beijing, I hope they will say: the United States actually does have a strategy to use every element of its national power to preserve peace and stability without provoking us, and we should not assume the United States is incapable of an effective response. In Taiwan, I think the lesson is: the United States trusts the people of Taiwan to choose the best future for themselves, and ultimately Taiwan's fate is up to the people of Taiwan to choose. That is the heart of what the American One China policy is about and must be about. The people of Taiwan must choose, and the United States will respect their choices. That is a profound insight that doesn't get said often enough. In the United States, the main observation is: this is not just a military issue. In a strictly military balance, we're actually doing pretty well. But if we think about this only in terms of war, we will be unprepared for crisis. We need to deter the crisis, not the war, and that means thinking very rigorously through the ways the economic and political factors would connect in a crisis. **Bernard Leong:** And totally avoid the Thucydides Trap — a very nice way to put it. **Eyck Freymann:** If I can persuade three sides of those respective messages, we can avoid the Thucydides Trap for a little bit longer. **Bernard Leong:** Eyck, many thanks for coming on the show. In closing, two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Eyck Freymann:** Recommendations? My favorite movie, which I'll say with a wink, is *Dr. Strangelove* — a great deterrence movie, tongue-in-cheek. It doesn't end so happily, but anyone interested in this issue, with a dark sense of humor, should check out *Dr. Strangelove* if they haven't already. For a more serious read: Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung at SOAS in London have an excellent new book coming out, which I was lucky to read in proof form, about the foreign-policy thought of Xi. Their book *The Political Thought of Xi Jinping* is a classic of the genre — the best account anyone has yet done of reading Xi Jinping Thought on fill-in-the-blank and stitching everything together into a coherent description of his worldview. They have a new book coming out about his foreign-policy vision which is superbly done, and I think it strengthens the case I've tried to make in this podcast: that he is gearing up for a crisis to humiliate the United States over Taiwan, and we need to be prepared for the crisis, not the war. **Bernard Leong:** Last but not least, how can my audience find you and your new book? **Eyck Freymann:** I have a very unusual and hard-to-spell name, so I'm easy to find on Google, on LinkedIn, or occasionally on X. My book is available on Amazon. There will be an audiobook coming out within the next few months, and it will be available internationally on July 15th. Please reach out if you're interested — we'd love to engage. **Bernard Leong:** And you can find this podcast anywhere — subscribe to us on YouTube, Spotify, and LinkedIn. Eyck, once again, thank you for coming on the show, and let's continue talking. **Eyck Freymann:** Thanks, Bernard. Much appreciated. [Inside “Defending Taiwan”: How to prevent a war between China and the US with Eyck FreymannPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · June 16 · 1h 2m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-180-08d0a597-ad9e-41e2-95b3-dd9b55b5887c.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-c13cc691-0df3-42ea-a25f-b0208591c3e4.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-defending-taiwan-how-to-prevent-a-war/id914868245?i=1000773014172&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/Mb3Azq6NWH8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-defending-taiwan-how-to-prevent-a-war/id914868245?i=1000773014172&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nlFSw62EoSefjFBwbHkuP?si=t8E3oxrYSp-G0G2cesl9eA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/defending-taiwan-us-china-eyck-freymann?in=analyseasia/sets/analyse-podcast&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuX3lyo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [LinkedIn Newsletter](https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7149559878934540288&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/analysepod) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analysepodcast.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@analysepod?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) ### Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI with James Liang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/innovationism-a-new-philosophy-for-the-age-of-ai-with-james-liang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:53:00.000Z Fresh out of the studio, James Liang — Chairman of Trip.com Group, economist, and author of *Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI* — joins us to explore what becomes of human meaning when AI does the work. James argues that innovation and heritage are "the same coin": innovation measured by how much heritage it leaves behind. He unpacks why the individual, not the nation or firm, is the binding constraint on innovation, why aging societies stop producing startups, and how his *Nature* 2024 hybrid-work study reframes family-friendly policy as economically rational. Closing the conversation, James explains why he is bullish on China mid-term but bearish long-term — and why population, not chips, is the real race. --- > "To innovate and to innovate successfully is measured by how much heritage you generate. But you know what's a good innovation? What's innovation can have a lasting impact? In my definition, the good news is it's going to last." - **James Liang** **Profile:** James Liang, Co-founder, Executive Chairman of the Board, Trip.com Group and Author of "[*Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI*](https://www.amazon.sg/Innovationism-new-philosophy-age-AI/dp/1966074794?ref=analysepodcast.com)*"* ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-liang-tripgroup/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Trip.com](https://investors.trip.com/board-member/james-jianzhang-liang?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com), and for the last decade we have been told that AI will reshape work. But the question James Liang puts on the table is harder: if AI does more of the work, what becomes of human meaning? Today's conversation explores three angles. First, his arc from a gifted student at Fudan University, to Silicon Valley engineer, to co-founder of what is now Trip.com Group, to a demographer, and now a public philosopher. Second, his new book, [*Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI*](https://www.amazon.sg/Innovationism-new-philosophy-age-AI/dp/1966074794?ref=analysepodcast.com) — the thesis that innovation and heritage, not work alone, are humanity's organizing purpose. Third, what his population and innovation lens tells us about the China–U.S. technology race and where it is actually heading. James Liang is the chairman of [Trip.com](https://trip.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Group, a research professor of economics at Peking University, and co-founder of the [Yuhua Population Research Institute](https://www.yuwa.org.cn/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (育娲人口研究智库). So James, welcome to the Analyse Podcast. It's a pleasure. **James Liang:** Of course. **Bernard Leong:** Your origin story fascinated me. You entered [Fudan University](https://www.fudan.edu.cn/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com)'s (复旦大学) gifted program at the age of 15, worked at Oracle in Silicon Valley, and then came home in 1999 to co-found Ctrip — now Trip — when most Chinese consumers had never booked anything online. Today they're travelling all around the world, and everyone, including myself, uses Trip.com to go everywhere. What did you see in China in 1999 that the people who stayed in the Valley did not? **James Liang:** At that time the Chinese economy was still rapidly developing, so a lot of infrastructure was not there. Obviously there was no internet, but even the call-centre-based travel agencies were not normal or widespread. There was very little online or credit card payment infrastructure, and little logistics infrastructure. Given all these constraints, a lot of the other e-commerce models were not as valuable as travel. We thought travel would be able to work around online payment, because you can pay at the hotel and the hotel gives you a commission. You don't need delivery. So you could get around some of the bottlenecks. The sweet spot was offering both the call-centre-based travel agency and the online travel agency. There was no mobile internet back then. Customers could book travel on their notebook or PC, but they could also call the call centre with a mobile phone — not a smartphone, just a real old-school Nokia phone — which offered very good reservation service. **Bernard Leong:** After that, Trip.com grew and expanded into a very large company. One of the big questions is that you stepped down from the CEO role twice — once in 2006, when you went to do a PhD in economics at Stanford, and again in 2016\. Both times you came back at pivotal moments. Looking back, what became visible to you about the role only after you stepped away from it? What were the lessons from those pivotal moments? **James Liang:** You thought all the innovations were already there — that there wasn't much on the horizon. You didn't see any rivals or competition. Once we dominated the PC internet, we became very successful, profitable, and listed, and our competitors didn't seem to be making any progress. But that was obviously an illusion, because what was looming on the horizon was the mobile internet — the iPhone, then Chinese mobile phones. When I stepped down and pursued a different career, I didn't see that. After a few years there was a lot going on in the market, and we had to work really hard to catch up. **Bernard Leong:** Was that because, when you were living in the Bay Area working on your PhD at Stanford, you suddenly saw everybody talking about iOS and Android? Did that trigger the realisation that you needed to get onto mobile? **James Liang:** No. I really immersed myself in academics. I didn't look at the home market or our business very closely at all. Only when I graduated and became a professor — I taught economics in Beijing for at least a year — and went back to China did I realise our company was not innovating as fast as some of the rivals. By around 2012 it was showing up in our earnings and our profitability. Our company suffered quite a bit from not being able to catch up with the mobile internet revolution. So I was asked by the board to come back and lead the company again. **Bernard Leong:** This is [founder mode](https://www.paulgraham.com/foundermode.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) in its truest sense. You have to be there and drive that innovation. From the outside, your CV looks like three careers: a great business operator, a scholar, and a public philosopher. From the inside, what is the single question you have been chasing across all three roles? **James Liang:** That's a very good question. People say the things I'm passionate about — travel, business, demography, having children — seem quite unrelated, and AI is a different dimension again. But looking at it from a humanity perspective, you want humanity to flourish. How do you define flourishing? You're a theoretical physicist — we have a four-dimensional universe, space and time. We want to expand in space: we want humanity to go all around the world, and maybe out into space. That's the space dimension. But the time dimension is innovation and heritage. You want to pass down your knowledge, but also your genetics, to your children. So it's all about human flourishing, especially in the age of AI. You need to think philosophically: what is the meaning of humanity, and what defines flourishing? **Bernard Leong:** We're about to get there, but I have one more question. If I were to ask you to share the key lessons from your career with my audience — the three important lessons of life you learned across your entire journey as operator, scholar, and philosopher — what would you share? **James Liang:** In the book I say you want to pursue an innovating life. But innovating is a big word. First, you want to pursue a rich life — a variety of experiences, even though some of them may seem hard, full of work, or uncertain. Having a child has a lot of uncertainty: for your health, your lifestyle, your career. But it's a rich experience, part of the human experience. A daughter is very different from a son, so you want to have both. Those give you richness and help you realise your full life. Travel experience does the same — different destinations give you different perspectives. If you're creative — creating unique content the way you do, or doing research — many of the most valuable companies in the future will be innovation-related, so if you're part of that endeavour, you should enjoy and capitalise on it. It's important that we make our lives very busy, but also take a step back, look at everything from afar, reflect, and then go on to our next journey. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/06/innovationism.jpg) **Bernard Leong:** Yes, that's what you're implying. But of course, there is the main subject of the day. I want to talk about your book, [*Innovationism*](https://www.amazon.sg/Innovationism-new-philosophy-age-AI/dp/1966074794?ref=analysepodcast.com). First, thank you for sending me the book — I spent some time reading it and really enjoyed it. I like how the book starts: with a story about your daughter. Many philosophical books begin with abstraction; you begin with a child. What were you trying to help the reader understand before asking them to think about the big subject of the book? **James Liang:** Philosophically, the meaning question is one of the most important questions, and it really emphasises the time dimension — it's about transcending yourself over time. You think about what kind of world you want to help bring to your children, or your children's children. With AI, that's accelerated. My daughter could be facing a very different world — a different job market, a different family structure. So what kind of world does she want to live in? That's a conversation with my daughter: why would you still want to explore the world? Why would you still want to study? Why would you still want to have curiosity in the age of AI? That's the most important question. **Bernard Leong:** I picked up a couple of key tenets — innovation, heritage, meaning. Can you explain the core tenets of your book, and what the term *innovationism* means in the context of heritage and innovation at the core of humanity's essence and meaning of life? **James Liang:** The one thing I have not seen in a lot of philosophy books is the concept of heritage. **Bernard Leong:** As an overseas Chinese living elsewhere, I read many Chinese books — the Confucian classics — and I think about the self, the family, and the country from that point of view. So when you talk about heritage, it resonated with me as I read the book. **James Liang:** The religions and philosophies we study now are at least a few hundred years old — sometimes a few thousand. Those philosophies don't treat innovation or progress as the theme, because progress was still very slow in the old days. In your lifetime, you probably wouldn't see much progress or innovation having any effect. We've now seen four waves of innovation, and today is completely different — so you need a new philosophy. But Chinese philosophy, compared to other philosophies or religions, is more time-based, because it's a lineage. **Bernard Leong:** You work for a lineage. **James Liang:** You want to pass down your lineage — not just your genetics, but also *li yan*: your knowledge, your philosophies, your values — to your children and your offspring. Sometimes in a family book you have your value system written down by some of the most successful ancestors. So this time dimension is quite unique and very important in Confucian traditional values. Of course, Confucians don't treat innovation directly, but the way to have impact or a heritage is to be innovative. If you want to pass down a value system that lasts for many generations, you first have to be first — otherwise you just inherit it — and it has to have a very good impact for future generations. So to innovate, and to innovate successfully, is measured by how much heritage you generate. That's the same coin. What's a good innovation? What's an innovation that can have a lasting impact? In my definition, the good is what's going to last. The longer it lasts, the better the heritage, and then you say it's a good innovation. **Bernard Leong:** I think a lot of Western corporations don't understand this part of Chinese culture. But as you say it, for any company — whether in China or in any Asian culture — innovation is at the core, because innovation is also the writing of the values. When you innovate, you're writing the cultural values of the company. **James Liang:** Exactly. **Bernard Leong:** And how successful your company is — your cultural values actually shine through that. That's what you mean by the time dimension, as the company goes further. Whether it's a company, an organisation, or a family, as they go on, the cultural values — the original innovation of where it began — is where that innovation drives forward. Did I understand this correctly? **James Liang:** Exactly. Technology innovation is very recent, but when we talk about innovation in the ancient days, it's the value in art, and it passes down generations. Successful cultures and successful organisations usually have some sort of value system passing down. Those values shape the behaviour of future success. **Bernard Leong:** One word that really catches me is heritage. Is it just children, family, culture, institutions — or all four at once? Which is doing the most work in your framework as you think about innovation moving ahead? **James Liang:** Children are of course one form of heritage. But technology, art, philosophies, culture — those also require you, first of all, to study. You have to innovate on top of the giant, and then incorporate new information or new technologies. Technology is one thing that's progressing independently, but all your value systems are taken in. With so much going on — four revolutions in your lifetime — you need the philosophies to catch up, which begs a new kind of philosophy. Heritage is about learning, and sometimes you need to be very concise. I didn't write this in the book, but you need to distil your existing knowledge, because otherwise it would be too complicated to make sense of. Physics is a great example: you distil a very few simple theories, and then you're able to innovate on top of that. That's one reason I think humans want to continue to be in control of innovation — humans are not very good at memorising huge amounts of things; they want it very concise. Fortunately, the world is actually based on simple principles and mathematics. The most beautiful theory innovation comes from simplicity. So you want to learn and simplify as much as you can, then you'll have a higher-level perspective and be able to innovate. It's not that you don't need to learn. In the age of AI, you need to learn more — to compete with the AI, or to manage robots and agents — to be innovative. **Bernard Leong:** I'm very much influenced by Chinese culture. I read the Confucian classics — the Great Learning, *大学*. When you were talking about physics just now, I thought of a Chinese phrase, 学无止境 (*xue wu zhi jing)* — that you can never stop learning. Because if you never stop learning, every day is an exciting day, and that's the meaning of life. So I have a different question here, because you've done some very interesting research. Most management literature treats family-friendly policy as a cost the firm absorbs for moral reasons. You ran a hybrid work experiment, [published in *Nature* in 2024](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07500-2?ref=analysepodcast.com) — a very prestigious journal — and you had a RMB one billion childcare subsidy in 2023 that pointed in the opposite direction: flexibility raises retention without hurting performance, and childcare support can be economically rational rather than just benevolent. What are the counterintuitive lessons you've learned about the economics of family-friendly design that most CEOs still get wrong? **James Liang:** Most businesses think some family-friendly practices are costly — and some are. If you're giving a baby bonus, that comes directly from your profit. But some measures — for example, allowing flexibility so people can work two days a week from home — I'd call triple-win policies. It's a win for the employees, a win for the company, and a win for society. The first cut is just reducing commuting hours. In big cities like Shanghai, or in Silicon Valley, you could spend an hour and a half each day commuting. If you save that three days a week, that's five hours of extra time you can spend on more productive things. Think about how much time at the office you actually need to talk to somebody versus work independently. If you work independently 50% of the time, you can have half your week working from home — and people often find it more productive, because there are fewer distractions. The rest of the time you participate in big meetings, which you can do effectively over Zoom. It's only on a few occasions that you need really intense conversations — engaging discussions, brainstorming, like we're doing now. Two days a week in office is more than enough, as long as you can coordinate your colleagues for those meetings effectively. That shouldn't hurt productivity, but it saves a lot of time for employees. **Bernard Leong:** If you think about the world's richest billionaire, John D. Rockefeller — if you read his biography, *Titan* — he worked from home three days a week and there was no internet access. He used the technology of the telegram to communicate with his teams building oil pipelines across the US. Think of those days, when communication was nothing like today. We can send each other a message instantly, almost at the speed of light. But back then communication wasn't there, and he still could do it. One concept that made me think a lot while reading your book was innovation capacity — how population affects it. Population size leads to a scale effect, population capability leads to an aging effect, and internal and external communication volume leads to something called the agglomeration and mobility effect within society. Can you share these concepts and your thoughts, to help my listeners understand more of what the book talks about? **James Liang:** This model tries to analyse the drivers of being innovative at a company level or at a macro, country level. I got the insight from large neural models, or the human brain. The brain's power comes from the number of brain cells, or neurons — but, more importantly, the connections between them. How much you can connect to other intelligent units determines how powerful or innovative your brain is. At a society level, it's how many people have an innovative mind. They have to reach a certain subsistence level — above subsistence — to do that. A poor country spends all its effort just feeding itself; it's not going to be innovative, even with a lot of people. But once a country moves past subsistence or middle income, what matters is the number of talents and researchers, plus how much they can leverage other researchers within the country or outside it. That's internal communication — exchange within the country — and external, international exchange. Internal exchange, as in the US or China, is usually much more friction-free and vibrant than international exchange. So with a large population you have a bigger talent pool, more connections, more exchange within your country, and a bigger market. I'd argue that recently — with the internet and AI — users also participate in innovation: creating content, or helping improve your algorithm. So a large population or market also helps innovation. That's the scale effect of internal population. But you also need to be open to the world — to exchange talent and research with the rest of the world. Mobility is very important. **Bernard Leong:** The book also fleshes out that innovationism plays out at three levels: nation, firm, and individual. From where you sit today, which level is the binding constraint — which one, if it fails, collapses the other two? **James Liang:** Currently the world is really innovating. Let's not talk about the uncertainties of what's happening in the world, but just from a mental-model point of view. The stability of the nation is quite important, because it ensures that firms can prosper and thrive. From the Chinese perspective, we always think about nation, family, and individual. I think the bottleneck is probably at the individual level. People see very successful entrepreneurs making a lot of money, but most innovators don't make much, or aren't as successful. They have to go through so much hard work and uncertainty. In Japan, and even in China, people talk about lying flat — giving up, both on their career and their family life. I always think having a child is like innovation. People are giving up trying these things because they could be enjoying a pretty pleasant life by themselves — living off their parents' savings or a government basic income. They can live a good life, but it's not as meaningful a life as if they continued to pursue harder things: having a family, pursuing a creative career. So the individual is probably the constraint. That's why it's philosophically an important problem — you need to put it in the value system, where people value career and family. **Bernard Leong:** So the individual is still the basic unit of everything from your point of view. **James Liang:** Yes. Nobody knows — no country, no company knows — what the next breakthrough innovation will be. If a company or a nation knew, then it's not innovation; we'd just be living in a very top-down world where a few big companies or the state plan all the innovation. That's not a good scenario. By definition, innovation cannot be planned. It has to come from the grassroots, bottom-up. Individuals really need to be the driver. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/06/DSC01972.ARW.jpg) **Bernard Leong:** One interesting thing was a paper you co-authored. Older countries do display lower entrepreneurship at every age, and the effect is especially pronounced for people in their 30s and 40s. It's not that old people don't start companies — it's that in aging societies, even young people start fewer companies. What is the mechanism, and how does that change the way countries like Japan, Korea, or Italy should think about innovation policy? If you think about Japan 20 or 30 years ago, there was Sony, Toyota — very well-known businesses. Today you hardly hear of any interesting new Japanese companies. Same with Korea. **James Liang:** When I looked at the problem 15 years ago, it was still quite debated what the culprit of the Japanese recession was — two or three decades of downturn. But now it's quite obvious. The difference between Silicon Valley in the US and Japan is that Japan doesn't just lack startups; the existing companies aren't doing well either, and we can explain why — it's also related to aging. The eye-popping fact is that Japan just doesn't have any successful startups like Silicon Valley. Korea is maybe 20 years behind Japan demographically, so Korea has some startups, but not as vibrant — though Korean people are very innovative and entrepreneurial. China is the opposite: it's very young demographically and growing fast, so you have a huge number of new companies popping up, and that trend seems to be continuing. The US and China have all the new dominant and breakthrough companies in these new technology fields — partly due to their young generation, partly due to their size. As for the mechanism: the golden age of starting a family, starting a company, or writing your influential research paper is around 30\. People in their 40s and 50s can still start companies, but at a much lower frequency. There's another effect: in an aging society, your hierarchy matters. Every economy or company has a hierarchy, and you have to go through the ranks. If you have many older people compared to young people — a top-heavy demographic structure — your speed of promotion to important positions is much slower. So even if you're creative and very young with a lot of good ideas, you're blocked by the older folks who've been there a long time, who have inertia in their mindset and vested interests — they don't want to change. That also dampens the creativity and innovative vitality of young people. **Bernard Leong:** We talk about AI. There's a framing you've made on an earnings call: that general AI agents make vertical operators more defensible, not less, because fulfilment, trust, inventory, and supplier relationships still matter. Help me understand this. In an AI era, is the moat the model — or is it the data plus workflow plus supply chain plus partnership ecosystems and organisational learning? Where does the thesis actually break down? **James Liang:** You're asking a very big question. It's hard to know now, because things are progressing so fast. But over the next few years: AI is very good at information processing. It'll break down all the information asymmetry at a non-physical, non-dynamic level, relatively fast. So if you're in the process of organising information — not real-time information, and not connected to the physical world — you're prone to being replaced or disrupted by AI. But if you're connecting to the physical world — like this hotel or this office: how many rooms are left at this minute, and what's the price, which keeps changing dynamically; all the flights, the last seats and their price — that's different. **Bernard Leong:** But trust is still very important. I'll still use Trip.com. As a user, I've used your platform before, I've built trust with it, so I'll book flights on there. Trust is very hard to break. Once we give a lot of autonomy to AI agents to do everything, they start to lose that. **James Liang:** Agents aren't really reliable yet, but I think that can be solved. Eventually agents will be quite reliable at getting that information — if the information doesn't change often and doesn't connect to the physical world. For the physical world, where things change often, AI will do a much better job than some of the current companies. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting part of the book is about education reform. You've been critical of exam-driven, memorisation-heavy education systems — I know it because I lived through it too. If you could change one thing about how Asia educates its next generation of innovators, what would it be, and why is that change so hard? **James Liang:** The background is AI's impact on the job market: people will have to go through longer training. Their internship jobs aren't there anymore, so you may have to pay tuition to get the internship. Training, education, and degree programs are all going to get longer. So it doesn't make sense to test or filter talented kids too early. You need some filtration sooner or later — that's inevitable — but you want to postpone it as late as possible. You don't want all the pressure early on in childhood. It's not a happy childhood, and it's not happy for the parents. If you study hard in college, that's from your own motivation — parents don't give you pressure. But filtering students when they're 10 or 15, as in China or some other Asian countries, makes sense only when education resources are scarce. If you don't have enough good college or high school spots, you want to filter the most talented students. But with today's AI tutor technology, you really don't need to go to college to study college material — you can just use AI. You do need some social networking, socialisation, and filtering at the end. So I'd treat today's college general education like high school education: everybody should get it. People live to 100 now, versus 50 before — why not spend 20 years for everybody just to finish college and get the general education? Not just for jobs, but to be a good citizen, to have a cultural and humanistic foundation — to learn about everything in the world, including science and maths. At the end of college you have a test. You should probably get rid of all the elite undergraduate programs in the world, and only at the graduate level start filtering for an elite. Because working with a professor on research projects is the only scarce resource you then need to allocate. **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you. One of the things I feel is that our education system is an answer-based system. But now we have an abundance of intelligence, where the answer is in abundance too — so we should focus on a more question-based education system, because our children and grandchildren have to be the ones thinking about the correct questions to ask in order to drive humanity forward. From your point of view, what would be your mental model for the education of the younger generation if it were today? I'm struggling now, thinking about my three children — two of them below 12, and one a teenager. I struggle quite hard, even as someone who's an AI practitioner, building an AI company serving customers' needs and teaching AI to different people. It would be good to get your thoughts. **James Liang:** Understanding is still very important. It's not that, because AI understands everything, you don't need to understand the world. You need a very concise model of the world, coming from you. Otherwise, when a new technology or a new thing comes at you, you won't be able to assemble the new information, and you can't rely on AI to handle this uncertain future. My experience is that if you don't worry about exams or practising all these problems, you can go much faster. **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you 100%. **James Liang:** But you still need a little bit of checking that you understand it — to be able to work out the problems without AI, without a calculator. Just a little bit, though. The purpose is to understand, not to get good grades on an exam. Eventually, at the end of college, when you start applying for those scarce research positions, you need to come up with your own project — project-based work. But at the elementary and even undergraduate level, it's pretty much standard material. You can go much faster and explore much wider subjects if you're not bogged down preparing for tests. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about *Innovationism* — about how it actually works inside a real company, not on the page — that almost no one reading the book from the outside is going to pick up? **James Liang:** There are a few new things in this book. I think there will be more and more philosophical books written for the age of AI, because the shock, for me, is really philosophical. The thing people worry about most, in the recent months since the book was published, is asking: what's the end game? Let's take three scenarios. Is the human going to continue to be the master, managing AI? Or are we going to be like children of the AI? Geoffrey Hinton said, very surprisingly, that AI taking over is inevitable, and the best thing we can do is teach AI to be a good mother — maternal love — to take care of humans. So the second scenario is that humans become the children of AI: still loved, still able to explore, but not in control anymore. The third, and worst, is that you'd be like a pet or a slave — and pet and slave are very close; we'd be treated as house cats, basically. They didn't mention it, but you need a large, well-educated, hardworking population to prevent that third or second scenario from happening. If it were such a great technology and you were a very small country at the end of the world, there's not much you could do — you could only buy products from the US and China, and outsource most critical decisions to them. If the US and China themselves had only half the population, or a much smaller population in future generations, eventually there wouldn't be enough brainpower to manage the innovation going forward. If you calculate how many brain cells there are in the world and compare that to how many parameters — digital brain cells — we're building, we're still many times bigger; maybe not a million times, but tens of thousands of times bigger than the silicon brains. But in 10 or 15 years it's going to reverse: they'll consume more energy and have more brainpower, at the same time as we're reducing our population — in China, by half each generation. So having a large population is very important. It determines how we're going to live with AI. **Bernard Leong:** The last part of your book ends with an interesting chapter on technology ethics, applying it to the frontier areas. We've talked a lot about AI. There's also energy, virtual reality, gene and longevity tech — and even space migration; Starship just launched, so we may be getting to Mars. Of the five, which is the most likely place where innovationism's ethical claims will actually be tested in the next decade, and which one are you most worried we'll get wrong? **James Liang:** I always worry about population more. I wrote a science fiction about immortality — post-immortality — and that's actually happening very fast. In one generation, people can probably extend life to maybe 150, maybe even longer. When people live that long, they think we don't need as many young children anymore, because the population keeps increasing as we have more and more older people. But that could be problematic if you don't have fresh blood — it's going to stagnate the whole system. You have vested interests and people whose mindsets aren't progressing. So humanity could hit a point where you have a lot of older people and not many young replacements. **Bernard Leong:** But suppose we can do space migration. Unfortunately, due to the laws of physics, getting to the nearest star system will take ages — the closest, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light years away. With longer longevity, don't you think our capacity to expand into interstellar space also grows? **James Liang:** That's the thing I worry about. Space travel is obviously such an important pursuit — to continue extending humanity indefinitely, and for the meaning question, it's very important philosophically. But space travel is much harder than Elon Musk suggests. That's the one thing I disagree with him on. Of course, he wants to advocate that within a lifetime we can go to certain places, because people don't think that long-term. But space travel is so much harder, and it's an almost limitless pursuit. It's good that it's limitless — otherwise we wouldn't find extra room to innovate. Longevity might be a 200-year pursuit, but space is unlimited room for exploration. On the other hand, space travel is not very profitable, so it just doesn't make sense — unless we find profitability along the way. People talk about mining energy. **Bernard Leong:** Or we might find profitability along the way. **James Liang:** Unless people make it into a tourism industry — where people find it interesting, a good experience to go into space, minus the risk. I'm not sure. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe that's the next frontier for the culture of Trip.com — where trips become interstellar instead of on Earth. **James Liang:** We're looking at some very interesting investment opportunities in this arena. But overall, it's really at the societal level that you need to allocate a lot of money and resources into space travel. Otherwise it wouldn't be business-viable. **Bernard Leong:** As someone who looks at technology not just from the US but also from China — thankfully, because I can read Chinese, I know what's going on there — what do you think are the biggest misconceptions about China when it comes to innovation, from the rest of the world, including the US? **James Liang:** I felt very strongly — I was in the minority 10 or 15 years ago when I started looking at innovation in China and how it relates to population size and demographics. My conclusion was very clear: China will be super strong, and will continue to be strong for the next 10 to 20 years. Only in recent years have people started to appreciate the advantage of a big country. In the '80s and '90s, even 30 years ago, you had very successful multinationals from smaller countries — Finland and Nokia, Germany. But if you look at the latest technologies — internet, mobile internet, AI, search engines — those all come from the US or China. Why? Because those are digital technologies, which can replicate at almost zero cost. And users participate in the innovation: when you use Google more, those long-tail searches help Google enhance its algorithm. The same with AI, and the same with our company — the more people use our service, the better our coverage. The user scale advantage is much bigger than the manufacturing-technology advantage. So the future will increasingly favour companies and countries with large talent or large market size. From that perspective, China should be very strong, looking back to 15 or 20 years ago when I was looking at the problem. Even during downturns — a housing crisis, COVID — those are just short-term fluctuations. Over the long run, technology and innovation are basically the one factor. The R&D people at our company, at Huawei, at Google — even during COVID, they weren't resting; they kept doing their experiments. So coming out of COVID, China is super strong. The electric cars now dominate the world after just a few years, and nobody predicted that. Twenty years ago, people still thought China was just a low-cost producer — its innovation strength wasn't even on the radar. In just the last two or three years, China's medical and life-science research has advanced at much more speed. If you look at China's input into innovation — the size of the talent, not just the size of the market — it's three times bigger than the US. So China should continue to do so. But unlike most economists, I'm very bullish on China mid-term, and kind of bearish on the long term — a 20-year horizon — because the fertility collapse of recent years will hit China 20 years later, when those kids would have grown up. **Bernard Leong:** Your own work has pointed to an innovation speed bump for China in the 2030s and 2040s if the fertility rate doesn't recover. In Singapore we call this the NFR — natural fertility rate. It's a very important number. But I want your perspective from China: looking at the China–US technology race now, with chips and export controls dominating almost every Western headline, is the real bottleneck for China's growth going to come down to whether there are more births, more kids, a bigger population? **James Liang:** Ultimately, it's the number of researchers trying to explore different paths for innovation. China today is actually leading in more fields than the US, because China has more researchers to explore different paths to innovation. Of course there are bottlenecks — NVIDIA has been there for 20 years; the technology, infrastructure, and ecosystem have been built up over 20 years. But that's not the end game. There must be better ways than NVIDIA to do things; there must always be a better way to make chips. And you're getting pretty close now. China is researching all these options, together with America and the Europeans. But the sheer size of Chinese researchers means they can explore all these different paths. In 10 or 20 years, no technology can stand still for more than 10 or 20 years — there will be different champions, and they could come from China. Of course, if the whole world is blocking China, that's a different story. Even though China has more researchers than America, at a world level China is still small — especially as demographics decline. So China needs to continue to work with everybody else, just as the US works with everybody else. If the US blocks China, it will hurt China, but it'll probably hurt the US more. So the best game the US and China can play is to be as open as possible — strategic cooperation, as indicated in last week's summit. If NVIDIA isn't restricted from selling to China, all the Chinese companies will be using its GPUs — that's a huge amount of money going to the US economy, and the ecosystem would remain US-based for much longer. In the current situation, China will invent a different path to work around that. I look forward to both countries continuing to cooperate, because it's in both our interests. **Bernard Leong:** I have one penultimate question before my traditional closing. What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about innovationism, but they don't? **James Liang:** The people I interview are quite successful business people — they understand innovation. But average people still ask: well, how do I innovate? Maybe I'll just ask you that — if I'm just a normal person, how do I think about innovation from my point of view? First, there will be more innovators. Currently it's about 2% of the population; it's going to 5%, maybe 10%, because there's just not that much routine work to do. Second, in the future there will be more experience-related innovations, not efficiency-related. For example, you're a travel blogger, you take a good picture, or you find a hiking trail that at a certain point or time of day gives a great experience, and you want to publicise it and lead your friends, or even customers, to that experience — and make some money. Not a lot, but good money. So there's more cultural, experience-related innovation that ordinary people can participate in. Third, making a good family — raising good children — is a very rewarding and meaningful experience. **Bernard Leong:** Agreed. So my traditional closing question: what does success mean for innovationism? What would you want your readers to walk away with — and does that answer change whether the reader is a 25-year-old founder in China, the US, or anywhere in the world, or a civil servant or CEO thinking about the future of their company with AI? **James Liang:** People are very nervous; they're trying to find the next direction. But just relax a little bit. Get a vacation, or have children. Those experiences will bring fresh perspectives. If you have a good time raising children, or a good time consuming a product or travelling, innovative ideas come along. The research says that when you're travelling away, you have more fresh ideas coming at you. So take a different perspective — relax, and enrich your life with different experiences. It will bring you new insights. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you so much. That's a good place to end. James, many thanks for coming on the show, and thank you for spending this quality time with me. I have three children, I'm totally happy — despite both my wife and I being founders of companies, so you can see the 0-0-7 hours that we work. In closing, two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently — books, or something you've thought about? **James Liang:** I should have thought about that. Actually, people don't need to read as many books, because a lot of the most up-to-date content is on podcasts. I regularly go to technology and philosophy podcasts. **Bernard Leong:** Nice — so you're recommending technology and philosophy podcasts. Where can my audience find you and your book? Are you on WeChat, or do you write a personal account? **James Liang:** I have a number of accounts — one talks about travel, one about innovation. I haven't set up the one that talks about philosophy yet. **Bernard Leong:** That's a good idea. I'll check with your team, get the links, and make sure I put them in the show notes. You can find the podcast everywhere — subscribe to us, and of course, give us your feedback. I highly recommend this book, which I had the opportunity to read in the English version first, but I'm definitely going to read the Chinese version. Many thanks for coming on the show, James. I look forward to speaking to you again. **James Liang:** Thank you. [Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI with James LiangPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · June 10 · 1h 2m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-180-40665bf2-66e3-4a25-a97c-036708228f65.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-6808be62-1ea4-4d7b-a3ff-f9e76f1d75c9.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/innovationism-a-new-philosophy-for-the-age-of/id914868245?i=1000772124644&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/fK-0dffl4Eo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/innovationism-a-new-philosophy-for-the-age-of/id914868245?i=1000772124644&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6WaQzBUDFMSV3EggX8WtRO?si=EjoKxXv0R1e96qIh96gNOg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/innovationism-age-of-ai-james-liang?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuL7rLc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/analysepod) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analysepodcast.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@analysepod?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) ### Incorruptible: The Chapter The Lean Startup Missed with Eric Ries URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/incorruptible-the-chapter-the-lean-startup-missed-with-eric-ries/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:59.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Eric Ries — author of the new book *Incorruptible,* joins Bernard Leong to discuss his blueprint for building mission-controlled companies that resist financial gravity. Eric explains why trustworthiness is the most underrated asset in business and why success, far from being a shield, makes companies a target worth capturing. He walks through the governance fortresses that have kept Costco, Novo Nordisk, and Patagonia true to mission for decades, and argues that today's so-called best practices have destroyed billions in shareholder value. The conversation turns to AI: which parts of the Lean Startup it accelerates, which parts it cannot, and why validated learning still lives only between the ears. Eric closes with a radical redefinition of profit as the maximization of human flourishing, and a challenge to Asia-Pacific leaders to leapfrog the governance failures the West is about to live through. --- > "We're helping people create this asset and we're teaching them the wrong idea. We're teaching them that success will protect them. But that's backwards. Success makes you a target worth capturing. And so that explained to me all these companies I saw that failed—not because they went out of business, not because they failed to create value, they failed because of their success." - **Eric Ries** **Profile:** Eric Ries, Author of [Incorruptible](https://www.incorruptible.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [The Lean Startup](https://leanstartup.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, Co-founder of [Answer.AI](https://www.answer.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com). ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the power of business, technology, and media globally. Today we are examining why successful companies lose their way — from how financial gravity corrupts mission, to how governance can be redesigned to protect what matters, and ultimately how great companies stay great. With me today is Eric Ries, founder of the [Long-Term Stock Exchange](https://ltse.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (LTSE), co-founder of [Answer.AI](https://www.answer.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and author of an upcoming book, [Incorruptible](https://www.incorruptible.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) — which is probably out today when we release this podcast — where he lays out the blueprint for building mission-controlled companies. I'm a first-time caller, long-time fan since [*The Lean Startup*](https://leanstartup.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Eric, welcome to the show. **Eric Ries:** Thank you so much. A pleasure to be here. **Bernard Leong:** Eric, your career arc has been remarkable. You founded IMVU, which you talk about in [*The Lean Startup*](https://leanstartup.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Then you went to build a stock exchange, which is extremely difficult. Now you're co-founding an AI research lab. My first question: what's the trend that connects all of these, and what drew you from product building to institutional design? **Eric Ries:** For me it's been a very consistent and smooth process of just pulling on the thread of the sweater of the truth. I wanted to know the answer to some very basic questions, and I kept having to go deeper and deeper to understand them. The first time I ever saw a personal computer, I was transformed. I love technology. I love programming computers. Since I was a kid, I didn't really know it was a job you could do — I just did it for the love of the thing itself. I was sure that programming was the most powerful force in the universe when I discovered it. It was a rush. Later I came to understand — no, programming is just one little piece of something called technology. So technology is the most powerful force in the world. Then I later learned that technology is just one way of making products, but products are the most powerful force in the universe. Of course, if you've read *The Lean Startup*, you know my journey to understanding that actually human beings make products. So in fact, management is the most powerful force in the universe. If you've read [*The Startup Way*](https://www.thestartupway.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), you know I eventually learned that accounting and accountability is even more powerful. Each time I felt I'd mastered some important element of a simple task. I just want to take ideas and put them out into the world, see them be successful, see them have positive impact. Yet so often it doesn't happen. We build a company, we build a product, nobody uses it. We build a product that's harmful to our customers. They use it because they're addicted to it. So many ways for it to go wrong. We build an organization that has success, but then someone takes it away from us. We lose control. Each time I go deeper, I feel I'm learning more about what really is the essential truth of what it means to try to build organizations that have positive impact in the world. In this latest turn, I feel I've gotten even deeper underneath the surface characteristics we usually talk about with organizations. Those surface characteristics are important — business model, strategy, vision, culture. But underneath all that is a deeper set of forces that shape organizations, even if the people involved are unconscious of what's happening. Those forces are what I try to turn my attention to in this book. **Bernard Leong:** The way I draw the arc: *The Lean Startup* gives founders the tools to build quickly and scale. But in *Incorruptible*, you write that your solution almost had to fail to anticipate what came next — that you taught people how to build something worth protecting, but didn't teach them how to protect it. As a startup founder, I think about this question all the time. It's a striking admission. When did that realization hit you? **Eric Ries:** I wish I could say it was on a certain day. It dawned on me over a very long period of time. I believed the best practices just like everybody else, because that's how I was taught. So when I saw company after company fall into darkness, I assumed it was somebody's fault — greedy investor, naive founder, unruly employees, whatever. I bought into the narrative that this is a personal failure. But it happened too often, and I started to ask: why is this happening? When I asked people, they said it's the market. Market forces. We all know the market rewards value creation. So if people are failing, it's because they're not creating as much value as whoever took it over. That doesn't seem right when we have so many examples of companies being taken over and then destroyed. That's an act of value destruction, not value creation. I started to see both the dark side of failure — companies failing when they didn't have to — and the dark side of success. People succeeding, building great companies, but making moral compromises along the way that left them rich and miserable. I started asking: if it's making us rich and miserable, who's it for? Who are the compromises for? I always thought if you got to be super rich and powerful, you'd be really happy. But you can tell from watching social media for five minutes, there's a lot of very rich people having a nervous breakdown in front of everybody. They don't seem very happy to me. Do they seem happy to you? So I started to feel there's something wrong here, and I need to get my bearings as to what it is. Meanwhile, I was trying to help people create companies, and increasingly those people were asking for help on this issue: how do I make sure that what happened to that founder doesn't happen to me? I'll never forget — I was talking to a really cool founder building something in the space of humane technology. He told me a story that blew my mind. He saw one of the founders from a previous generation — I want to say it was one of the Google founders. He was at a party where this billionaire founder was. The guy was dancing alone on the dance floor, hitting on 20-year-olds. The founder I was talking to said: is that my fate? Am I going to wind up like this guy? He has everything. He owns everything. This is what he spends his time doing. He's so alone. It was a really powerful statement to me of the problem we're dealing with. It took me a while to understand what's going on, why is this happening, and what could we do about it. One of the big breakthrough insights for me: eventually I realized we were teaching people how to create these superpowers for their organization, but I knew them as separate superpowers. The power of alignment. The power of magnetic attraction for talent. The power of customer loyalty. The power of long-term partnerships. I could see that mission-driven companies do this a lot better and a lot more than conventional companies. So I knew it in my bones before I could understand it. What is the superpower that makes this all possible? I eventually realized: the most underrated and valuable asset in all of business is trustworthiness. When you build a character of someone who can make and keep promises, customers and employees and partners can trust you — and that's what creates all these other good things in the business. The problem is, because we don't account for trustworthiness as an asset, we don't protect it. It's as if we have this massive trove of this asset just lying on the floor. Anyone could pick it up. There's no vault, no locks, no door, no protection. At that point it hit me: we're helping people create this asset, and we're teaching them the wrong idea. We're teaching them that success will protect them. But that's backwards. Success makes you a target worth capturing. That explained to me all these companies I saw that failed — not because they went out of business, not because they failed to create value. They failed because of their success. That is what turned me onto this problem and got me interested in finding a solution. **Bernard Leong:** It reminds me of [Clayton Christensen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton%5FChristensen?ref=analysepodcast.com)'s *The Innovator's Dilemma* — it's not the poor managers who fail to spot innovations. It's actually the capable managers who fail to realize it's going to threaten them. They're making the smart decisions, but they were the wrong decisions. One more question, inspired by my last 500-plus episodes. From your journey so far — across entrepreneurship, institutional reform, and now AI — what are the key lessons you share with my audience about building organizations with intention rather than default assumption? What do you share with the younger generation as short advice? **Eric Ries:** There's a lot. I struggled to keep this book to a manageable length because there's so much I want to teach, but I don't want people to feel overwhelmed. The biggest thing you've already just said: unless you do this design intentionally, you will get the default best practices. So the first thing I want people to understand is that today's best practices destroy value. I'll give you some examples. Since 2008, companies rated by governance ratings agencies as having bad governance have outperformed the companies that have good governance. I tell a story of something called the [Harvard Shareholder Rights Project](http://www.srp.law.harvard.edu/communications.shtml?ref=analysepodcast.com), which attacked many companies for having non-standard governance. A later independent analysis found that this project destroyed roughly a hundred billion dollars of shareholder value in the name of protecting shareholder rights. It's absurd. In the book I give the example of [Costco](https://www.costco.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), obviously one of the heroes of the book. Costco has been able to defend its ethos for a long time because it's protected by what I call a governance fortress — a set of best-practice governance worst-practices that are actually very effective at insulating management from outside pressure. Over the years, many investors, investor activists, and governance experts have attacked Costco for things like spending money that rightfully belongs to shareholders on improving the customer experience, as if that's a criticism. That's the whole point. That's why customers love Costco. We see this again and again with best practices that are actually value-destroying. So a huge part of it is: we can't just fall into the trap of assuming that just because someone's teaching us the best practice, it's actually any good. One of the stories I tell is about [Novo Nordisk](https://www.novonordisk.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) — makers of Ozempic and other GLP-1 medicines. That company was set up in the 1920s by a Nobel laureate and his wife. The wife actually had diabetes. They wanted to create a company that would synthesize insulin to cure her. They didn't want to just cure one person — they wanted to bring that technology to their home country of Denmark. That's how the company was started. They adopted what at the time was not an uncommon structure but is today considered heretical worst practice. Novo Nordisk is a scientific research foundation that owns a for-profit subsidiary. The for-profit subsidiary, by the way, is a full-on public company traded on the [New York Stock Exchange](https://www.nyse.com/index?ref=analysepodcast.com). It's a huge company, unfathomably large today. That structure has kept Novo Nordisk true to its mission of scientific discovery for more than 100 years. So I always tell people: when you're hearing someone give you advice about best practices, I'm sure they seem very smart. I assume they seem very well credentialed — they're a lawyer, a banker, an investor, whatever. But before you listen to them, ask yourself this one simple question. Are you sure that you're smarter than a Nobel laureate? Because if you're not a hundred percent sure, you might want to study what has worked for a really long time that is in violation of these so-called best practices. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/06/Incorruptible-book-cover.jpg) **Bernard Leong:** That comes to the main subject of the day. *Incorruptible* asks why some good companies go bad and how great companies stay great. We're now in the era where AI can generate prototypes, write code, iterate at machine speed — like *The Lean Startup* on steroids. **Eric Ries:** That's an exciting time. **Bernard Leong:** Which parts of the Lean Startup does AI make easier, and which parts become harder — or more important — precisely because of AI? When I think about AI today, I tell myself: if I could ask Eric Ries one question, that would be the first one. **Eric Ries:** Sure. There's a lot going on in that question. Let's take it piece by piece. The first thing: in general, the principles of Lean Startup have held up very well, if I do say so myself. It's been 15 years, and the stuff I said in 2011 about the future — I didn't predict generative LLMs or anything like that, but I did say what we were going to see in general with technology was a consistent increase in two dimensions. One, we were going to see a reduction in cycle time — an increase in velocity of development. The democratization of the means of production, so that more and more people could bring world-class technology to bear on any problem in the world. Secondly, in part as a result of the first thing, we were going to see a world of increased uncertainty. Lean Startup has always shined in the top-right quadrant of high speed, high uncertainty, because we have both the economic opportunities to discover new things and the competitive advantage of being faster in our learning environment than others — which is what you need in times of high uncertainty. That seems a pretty apt description of the last 15 years and probably will continue to be pretty good. Is this new technology good for founders? That depends. Here's what's really interesting to me. People always assume that if a technology makes a certain process more productive, therefore it's good for the people doing that process, because it will make the industry overall more productive. But not necessarily. I always do this exercise when I'm in audiences now. I ask: how many people have asked ChatGPT to turn three bullet points into a proposal of some kind? Everyone raises their hand. That's right. Everybody does that — just give ChatGPT a few bullets. Then I ask: how many people have taken a proposal and asked ChatGPT to summarize it down to three bullets for them? **Bernard Leong:** A lot of people \[do that\]. **Eric Ries:** A lot of people raise their hand. If I send you a proposal I generated from three bullet points, and you turn it back into three bullet points — have we actually made anything more productive? We've taken the same three bullet points and spent thousands and thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of tokens, the water, the electricity, the GPUs — we burned out all these GPUs to generate a proposal we then used the same GPUs to turn back into its original form. There's no guarantee of productivity improvement ever, even if you make any individual sub-step more productive. You see that with traffic capacity improvements — more freeways just create more traffic. The other side of it is really interesting. Just because you can now make an MVP faster than before, does that give you a competitive advantage? Not necessarily. If you have the advantage and nobody else has it, sure. But what if all your competitors get the advantage at the same time? The crazy thing about AI is it's being made available to everybody simultaneously — incumbents and new entrants alike. I can't tell you how many people have pitched me a startup since the advent of LLMs saying: I just had this great new idea, I built this cool MVP. I say: I've heard that pitch three times already. The same "great idea" is occurring to everybody because it's super obvious. That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to win. We'll have to see what the net effect is for entrepreneurship. Obviously the concentration of power of platforms can be antithetical to entrepreneurial flourishing. We'll see. But if I look at the people who have had those same ideas who won, it's always the one who learned fastest from customers. In some ways the acceleration of the technology has made the human limits more of the critical bottleneck — and therefore created returns to those who can learn the best. At the end of the day, one of the key ideas of Lean Startup is that the unit of progress in entrepreneurship is validated learning. It exists only between the ears, and that can't be accelerated with a GPU. Those who are figuring out how to use the technology to enhance their own skills and capabilities are the ones who are going to come out ahead. **Bernard Leong:** I enjoyed the opening of *Incorruptible*. The professor whose biotech breakthrough could either save lives or create bioweapons, terrified of losing control of the creation. A little bit sounds like an AI company that's having issues with the government. You wrote that you felt like you were feeding one company after another into a meat grinder. What prompted you to write the book, through the lens of that story? **Eric Ries:** This is a real story. I anonymized certain stories in the book because I wanted to protect the identity of the people involved. But this is a real person. The professor gave me permission to tell the story this way. He's a tenured university professor — a very intelligent, very serious person. He called me for advice because he was having trouble recruiting other scientists to join his lab. First of all, they're all tenured professors themselves, so what do they need? They don't need a new job. But they were very excited about the possibility of commercializing this technology. It's a super cool product, but also a very dangerous product. The issue wasn't compensation. It wasn't equity splits or any of the usual stuff. Every person was asking the same question: how can I trust you're not going to use this for evil? If I leave my university lab and join you, am I going to be complicit in a moral disaster? I don't want to become another tobacco company. What's the deal? He'd say: no, no, no, don't worry, trust me. He has a very altruistic mission. He's interested in saving lives. Then they'd say: yeah, but what about your investors? He'd say: no, they're aligned too. They'd say: are they? What if they fire you? What if they change their mind? He was getting all these questions from them. Meanwhile, when he met with investors, if he asked them those kinds of questions, they'd tell him: you don't seem very serious about business at all. We don't want to invest in some hippie who's only concerned about doing good. We want to make money. He had this realization — this is why he called me — that many of the investors he was talking to would be very happy if he made them a lot of money, no matter what kind of disaster happened as a result. As long as they profited from it, they wouldn't care. They were amoral actors. By the time he met me, I had had that conversation a bunch of times. It was not my first rodeo. I said: if you stay on the conventional path, the very thing you fear the most is almost guaranteed to happen to you. I told him a bunch of stories, some of which are in the book, about people this happened to. He said: oh my God, is it too late? I said: it's not too late, but you're already on the wrong track. If you honestly want to do this, there are some things you need to do right away. He was very willing to make those changes. But most companies don't have those protections. As a result, I had that feeling of: what is the point of all this work? We're just creating these great companies only for them to be destroyed. I wanted to honor the professor and people like him who come to this book already with the conviction that the best way to make money is what I call the builder's intuition. You make money by creating new value in the world and capturing some of it for yourself — not by squeezing every dollar out of the world you can find. This book doesn't try to persuade anybody to be like that. If you're already a sociopath and you just want to make money, this book's not for you, and I can't help you. I have nothing to say to you. I will not try to convince you to give that up. That's a deeper, more personal question about what you really want out of life, and I'm not equipped to help you answer that question. For people who've already answered the question in the affirmative — I want to create something that will last. I want to create something that stands for quality and craftsmanship and human-scale achievement. I want to take care of the people under my responsibility. Yes, I want to make a lot of money because I made the world a better place. For those people, I wanted to give them a blueprint, a playbook they could follow to defend themselves from the people trying to take it away. **Bernard Leong:** There's also your personal experience. You co-founded Answer.AI with Jeremy Howard — **Eric Ries:** Yes. **Bernard Leong:** — deliberately structured as a public benefit corporation, with long-term SPV investors. How did that experience of building the Long-Term Stock Exchange and watching companies get surgically deboned shape how you structured Answer.AI from day zero? **Eric Ries:** It was really important. Jeremy Howard is a genius. For those who don't know, he was one of the first people ever to build a large language model, and to propose that training neural networks on a corpus like Wikipedia would produce intelligible outcomes. At the time he had that insight, I would have said that's absolutely, positively impossible. What are you talking about? He saw this a lot sooner than other people did. He's been a very successful entrepreneur. People mostly know him for FastMail. He was involved in the creation of Kaggle and a bunch of other companies. He's most known these days for having created fast.ai. Fast.ai was a non-profit, almost anti-profit organization where he worked really hard in machine learning and tried not to make any money from it, because he wanted to democratize access to the technology itself. Many of the people who learned machine learning or deep learning and now work at one of the major AI labs got their start from one of fast.ai's courses. When we were talking about this new wave of AI companies a few years ago, we were really focused on: what could we be doing that would be helpful? I said: look, Jeremy, I think you're in a position now where if you created a company around your research, we could amplify the good you're doing in the world quite a bit. But I was very wary — and he was very wary — of bringing investors into that research, because the gravitational influence of those investors might warp the research in just the ways he'd been trying for ten years to avoid. It was a match made in heaven. I said: if you want to start this company, I will help you raise money for it, and help you structure it in such a way that you'll be able to maintain control of it and protect it against these forces. That experience of having done it myself and helped lots of other people get it right — and get it wrong — meant I could bring that advice to Jeremy and help him set up the Answer.AI research lab in such a way that it will be immune from these forces. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting concept I thought about: organizations as superorganisms. They have a certain emergent intelligence, their own character preferences and will to survive. You draw a lot on the Weizmann Institute's animal experiments and MIT's collective intelligence research. What should leaders actually think about this? If the CEO isn't really in charge — who is the bank? **Eric Ries:** The chapter is called "Who Is the Bank?" because I named it after a famous story in Steinbeck's *The Grapes of Wrath*, where tenant farmers are being evicted by representatives of the bank during the Dust Bowl. What's so fascinating about this story is they're telling the bankers: look, this doesn't make sense. We've defaulted on our loans obviously, because it's a Dust Bowl — there are no farms here, nobody can farm at all. So technically, yes, you can evict us from our land, but when the Dust Bowl passes, you're not going to have anybody to farm this land. You're going to have repossessed a useless asset. They don't talk like that because they're tenant farmers — I'm putting the language of economics in their mouth. Steinbeck's a much better writer than that. Meanwhile, the bankers agree: yeah, this doesn't make any sense. The farmers say: why are you doing it? The bankers say: we're not doing it. The farmers: who's doing it? You're the bank. You're doing it. The bankers: no, no, no. We hate this. Every person who works in the bank thinks this is wrong, and yet the bank still does it. The farmers: why? You're just a bank — a bank is nothing but human beings. The bankers: that's where you're wrong. The bank is made up of human beings, but it is not itself a human being. It is a creature that breathes profits instead of air. That's what it is. That metaphor in Steinbeck stayed with me all these years. Who is the bank? What's going on there? It turns out — I won't spoil the whole book, but just to give a sneak — organizations are literally alive. That's my conclusion. They are a category of a phenomenon called emergent properties. Interestingly, it's the same scientific field of study that makes transformers turn into generative LLMs. That is the same thing that's going on. Emergent intelligence is an intelligence that is a property of the whole that is not located in any part. You're right that I cite this study from the Weizmann Institute — because this is not metaphysics. This is not science fiction. This is not a metaphor. This is a literal scientific fact: certain kinds of collections of organisms exhibit this weird property. If you're skeptical, the best demonstration I've ever seen is an experiment done at the Weizmann Institute — they literally created something called the Piano Movers puzzle. You should really watch the video rather than hear me describe it. There's this T-shaped object that has to fit through this gap. It's one of those classic difficult things to do. Have you seen that viral clip of *Friends* where the guys are trying to move a couch, going "pivot, pivot"? It's actually a very difficult geometrical puzzle. You have to do it in just the right way. Obviously if you give the puzzle to a single human being, they can figure it out. If you give the puzzle to a single ant, they cannot figure it out. But the more ants you put in the puzzle, the faster they figure it out. The difference between a single ant, a thousand ants, and 10,000 ants is amazing to watch, because you're watching an intelligence at work. It makes the same kinds of attempts you would make. It bumps into things. It rewinds and tries a different way. You can see it working out the solution. Here's a really wild part of the experiment. They also gave the problem to groups of humans. It turns out — although with ants, the more ants you add, the better the emergence, the faster it solves the puzzle — with humans it's the opposite. The more humans you add, the worse everything gets. Just like ant colonies, just like all kinds of other groupings of things, groups of human beings exhibit emergent properties. An organization is an emergent intelligence. We do not own it. When we found it, we birth it. It is alive. It has its own moral compass, its own character, even its own sense of ethics. In one study I thought was really cool, researchers measured how ethical different companies are. They discovered that if you understand how ethical the company is — not how ethical the people who work there are, that's not correlated — but if you know how ethical the company is, you can predict how many compliance failures and other kinds of problems it's going to have in the future. Moral character is also an emergent property. A big part of why founders, leaders, and board members lose control of their organizations: sometimes they lose control because outside hostile investors take it away from them. But sometimes they lose control of the thing itself, because they don't really understand how to motivate and bind a superorganism to their values. **Bernard Leong:** I want to come to the blueprint — redefining profit and building mission-controlled companies. I see this happening at Intel. It was such a great company, but when it changed from making the engineer the CEO to making the sales guy the CEO, they missed mobile, they missed AI, they missed almost everything. Epic did the same. I've always had this view that the CEO who'll run the company in the future will be a software engineer. That comes to the point of what you propose: a radical redefinition of profit as the maximization of human flourishing. You walk readers through a thought experiment — from Ponzi schemes to toxic waste to a hitman marketplace — to show that conventional profit accounting has pretty fatal blind spots. Share a bit of the definition. I don't want to give away the book — everybody should read it — but share why it matters. **Eric Ries:** Thank you. This is a tough one for people just coming cold through a podcast, so I urge you to read the book to hear the whole argument in full. The basic idea: the way we currently define profit has a huge problem. This is not unknown. Economists — if you take an economics class, you'll have learned about these problems. Generally speaking, we just accept that it has problems. We don't realize that every company today — even under today's very limited definition of profit — has to define profit for itself, and then publish how it does that accounting. The idea that every company follows a standard interpretation of profit is not really true, despite GAAP and all that. Most companies still produce their own proprietary version. The question is: is the version we're using any good? What I discovered is that most builders — people who make things for a living, whether they're a founder or not — carry two definitions of profit around with them. The intuitive version — the builder's intuition — is that profit is about making something more valuable. Creating net new value in the world. They also carry a formal definition of profit they learned in school. The formal definition: revenue minus cost. That's it. I take a $50 piece of wood, I turn it into a $200 table, I made $150 in profit. Very simple, very simplistic. But if you probe people about this definition, you will find lots of situations where their intuitive understanding of profit and their formal definition are at odds. Take the Ponzi scheme example. Is a Ponzi scheme profitable? Most people will say: of course it isn't. Why not? Revenue minus cost. This Ponzi scheme made a million dollars, paid out 500,000\. Isn't that $500,000 of profit? People say: no, no, no. Because although we didn't pay out the expenses this month, we're going to have to pay them out eventually. Although we created value in this period, we created far larger liabilities deferred down the road. So deferred liabilities also have to count against profit. Good to know. What about a toxic waste dump? Isn't that a deferred liability? Are companies that pollute really profitable? That's making it worse. What if I dump the pollution in the river and it makes the people down the river sick — and, imagine, I get away with it, so nobody ever finds out and I never have to pay the cost? Is that profitable? People say: no, you stole. That's stealing. If I steal a $200 piece of wood and make a $100 table out of it, that's not profitable. What are you talking about? So what are called negative externalities also have to be accounted for. But now what about that $100 table I made out of a $200 piece of wood? What if I use human beings as one of my input factors of production? Am I profitable? People say: what? Nobody would ever do that. I say: indulge me for a second. Imagine I committed murder for hire. Literally, I create Bitcoin-murder-dot-com, blockchain, whatever app. Go on the dark web, pay me money, kill anyone you want. Is it profitable? People say: that's absurd. That's illegal. But what if I made so much money doing it that I could make it legal? Now is it profitable? They say: it's immoral. I say: I know, but that's not the question, is it? Are you telling me immoral things can't be profitable? If you really press people on this point, they eventually concede that no, it's not profitable. If you ask why, they say: if someone pays you $100 to commit murder, you're not accounting for your cost properly. You just killed something of infinite value in exchange for a finite amount of money. That's negative value. That's not positive value creation. So if our current mental model of profit cannot see deferred liabilities, cannot see negative externalities, and is willing to see a human being as an input factor of production — I would say that definition is fatally flawed. We shouldn't try to tinker around the edges with double bottom line, triple bottom line, good profits, bad profits. We can have whatever definition we want. We are the ones who make the things for a living. We can define profit however we like. So I say we define it as the maximization of human flourishing, and be done with it. Then all those scenarios are automatically accounted for. Yes, we'll have to do some extra work to figure out if our product is in fact making people's lives better or not. But wouldn't you like to know anyway? That seems like very valuable business intelligence. Every company should be very eager to track and find. **Bernard Leong:** That's a good point. It's Tim O'Reilly's principle: create more value than you capture. But it runs through the book. What you're showing is that current measurement tools are designed to miss certain positive externalities. Costco's supplier loyalty has no ledger entry. GitLab's radical transparency gets competitors to debug their code for free. If I want to implement something like that — how do you think leaders and boards should rethink this? Everybody wants a measurement, and that runs you into Goodhart's law — your measurement becomes the problem. **Eric Ries:** In the academic literature, this is called surrogation. When you measure and reward people in the Goodhart's-law way, people wind up thinking the measurement becomes a surrogate for the thing itself. You reward people for average hold time in customer service. People start thinking that if average hold time goes down, then customer service is improved. That's not true. We all know from having called a cable company that they have lots of ways to get you off the phone that don't involve actually satisfying your problem. We create perverse incentives, and it runs all through our economy. In the book I give a bunch of examples, including the fact that customer service on average has gotten twice as bad in the last 50 years. It's being caused by this pervasive problem, even though we're spending billions of dollars improving it. It's also why transit costs are out of control in this country. There are 20 other things that affect your daily life being driven by surrogation. If we want to build organizations that don't fall to this corruption, we have to learn to wield a more accurate — what I call holistic — measurement system that avoids false proxies like average hold time, and instead tries to really get at the underlying things that create trustworthiness in a business. **Bernard Leong:** One thing I want to get to: you describe a scene I couldn't get my head off after reading the book. The moment a CEO leaves the room, his professionals laugh at his mission-protective structures. It's as if they've performed this play before, and the script never changes. How can founders recognize and resist this pattern? **Eric Ries:** This is a real story. This really happened to me. I was sitting in a pre-IPO prep meeting with a CEO and his top team — CFO and all the other fancy people he'd hired to "land the plane" of the IPO. He'd brought me to the meeting because we were working on a whole bunch of mission-protective provisions for the company to demonstrate as part of its IPO that this wasn't just a bunch of Silicon Valley kids getting rich — this was a serious company invested in broadly shared prosperity. He was getting a lot of resistance from his team: we already have the IPO, why are we doing this stuff, come on. But he said: no, no, no, this is my top priority, I insist on these things being done. He gave them a list: my top priority. Then he left the room, and everyone started laughing. One of the people said: I'll just add this to my other list of top priorities he's given me. They all looked around the room and said: he'll blink. The IPO date's already set. What's he going to do? I said: guys, I'm sitting right here. This is my personal friend you're talking about. Won't you all be in a lot of trouble if I tell him what you said? They said: you better not. We're going to make life really difficult for you if you tell him. But they didn't really care. I said: I'm going to tell him anyway. They said: fine. Honestly, we don't care. He knows. He's just blowing off steam. He's not serious about this. At the time, I thought: these guys are showing such bad judgment telling me all this stuff when he's not there. But when I look back on it now, I realize they actually understood the situation a lot better than I did. Because they had been in this play before. They'd taken multiple other companies public. They'd sat with a lot of other idealistic founders and placated them by patting them on the head and saying: no, no, it's too late for that stuff. They were right. That's the sad part of the story. I was wrong and they were right. Almost every idea we talked about that day wound up on the cutting-room floor. The company didn't do all that stuff. I talk in the book about some of the consequences for the company as it evolved later. I think it could have been really different if it had been able to differentiate itself by showing it was sincerely committed to these principles. My goal for people reading this book: you and your co-founders don't have this laugh. Don't have these ideas laughed out of the room. Instead, you'll have the strength and the knowledge to insist — first of all, on doing it early so it's already done by the time you get to this stage. But even if you missed a stage, if you feel it's too late, it's not too late. As long as you know how to talk about these issues, as long as you understand them in a deep enough way, you can implement them at any time. **Bernard Leong:** Given the time we have, I want to get to AI. You recently spoke at the Vatican Conference on AI governance with representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Palantir. You observed that none of these companies accept the standard governance defaults. They all agree shareholder primacy will be catastrophic for transformative AI, yet they're taking very different approaches. What's your assessment of AI governance today, given the technology is actually moving even faster than previous technologies? **Eric Ries:** It's incredible. It's an extremely dangerous moment and also an extremely rewarding moment. This is going to be a transformative and really powerful technology, but unfortunately we've wedded it to a really antiquated, outdated governance model. The popping of the bubble and a lot of collateral damage seems almost inevitable to me. People are vibe-coding their way into all kinds of software and systems that they themselves do not understand, that no human being can understand. We're obviously going to see some carnage along the way. In the long run, the technology ultimately will be extremely powerful and extremely useful. The fact that you have all these companies that have taken such extreme measures to get away from standard governance is not so much about their personal greed, but about how terrible standard governance is. In the book I talk about the downsides of some of the approaches they've taken. Obviously OpenAI has had very public issues with governance. But even Google and Meta — companies that have unlimited power vested in the founders themselves — being emperor for life is no picnic either. A lot of the problems we see in those companies stem from the fact that we've put individual people in a socket that needs to be an institutional solution. We're asking human beings to carry far too heavy a burden — being the individual who's got their finger in the dam preventing the flood of the markets from ravaging their company. It's much better to take an approach like Costco, Novo Nordisk, or Patagonia, where the architecture of institutional longevity is encoded into the company structure rather than relying on individual good intention. **Bernard Leong:** A question for leaders in Asia-Pacific. Governments here are simultaneously trying to attract AI investment and build regulatory frameworks. What governance lessons from your book should they be paying attention to? **Eric Ries:** The power of having an opportunity to leapfrog a frontier technology is something countries should be much more excited about than they are. Think about the countries that were able to skip landline phones altogether and go straight to mobile. They had the opportunity to build an economy around that new technology from scratch, instead of having to go through the growing pains that the inventor of the technology goes through. If you watch what's going wrong with AI governance now — and I think we're going to see a bunch of disasters — people should be thinking already past that. How, when there's an inevitable backlash against AI in the countries where those disasters take place, can we be positioned to avoid those disasters, avoid that backlash, and profit from that opportunity? That could be pretty powerful. **Bernard Leong:** I have a couple of quick questions. My first: the epilogue itself, the Coda, is unlike anything I've read in a business book. It's literary, a little mythic. You address the reader directly and present a choice — turn upward, or turn away to the dusty ground. What drove you to end the book that way? **Eric Ries:** Thank you for asking. I don't want to give spoilers. My intentional design with this book was that it should begin like a conventional business book and, over the course of the book, gradually break the form and become something else. That was my intended goal, because what we're talking about here — yes, it has its origins in business, it has a lot of business implications — but at the end of the day, this is a human question, a philosophical question, not actually a business question. I wanted to invite readers, whether they come at it from business or some other place, to have an opportunity for deeper reflection and find deeper meaning in the work itself. That was my intentional design. I can't tell you how many people tried to talk me out of it. We'll see how people respond. For certain readers, what they've reported to me is that the last chapter makes them feel seen in a way that no other business book ever has. That really was my intention. If you're someone grappling with these issues for real, you will feel that kinship we all have as part of a universal brotherhood and sisterhood who care about these issues. It's not for everybody, but that's okay. It's for us. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one thing you know about organizations and governance that very few people understand, but should? **Eric Ries:** Today's best-practice ideas about the governance and structure of organizations are extremely young. For the vast majority of the time there have been joint stock corporations, they were governed by a completely different philosophy of what organizations are for. We have forgotten this ancient wisdom, and we need to urgently rediscover it. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one question you wish more people would ask you about your current work, but they don't? **Eric Ries:** For all my books, I wish people would ask me about the later chapters. So I'm very glad you asked me about the end. People only read the early chapters, and they don't get a lot of the good stuff that comes later. Anything about the later chapters would be my pleasure. **Bernard Leong:** I make a point every time I interview a book author — I read the book end to end. **Eric Ries:** I love that. **Bernard Leong:** It makes me really appreciate what the book is. When I have the conversation with the author, it's a great feeling. This is exciting. I want to hear this. Last question. What does great look like for you? How do you define success — whether it's for *Incorruptible*, Answer.AI, or the institutional architecture you're trying to drive through? The structures that are going to be built for the next decade, the new Novo Nordisks, the organizations you're trying to inspire founders to build. **Eric Ries:** The thing I'm most proud of so far with the book — I had maybe 500 people test-read it. I'm a big believer in feedback. Believe me, the early test readers were saints. They had to endure a much worse version of the book than you do. It's gotten a lot better. I have more than 10,000 reader comments on the manuscript, so I know for sure it got a lot better as I worked on it. I know the parts that people struggle with, the parts that were good. What I'm most proud of is actually not the 10-star reviews and that kind of stuff. The thing I'm most proud of is the people who have written me already saying: thanks to this book, I've started a new company that I wouldn't have thought to start before, because it made me realize there was a business opportunity staring me right in the face and I had the blinders on — the profit blinders. I couldn't see it. Now I see this new possibility. As those ideas roll in, it makes me feel we're onto something here. This is going to be, I hope — knock on wood — a movement for change. **Bernard Leong:** That is a very good place to end. I took a lot of inspiration for myself — this is a question I've been thinking about a lot for the startup I'm building now. I also want to push a lot of founders to think about their constitution. It's a document everybody does for admin purpose, but they don't really think about what it is for the organization even beyond the founder itself. Eric, many thanks for coming on the show. I would love this conversation to be much longer, but all of us have our time and space. In closing, two quick ones. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? Could be books, podcasts, ideas, people. **Eric Ries:** This book has a huge bibliography — you can see all the many books I found helpful in writing it. I don't even know where to start. There's so much — music, podcasts. I'll give special credit to the *Acquired* podcast. **Bernard Leong:** I know those guys. **Eric Ries:** Those guys are awesome. I've known them for a long time. There are two of their episodes that have their fingerprints all over the book. They did an episode about Costco and an episode about Novo Nordisk. In the Novo Nordisk episode especially, they talk about a famous episode that's also in the book — a time when the non-profit directors of Novo Nordisk created more than $500 billion of shareholder value. I really appreciate that they brought those stories to life and gave me a lot to work with — how do you tell the story in a humorous, human way that makes it more accessible than would otherwise be a very dry corporate governance story. **Bernard Leong:** One thing that's really interesting about them: they built their podcast with a mission. They only focus on stories of how great businesses are built from the business point of view, telling all their stories in tech. I see them sometimes in Zoom calls when we have the conversation. My last and final question. How do my audience find you and, of course, your book? **Eric Ries:** Please go to my website, incorruptible.co. You can get everything there. Please join my newsletter if you want to get extra bonuses and all kinds of stuff. If you pre-order the book, or order it right when it comes out, there's a bunch of bonuses you're going to get, including a secret chapter, implementation guide, reader guide — lots of good stuff. We tried to make it really worth the while to be an early adopter of the book. The thing I'm most proud of on the website is we have a list of as many different independent bookstores as we could find who are carrying the book. You can buy the book in hardcover, in ebook, in audiobook. I actually recorded the audiobook myself. There's special bonus content in the audiobook — I think it turned out really great. You can also buy it at a local community bookstore, and then you're helping support your local community as well as supporting me as an author. Thank you to everyone who chooses to do that. **Bernard Leong:** Eric, many thanks for coming on the show. This is a dream interview I've always wanted to have. Many thanks, and hopefully you will write some more books that will challenge our minds. Thank you for your time. **Eric Ries:** Thank you very much. I appreciate it. [Incorruptible: The Chapter The Lean Startup Missed with Eric RiesPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · June 3 · 47m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-180-69e6d876-6093-47f2-818f-cd40bce9b6ac.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-2ddbb1f6-3236-40e3-b51e-efba28cbd548.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incorruptible-the-chapter-the-lean-startup-missed/id914868245?i=1000771069367&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. 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Drawing on private archives at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, unbroadcast footage from inside NeXT, and interviews with the people who lived it, Cain reframes the wilderness decade as the cause, not the gap, in Jobs's transformation. We trace the NeXT collapse and the failed IBM licensing deal, the parallel crucible of Pixar where Catmull and Lasseter barred Jobs from creative meetings, and the deep Japanese and Zen influences — Akio Morita, Sony, the beginner's mind — that Isaacson and Schlender underplayed. We close on Apple at fifty, John Ternus's ascent, and what Jobs would have done with AI. --- > "The successes that we see in the world for every iPhone there is, for every SpaceX rocket there are perhaps dozens or maybe even hundreds of failures behind that we don't see. And so the wilderness, as they call it, this is the greatest moment in the lives of many founders. It's the wilderness that we all have to go through before we can achieve greatness, and if we don't go through that, then we don't learn those lessons." **\- Geoffrey Cain** **Profile: Geoffrey Cain**, Author of "[Steve Jobs in Exile](https://geoffreycain.net/steve-jobs-in-exile/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" and "[Samsung Rising](https://geoffreycain.net/samsung-rising/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" ([Personal Site](https://geoffreycain.net/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gcain/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [X](https://x.com/geoffrey%5Fcain?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Substack](https://geoffreycain.substack.com/)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. The life of [Steve Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve%5FJobs?ref=analysepodcast.com) has fascinated many generations of founders, executives, and technologists because of the extraordinary impact he made through [Apple](https://apple.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Pixar, but one chapter remains underexamined. In May 1985, Steve Jobs sat in an Apple board meeting, his voice trembling, as he learned the company he had co-founded no longer had a meaningful role for him. The twelve years that followed — NeXT, Pixar, and an unlikely return to Apple — are often treated as a footnote to the main Apple history. My guest today argues the total opposite: that Jobs's exile was not a detour, but the crucible that made him into the visionary he later became. Today, we explore three threads. First, the failures that forced a brash wunderkind to learn delegation and leadership. Second, the unbroadcast footage and private documents that reopened this overlooked period. Third, the deep influence of Japanese management and design on Jobs's second act. With me today is a recurring guest, [Geoffrey Cain](https://geoffreycain.net/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the author of *Samsung Rising* and now his new book, *Steve Jobs in Exile*, which arrives next week. I have a pre-ordered copy. Jeff, welcome back to the Analyse Podcast. **Geoffrey Cain:** Great to be here again, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** Welcome back. The last time we spoke was around [*Samsung Rising*](https://geoffreycain.net/samsung-rising/?ref=analysepodcast.com), quite a while ago. Quick check before we dive into the new book: what have you been working on, and what pulled you from Korean chaebols back to Silicon Valley? **Geoffrey Cain:** So much. It's been the last five years. The book came out in 2020, right during the pandemic. Here's the interesting part. I was writing about the Korean chaebols. I had been in Korea for a long time. I had studied the Korean language, wrote [*Samsung Rising*](https://geoffreycain.net/samsung-rising/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and the book was about the rise of a nation — South Korea — not just Samsung, and how the company was so involved in nation-building products. One of the things we often forget is that South Korea used to be one of the poorest countries in the world, poorer than many Sub-Saharan African countries today. It's one of the greatest economic miracles the world has ever seen. I wanted to help tell that story from an outsider's perspective — to understand how did Samsung help make that happen? There's another side of the legacy: the government and the corporation were very tightly knit together, and that led to a lot of scandals. The chairman had spent some time in prison. It is what it is. It's just how business has worked there for many decades. But the pandemic happened, and across the world, especially in the United States and Europe, there were major shortages of everything industrial, anything that was manufactured. Immediately the lessons of that book became clear to me. I thought I was writing about a Korean chaebol, but what I was actually writing about is how do you create an industrial base? How do you create industry that supports national wellbeing, supports the economy, supports healthcare, ensures that supply chains are working? That's one of the biggest lessons coming away from the Korean miracle, and from the Japanese economic miracle too. There are other countries we can get into that are similar, but I was really focused on those two. To answer your question: I returned to the United States. I'm from Chicago originally, and I spent some time working in government. I was at the US House of Representatives. I was an advisor on technology policy, working on many of the bills and legislation related to supply chains, sanctions, semiconductors. I was using what I had learned in Asia and trying to apply it to the American context — trying to show our leaders how to build a healthy economy, industry, supply chain. One of the big problems in recent American history is the de-industrialisation of the US, especially the Heartland. The pandemic made that clear. A lot of those shortages, economic chaos, and inflation came from this exact problem. I used *Samsung Rising* as a kind of template for how to rebuild some of that industry at home. **Bernard Leong:** Very interestingly, just this week, Samsung just reached a one trillion market capitalisation, all due to semiconductors. I'm going to go straight into the main subject of the day, which is your new book, *Steve Jobs in Exile*. Let's start from the central claim. The standard telling treats 1985 to 1997 as a footnote, a wilderness walk before the real story resumes. You're inverting that — saying exile isn't a detour, it's the cause. Walk me through how you arrived at that thesis. What was the moment in the research when you knew the missing piece was the right frame, not just another biography? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/05/steve-job-in-exile.webp) **Geoffrey Cain:** Going into it, I was a little taken aback by the sheer amount of material that's already been written about Steve Jobs. I knew it was going to be a challenging project from the start, but very quickly, as I dived into the materials, I realised this side of the Steve Jobs story is the one aspect of him that hasn't been told before. The sheer amount of materials proved me wrong myself. There's so much more out there that hasn't even been studied yet, that no one's gone through. I found archives everywhere — private archives in people's homes, the former colleagues of Steve Jobs, and also public archives at places like Carnegie Mellon University, a major computer science centre, and Stanford University, which has an Apple archive. As I was going through all this material, I was blown away. I thought, "Wait a second. I thought the story of Steve Jobs has been told. I thought we all know this story." But I would go through these old letters he wrote, emails. I found a lot of old private videos people had recorded of him that have never been put on YouTube. They haven't been released anywhere. They all showed a side of Steve Jobs different from the person we know. The Steve we all think of is the man in the turtleneck who stands up on the brilliant stage, the Apple logo behind him, holding up the iPhone, announcing how he's going to change the world. That's the Steve Jobs we all love. We see him as the creator and visionary of so much modern technology, and he turned Apple into the major company it is today. But this side of Steve Jobs is before all that. This is before he returned to Apple, when he hit rock bottom. He was starting a company called NeXT Computer. He had recently been pushed out of Apple in 1985\. He co-founded Apple, had a power struggle with the CEO, John Sculley, ended up leaving and starting NeXT Computer. The goal was to create an advanced computer for university research departments and laboratories, and intelligence agencies too. This was a computer that wasn't selling. It was too advanced for the market. It was a great machine, but the market just didn't want it. Steve Jobs failed. These were his years of failure. Eight years after he founded the business, he was about two to three years away from personal bankruptcy. The people who knew him best said he had about $100 to $150 million in the bank, which is a lot of money. But when you're Steve Jobs, he was investing his own money to keep this failing company moving. It was not a public company. He didn't have a lot of investment capital. With that amount of money in the bank, he was actually fearful that within two to three years he would be personally bankrupt. This was a moment of terror for him — financial terror. Many of his co-founders were leaving him. His top executives, people he had worked with for years, didn't want to be with him anymore. The media — *Fortune* magazine, for example — had called him a snake oil salesman. He was seen as a scammer. His products weren't working. This is not what you think when you think of Steve Jobs. We all think he was brilliant, a genius. But what is the lesson here? Here's what I learned. The successes we see in the world — for every iPhone there is, for every SpaceX rocket — there are perhaps dozens or maybe even hundreds of failures behind that we don't see. The wilderness, as they call it, is the greatest moment in the lives of many founders. It's the wilderness we all have to go through before we can achieve greatness, and that wilderness is where we learn what it takes to really succeed. If we don't go through that, we don't learn those lessons. It's a moment we all have to understand and treasure and learn from. **Bernard Leong:** One big criticism of Walter Isaacson's book, the most well-known biography of Steve Jobs, is that the entire wilderness period was treated very much like a footnote. It doesn't tell exactly what happened during the NeXT and Pixar era. Your book starts with the May 1985 board meeting — Jobs at the table, voice trembling, then exiled into an empty project team. It's a deeply vulnerable image of someone the world remembers as the wonder kid. Why start the book there, and what does the audience need to understand about this specific moment to follow the arc you're tracing in the book? **Geoffrey Cain:** This is a good question about how to craft a biography. I did not want to set out and write a biography of Steve Jobs from start to finish. That story has been told so many times. The story of Apple has been told. I didn't have much to contribute. That's where I saw there wasn't much new material. The interviews have been finished, the archives have been gone through. There's nothing I can possibly add that would enlighten readers with something new, especially about Steve Jobs, who is so well known. I decided, instead of starting with the start of Apple in 1977, to move the clock forward and start in 1985\. Spring 1985 was when Steve Jobs was just out of the height of his fame. A year earlier, he had released the Macintosh computer, which was his biggest early success. It wasn't really a commercial success — it didn't actually sell that well — but it's what put him on the map as a visionary. The problem is that since it didn't sell that much, Apple was starting to enter a crisis. Inventories were piling up. They weren't selling enough computers. Costs were very high. They had to lay off many people for the first time in their history, and they closed some factories. This was the source of enormous tension between Steve Jobs and John Sculley, Apple's CEO. We tend not to remember that. We tend to think Steve was the CEO of Apple, but that's actually not the case. He was the head of the Macintosh unit, so he was tasked with creating the Macintosh. Steve saw himself as the heart and soul of Apple. It was the company he co-founded, and he did not appreciate John Sculley criticising his work or trying to assert control. He believed the Macintosh was his. Steve was also extremely difficult to manage. We all know that about him. He would throw tantrums, yell at people, overstep his authority. A lot of people at Apple — something we also don't remember — didn't like working with him. They went to John Sculley and said, "You have to get Steve Jobs under control because he is just ruining our work." I started here because this is the moment when Steve Jobs is just beginning his descent into the pit he's going to go into. This is the moment when his life starts to unravel. I had to start there because I had to raise the curtain and show how he got to this point. Once things started going south, Steve tried to orchestrate a coup d'état against John Sculley, tried to have him ousted as CEO. The plot backfired. Nobody was going to back him because he actually wasn't well-liked at that point. In the end, the board decided to exile Steve into a different unit. He was given a powerless unit, and he was sent off on his way. Steve decided to resign. He just couldn't handle it. He felt he had been betrayed by the board, by John Sculley, and he said, "I'm going to take five talented Apple employees and I'm going to go and found my new company, NeXT Computer." That's where the core of the book starts. **Bernard Leong:** NeXT was founded on the idea of an interpersonal computer — research-grade workstation with consumer product elegance, aimed at higher education. I still remember the first NeXT units I saw in Singapore. From 40 years out, it looks like Jobs was solving a problem the market hadn't articulated yet. Was he early, or was he wrong about what universities actually needed? There was also the famous Silicon Graphics, SGI, during that period. **Geoffrey Cain:** It was both, actually. There's no clear answer to that one. He was very early to the market. He wanted to use the most advanced technology available to consumers. What he was saying is that he wanted university students to be able to cure cancer in their dorm rooms with this computer. He wanted the most advanced artificial intelligence of the 1980s. This is Steve Jobs 40 years ago thinking about AI, and now it's a major technology. He wanted to have the most advanced optical drive that was available. But the problem with using all these new technologies for the age was that the price kept going up, and his customers — which were universities — told him the computer had to be under $3,000\. Universities are big bureaucratic institutions and their budgets are set. They're not businesses. They can't negotiate on price with Steve Jobs. In the end, the computer was so far ahead of its time that the price went up to around $10,000 with all the add-ons. The customers did not materialise, and the computer failed. It really is a tragedy because the computer — it was called The Cube — was shaped like a beautiful cube, literally a cube, with this exotic magnesium alloy. Nothing like a computer that exists now or at the time. It really was a work of art. It was gorgeous, and it really was cutting edge, but a lot of the tech just didn't work well because it was so far ahead. It wasn't ready for the market. His optical drive that he loved — that was the thing of the future for him — kept breaking down on people. The computer itself became a disaster. It was innovative, it was smart, but it was just not working and it was too expensive. In the end, he had to close down the computer business at NeXT Computer. But here's the catch. Steve has this thing called the reality distortion field. He can convince anybody, and himself, of anything. That was his master talent. Because of that, he was having trouble stepping outside of the reality distortion field. He had to look at things with clean eyes, look objectively. What was really the big innovation at NeXT Computer was the software he was developing. He just didn't quite see it at the time. He was one of the first people to introduce a revolution called object-oriented programming — the style of software development that exists today. If you open your iPhone and look at the icons and the operating system, the drag and drop and all that — if you've ever made an app, you're probably using object-oriented programming. That's the dominant thing today, and he was doing this 40 years ago, just starting it. This was where his big innovation was, and this is what his customers told him. They said, "We want this from you because this software is so advanced, it's going to lead to massive innovations in finance, in healthcare, in AI, in government intelligence work." The computer was so advanced with satellite imagery, things you could only dream of in the 1980s. There he was, the first guy with this computer. But Steve was so in love with his computer, with the hardware, that he would not see the software. He wouldn't see what the customers actually wanted. It was his big mistake — clinging, trying to keep control over this beautiful computer, so deeply entrenched, that he just loved it and would not abandon it. This was his undoing in the end. **Bernard Leong:** Part of the story is the Fremont factory, one of the more painful chapters — a highly automated, beautifully designed plant building a machine the target market couldn't afford. Looking back, what would the Jobs of 1986 have done differently with the wisdom of the Jobs of 1997, when Apple was almost going to collapse? Where does that line sit in your reading between visionary ambition and engineering overreach? I will get back to the OS later because I think that's the one big decision he made later that was very useful. **Geoffrey Cain:** The Steve Jobs of 1997 who returned to Apple was not the same person as the Steve Jobs of 1985 who was pushed out of Apple. For readers who aren't familiar with the story, Apple acquired his company, NeXT Computer, for the software — for the operating system actually — and brought him back. He ended up becoming the CEO in the year 2000, and he saved Apple from bankruptcy and released the iPod, the iPhone, the iMac. The rest is history. We all know what happens after that. Apple is in our lives every day now. How did Steve do that? The Steve who returned to Apple and saved it was a much more pragmatic and even modest Steve. We don't associate Steve Jobs with modesty and pragmatism, but he had learned to build a team, to trust his people. He saw that he had the best talent in the industry, so he learned to manage them and to work with their talents instead of trying to command and control them. He learned to listen to what customers wanted. He realised that building a great machine wasn't just about his vision and his brilliance and showing the world how great he was. It wasn't about changing history either. He even admitted at one point that he realised technology does not change the world. It just makes certain things easier. Once he had that change of perspective, he was able to go from being this brilliant boy genius who was just a brat and hard to work with, to a tempered leader who knew how to build and lead a company. There's a vast difference between those two. We see Steve Jobs, the brilliant visionary of the younger years, become Steve Jobs the wise, older business executive of his later years. This is what allowed things like the iPhone to happen. The iPhone is such a great example because Steve is not just making a beautiful device — he's making something practical, pragmatically useful for regular people. He's not telling you, "Here's a $5,000 phone with every beautiful technology I can cram in." He's saying, "Here's a simple smartphone I'm going to sell you, and the price is reasonable. You pick it up, you open it, you use it, and that's it. It works." If Steve had tried to do this stuff at NeXT Computer, he would have failed because his ideas were just too different. He hadn't developed enough yet. At NeXT Computer, he kept trying to show people, "I'm smart. This is what I made. I'm very smart. Buy my computer." But it's not about Steve. It's about what the world needs from Steve, and that's where the lesson was for him. **Bernard Leong:** Silicon Valley has a pretty much settled version of Steve Jobs's story — the genius was always there, NeXT was the detour, Pixar was the lucky bet. From your sources, the meeting footage, the private documents, all the NeXT veterans you spoke to, what's the most counter-intuitive lesson you came away with about that missing wilderness decade? Something that runs against what even Apple insiders still believe. Was there a specific scene or interview where the lesson crystallised for you? **Geoffrey Cain:** Yes. The lesson where it crystallised — there are some scenes, but I think the most powerful one that crystallises the lessons would be when the NeXT Computer hardware division collapses. This is the most dramatic moment in the book. This is the moment when Steve is at the lowest point of his entire career, when he might be written out of history. What I found so interesting about researching the book is that there are so many decision points Steve and his executives ran into. It was fascinating to write because I could see that if he had made any decision slightly differently, or if things had played out just a little differently than how they did, all of technology today would be different. The whole universe of technology would not exist. There would probably be no iPhone. Apple would have gone out of business. There would be no Apple. We would be using IBM smartphones now, loaded with [NeXTstep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP?ref=analysepodcast.com), the operating system made by Steve Jobs, because he had a big deal with IBM that he was pursuing and then he blew it up. It made me realise the importance of the decisions we make in life and in careers. Every decision adds up and opens the door to many other possibilities. Even the smallest decisions you make can wildly change your life — like the butterfly flapping its wings, it can ripple out and change life and change the world in ways we can't imagine down the road. That's the takeaway. When I look at the iPhone now, when I look at Apple products now, I see them differently because I think, "Wait a second, what if Steve Jobs had not returned to Apple? What would this thing look like? This would not even exist." That's just how profound the ability to use your decisions really is. **Bernard Leong:** After thinking through the things you talk about in the book, it also reminds me of the first decision he made when he went back to Apple — to do the deal with Microsoft that saved the company. I want to go back to the 1989 IBM licensing deal for NeXTstep, which is one of the closest things to a hinge moment in the book. He tried to hold out for more money, and then Ken Aquino, the executive from IBM, stopped returning calls, and the whole enterprise platform play collapsed. Looking back, was that a failure of negotiation, a failure of self-awareness, or maybe just a structural mismatch between NeXT and IBM's timeline? There also seem to be some lessons he took from that specific moment into when he went back to Apple to negotiate with Bill Gates. It feels like there are mirror things he tried not to do again. **Geoffrey Cain:** A lot of corrections, self-corrections that he made. Ultimately it was a failure of ego. Ego was the base of it, and the failure of his ego is what rippled out into these other aspects. It became the mismatch of the IBM and the NeXT culture. It became the fighting that happened. Ultimately it came down to the fact that Steve Jobs was trying to protect his massive ego, and he could not envision himself doing business with IBM, the company he hated. There's a famous photo of Steve, the rebel at Apple, giving the middle finger to the IBM logo. He had this opportunity open — IBM was going to license his operating system NeXTstep on its machines, which is massive. We don't always remember IBM today; it's an older company now. But back then it was the biggest computer maker in the world. This is so counter-intuitive to Steve because he wants total control over the hardware and software ecosystem. For him to take his software and put it on somebody else's machine, especially a big bureaucratic corporation like IBM, is not what he's willing to do. But that was the best option available to him, and he didn't quite realise it at the time. He thought he would find other ways. He thought he was a smart visionary, so he could figure this out. There is really a big lesson here in not understanding the limits of total control. This is what he ran into. He didn't realise at the time that having total control over your system requires enormous scale — enormous scale and resources, money, capital, teams. It takes years and years to build that level of scale, what Apple got later with its devices. By going head-to-head with IBM and trying to fight with IBM, he was playing a game of chicken, and he lost in the end because IBM is a major company and they have lots of options. Hate to break it to you, Steve Jobs, but in the year 1988, you were not as cool as you used to be, and IBM is going to drop you like a hat and go to somebody else if you're being too difficult. That's what happened. There's a lesson for a lot of founders out there — *you do have to make concessions in a negotiation. You cannot overplay your hand. You have to realise your self-awareness, where you stand in the world. If there's a bigger player than you, you cannot go head-to-head with a bigger player and expect to win*. It's just the reality. **Bernard Leong:** A good useful frame for even thinking about platform history is to look through the lens of your book. Companies that survive often do so by abandoning the product category they were founded on. Think about Netflix exiting DVDs. Slack dropping Glitch. AWS turning Amazon's infrastructure into a business that became AWS. NeXT did exactly the same thing — gave up on hardware and became a software company, with the OS eventually returning to Apple as macOS. Does that frame hold for NeXT, or does it understate something specific about what Steve Jobs did? To confess, I have never used a Windows machine since 1995\. I was living on Linux for many years until I saw macOS, and I wasn't convinced until somebody opened up the Unix terminal. That was a shock for me. What's your thinking on that? **Geoffrey Cain:** The software story — NeXTstep, his brilliant operating system. Steve was so focused on the hardware side of the business. He really wanted to have that total control, and he did not want to unbundle his software from the machine and give it to other people. In the end, that's what people wanted from him, so he had to make that concession, and that was the only way he would survive. The operating system was the future. If you were standing in the year 1990 looking at NeXTstep, you might not realise it, but that was literally what was going to become the Apple OS later. He ported it over to Apple. If you were sitting there with a NeXT computer in 1990, you were looking 20 years in the future. You just didn't realise it. This shows the sheer vision of Steve Jobs, how far ahead of his time he was. We have to give him credit for this because he was just such a visionary. He could reach into the future and see exactly where tech was headed. That's a talent of his. Since he was so focused on the hardware, he kept making this one mistake — the thing you're working on right now might not be the thing that actually matters. Sometimes there's a lot of gold in any project, and it's not just technology. It could be anything in life. You're doing something, but the thing that actually matters, the thing that's really going to be valuable, might be the thing you're not focused on, and you just don't realise it. Steve would often talk about the concept, very inspired by Japanese philosophy: the beginner's mind. He studied Japanese Zen. The concept is that if you're really deep into your thoughts, deep into your project, you need to step back, clear the mind, and look at everything as a beginner would. The beginner's mind has the most possibilities. That's the famous phrase of the Zen Buddhist monk who said it. The master's mind has few possibilities. It is good to be a master — I'm not saying ignore mastery — but the master's mind has few possibilities. Steve was approaching from that perspective. He was a master of his technology craft, but that confined him in so many ways because he didn't realise the window to start a hardware company had closed. There was no more room. Apple, IBM, Compaq, Dell, and so forth were already dominating the computer market by then, and there just wasn't room for another NeXT — another platform separate from them. Either you had a Mac or you had a Windows PC. That was what was happening. If Steve had earlier on realised this, if he had stepped back and taken that beginner's mind perspective, everything would be different, and he would have been successful at a much younger age. It was that software he was refusing to port to other computers that people really wanted, because it was such a powerful leap ahead in the software development technology of the day. Especially if you were a big corporation, the revolution of the day was that corporations were developing their own custom apps for the first time. Today a custom app is nothing. But back then, if you were Disney or Temasek in Singapore, you needed a computer system across many departments, many executives, many thousands of employees, that functioned well and had apps specific to your company for productivity. Steve refused to see that, but those became his customers in the end — the companies. **Bernard Leong:** I want to take a different track during these wilderness years. I'm talking about Pixar. Pixar runs in parallel through the entire exile years. If you read [*Becoming Steve Jobs*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becoming%5FSteve%5FJobs?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Schlender and Tetzeli, their argument is essentially that Pixar is where he learned a different leadership style — hands-off, deferential to creative talent. You also have Ed Catmull in his book *Creativity, Inc.*, and doing the afterword as well. How do you reconcile the two crucibles? Is NeXT teaching him one thing and Pixar teaching him a different thing, or is it the same lesson coming from two different directions? **Geoffrey Cain:** It's the same lesson from two directions, but it's the same lesson because the outcome was different, ironically. Pixar was the place where — the deal going in — Steve bought Pixar from George Lucas. George Lucas had originally created Pixar as part of his film work back in the 1980s, but he had an expensive divorce, so he had to sell Pixar at a fire sale. Steve got it for $5 million, which is nothing for Pixar. There were two co-founders of Pixar there who resisted him: [Ed Catmull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin%5FCatmull?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [John Lasseter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%5FLasseter?ref=analysepodcast.com), the two main people who stayed behind. They told Steve, "You are not allowed in creative meetings. That is the condition of you taking over Pixar." They knew Steve was extremely difficult to work with, and from his past work they knew he would go in and interfere and tear things up and tell people they were stupid. If he had been let into those creative meetings, he would have destroyed Pixar. That's how bad it was. The irony is that because he stepped away from Pixar creative work — he was not doing the storytelling, he was not involved in the films — he became the deal maker. He became the business executive. He would go represent Pixar in front of negotiations with Disney, which later acquired Pixar. That was where his strength was. Steve Jobs wasn't — we tend to think he was just good at everything, brilliant, so he was just good at what he did. But his actual talent was theatrics. He was great at standing up in front of a crowd, going into the negotiation, just so good at commanding the room and convincing people to buy this or sign this deal. Once he stepped into that role at Pixar, Pixar did great. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull went on to create *Toy Story*. Ed Catmull was the technologist behind the advances at Pixar. John Lasseter was the storytelling genius. We don't remember this, but Steve Jobs was not that wealthy in the 1990s. It was actually the release of *Toy Story* and then the IPO right after of Pixar that made him a billionaire. If it were not for Pixar, all this would have not happened, and he would have been forgotten from history. Pixar is what gave him the money he needed to get leverage. Once he had that leverage, he realised this, and Steve would talk about this. Money — you don't live for money, but money is a tool. It's something you can use in negotiations. You can use it as a lever if you need to get something done. Steve didn't care about money in the sense of wanting to get a yacht and live in a mansion. That wasn't his thing. Once he got that leverage, then it was much smoother sailing going out, because he wanted to stay at Pixar. He had the option to go back to Apple. He didn't have to. He wasn't desperate. Ultimately, it allowed him to reassert control, and he was not backed into a corner anymore like he was at NeXT Computer. **Bernard Leong:** The interesting thread is also the role of the people around Jobs. You have Avie Tevanian on the OS side, Bud Tribble on the engineering side, and Dan'l Lewin on the go-to-market and economic side at Pixar. These are the people who taught him how to delegate. Was Jobs also deliberately surrounding himself with people who would push back, or did he learn it the hard way through people who stayed and people who left during this wilderness period? **Geoffrey Cain:** He did learn the hard way, because all of his co-founders at NeXT left him. They were all in it together. There were five of them who fled Apple. They had this mutiny at Apple against the CEO, John Sculley. They left, and they were sued by Apple. Two of them — Steve Jobs and his hardware engineer Rich Page — were personally sued by Apple. Apple did not sue the company, which is really unusual. They were trying to bully Steve and Rich Page into not making this new computer. At NeXT Computer, that created a feeling of being in the trenches together. They were fighting. They were soldiers out in the field. It was a very tight-knit group. But Steve became so unmanageable and difficult that in the end they left him. It was a very hard pill to swallow for Steve because his closest people did not want to work with him anymore. Yes, Steve learned the hard way. The thing he kept learning over these years was that to succeed, he needed to hire people who had a force of personality — people who would not cower down to him. He wanted people who would stand up to him and push back against him. He believed that's how you arrived at the best idea. A lot of people got this part wrong about Steve Jobs. They would go into NeXT Computer or Apple back in the day and assume Steve is the boss, therefore I should just do what Steve says. If he says do it this way, they do it this way. But no — when Steve was commanding the room, he wanted people to fight him. If Steve said, "This idea is a bad idea," he didn't want you to agree. He wanted you to tell him why it was a good idea. The force of personality, the tug of war, the conflict — that is actually what Steve valued. People thought it was him being a narcissist or an egomaniac and being difficult, but the truth is he was trying to get you to fight back against him, and if you fought back against him, that's how you got into his good graces. **Bernard Leong:** What is one thing you know about the NeXT and Pixar years from the documents, the footage, and the people who lived it that very few people do — something that fundamentally changes how people should understand what was happening about Steve Jobs inside these companies? **Geoffrey Cain:** The fundamental thing to understand is that Steve was really in the wilderness. He was going through a transformation, a very difficult transformation, but one that was necessary. The key takeaway here is that any great success you look at in the world — whether it is the iPhone, or a president — there are many examples in history. I've studied a lot of biographies as I was writing this book. In the American context, there is Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, two great presidents who went through the wilderness themselves, and they later said that their failures were actually what turned them into leaders. In the case of Europe, there's Winston Churchill, who was in the wilderness and failed. I'm not an expert in Singaporean history, but I would venture to guess that Lee Kuan Yew might have gone through this at some point. I'm sure he was not the winner from the outset, right? He was somebody who had to earn his position. I could see this in a lot of places. Sony — Akio Morita, one of my favourite founders. I love Sony, I love the story of Akio Morita, how he came out of the devastation of World War II. Tokyo was literally burned down, and he managed to build Sony from that. Not anybody can walk into the wreckage of war and create one of the most successful companies ever in history. These are the kinds of stories — it's not just Steve Jobs. It just happens to be that I was writing about Steve Jobs. But it's a universal story that appears across time, across places. It appears in literature, in ancient mythology. It appears in film — in *Star Wars*, for example. There's always a middle section where the hero is cast out and must fight his demons and then return older and wiser. That's what Steve Jobs went through. It's a beautiful story. It's a hard story, but it's beautiful in the profound nature of it. **Bernard Leong:** Take all three books and put them on a table. I haven't read your book yet, but I will, because it's already on my pre-order list. Walter Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs is really consistent across time — same intensity, same age, same flaws. Schlender and Tetzeli's *Becoming Steve Jobs* is about evolving from Steve 1.0 to 2.0, but the mechanism is soft — Pixar mellowed him, time also helped shape him before he returned to Apple. The story, from reading some of the interviews you've given and understanding the perspective of our conversation so far, is that your interpretation of Steve Jobs in the wilderness is actually his forge. Failure as a specific causal mechanism that produces him as a different person before he goes back to Apple and creates all those legendary products we talk about today. Isaacson, Schlender and Tetzeli, take the story in their own perspectives. What in your evidence base lets you make a much more interesting claim in this place compared to the other authors who interpreted the Steve Jobs story very differently? **Geoffrey Cain:** I'm honoured to hear you say that. There are lots of books about Steve Jobs, and I've read all of them. They're all great. They all have their own aspect of Steve Jobs they look at. Every writer has their own style, and we're all different. We have our own personalities that go into the page, the way we write. In my particular case, especially now that I'm getting older — when I was younger I was different — I try to stay out of the page. I don't want to be seen. When readers are going through it, I don't want them to be reading my book and thinking, "Oh, this is a book written by Jeff Cain." I want them to be thinking, "Oh, this is a book about Steve Jobs." When I write, I try to allow the page to breathe. In the same way that if you open a nice wine, you have to let it decant. You have to let it sit out, 30 minutes to two hours. By the way, I am a sommelier, so I use a lot of wine comparisons. You have to let it sit. You have to let the tannins aerate, it has to kind of ripen. It opens up the flavour. Same for a lot of food — you have to allow it to open. Artwork — the best artists step back from their painting in the middle of it and take it all in before going into every detail. When I was writing this book, I removed myself and only allowed the evidence, the quotes, and the documents to speak for themselves. I did not tell readers at all what to think because I thought the stories should be obvious. Read this story about Steve Jobs and make up your own mind. If I have succeeded at my task, you will have made up your own mind about Steve Jobs. These are the hardest years of his life, and it's hard to read because he's really suffering. He's really having a hard time. But being able to see the reasons, the purpose of the hard times, to see what comes out of them at the other end of the tunnel — that's really the important part here. **Bernard Leong:** Tim Cook has also criticised Isaacson's book as a disservice to Steve. Does your account vindicate that criticism or complicate it when you examine his life from a different perspective? **Geoffrey Cain:** Humans are complicated creatures, and we all have different sides to ourselves. To the point of other books about Steve Jobs — NeXT Computer has always long been seen as a failure. If you're looking at the list of priorities and you're writing a book, you only have X number of pages, and you have to tell the whole story in those numbers of pages. The priorities are going to be Apple and Pixar for Steve Jobs, and the story of his family, his daughter. There are lots of things to write about with Steve Jobs. It's understandable that a lot of books out there have tended not to look at NeXT as closely because it's kind of the ugly duckling of the Steve Jobs story. But what I found — that's a blessing — is that the story of Steve Jobs was not complete. There was still something more to tell, and once I went into those archives and started doing my interviews, it became so obvious that this was a story that needed to be told. **Bernard Leong:** You have unprecedented access to the unbroadcast footage of the NeXT meetings — a kind of artifact that doesn't really exist for business biographies. Walk us through a specific scene from that footage that you couldn't have reconstructed from any other source. What does Jobs in an unguarded internal meeting actually look like? After watching it, how did it change your perspective for when you tell the story from your lens? **Geoffrey Cain:** When I watched those videos — Steve is theatrical. He's still got that theatre, and he's still able to give a great presentation in the conference room. But I saw the cracks. He would be speaking to his sales force, for example, and I saw that — this was already at the point where NeXT was failing — he was going in and saying things he did not know to be true. I thought that was the most interesting part about him. I could see the balance sheets. I had all the archives, so I could see how much money they were actually making. They were selling anywhere from 20 to 100 computers a month at that point. Nothing. Steve goes in, ignores all that, and just says things he doesn't know are true. He's not quite lying, but he was always really good at fudging — manipulating the real story. It was interesting because I would also watch videos of him from earlier years at Apple. I watched everything, stuff on YouTube too. He was definitely mellower during this time at NeXT. I could see the uncertainty wearing down at him. He didn't have quite the same bravado. He just wasn't quite the same person. He really was changing. **Bernard Leong:** One thing you mentioned before we had this podcast conversation — a trait that hasn't really shown up in most of Steve Jobs's biographies — is his deep admiration of Japanese management and design philosophy. Even Isaacson and Schlender didn't pull on that much. Where does the admiration come from in his biography, and what specifically did he learn from Japan operationally, aesthetically, and philosophically? How does it show up in NeXT and then in Apple's second inning? I always like to make this comment about Apple — Apple is actually like a Japanese company, because very few American companies value engineers the very different way Apple values them. It has always felt to me Apple is actually Japanese — it just happens to be an American company pretending to be Japanese. **Geoffrey Cain:** The Japanese story, the influences on Steve Jobs, is one of the areas where I actually gathered a lot of material and a lot of interviews. But I couldn't fit it all into the book. That's perhaps for another book one day, or maybe an article or a podcast. Who knows? Steve Jobs, from his youngest years, was always influenced by Japan. From youth, from being at Reed College. He travelled to Japan when he was young. I was talking to an executive who was with him in Japan. There was one point where he went to a Zen monastery and got one of the bricks. For people not familiar with Japan, there's a tradition of writing calligraphy on bricks. He had learned to write the calligraphy for Mac, and he wrote it on one of those bricks and put it in the Zen monastery — a kind of blessing for the computer he was going to release. He was always so influenced by the minimalism, the design. That also led him to be influenced by Sony. I met an executive from Apple who travelled with him to Sony. The year was 1983\. He met his hero, Akio Morita. Akio Morita was the co-founder of Sony, and Steve just adored him. He fell in love with the Sony Walkman, the old tape player. Japanese craftsmanship was very aligned with Steve Jobs's values because Steve valued simplicity, and he valued the miniaturisation of items. What Sony really did — their big innovation — was taking the stereos of the age, these giant stereo players, and Akio Morita was famously on an overnight flight to, I think, Los Angeles. He wanted a way to play music, and that's one of the innovations that allowed him to build the Walkman — to miniaturise the stereo into a little tape player. It's gorgeous. You still look at those Walkmans and the design is gorgeous. They still look good today. Steve really valued the full integration of design, hardware, software. He didn't want any one of these parts to stick out. He didn't want to put a phone in front of you where the software was different from the hardware. He wanted it to be seamless and gorgeous. That's what he took from Sony — studying their processes, studying the Walkman. At one point, he proposed to Apple employees, inspired by Sony — they had company uniforms back in the day, a Japanese tradition — Steve wanted to do that at Apple. The employees rebelled against that. They said, "We're not going to wear uniforms." That just shows how deeply ingrained the Japanese management philosophy is with Steve. **Bernard Leong:** He carried the essence without the dating. The standard turtleneck is one example. I want to take it off from Steve into the current age. Apple is 50 years old this year. I have also been an Apple fanboy for many, many years, taking all the products into every part of my life. You wrote a column recently in *The Spectator* earlier this year arguing that Apple's new CEO will play it safe — I think that's John Ternus — that the company in 2026 will drift toward execution over reinvention. If the Steve Jobs in the wilderness era, in the exile era, were to walk into Apple Park today, what would he see that would need killing? Does your book end up implicitly being a critique of the current Apple, or a defence of it? **Geoffrey Cain:** I think he would be proud of Apple today. I don't think he would dislike it. He would be proud of what Tim Cook has accomplished as a supply chain expert. Tim Cook basically took Apple, after the iPhone — when Steve died, he became CEO — and what he's famous for is building a global supply chain that could sustain and continue to grow Apple. You have to remember just how complex all these devices are. The iPhone, for its time, might be the most complicated device ever created by humankind at the time. The sheer number of components — the semiconductor, the display — there's so much that goes in there and so much that can go wrong. When they do go wrong, it's not good. In the case of Samsung, the phones started catching fire when they tried to cram in too many features. It's a very delicate product that relies on vast, complicated supply chains from all over the world. There's another good book, [*Apple in China*](https://www.analysepodcast.com/how-apple-accidentally-built-chinas-tech-superpower-and-cant-escape-with-patrick-mcgee/), that goes into this, by Patrick McGee. **Bernard Leong:** He was on the show as well. **Geoffrey Cain:** Yeah, he's great. I love his book and I love his writing. When Steve passed that torch to [Tim Cook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim%5FCook?ref=analysepodcast.com), Tim did a great job of continuing to grow Apple, but he sacrificed innovation. There hasn't really been an iPhone moment in a long time. Now, with [John Ternus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%5FTernus?ref=analysepodcast.com) taking over in September, what's going to happen is Apple's just going to — he's been hired to preserve the line, preserve the success. I think Steve would be mostly okay with how things look now, but if he were around, he would still be concentrated on one big question mark for Apple: how do you integrate AI into Apple products? Most companies — OpenAI, Google — tend to make their AI products very loud. You know that it's AI. It says, "This is AI," and it gives you an AI summary. They're starting to introduce agents that can go out there and do things on your behalf, which is the next frontier. What Steve would want to do is find a way to integrate these new technologies. He might want to release an agentic iPhone. Instead of apps, maybe the iPhone would move to an agentic model where there are agents on there. You load an agent — it's the hotel reservation agent, and it'll make the reservation for you. But I don't think Steve would make it a big deal. It would be very much in the background. You'd open your iPhone and maybe you would still have all the icons there, and you don't quite realise they're agents. It's not in front of you. With his philosophy of perfect integration, he would want AI to be very quietly put in there. It's not Apple becoming an AI company. That's his model. **Bernard Leong:** The flip side of it is that Apple's been criticised for their bad rollout of AI and how they missed the entire AI era. They're going into a partnership with one of their frenemies, Google Gemini, which is going to be adapted into the next Siri. Do you think the partnership with Google Gemini is the next style of "swallow your pride and acquire what you can't build" move? Or is it a sign that Apple is just content to become the distribution layer for someone else's intelligence? The whole AI bubble could burst, and then they are the only ones untainted by it. They can go out and pick anyone if that situation happened. I spoke to Horace Dediu, who's pretty well known for analysing Apple privately, and he told me this is a position they walked themselves into by accident rather than really deliberately thought through. **Geoffrey Cain:** You're right. Apple has been criticised, and they have a big partnership with Google now. No, I don't think Steve would like that. That's not him. He would want to — he would probably scold Apple. This is all speculation. **Bernard Leong:** But they have kind of done exactly the chip thing, right? Taking off the Intel chip and waiting to try to do Apple silicon after 18 years of iteration. That would be what I think this move would look like for them. **Geoffrey Cain:** You're right. I think he would not favour the Google deal, and he would want to find a way to get ahead in AI and to release AI products that are more refined than the alternatives. I don't think he would be the first mover on AI, because you have to remember — with every product Steve released, the iPhone, the Macintosh, they were not the first movers. They were actually second movers. Other companies had already released their own smartphones, but he's the one who combines all the technologies and creates the leap forward — the easiest thing to use for regular people. He would call it the bicycle for the mind. That was his saying. That's what he would be doing with AI now. He'd be watching ChatGPT, Claude. I don't think he would like their software. I think he would see it as a little ugly and clunky. He would probably laugh at the way that it writes, because it's got the patterns it uses, the same patterns over and over. He would strive to make AI feel a lot more human-friendly. People are really scared of AI right now. They're going to lose their job. He would find a way to cut through that and to show people a friendly, helpful AI that's not going to replace you. It's the human promise that Steve Jobs is really good at. **Bernard Leong:** I'm actually surprised to hear you say that, because I find that Anthropic and Claude are actually much more aligned with how Apple designs products, when I look at the way they've been thinking about it. Ethos-wise closest, I always felt Tim Cook should just suck it up and pay them, and they would have been the preferred partner. Let's get back to John Ternus. Do you think he's the right person for the market moment, or might Apple risk the same situation that John Sculley fell into in the early 1990s? **Geoffrey Cain:** I don't think Apple's going anywhere. It is a $4 trillion company, so it will continue to succeed, but the success is going to look different. Apple is so integrated into our daily lives that it's still going to be there. A lot of people worldwide use iPhones. They tap into the train, the subway. They use FaceTime to call people. That's not going anywhere any time soon. But the question is — as that technology ages and newer technologies come out, especially with AI, what is Apple going to start to look like? If we were having this conversation in ten years, I would guess Apple is going to start to look like a company maybe like General Electric. That's a good example because Thomas Edison's company invented the light bulb. It's still massive. It's still very successful, but we don't really walk around asking questions about what GE is up to these days. It's not really the player. Every big company sort of becomes like that after a while. IBM has certainly become more like that. I think that's just the natural progression. Barring some other circumstance we can't see right now, Apple's going to slowly evolve into a General Electric. Yeah, we all have the iPhones. Maybe it's the year 2050, and we're still using some older version of this technology. Apple's still going to be making it, and Apple's still going to be there. **Bernard Leong:** For all that criticism about them missing AI, all Mac Minis are now three weeks in waiting because everybody wants to buy a Mac Mini to do open calls on it. The irony is they still have the best hardware. Coming back to this — if you look at your sources from NeXT, the veterans, the Lewins, Tevanians, and Tribbles, what would they say the right Apple CEO actually looks like? Does any of them map onto Ternus? **Geoffrey Cain:** Actually, I haven't had this conversation with a lot of people from NeXT, just because the announcement was so recent and I think people are still figuring out what this all means. But the general feeling among the people I've talked to is that things are fine. People are still betting on Apple's future. They don't see a crisis or a reason to be worried right now. It's hard to predict — technology can change fast, and it's hard to predict what would happen in the future. There seems to be a sense of, Apple is already successful. We don't have to change things right now. Let's just continue to ride the wave. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about the exile years, or about Jobs in general, or even about your book, *Steve Jobs in Exile*, but they don't? **Geoffrey Cain:** What should they be asking? That's a good question. The big thing they should be asking — this story applies to a lot of lives out there. The question, especially if you're a founder, entrepreneur, business executive, is: what is the purpose of this failure? We've all failed at some point. What is the purpose? What can I learn from NeXT Computer about how to deal with failure, and what is it showing me? Is this time for me to course correct? Have I been focused on the wrong things, or am I just not seeing something? A lot of humans — we have a psychological guard, a tendency. When something fails, we don't want to take responsibility for it. We want to blame some other circumstance. "Oh, it failed because there's something with the market this year. It failed because of that decision somebody made." It helps to always look at our role. Even if we're not the decision maker and something's not working, what is our role in perhaps helping make this happen, and what can we learn from it and do better in the future? That's really the question to be asking. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what does success mean for your book, *Steve Jobs in Exile*? What do you imagine the right reader closing the book and taking away as the one thing? I'm looking forward to reading the book. **Geoffrey Cain:** Thank you. The one takeaway — let's phrase it this way. Let's say a reader has just been fired from their job, laid off. That happens a lot these days. If they were having a conversation with Steve Jobs, he would probably tell them getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to them. Those are literally Steve's words. He said that in the [Stanford commencement speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&ref=analysepodcast.com), the viral one on YouTube. **Bernard Leong:** But what does success mean for your book then? **Geoffrey Cain:** Success for the book. Sorry, I diverged from the question actually. I don't measure success in sales or profit or anything. I would measure success as whether this gets people thinking. People finish the book, close it, and they see things in a new way. They start thinking about things differently. That's really my goal here. I'm not trying to tell people what to think. I just like to put something out in the world that makes that little ripple. Next time you're in a business meeting, or next time you're having a hard conversation with your spouse, hopefully there's another way of thinking about it. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you so much, Geoffrey, for coming on this time to talk about *Steve Jobs in Exile*. I really enjoyed the conversation. I wish you all the success, and thank you for spending the quality time with me to discuss this new book. It's a favourite topic of mine — reading all his biographies. In closing, two quick questions. Any recommendations that inspire you recently? **Geoffrey Cain:** Recommendations for books specifically? **Bernard Leong:** Anything. Books, movies, TV shows. **Geoffrey Cain:** Sure. I've been reading the book \[[Poor Charlie's Almanack](https://press.stripe.com/poor-charlies-almanack?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] by Charles Munger — I forget how to say his name — who died a few years ago. He was Warren Buffett's right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway. I've been reading his book that came out a couple of years ago from Stripe Press. I just find it full of wisdom. I read it and it's well-written, it's simple, easy to follow, and it's one of those things where it's not even just about business — it's just about life, and it's helpful as a guide. The other thing, in terms of storytelling: I've been watching the TV show [*The Pitt*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FPitt?ref=analysepodcast.com). It's a show on streaming about an emergency department at a hospital. I find the storytelling in that show to be a masterclass. It is just so well-written. I wish I had that level of talent that I could write a fictional show like that. I can't imagine the level of work and care that went into making that happen. **Bernard Leong:** Noah Wyle happens to be playing Steve Jobs at one point and showed up in the Apple keynote before. **Geoffrey Cain:** Yes, and you are right. **Bernard Leong:** Where can my audience find you and the book? Definitely very important. **Geoffrey Cain:** I'm on X — my handle is @jeffrey\_cain. That's my name. I'm on LinkedIn too, GCain. I have a website, jeffreycain.net. The other place you can find me — I'm now a regular contributor at *The Spectator*, the British magazine. I'm with the US edition, writing every two weeks now about technology, business, global geopolitics — another area I focus on. It's been a really fascinating time with everything going on in the world right now. **Bernard Leong:** It's quite interesting you covered the $1 trillion company, now it's the $4 trillion company. Maybe the next time will be something much more interesting. Geoffrey, all the best for your book. Definitely you can find this podcast anywhere — from YouTube to Spotify — and of course, subscribe to us. Thank you so much, and I look forward to your success with the book. **Geoffrey Cain:** Thank you, Bernard. Great to be here. [Steve Jobs in Exile with Geoffrey CainPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · May 27 · 1h 3m![](https://static.ghost.org/v5.0.0/images/link-icon.svg)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200bf-60-0826b778cfce552405dfa70b657b8b49736d2baaa3aaf92b06db36de92918413.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steve-jobs-in-exile-with-geoffrey-cain/id914868245?i=1000769884646&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/qmXZ-wsxaFM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steve-jobs-in-exile-with-geoffrey-cain/id914868245?i=1000769884646&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LfQhp6wgPiAl7XvhObu31?si=VvqTgOnkSmuiXv1efKrVOQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/steve-jobs-in-exile-pixar-next-apple-geoffrey-cain?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFv9sL8s?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/analysepod) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analysepodcast.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@analysepod?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) ### Inside Singapore's AI Bet for 2030 with Kiren Kumar URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/inside-singapores-ai-bet-for-2030-with-kiren-kumar/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:58.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Bernard Leong sits down with Kiren Kumar, Deputy Chief Executive of the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) Singapore, for a conversation on how Singapore is building trusted AI at national scale. Kiren traces IMDA's arc from the 2018 Model AI Governance Framework to the Agentic AI framework launched at Davos this year, the four AI missions — advanced manufacturing, finance, connectivity, and healthcare — anchoring the next strategic bound, and the programs moving enterprises from pilots to production. He argues the real blocker is leadership rather than policy, that trust is Singapore's enduring competitive moat, and that the country must shift from 10% productivity gains to 10X transformation. The conversation closes with a preview of ATx Summit 2026 and what great looks like for Singapore's AI economy by the early 2030s. --- "What would be amazing to see in Singapore is, number one, we have our large companies truly transforming themselves and becoming way bigger than they are today in the global competitive landscape—in manufacturing, in finance, in healthcare, and in connectivity. That's one. The second one is we are known globally as an economy where everybody in our workforce is AI-ready. Yeah, is AI fluent. The third thing I'm hoping to see is we have amazing AI native startups being born in our ecosystem, which are global in the niche areas that they can play in. We may not have the next OpenAI, but I'm hoping that we have a lot of new AI native technology companies that are developing products and services and solutions enabled by AI, powered by AI, transforming industries and creating a lot of growth." - Kiren Kumar **Profile: Kiren Kumar**, Deputy Chief Executive Officer at [Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) of Singapore](https://www.imda.gov.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiren-kumar-2478494/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and if there is one country whose approach to trusted AI deployment is being studied closely by governments and enterprises all around the world right now, it is my home country, Singapore. The conversation has moved past whether enterprises will adopt AI to whether the systems being deployed can be trusted, governed, and scaled across borders. The [Infocomm Media Development Authority](https://www.imda.gov.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com), or IMDA, has been at the centre of that challenge for nearly a decade — building the [Model AI Governance Framework](https://aiverifyfoundation.sg/resources/mgf-gen-ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com#proposed-model-governance-framework-for-generative-ai), [AI Verify](https://aiverifyfoundation.sg/ai-verify-foundation/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and the world's first model [AI governance framework for agentic AI](https://www.imda.gov.sg/-/media/imda/files/about/emerging-tech-and-research/artificial-intelligence/mgf-for-agentic-ai.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com), which was launched at Davos in January 2026. Today, as AI moves from pilots into the operating systems of economies, with the [ATx Summit 2026](https://atxsummit.asiatechxsg.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) about to convene four thousand global leaders in Singapore within the next week, the question of how Asia leads on trusted, deployable AI has never been sharper. With me today, Kiren Kumar, Deputy Chief Executive of IMDA, to discuss how Singapore is approaching trusted AI development, what it takes to move from AI exploration to real-world implementation, and how trust, governance, and interoperability are shaping AI growth across Asia. Kiren, welcome to the show. **Kiren Kumar:** Thank you, Bernard, for having me. Great seeing you again. **Bernard Leong:** I always like to start by asking about my guest's origin story. Tell me where you grew up, what shaped you in those formative years, and how your career journey unfolded. You joined [Economic Development Board](https://www.edb.gov.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (EDB) in 2001 with overseas postings in New York for the Americas, and then in Stockholm as the centre director for the Nordics and Russia, before becoming the Deputy Chief Executive of IMDA today. **Kiren Kumar:** Thank you so much for having me here. If I reflect on my journey, I was born and raised in Singapore, but I studied for my undergrad and my master's in the US. The year was 2001, during the dotcom fever in the Bay Area. I was at Stanford, and when I graduated, that was the time when the entire markets went down. Because I spent so much time in the US, and I am a technologist at heart and also by training, I was enamoured by what technology can do to society, to the economy, to the lives of people. We have seen how the digital economy has transformed globally over many decades now. When I graduated, I came back to EDB, and since then I spent about 20 years there, and the last six years at IMDA. If I summarise my career looking backwards, when I was there in the Bay Area, I had a vision. I had a mission. How do we make Singapore the tech hub of Asia? Therefore, if I look back at my career, everything I have done — from policies to infrastructure to industry development — has been all around the technology sector and growing Singapore as the tech hub we see today. Quite an exciting time. This is another turning point, another inflection point, that we are seeing with AI. The opportunities are tremendous, and I have never seen anything like it before. **Bernard Leong:** Given you have seen the dotcom boom and bust, then Web 2.0, mobile — what pulled you into thinking about Singapore's economic agency track in the first place? Was there a moment or person or experience that actually pointed you in that direction? **Kiren Kumar:** If I look back at my career, I have always been involved in the tech sector, and technology is a very profound enabler of growth for countries, for industries, and for individuals. While we were building the Singapore technology hub, we were working with the leaders of the world — from the Googles to the Alibabas — to attract them to invest in Singapore and grow our technology sector. We have also grown a very credible startup ecosystem in Singapore that we are quite proud of in Asia. The technology sector today is a big part of our digital economy. Fun fact: about five years ago, our digital economy was about 12%. Today it is 19% of our GDP, which means one out of every five dollars in our GDP is coming from the digital economy. But the profound aspect is that it is a horizontal enabler driving growth in every sector, every company. Of the 19%, about 12% comes from the non-tech sector, and the rest comes from the technology sector. The beautiful thing here is that the entire economy in Singapore is moving forward with digital enablement, with technology, with new business models, with new innovations. We are very happy with that. The second point: because we have built a credible technology sector, that has been a big enabler to drive the entire digital economy's growth. We have about 220,000 technology workforce in Singapore today building products and services for everyone — from startups to big tech companies to even large technology teams in DBS or a manufacturer. 60% of that workforce actually works in the non-technology sector, and 40% works in our technology sector. We are quite happy with the diversity we have built in our economy. I am excited about what AI brings for us to take our digital economy into the next lap. **Bernard Leong:** Looking back across the 25 years, across your experience with EDB and IMDA, across continents, and across the different technology cycles, what career lessons would you share with my audience? **Kiren Kumar:** I'll share one story. About 20 years ago, when I was a young officer at EDB, I was told to go to Stockholm. I was based there for three years, covering the Nordic markets — everything from Russia to Iceland and everything in between. In those days, the Googles of the world were Nokia and Ericsson. Those were my accounts, and I was working very hard to get them to invest in Singapore and build capabilities here to drive their global business. Where are they today? Nokia and Ericsson used to be at the top, and then Apple came, Google came, and many others came. One learning lesson for me was that technology moves really fast, and it is even moving faster today. Companies that are leading yesterday may not lead in the future. But what is important for an economy to build is capability in our people. Companies will come and go, but the capabilities only grow. We are hoping that becomes the secret sauce of how we build our digital economy — working with leading companies from around the world to put investments in Singapore, building differentiated capabilities to drive growth. That model continues, but the clock speed has become a lot faster. **Bernard Leong:** If you were to give a 25-year-old Kiren about to start at EDB today one piece of advice, given the age of AI has changed so much of where we are going — what would it be? **Kiren Kumar:** If I were to rewind the clock and redo my entire career, the advice I would give myself is that the first job anyone coming out of school should have — this is my own personal view — is to work in a startup or start a company. That really teaches you how to use technology, build a business model, drive product and growth. In that journey, you actually learn a lot. After that, if you become a successful entrepreneur, or go and work for a big tech company, or work for the government, your worldview, your mental model, will be very global, very technology-grounded. You can drive a lot of innovations regardless of where you go in your career after that. If I were to do it all over again, I would build a startup. **Bernard Leong:** So, we get to the main subject of the day. I want to talk about AI deployment across enterprises, governance, and maybe the upcoming ATx Summit as well. But before we begin, I have to help the audience all over the world. Can you give a comprehensive overview of the Infocomm Media Development Authority, or IMDA, Singapore — what are its core functions and mandate? **Kiren Kumar:** The Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore — we like to call ourselves the architects of Singapore's digital future. We drive the economy and society for the digital future of Singapore. We have four key roles that we undertake to hit that mission. First, we are a regulator of the telecommunication sector, the infrastructure in Singapore, and personal data protection. That regulatory function is a big role we play. The second big role is industry development. How do we grow the tech sector together with our partners in government and the industry? The third is how we drive digitalisation across the entire economy — from SMEs to large companies to mid-stack companies — and drive workforce development across the ecosystem for tech. The last is how we build an international coalition around the world for technology investments, governance, and industry development. We play multiple roles. We have many different mandates in one organisation. But the summary is that we are architects of Singapore's digital future, which is why we are driving a big part of Singapore's National AI Strategy. The second version was launched in 2023, and we are working on four key aspects of that strategy. First, how do we have robust connectivity infrastructure — everything from data centres to submarine cables to satellites and telco infrastructure — to drive and enable the next bound of AI innovations? The second big thing we are driving is digitalisation of the entire economy. The third is talent development across the entire ecosystem with AI. The last is how we have robust governance in place so that we can drive AI for public good in a responsible way. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/05/DSC00924.jpeg) The interview which took place in Poddster Singapore: Bernard Leong and Kiren Kumar **Bernard Leong:** The National AI Strategy 2.0 came out about three years ago. Earlier this year you launched the Agentic AI Governance Framework in January 2026 at Davos. Whenever I am teaching in the Middle East — the UAE government, the Saudi Arabia government — Singapore is always seen to have built what is arguably the world's most coherent trusted AI architecture, from the Model AI Governance Framework in 2019, to AI Verify, to the Global AI Assurance Pilot, and now to the Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI. From where you sit at IMDA, how is Singapore approaching trusted AI deployment, and what makes the Singapore approach distinctive from other countries around the world? **Kiren Kumar:** AI is at a very nascent stage, and the technology is evolving extremely fast. Model capabilities are increasing dramatically every few months — what you see with what Claude is doing, OpenAI is doing, Mistral, and many others. The philosophy we have taken — but before I go there — Singapore's brand globally, in the global economy and for any industry, has always been about trust. We are known as a trusted location, whether in aerospace, in pharmaceuticals, in semiconductors, and now also in AI. That is the starting point, and we think that is one huge advantage Singapore has in the world of AI. We launched our very first Model AI Governance Framework at Davos in 2018\. This was pre-GenAI. This was when our first AI strategy was in play, starting from 2017\. Ever since then, GenAI came about, and technology is evolving so fast. Our fundamental approach: there are countries that regulate technology, and there are countries that do not regulate technology. Our approach has been — how do we co-create with industry relevant model governance frameworks, tools, and platforms so that we can co-create on the policy, technology, and business model front before deploying these technologies at scale in various workflows? So that the deployment is a good one, the value is there, and it is a safe, trusted application of that technology. We do not believe that regulating it right now is the answer. It is about co-creating, which is why we launched the Model AI Governance Framework. But that is just a framework that we co-create with industry partners. The next thing we did was create tools like [Project Moonshot](https://aiverifyfoundation.sg/project-moonshot/?ref=analysepodcast.com) to actually bake those frameworks into a tool so you can test your models before you roll them out. **Bernard Leong:** That is the sandbox, right? **Kiren Kumar:** That is the sandbox. We have worked with many companies, workflows, and use cases around the world to do that in Singapore, and we publish the learnings from specific use cases so that the global ecosystem can benefit from it. Our next bound is really what we launched this year in Davos. We will have an update to the Model Governance Framework for Agentic AI also at ATx next week, because this technology is moving so fast, and agentic is quite different from GenAI. Agentic is a technology that can actually reason and act — take action in multiple steps, maybe with no human in the loop. Therein lies a lot of new risks that we need to take care of in terms of safety and reliability, and we are working with industry to update that. We have also launched the OpenClaw guidebook yesterday, because that is the talk of the town. There will be more technologies like that coming along. **Bernard Leong:** I want to dive deep on that. The Global AI Assurance Pilot has 17 deployers across 10 sectors, together with 16 specialist AI sectors. Because we are talking about enterprise AI deployment — what surprised you most from those real-world deployments so far? **Kiren Kumar:** What has surprised me most is — number one, there is a lot of interest around the world to deploy AI in enterprise workflows at scale. But a lot of it today is pilots. There are a lot of challenges to move from pilots to production. In order to move from pilot to production, what we have found as we work with companies is that they need a sandbox to play with the models and technology in a particular workflow or context — to ensure that their data, system architecture, and API connections to the rest of their corporate databases are done in a safe and reliable way. So that the tool does what it says it will do, the value is there, the safeguards and guardrails are put in place accurately. We need to ensure that they test it robustly before they put it into production. Pilot to production. No different from how an engine manufacturer will test his engines before they put them on a plane. **Bernard Leong:** For example, in agentic AI — what we are really worried about, even as an AI deployment team — we work with a lot of customers. One of the fears we usually tell our clients of is that per every thousand, the error rate is almost one — a 1% error rate. One question I have: suppose sometimes, not within the intention of the deployment, something makes a mistake through the sandbox that we do not spot, but it goes into actual production. How do we deal with the non-deterministic nature of AI, from your perspective — just to get a mental model if certain mistakes were to happen? **Kiren Kumar:** The technology is not perfect. No matter how much you test it in a sandbox and tweak it before you roll it out, the mental model is that there will be errors, there will be mistakes. 1% is not bad, actually. Deploying it and learning from there — having a mechanism, a technology response, a business response, to continually upgrade and tweak the system even after you have rolled it out. That is what we are learning from many companies we work with. There is no perfection before deployment, but you can take out as much risk as possible. It is no different from many other technologies today. The technology is now coming to a point where it is becoming really useful. The hallucination has come down dramatically, and the techniques and tools of doing this are happening quite well. The other bottleneck is, when you deploy a technology into your workflow, in your domain — whether you are a bank, a manufacturer — we are hearing a lot about a gap in the skills of the people. The technologists who built the product do not necessarily understand the domain where it is going to be deployed. We are hearing a lot about forward deployed engineers becoming a scarce commodity globally, because they need to really work hand-in-hand with the client — with the bank, the manufacturer, the government — to go in, understand the workflow, deploy the technology, test it. But the domain expertise of how it is being used sits in the client or the enterprise — that is critical. This model of co-creating and then deploying is becoming quite a feature when you talk about large-scale enterprise deployments. We are working with some of the big model developers to expand in Singapore — to create those forward deployed engineer roles for Singapore and the region. We think that will put Singapore in good stead to be a hub for AI deployment in the region. **Bernard Leong:** I see that becoming more and more common, given that even as an AI builder myself, we work a lot as forward deployed engineers with our client customers' teams as well. I just wanted to go back to one more conversation to close the governance side. Why did IMDA decide to publish a separate Model AI Governance Framework specifically for agentic AI, rather than fold the agentic guidance into the existing framework, which you have published quite extensively? **Kiren Kumar:** What is different in agentic AI, as I mentioned, is that this is really a technology that can reason and act in various workflows. GenAI could reason, but there was a human in the loop to make decisions. Now, with OpenClaw and many other agentic systems, you are going to have multiple agents working together. Then we need to rethink how we frame the Model Governance Framework. A lot of it comes from our first version, but we really need to update it. What we are launching at ATx — which is a relaunch of the agentic AI framework — is with real use cases. That is where the frameworks come to life in terms of how they are implemented, and that is going to be the difference here. Our model is that we will continue to iterate these frameworks because the technology is just moving so fast. **Bernard Leong:** You alluded earlier, when we talked about enterprise deployment, to forward deployed engineers. Adoption is not deployment yet — but if you look at the SGD 2025 numbers, they already showed that Singapore's SME AI adoption has tripled in a single year. It was something like 4.2% to 14.5%, just to make sure I have the correct numbers. About 62.5% of non-small-medium businesses have also adopted AI. Most of the current consensus I hear — I teach a lot of SMEs and CEOs of different companies — is that the conversation is still stuck along what we call pilot purgatory. From your point of view, what does it actually take to move from AI exploration to real-world deployment across the economy? **Kiren Kumar:** That is a great question. As I said earlier, we are still at the very early stages of this technology. There are a lot of pilots going around, or what they call POCs. That is an important part of the process. If you do not get your hands dirty, or you do not get onto a bike and fall down a few times, you are not going to learn how to ride a bicycle. What I am seeing right now is — you mentioned the adoption numbers — the small and medium enterprises, the mid-stack companies, and the large companies are already moving. That pace is accelerating, with the numbers you just mentioned. The next bound is going to be: how do we move from the 10% to the 10X? Let me explain. A lot of these pilots are: how do I drive productivity by 10%, 20%? That is useful, it is valuable, and we will do it. Coding agents, for instance, is an example of that. You drive tremendous productivity within your coders and software developers, and that is great. There have been a lot of 10% projects around, and that is very valuable. We should continue to drive that. But the next part of our strategy is: how do we get to 10X? 10X requires a fundamental transformation of the business, of the workflow, and then using the technology to drive a lot of innovation — where you create new business lines, new products, new services. Beyond the 10% to 10X. To get there, we have put in place a couple of different programs in our ecosystem. Let me explain it through a pyramid. At the very top, your large multinationals, global leaders in every industry — from finance, banking, insurance, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals — we are getting them to set up what we call AI Centres of Excellence. Our target in our strategy was 100\. We are already at 70, and we are well on our way to meeting that target and going beyond. They are setting up teams with technology expertise and domain expertise to go workflow by workflow, work on the 10% or the 10X. That has been very powerful to drive the transformation of the business from Singapore for the world. For our local companies, which are very large, we have also recently launched the Champions of AI program. We are in the midst of identifying a few bellwethers who are local companies, and they have a large ecosystem under them to also drive that transformation. We think if we work with the queen bees, we can reach the ecosystem below. That is an intervention at the very top. At the next level, EDB launched the Enterprise Compute Initiative. How do we provide compute capacity, GPU capacity, through big technology majors — everybody from Google, AWS, to Microsoft? Get the system integrators and consultants in. Give our mid-stack companies the opportunity to find workflows and innovate and change, with support. We have also launched the Digital Leaders Accelerator Bootcamp. We hope to touch 2,000 mid-sized companies in our ecosystem to transform their workflows, and we are working with the likes of BCG, EY, and others to provide expertise, guidance, workshops. If they do well, we also have a Digital Leaders Program where we will fund them to set up a technology team. These tend to be companies that have already done the basic digitalisation. They are looking for the AI leap. At the SME level, we have had a very successful program in SME Go Digital. We have touched more than 100,000 SMEs over the last 10 years. With AI, we are identifying new solutions — AI-enabled — that are relevant for SMEs. We fund them 50 cents to the dollar to adopt those, and that is going to be the next part of our program to drive AI adoption at the SME level. These are some of the programs we have put in place. We have shifted the approach a little bit, given the philosophy of "let's move from 10% to 10X." **Bernard Leong:** I am surprised, because when you talk about the different programs, it is very customised for different segments of the enterprises. You talk about a 200-person Singapore small-medium business, and something as big as DBS, Intel, or a multinational like Google. OpenAI has set up here recently too. But if I were to ask a much deeper question — what is the single biggest blocker on the deployment side that even government policy alone cannot solve? Something that has to come from the industry itself. Where would that be? **Kiren Kumar:** We work with the big companies, the mid companies, and the small companies. The biggest blocker today — policy aside, government support aside, all these are supply-side enablers — I fundamentally believe that this is a leadership question. The leaders of organisations, whether you are DBS or a 200-man SME in Singapore, in whatever sector — if the leadership is driven to drive change with AI, it starts with transformation. That leadership support and the gumption to actually change is going to be one critical factor. The second blocker is capability. Mid-size companies — DBS has a large technology team, so they have the capability. Once they have the leadership and the capability combination, they can drive change. But for a lot of our mid-size companies and our small companies, they do not have a technology team. While they may have the leadership ambition to change, they may not have the team to help them get there. They understand the domain, they understand their business, but they do not have the technology assets. That is where guys like you come in to help them as well. **Bernard Leong:** Interestingly, you mentioned this. I actually have a very large Singaporean company — contract manufacturing — where the chairperson with no technology background attended my technical class on large language models. She brought in her head of software and digital applications, and now they are talking about GPUs and hosting their own internal models. I find that across the different technology adoption cycles, this is probably the age of AI — the adoption seems to be driven much faster by senior-level people. I also notice it at the ground level, through teaching at NUS, with most of the students coming from all walks of life. That comes to a question: Singapore has no natural resources. Our talent is really our most important resource, and that is one of the things — the Singapore government has put a lot of emphasis on the education piece. Help me think about this, because we see very different attitudes on AI now. If you go to the US, everybody is afraid of it. People are worried about increasing energy bills and have a very anti-AI attitude. In China, you get the opposite. You have grandmas using OpenClaw. You have a very optimistic attitude with technology — robotic servants, even in the restaurants in Shanghai and Shenzhen. But when we come back to Singapore — as a Singaporean myself — how do you think we are mentally prepared for this coming AI? I get two worldviews. Just a small anecdote: I had a student who came in for one of my classes. He was unfortunately being made redundant. He had been in engineering for 20 years. He came in quite sceptical. In one of my classes, I taught him how to build an AI assistant to tailor his CV for companies using a custom GPT. A few months later he messaged me and said, "Thank you for showing me that demo." He got a job. That was one of the only few times I thought, "Hey, I think I have done something as a technologist for the world." But from your point of view, looking at the whole of Singapore through the lens of government, how are you thinking about it? **Kiren Kumar:** If you look at various technology cycles over the last 60 years, Singapore has always leaned forward to embrace, adopt, and use technology in a responsible way. Whether it was computerisation, whether it was digitalisation — I do not think anything is going to be different with AI. AI is a huge opportunity for us to drive productivity. We are a small country with very limited resources, so this is going to be a huge enabler for us to become a much bigger red dot. What does this mean for the workforce and our people? When we first started our strategy, technology was still early. In 2023, when we launched our National AI Strategy, we said we needed about 15,000 AI practitioners in our ecosystem. That was the number. We are more than halfway there now. It is growing really fast. These practitioners are defined as folks who can build and deploy enterprise-grade AI systems at scale. These are your experts. These are your FDE types. But what we realise now is that every job, every worker, can be empowered by AI. You gave that example — even writing a CV, doing online marketing, accounting, auditing, you name it. Whether you are a lawyer, a marketer, an HR professional — not just a technologist. Everyone can be empowered and enabled by AI. We firmly believe in this, which is why we have launched, just earlier this year, the National AI Impact Program. This is about enabling every worker, every Singaporean, with AI competencies — be it AI literacy (basic understanding) or AI fluency (a much deeper understanding), applying it to your job and your workflow and becoming hyper-productive, to drive your own career and also to drive transformation in the business or company that you work for. The [National AI Impact Program](https://www.mddi.gov.sg/newsroom/national-ai-impact-programme--empowering-enterprises-and-workers-to-transform-with-ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com) — we have just launched it. We have said we will upskill 100,000 in our workforce with AI fluency, and we have identified four occupations to start with: HR professionals, accounting professionals, legal professionals, and marketing professionals. We are working with the professional bodies and the largest employers — whether government or private sector — to launch bite-sized, largely online courses with certification for their particular workflows in their occupation. Take accounting, for instance. Let's identify three or four big workflows that every accountant has to touch. Let's automate that with AI. Bring the right tools, the right training, the right experience. So it is on-the-job training. It is contextual, not theoretical. We think this will actually help drive AI fluency in different occupations. That is the plan. We have just rolled out a few, and you will see more being rolled out in the future. **Bernard Leong:** Would you be extending this for younger graduates? The issue now in the market is that younger graduates are trying to look for entry-level jobs, but there is a transition needed to bring them into becoming professionals — for example, the accountants, the legal, the HR roles that you mentioned. **Kiren Kumar:** Absolutely. The National AI Impact Program is for every worker currently holding that occupation in our ecosystem today. You could be a 30-year-old, 40-year-old, 50-year-old accountant, and you can come and take those programs. What we are doing is that the pipeline of our final-year students — whether you are at a university or polytechnic — we are going to take them through these programs too. Before they graduate, they already know what the professionals with experience in those sectors are doing. We hope this will close the gap of their experience base before they go into the workforce. How do we get them to be job-ready or AI-ready is part of the feature of the programs we are rolling out. **Bernard Leong:** I want to come back to a question on Singapore. When people in the US think about AI governance, they think it is a tax on speed. They will think that. But for Singapore, I do not feel that way. Trusted AI can be a competitive advantage. As more and more countries move from talking about AI to operationalising it at scale, how does trust actually become a moat rather than a constraint? **Kiren Kumar:** If I take a step back — you may ask, where does Singapore play vis-à-vis the big innovation hubs creating a lot of technology for AI? Be it Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Shenzhen, or anywhere else in the world. We strongly believe that Singapore is positioned to be a deployer of these technologies at scale in a responsible, trusted way. Our Prime Minister just announced our AI missions. The next bound of our AI strategy is going to be driven around the missions. Up till now, a lot of our strategies focused on the enablers — infrastructure, talent, adoption, education. All these are no-regret moves for us, and we are working with industry to make sure they are relevant. But the next bound is: how do we push it towards four missions? We have identified four sectors where we think Singapore has scale, global reach, and these are large sectors in our economy, and they are highly trusted sectors: advanced manufacturing, finance, connectivity, and healthcare. If you look at the workflows within these four sectors, they are critical sectors around the world. They are globally connected, and trust and reliability is the raison d'être for these sectors. **Bernard Leong:** They still need a lot of human judgment as well. **Kiren Kumar:** Absolutely. Therefore, we are picking these four missions because we are going to position Singapore as a sandbox where globally leading companies come to play with our leaders in this sector to create new technologies for different workflows — where we can co-create policy, technology, business model, and apply it at scale for the global economy. We think that will be our 10X for these four sectors. We think that is a way to manifest trust and reliability in AI in real workflows, in real industries, in real jobs. **Bernard Leong:** When it comes to thinking about that piece, we also talk about standards. In software, we have ISO 27001\. Singapore is now championing ISO/IEC 42119-8 — the first international standard for GenAI systems, with 35 national bodies and 250-plus experts coming for a plenary in Singapore. Do you think owning the standards layer strategically is important, and what does that mean for Singapore moving forward? **Kiren Kumar:** AI is moving so fast, and actually, standards eventually will be very important. Why are standards important? Because interoperability of these technologies across jurisdictions and industries is going to be the secret sauce for how AI really gets deployed at scale in a reasonable, responsible manner. We stand for standards, and we are helping to shape them actively with like-minded countries from around the world. It will take time, because technology is moving quite fast. But this is an important conversation to have while we are developing these technologies — to actually get some alignment on certain key parts of the framework. It may not be totally the same in every country, because every country has unique nuances, biases, cultures, languages. No one AI system will behave the same everywhere. There will be some commonality through standards, but some customisation by cultural context in different countries. That is going to be an important driver for interoperability and safe, responsible deployment of this technology with local customisation when needed. **Bernard Leong:** The ATx Summit is going to happen next week, with about 4,000 leaders from 50 countries. Singapore's digital economy, as you said, is now 18.6% of GDP. What is IMDA seeing on the ground in terms of enterprise uptake and ecosystem development that the headlines might be missing, and what is going to be happening at the ATx Summit? **Kiren Kumar:** This is the sixth edition of ATx — Asia Tech Exchange Singapore. There are two key platforms: the ATx Summit, which happens at Capella and is invite-only, and ATx Enterprise, which happens at Expo. It is a large trade show with more than 30,000 people. At ATx Summit this year at Capella, we are expecting about 4,000 global leaders — industry leaders, technology leaders, academia leaders, and government leaders — who are coming to discuss tomorrow's technology opportunities today. Some of the key themes we are exploring within this Summit reflect the global zeitgeist. Number one is agentic AI and the next bound of the technology. Number two: where is agentic AI being used in the enterprise? What are some of the blockers? How do we overcome those? What about physical AI and embodied AI, which is really the next bound of technology — robotics? We are also talking a lot about AI governance. How do countries, how do companies, think about that? Our AI assurance sandbox that we talked about earlier, our Model Governance Framework that we talked about earlier, will be discussed as well. We are also going to have leaders discussing the societal impact of AI adoption, and how societies and countries can respond to make sure they are driving AI for public good — in their countries, in our region as well. Lots of heavy topics that are in every leader's mind today — not just for Singapore, but for the world — and we expect a very robust discussion. We have some amazing leaders coming to Singapore next week. We are going to have Ajay Banga, the former CEO of Mastercard and President of the World Bank, in Singapore at ATx, sharing his views on jobs. His topic is the 1.2 billion challenge. We are going to have the Chief Revenue Officer of OpenAI, Denise Dresser. I'll be interviewing her on stage. It will be great to see the insights of a frontier model company that might IPO soon — what are some of their future strategies, and how do they see enterprise adoption and the workforce moving. We are going to have Bill Dally, the Chief Scientist of NVIDIA, sharing about NVIDIA's technology roadmaps to the future — everything from chips to embodied AI to resource-efficient AI, given the power take you have within AI infrastructure. We are going to have Peter Schwartz, who is a futurist at Salesforce. He is always amazing to hear. We have many, many leaders like that, an amazing lineup of panels. We are looking forward to welcoming our global guests to Singapore. Singapore is very quickly becoming the Davos for technology when it comes to some of these issues of our time. **Bernard Leong:** AI adoption is projected to deliver around $198.3 billion in economic benefits to Singapore by 2030\. What does Singapore have to get right between now and then to capture the value, and what could derail that? **Kiren Kumar:** What we need to get right is the four missions I mentioned. We need to play big. We need to play 10X. Second, we need to get every enterprise to start adopting these technologies. Third, to upskill our workforce at scale. This will evolve, but we need to start now and iterate from there. Fourth, we need to get our policies and governance frameworks right so that we can actually drive towards AI for public good in Singapore. What could derail some of these things? One is leadership, as I mentioned, and ambition. Two is, of course, geopolitical forces at play — which we cannot control — but we will need to see how we navigate them responsibly for the benefit and interest of Singapore to become a major player in AI, at least in our region if not the world. **Bernard Leong:** I have a couple of very quick questions, and you speak your mind. What is the one thing you know about deploying trusted AI at national scale that very few people actually do? **Kiren Kumar:** It is hard work. You need to get a lot of stars aligned before this can be deployed at scale. The secret to this is there is no secret. You just have to start by experimenting, working small, learning while you do it, and slowly you will get better — then you can play the big game. **Bernard Leong:** Also bring people together. Singapore always does. **Kiren Kumar:** Absolutely. AI, unlike any other technology area, is moving so fast. It is a contact sport. You need to do it, learn it. It is an iterative process, and the more you do, the better you get. I always joke that if you want to learn how to ride a bicycle, you just have to get on it. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about IMDA's work in AI, but they don't? **Kiren Kumar:** At the end of the day, we speak a lot about frontier technology. Technology is moving so fast — how does the government keep up? We call ourselves the architects of Singapore's digital future, but to be an architect, you need to know where technology is going. What people do not know is that we have become very agile as an organisation. We have brought in a lot of technologists who understand the technology deeply. We do a lot of watchtower work. We do a lot of unboxing work to actually understand the technologies. We talk to some of the frontier companies in the world to have a point of view on where technology is going — whether it is agentic, embodied AI, quantum computing, quantum communications, and many others — so we can start developing the right policies, the right programs, and also iterate them after we roll them out, because the technology is moving so fast. Being agile, knowing the technology, is a new capability and competency we have brought into the organisation to help us do our work and mission better. The last thing is — because we have many different functions in the organisation, everything from regulations to industry development to digitalisation to governance to international — how do we work together as One IMDA, where those competencies and capabilities, if brought together in a meaningful way, can help us punch above our weight as a country as well? **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what does great look like for Singapore's AI economy and for IMDA's work in the next few years in this era of AI — before quantum computing, of course? **Kiren Kumar:** That is a very good question. We have a lot of KPIs and trackers and all that. But if you ask me personally, in five years, what would be amazing to see in Singapore is: Number one — we have our large companies truly transforming themselves and becoming way bigger than they are today in the global competitive landscape, in manufacturing, finance, healthcare, and connectivity. The second — we are known globally as an economy where everybody in our workforce is AI-ready, is AI-fluent. The third — we have amazing AI-native startups being born in our ecosystem, which are global in the niche areas they can play in. We may not have the next OpenAI, but I am hoping that we have a lot of new AI-native technology companies developing products, services, and solutions enabled by AI, powered by AI, transforming industries and creating a lot of growth. These are the three things I am hoping for. I am wondering what you are hoping for. **Bernard Leong:** I am also hoping for exactly the same. Kiren, many thanks for coming on the show. It is a really great topic to have a conversation about. For me as a Singaporean, very proud that we are actually leading a lot in terms of things like governance and working with the international community, bringing Singapore to be one of the very AI-enlightened countries out there. In closing, I have two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Kiren Kumar:** One area we are looking at — I mentioned some of the frontier. We spoke a lot about AI adoption and agentic AI in the enterprise, but physical AI excites me. Embodied AI excites me. We have seen a lot of robots being deployed everywhere in the world. They are cute. They bring food to you. They are concierge robots. But with the technology and the next bound — what we see — this could be a dramatic game changer as the next bound of AI. We have invested a lot in embodied AI as a country, and we are now looking at launching an industry consortium where we are going to have use case owners, some of the best robotics companies from around the world, some of the best cloud companies, as well as chip companies and AI companies from around the world, coming together to form a consortium to look at embodied AI research, testing, and deployment in Singapore. We will be announcing that at ATx, so stay tuned to see what Singapore has in store for the next bound of AI. **Bernard Leong:** I'll put a link there when the episode is up. Awesome. How can my audience find you and the work at IMDA? **Kiren Kumar:** I am on LinkedIn. We have an IMDA page on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/imdasg/?originalSubdomain=sg&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/imdasg/?hl=en&ref=analysepodcast.com), and others — please follow us there. [ATx](https://atxsummit.asiatechxsg.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) has its own page, so please follow us there to keep up with the various announcements and activities happening at ATx Summit. We also organise [ATx Inspire](https://atxsummit.asiatechxsg.com/atxinspire?ref=analysepodcast.com), where we have hosted Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Li Fei-fei, and Bill Gates in Singapore whenever they are in town. If you want to come, please follow our page, and we'll see you there. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find this podcast everywhere, so subscribe to us on YouTube, Spotify, and everywhere else. Kiren, many thanks for coming on the show, and we look forward to speaking again. **Kiren Kumar:** Thank you so much, Bernard. Thanks for having me. [Inside Singapore’s AI Bet for 2030 with Kiren KumarPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · May 18 · 48m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-180-6a544997f3ee933d69acc0e90e0c30856be9922b3f84ae5f8dbaf828ef81ddf2.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-8555d332e9e594b3557a736209e983babf3ae4ced96c018803d08acd98e5f0d5.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-singapores-ai-bet-for-2030-with-kiren-kumar/id914868245?i=1000768462088&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/8x5E5DGcBiU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-singapores-ai-bet-for-2030-with-kiren-kumar/id914868245?i=1000768462088&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Q6XGn5TxQtScuOhKG0dtA?si=VWzlae27TIOBfS0LZQNGWg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/inside-singapore-ai-bet-2030-imda-singapore-kiren-kumar?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsOoors?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/analysepod) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analysepodcast.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@analysepod?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) ### Inside Pulse ID's Playbook for AI-Driven Banking with Alex Topaloski URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/inside-pulse-ids-playbook-for-ai-driven-banking-with-alex-topaloski/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:58.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Alex Topaloski, CEO and Co-founder of Pulse ID joined us in a conversation on his company's customer engagement infrastructure powering Visa's cardholder offers across Asia Pacific. Drawing on Pulse ID's recent white paper, *The Age of Knowing*, Alex unpacks the three forces reshaping bank loyalty: interchange, partnerships, and intelligence. He explains why banks have solved the data problem but still struggle with engagement, walks through agentic AI architectures and the minimum effective nudge principle, and lays out why Asia-Pacific diversity demands distinct playbooks for Australia, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Closing out, Alex argues the next 12 months belong to banks that prioritize the last mile — where ROI on a decade of data investment finally lands and lays out what great would look life for Pulse ID moving forward. --- > "So we are making that transition from being a system-of-record platform for engagement, loyalty, and rewards to being a system-of-action platform that drives measurable behavioral change. And I think that is quite a big step forward. The efficiencies that clients are able to get—the outcomes, the revenue, ROIs that it can get on interactions—it's something that people are now going to start experiencing." **\- Alex Topaloski** **Profile: Alex Topaloski**, **CEO of** [**Pulse ID**](https://www.pulseid.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/topaloski/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong. Banks today have more data about their customers than ever, and most are still failing to act on it. The gap between intelligence and relevant action is where the next competitive battle in banking will be won. My guest today has spent nearly two decades building the infrastructure that closes that gap, powering Visa's cardholder offers across the Asia Pacific and creating the first hyper-personalized credit card in Japan. Alex Topaloski, CEO and Co-founder of [Pulse ID](https://www.pulseid.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Alex, welcome to the show. **Alex Topaloski:** Thank you, Bernard. Good to be here. **Bernard Leong:** I did some reading, and of course we have spoken to each other through one of my investors, Joe, who set us up for today's show. I wanted to start by asking about your path from being a strategy manager at ANZ to becoming a fintech founder across Asia Pacific. It's not a conventional one. You have said the spark was a strategy paper you wrote for the ANZ board in 2010 on location intelligence, exploring fraud detection, customer onboarding, and merchant loyalty. What did you see in that paper that the bank didn't fully act on, and how did that gap become the business you built today? **Alex Topaloski:** When we put together those board discussion items, you analyse a technology, identify the use cases, build a view on how a financial institution could benefit from those use cases, and there's always a recommendation and a roadmap of what you tackle first, second, third. That specific technology on location intelligence captivated me. It was about analyzing a very rich data stream of how your customers move in the real world all the time. I saw so many use cases available for a financial institution, and I saw an opportunity not just in that data stream, but in the ability to build a company around guiding enterprise clients and financial institutions through a journey of adopting that technology. **Bernard Leong:** After that you left a senior corporate role to found Proximity in Australia in 2011, only to wind it down to focus entirely on Pulse ID in 2016\. We've spoken about this — I also wound down my company, which was in the location-based advertising space. You have been building in this B2B fintech infrastructure space ever since, serving banks and payment networks rather than end customers directly. That's a very different kind of founder journey. What does it take to operate in an invisible layer for the last 15 years? **Alex Topaloski:** Both of my companies have that in common — that invisible layer, what I call infrastructure platforms. It's actually interesting building products in that space, because infrastructure is a little bit like an organ. You don't know exactly how it works. You just need it to power some functions. You need it to work super reliably. You notice when it misfires. The challenge in building infrastructure platforms is that there isn't a roadmap on exactly what to build against, so there's plenty of opportunities to go down the wrong route. **Bernard Leong:** I thought it would be much more focused, because you would know where the problem usually is. Or do you still have to do customer product-market fit at every kind of instance? **Alex Topaloski:** You definitely do. You have to see how your clients are adopting and thinking about that technology, especially as the technology landscape changes. The hypothesis in year one may not stand in year four. **Bernard Leong:** I actually have a contrary view. I find that moving from B2C or B2B2C is harder than now being in B2B — but that's my own point of view. Looking back across your entire arc, from the ANZ boardroom in Melbourne to building across 11 countries, what is the career lesson that took you the longest to learn that you can share with my audience? **Alex Topaloski:** It's unique to my own journey. The lesson that took me a while to realize is: I don't want to build ingredient platforms. In the infrastructure space, it's tempting and common to be solving for a very specific use case. My first company was a geolocation platform really focused around a specific use case. But I've learnt with ingredient platforms it can actually be hard to commercialize, because you've got so many interdependencies on other systems that sometimes make it challenging to scale out. So that learning, within Pulse, we've really taken to be central in what we do and how we build: don't build ingredient platforms — build things end-to-end that solve a function. Over time, that means you need to be building quite a lot to really solve a problem, whether it's customer engagement, customer operations, or whatever it is end-to-end for an organization, as a better way to service that segment. **Bernard Leong:** I wanted to ask — in your LinkedIn bio, you talk about choice, lifelong learning, relationships over automation, treating walls as steep learning curves. How do those beliefs show up in how you actually run Pulse ID day to day, and what conviction has been the hardest to hold onto? **Alex Topaloski:** Probably the hardest one is lifelong learning as a mindset. Obviously we all say how much we love learning. It's probably the most common response we get in job interviews — people telling us how much they love learning new things. But the day-to-day reality of learning something actually unpacks a lot of challenges that people stay silent on. When you're learning new things, your brain literally builds new neural pathways. So if you turn up on Monday and you spent three hours learning something, you're tired. If you do the same on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, by Friday your brain is cooked. Carrying that mindset week after week, month after month is challenging. To the earlier part of your question — what we call steep learning curves often come across as walls and obstacles. The job of a new business, of a startup, of an entrepreneur is to find a way. To find a way where others have tried and failed, or find a new way where others have not gone down. Those obstacles that appear as walls, if they are approached as a learning curve, it means you're able to conquer them. There is a method and a process that works, of how you go around it. **Bernard Leong:** I'm going to get to the main subject of the day, but I have to ask first — give me a quick overview of what Pulse ID is, and then we can go into the interesting stuff you're all doing. **Alex Topaloski:** Sure. Pulse is building the future of customer engagement and loyalty for highly regulated enterprises — financial institutions, telcos, merchants. We're seeing a lot of change in that industry. It's a space we've been building in for a few years. That's central to our mission: build a better mechanism for how an enterprise is able to engage with their customers at scale. **Bernard Leong:** What people don't realize is that you have clients like Visa. But I want to start with the white paper you recently published — [*The Age of Knowing and the Three Forces*](https://www.pulseid.com/white-paper-age-of-knowing/?ref=analysepodcast.com): why intelligence changes everything. There are now three forces reshaping bank loyalty: interchange, partnerships, and intelligence. Intelligence is where artificial intelligence is the most transformative, but also the one we are only at the beginning of understanding. What does the beginning of the intelligence era actually look like in practice, and what tells you when a bank has genuinely crossed into it — versus still operating on Force One or Force Two economics? **Alex Topaloski:** This is the way we think about it. The era of intelligence — intelligent interactions — is just reducing the latency between when a signal from a customer happens and when a journey is sent and engaged with that customer: giving the right reward at the right moment, on the right channel. In an era of intelligence, that happens automatically in near real time, without necessarily the intervention of a human campaign manager. It's no longer feasible to do that at scale across millions of customers, mapping out every individual journey that makes sense for that customer. That is quite an engineering and technology challenge — many systems need to hold hands together to deliver. **Bernard Leong:** Possibly also human in the loop, or on the loop, as well, right? **Alex Topaloski:** Mentioning that a lot of this happens automatically doesn't mean there are no humans involved. In fact, it's about building that next generation of guardrails — to give full transparency of what the system is doing, and having the human be able to guide that system. **Bernard Leong:** One striking diagnostic in the paper: banks have actually solved the data problem from input to decisioning, but they still have problems with engagement. Insights have accumulated faster than they can turn into action. What broke down between those two stages, and why has it taken the industry such a long time to think about this gap? **Alex Topaloski:** You're right to frame that as two stages, because they're two separate problems that are interconnected, and they need to be solved sequentially. The first is being able to build some form of unified view of what a customer does — the data, their interests, the way they transact with you. For a financial institution, that is a really big ask, because these are systems that have been layered over a number of decades and need to work in highly regulated environments at different points of the lifecycle. Some have been purchased in the last 12 months and integrated. Other systems have been around for a couple of decades. The first phase of that is financial institutions investing a lot in their data architecture, and I believe that phase has been largely successful. A lot of investment has gone in by financial institutions, and now their internal data architecture is in a good place. The second part of that problem is: once you've got that data and those insights, how do you translate that into a customer experience? How do you pair it with a reward? How do you price it in the right way? How do you make the economics of customer engagement work? That is now the next phase of innovation that is going to be needed to get an ROI on a lot of that data investment. So it's not that anything broke down. They just need to be solved in a sequential way. **Bernard Leong:** It's actually a more gradual shift, just that the second part is less taken care of — that's why you think of it as a two-stage process. The competition for banks is not just from other banks offering richer rewards. It's also from super apps and lifestyle platforms offering smoother journeys. Think about GrabPay in Southeast Asia — it appears at the instant you tap on a coffee subscription, and it feels like a daily win. What is the correct diagnosis of why those experiences feel so different from what most banks deliver, and why is it so hard for banks to replicate that experience? **Alex Topaloski:** We work with banks. We work with payment networks. We also work with fintechs, telcos, and newer businesses. For a super app, they've been able to start with a much simpler system architecture. They've been able to commission systems built recently — being able to pull that data and build very smooth journeys on top of it. The reality for financial services is that there's a lot more data, a lot more products, they've been operating for many decades, and it's a highly regulated environment. Every institution needs to think very carefully as they're making system changes — because of the obligations they have to regulators and to customers. The upside of getting something right is often a lot lower than the downside of getting something wrong. So it is prudent for financial institutions to step through this journey in a careful, thoughtful manner. The task is a lot greater for them in terms of needing to transform themselves. **Bernard Leong:** The white paper maps four stages of intelligence: capture, connect, understand, and engage. You mark the first two — whole-bank data ingestion and the unified data layer — as more on the data lake side. Real-time intelligence is actually in progress. But triggering things like contextual offers at the right time, right channel, right value still remains a goal state. We've both been in the location-based advertising space — I always tell people it's not so simple to just get to that correct location with the correct offer. The gap between understand and engage is essentially the business you are in. What is actually blocking a lot of banks from completing that final stage? **Alex Topaloski:** It goes back to the earlier part of our conversation — being able to use the data assets that are now in place, that perhaps were not there five years ago, and being able to trigger customer experiences and rewards at scale. Many loyalty platforms and vendors are not designed to actually absorb the new data signals available inside the bank environment. Loyalty and engagement systems could be built to ingest payments data, but if you want to throw another 20 or 30 different types of signals at them, it's actually not that easy for them to come up with the right experience. **Bernard Leong:** That is where the white paper had an interesting line — the smallest, most effective nudge, not the biggest reward. It's behavioral economics. It's not the most frequent touchpoint — it's the minimum effective intervention. What does your system actually have to learn in order to find that minimum, for a given customer at a given moment? **Alex Topaloski:** You need to be able to reason on an individual customer's data trail, and be very deliberate on when you choose to trigger something. Today I woke up, went downstairs, and used my card to have a coffee. I then took a Grab to see you. I've got my salary coming in this afternoon. I've got direct debits for all my bills. If a bank sent me a nudge on all of those signals, it would be a nightmare. That is a horrific experience. So much of it goes around being able to understand when there is a signal to act on, versus a signal that you're just going to put into your learning loop. **Bernard Leong:** How do you prevent the system from optimizing for engagement metrics at the expense of genuine customer value over time? **Alex Topaloski:** Engagement shouldn't be the primary KPI. The primary KPI should be: what do you want to do with this customer in terms of deepening the relationship, improving the services you're providing, incentivizing them to take that next action? Just going on engagement will get you in trouble and actually destroy customer trust. It's about understanding the right moment where it does make sense. In some way, this is the same product learning we had in the geolocation era. People would say, "Oh my God, if you drive through 50 geofences — I want to make sure that a customer doesn't get 50 push notifications." It's about being subtle and having the intelligence of knowing what that right moment is. **Bernard Leong:** For geolocation we also had to think about how high-touch the customers we were dealing with were at that point in time. Moving forward, there are four signal categories that banks now harness: banking data, digital behavior, life signals like salary, credit, savings milestones, and AI outputs like propensity scores and churn risk. If you aggregate all those signals at a level of precision, you can also create what is called a real privacy risk. Specifically in Japan — which your playbook describes as a market with high savings orientation and trust sensitivity — how do you build personalization and customer experience as recognition rather than surveillance? This is the number one question on every customer's mind. **Alex Topaloski:** You've nailed one of the key challenges. Just because a bank has access to that data now as a new asset doesn't mean they're able to share it with third-party vendors and partners. A lot of that data is private, sensitive, regulated. That distills down to a product challenge: how are you able to act on signals without knowing the full context, and without needing a lot of that data? The good thing is that technologies like AI are coming up with new solutions. A couple of weeks ago we launched our MCP — Model Context Protocol. That allows a standard protocol for us to be able to get instructions for the next generation of bank AI systems and models, where they don't need to share with us the full data stream that we need to understand of why a decision has been arrived at — but we just need to be able to execute on that in real time. There are other practices too, to minimize data sharing — anonymization of data, and so forth. That is another reason why, in this space, you have to really step through and think through these things very carefully. **Bernard Leong:** You have a long-term partnership with Visa for over five years. You power their offers exchange marketplace across Asia Pacific. You also work with GCash in the Philippines, and with JCB in Japan. These are very extraordinary anchors for a B2B startup. What does it actually take to earn and maintain relationships like that — commercially, technically, and in terms of security and regulatory compliance? People underestimate the amount of certifications B2B companies have to go through. **Alex Topaloski:** It distills down to very old-fashioned concepts of reliability and delivery week after week. As you mentioned, a lot of our partnerships are multi-year relationships. This is not about running a successful pilot, or running a successful implementation — it's really about having the organizational structure and focus to be able to deliver time after time, across different markets and different use cases. One of those tickets to play is being able to do this at bank-grade security. The regulatory journey has been quite extensive — to be able to ensure that everything we do is penetration tested, compliant to all the regulations. That's really the hill you have to climb if you want to work in our space. Ultimately it comes down to having the organizational commitment to just go through that step. **Bernard Leong:** The Visa partnership got you an innovation award, but I suspect there were definitely hard moments — every time you work with such a big organization, you have to deal with a lot of what is required there. What was the toughest thing you had to face or prove in order to keep the relationship intact? I always admire companies that can have very long-lasting partnerships with big companies. **Alex Topaloski:** With Visa, we're launching new things. The mindset that a large organization has when launching a new capability with clients is very different to a smaller organization or a startup. The tolerance for things going wrong is a lot lower. We've had to really understand that and appreciate why it needs to be like that — mainly because the impact can be so much greater. Maybe step through the partnership with a bit more empathy. That often doesn't come easy for a startup, because it does go against a lot of the startup principles of "move fast and break things." We haven't been able to carry that mindset. **Bernard Leong:** No, you have to be a stable structure. **Alex Topaloski:** If we broke things, we wouldn't really be able to operate in the financial services space. **Bernard Leong:** Move fast and break things is easier for B2C, but in B2B it is totally the opposite — and people don't appreciate that when they go into that space. On the funding levers — there's smart pricing, where AI allocates incentives at high-propensity moments. There's reward debt through tiered relationship status. There are partner-funded offers where merchants bear the cost. And subscription bundles that create predictable revenue. In your experience deploying across so many markets, which lever is actually the most underutilized by banks, and why do they keep defaulting to the least sustainable one? **Alex Topaloski:** The hardest model to get right is smart pricing. Grab and Uber have surge pricing — we'll see how the same trip costs very different depending on demand and drivers around us. If you try to extrapolate that for a financial institution with many different pricing points and many different products, it's very difficult to get right. It also becomes really hard: how do you market and communicate that to customers? If you're going to be marketing a certain product, customers need to understand what some of the benefits are. If the mindset is, well, it's going to change depending on who you are and the circumstances, that can also impede the adoption of the product. The hardest one is probably smart pricing — and yet I think it's inevitable that the industry is moving in this direction, because it's now able to make different pricing decisions at a more granular level than previously was possible. **Bernard Leong:** You operate across Singapore, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the UAE, and Oman — multicultural contexts simultaneously. What is the one quality that separates the people who thrive in that environment from those who don't, and how has your own leadership style evolved as the company has scaled from a startup to a global platform? **Alex Topaloski:** You have to be able to work with people from different cultures and backgrounds. That's a given. We look for other traits in individuals — what they enjoy, what their values are when it comes to their job, what type of skills they bring in, and what type of skills and mindsets they want to be developing. We've been able to carry a playbook of how we enter markets that is not necessarily constrained to where you live or your cultural background. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one thing you know about Pulse ID and what it is building towards, that very few do? **Alex Topaloski:** The future is going to be very different. The future of customer engagement, from a system perspective and from an experience perspective, is going to be very different to the way we experience it right now. Building towards that future is the priority, and guiding clients and organizations on that journey is going to be our number one mission. The future is a lot more intelligent, and the type of technologies that need to work together are only now becoming more apparent and obvious. **Bernard Leong:** I'm going to go straight to the point. You talk about intelligence — so we ought to go with AI at the core. The winners, as you've talked about, is that the age of knowing will allow AI to choose the timing and the price of the nudge, and let an event-driven stack do the heavy lifting. What does the architecture actually look like when AI is making those timing and pricing decisions autonomously, and what kind of guardrails would you need to exist to prevent it from drifting toward outcomes that serve the bank but not the customer? **Alex Topaloski:** We're learning that, in that statement, AI will actually work in multiple points of the stack. This is not about necessarily having one AI brain that manages the experience end-to-end. We're learning that we need to work with different implementation models for clients. Some clients want to use internal models for specific use cases where they have very personal and sensitive data they're simply not able to share. For other data already plugged into a platform, they actually want to rely on our intelligence and our own AI and agentic capabilities. In some ways, a little bit like an open Claude model — being able to choose the brain for an individual task. We see an opportunity in that. From an architecture perspective, dependent on the client and the use case, the platform is intelligent enough to be able to select what brain is actually going to do the reasoning. **Bernard Leong:** How do you ensure the guardrails that go in there? **Alex Topaloski:** The guardrails are not fully understood yet, because a lot of these use cases are yet to be properly tested in production. It's about having guardrails through your implementation plan — to be able to build and identify how you go about managing for all of those scenarios. There are certain guardrails — for example, do not let an LLM actually analyze the data, mainly because it hallucinates and is going to give you the wrong information maybe two to five percent of the time, which is really not acceptable. You can't operate in that customer engagement space where the accuracy of the data is 95 to 98 percent. One of our platform principles is: have the AI being able to reason on what tools it's able to select, but it's not actually going to be analyzing the data directly. That's just an example. **Bernard Leong:** That also has other things you have to watch out for, like degraded output as well from the AI. A lot of people are talking about agentic AI — it's also the direction everyone is going toward. Systems don't just recommend, they also act. From a loyalty context where you operate, what does it mean when the AI is not just curating an offer, but autonomously sequencing the cardholder's entire engagement journey across products and life stages? My question is a bit deeper here: at what point does the system actually stop being a tool and start becoming something closer to a participant in the customer relationship — with its own form of judgment about what matters to a person? **Alex Topaloski:** We're actually surprised at how fast that transition is happening. When you start introducing agentic and AI capabilities, it can surprise you how far it can go in recommending the experiences. As we are testing the new version of our platform, it's moving a lot faster than even we anticipated. 2025 feels like 100 years ago. **Bernard Leong:** 2026 is even faster. **Alex Topaloski:** That's exciting. A bit terrifying. Overall, what is the transition we're making? We are making that transition from being a system-of-record platform for engagement, loyalty, and rewards, to being a system-of-action platform that drives measurable behavioral change. That is quite a big step forward. The efficiencies that clients are able to get, the outcomes, the revenue ROIs on interactions — that's something people are now going to start experiencing. A couple of interesting points: there was an NVIDIA report I looked at last week — [the State of AI in Financial Services](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/industries/finance/ai-financial-services-report/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Customer engagement was the number one AI use case for banks right now, and it's also the use case with the strongest ROI in a business case. There's a lot of change in this space, and as industry participants, it's important that we're part of that process. **Bernard Leong:** For financial services, AI is actually the earliest penetration in. There's a lot more understanding in financial services on AI. Even when I was working in AWS, a part of engagement was always the banks, because they really have a very clear use case, specific to the AI side. **Alex Topaloski:** Why do you think that is? **Bernard Leong:** First, in financial services there's a lot of data. There's also clearly unstructured data insights, where people want to find patterns, find precision points where they can target. It's a combination of that. Where they get tripped the most is trying to create their customer 360 — the data lake that everyone sells to them. That takes them a little bit more time. But they took their time to build it, and what's happening is that some banks who did that reap the rewards, and some who didn't, didn't. It is precisely because in banking, everything is about numbers and precision. AI is actually a better fit. I call it product-market fit for AI to actually enter the sector much earlier than the rest of them. These days we talk about ChatGPT, but if we go back in time, banks have been using AI — which usually surprises me when people say, "Oh, no, it's now going into banks and everywhere." No, no, they have been there all along. **Alex Topaloski:** That's a good point. **Bernard Leong:** We underappreciate that all the time. Banks and payment networks you serve are all investing heavily now in their AI capabilities. As foundation models — ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek — commoditize, every financial institution can run inference on transaction data. What remains proprietary about what Pulse ID does, and where does your moat actually sit in a world where the model layer is becoming widely accessible? **Alex Topaloski:** The technology is widely available. What is super valuable is a system of action that works with a guaranteed ROI, with a specific configuration that can be repeated across use cases and across markets. That framework is carrying immediate ROI for clients — that's one point. The second is being able to bring in an ecosystem of partners — merchants, subscription companies that can be part of that rewards ecosystem for an organization. That has a direct impact on the funding and the economics of the program. The moat is shifting. It's shifting around: how do you... what is that system of action that is generating experiences that are yielding results? An organization like us is able to get those learnings across the network and defray costs across the network, whereas any individual organization themselves has a more limited data set to be able to make those learnings and arrive at those decisions. **Bernard Leong:** The white paper maps out the Asia-Pacific landscape with pretty good precision. Australia and New Zealand face a thin and declining interchange, so the playbook is more merchant-funded rewards and tiered relationship benefits. Japan and Korea require what you call quiet recognition — fee waivers and rate boosts as predictable entitlements, because emotional assurance beats flashy rewards in a high-trust, high-sensitivity culture. Then you have Southeast Asia, which is super-app competition — routines live outside the bank app entirely. Which of the local playbooks is furthest from where most banks in those markets actually are today? **Alex Topaloski:** There's a lot of diversity in terms of the environments banks operate in when it comes to engagement and rewards. There are opportunities to improve across all of those. Probably the most challenging is environments where you're competing with much newer businesses that are now hitting scale — whether you call them fintechs, super apps, or e-commerce marketplaces. The reason that's most challenging is that the trait of those organizations is just so different. They start with a simpler architecture. They're able to build smoother journeys. That is the most challenging space. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting that you also mentioned, for example, SMBC or Liv in Japan integrating their payment, savings, and lifestyle benefits into one single flexible ID. Commonwealth Bank's Yello in Australia is blending app-personalized offers and merchant partnerships in response to low interchange. GoPay in Indonesia is doing rewards across rides, food, payments in real time. Are these actually outliers, or leading indicators of where the whole region is moving? **Alex Topaloski:** The three examples there are organizations that are very successful in their markets. They have tens of millions of customers, and they have put in a lot of thought in how they want to shape that next era of engagement for all of their customers. I would see them as leading indicators, not outliers. They could be outliers in being further ahead on a specific use case at this moment in time. They're able to get there because of the focus they've put in to building those organizational muscles, and they have the scale to drive real impact. **Bernard Leong:** The conclusion from the paper was that this is going to be a direct challenge to the boardroom. The winners won't be those who reward more — but those who understand more and act fast in the moments that matter. If you were advising someone sitting in a banking board meeting in Singapore, Bangkok, Manila today, what's the one decision a board needs to make in the next 12 months while most are still deferring? **Alex Topaloski:** Our advice would be: don't forget about that last mile. Getting the data and the insights could be 80 percent of the work, but getting the ROI on all of that really comes in ensuring that the 20 percent also gets prioritized — because that is actually what shapes the experience that goes down to the customer. The opportunity to unlock a lot of ROI on all of that investment, not just in the last three years but maybe in the last 10 years, is contingent on that last step — being able to have systems in motion that can ingest a variety of bank signals. That's not just for banks, but for many enterprises and telcos that are on a similar journey. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one question you wish more people would ask you about Pulse ID, what you are building, or anything about loyalty, personalization, or AI in banking, that they don't? **Alex Topaloski:** It's really about being more proactive and talking about the future. **Bernard Leong:** What is the future, then? **Alex Topaloski:** The future has fewer systems — more capable systems. The architectural decisions we should be taking now, to be able to power that, require a bit of courage. They require participation in the market. That's why we're happy when we see NVIDIA reports around it being a popular use case. Ultimately, this is not about loyalty or customer engagement — it's about being able to shape behavior. That is a really important part of any B2C business. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question. What does great look like for Pulse ID in the next few years? **Alex Topaloski:** Great for us would really be to be one of those platforms that powers experiences in this era of intelligence — being able to work with great clients, reputable clients, and to continue delivering in a trusted way to them. That will be a challenge because of the amount of change in motion right now. That is the mission we take on. **Bernard Leong:** Alex, many thanks for coming on the show. Really interesting insights. This is probably one of the more in-depth conversations I've had thinking about loyalty, AI, and the context of where things are going in the banking industry. In closing — any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Alex Topaloski:** I've read [*The Fountainhead* by Ayn Rand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FFountainhead?ref=analysepodcast.com) a couple of times. I read it recently. It's a classic, written in the 1930s. I can definitely recommend that. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you and your work, and learn more about Pulse ID? I'll definitely put a link to the report I read. **Alex Topaloski:** We want to make the report complimentary for your audience. You can reach me at alex (at) pulseid.com. You can go on our website, [pulseid.com](https://pulseid.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and [find us on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/pulse-global-limited/?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** You can find us on any podcast platform, on YouTube, on Spotify, and on the main site. Alex, many thanks for coming on the show, and let's continue to talk. **Alex Topaloski:** Sounds good. Thanks very much for having me. [Inside Pulse ID’s Playbook for AI-Driven Banking with Alex TopaloskiPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · May 14 · 42m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-180-1.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60-1.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-pulse-ids-playbook-for-ai-driven-banking-with/id914868245?i=1000767672760&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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Rebecca traces China's transformation from copier to innovator, the decoupling of US-China venture capital and the reroute of capital flows toward the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and an AI race where China commercialises while the US theorises. The conversation moves through Chinese EV dominance, humanoid robotics, and semiconductor self-sufficiency, before opening out to a multipolar tech order with India and Saudi Arabia rising. She closes with a hopeful note on reopening US-China collaboration. --- > "Many of these AI advancements, where the U.S. is more on the innovative theoretical side of creating new models... China's really ahead on commercializing them, and that's their advantage. I think saying that China and the U.S. are equivalent in AI is probably an overstatement. I think the AI center of innovation continues to be in Silicon Valley. This could change—the gap is closing. I do think the U.S. is still ahead, but I think China is catching up." - **Rebecca Fannin** **Profile:** Rebecca Fannin, Author of "The New Tech Titans of China" and Silicon Dragon Ventures ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-fannin-533128/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Site](http://www.rebeccafannin.com/index.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Podcast, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and today we are examining how China's tech giants — from Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent to the next-generation players in AI, electric vehicles, drones, and robotics — are reshaping the global competitive landscape under intensifying geopolitical pressure. With me today is Rebecca Fannin, internationally recognised expert on Chinese tech innovation, venture capital, and US-China geopolitics. She's the founder of Silicon Dragon Ventures, a journalist, public speaker, and author of five books. Her latest, *The Tech Titans of China: Innovation Under Pressure in the World's Most Ambitious Economy*, is the updated, expanded second edition of the landmark book. Over the last six years, there have been sweeping changes. The book features detailed profiles of the Chinese tech companies making waves, the sectors that matter most in China's grab for superpower status, and forward-looking insights into the next decade, including breakthroughs in AI, blockchain, and quantum computing. Rebecca's a returning guest on Analyse Podcast and it's great to have you back. Rebecca, welcome to the show. **Rebecca Fannin:** Thanks for having me back again. It's been a while — about six years, I think. **Bernard Leong:** Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? **Rebecca Fannin:** Six years ago, my book *Tech Titans of China* was published, right before COVID — a few months before COVID. So during COVID, I explored a whole other region of the world, which was the Rust Belt, and wrote a book called *Silicon Heartland* about the response to China's gains. It's about how the US needs to move from the old Rust Belt kind of factories to new tech. I travelled all over the Midwest region, the Rust Belt of the United States, and that book came out in 2023\. Since then, I've been running an investor group in New York City, running my Silicon Dragon events, and also working on this new edition of *Tech Titans of China*, just published. It's been a very busy time. **Bernard Leong:** What motivated you to write this updated second edition? When we interviewed you the last time, based on the first edition of the book in 2019, what has changed dramatically? **Rebecca Fannin:** Quite a few changes, which is one of the reasons I wrote the book. We saw tech innovation go to hard tech from the dotcom era. We saw venture capital split from Silicon Valley, from Sand Hill Road. We saw "China for China" strategies. This was a big change. There used to be a lot more US-China collaboration, and now it's become far more competitive. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/05/new-tech-titans-of-china.webp) The New Tech Titans of China **Bernard Leong:** We should get to the main subject of the day, which is the book. The book is structured into three parts. The first part examines how China's new economy keeps gaining despite considerable setbacks. You open with China's bid to get ahead intact. What does that bid look like today versus when you first wrote about it, and what are the setbacks that have paradoxically strengthened it? **Rebecca Fannin:** One of the challenges in the past was that China was primarily known as a copier of innovation, and now it's gained respect as an innovator in its own right. We do see a lot of the startups coming out with new ideas in China. We've also seen the Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent — the big three that I wrote a lot about in the first edition. They're still very active and they've moved into new areas, such as AI in a big way. The biggest big-picture change is that China is now regarded as an innovator. It used to be regarded as a copier. That's a big switch in global perception of China. **Bernard Leong:** You profile the BAT — Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent. Sometimes I think Baidu should be changed to ByteDance, but we can discuss that privately. Each of them has stayed in power, yet each has faced regulatory crackdowns domestically. How have they adapted, and which of the three do you feel is best positioned for the next decade? **Rebecca Fannin:** It's amazing that these three are still so much in power, plus ByteDance, as you say — double B, Baidu and ByteDance. These three are still the tech titans of China. We've seen some newcomers like Xiaomi, which I also write about in the book, but these three are very dominant. They did face major regulatory crackdowns a few years ago because they were becoming so powerful, so monopolistic, that they were regulated to sell off some businesses, to backtrack on some ideas. Alibaba was going to take its fintech unit public — well, that didn't happen. We saw a lot of pressure from the Chinese government on these big three. Their market value sank. It's still in recovery, I think, from that period, but now they're going strong again. This is a good sign for the future of China's tech titans. **Bernard Leong:** I felt that Alibaba was the most affected because they were almost splitting up all the different parts of their business. But they kept Alibaba Cloud, and the financial arm — Ant Financial — couldn't go public as a result of government intervention. Beyond the BAT, you also wrote in the original edition about TMD — at that point, Toutiao under ByteDance, Meituan, and DiDi. How far has the competitive landscape among this second generation of champions shifted, especially with ByteDance's global expansion through TikTok and Temu, which is part of Pinduoduo, and its explosive rise in e-commerce? **Rebecca Fannin:** Each one of them has a very different story, but going global is one unifying theme for ByteDance and DiDi. Meituan has tiptoed into international markets like Hong Kong, but it's pretty much stayed focused on the China market, where digital delivery is a big thing. Meituan owns that. ByteDance, of course, with TikTok — a major story there. How it moved into the US, and now has US ownership restructured. DiDi, a whole other story. DiDi went public in the United States but was delisted, due partly to government pressure. Now I'm hearing that maybe DiDi will come back and try to go public again. A very big leap into global markets, and in the US market very successful. But that can be somewhat tricky because of tariffs, as we've seen — the tariffs that were placed on goods coming from China, particularly in the area of lower-value shipments. Temu's business has been hit because of that. That is one of the issues of going global or going outside of China — there can be unexpected developments. **Bernard Leong:** I think Temu faced the problem where what's called the de minimis route is now being taken away — packages below a certain dollar value are now being charged tax when they enter the US market. So they're also trying to put warehouses inside the US. The chapters have actually covered a lot about next-generation mobile apps that have leapfrogged the PC era entirely. These days, even living in Southeast Asia, I see a lot of mainland Chinese coming here, and Southeast Asia is starting to adapt to Chinese tech — for example, scanning QR codes. **Rebecca Fannin:** Oh yes. **Bernard Leong:** What can the rest of Asia learn from how China has executed the mobile-first leap? **Rebecca Fannin:** Just the speed of it and the extent of it. Mobile-first in China, no cash accepted anymore. Everything is QR codes. This idea has spread throughout Asia, and it's an efficient idea. Many of these companies from China adapted to the mobile era very quickly. It's interesting how ideas that originate in China often do carry over into other parts of Asia. The whole idea of mobile-first, mobile apps, digital everything, is an idea that travelled very fast and very extensively. **Bernard Leong:** I was referring to something like Grab in Southeast Asia, or Ola in India. They took a lot of inspiration from WeChat and tried to put together the same set of apps and run it like what we call the super app concept. **Rebecca Fannin:** That's true. Those are good examples. **Bernard Leong:** One of the big changes is also how the competitive landscape has changed. You have tracked cross-border venture capital flows for years, and there is a lot happening — like Sequoia split up between China, India and Southeast Asia, and the US. GGV Capital has also been split into two arms, one for the US and one for outside the US. How severe is the decoupling now? Is it really a revolving door that has shut, or has it been moved to other corridors — say, Middle East and Southeast Asia? **Rebecca Fannin:** The split between US and China — the cross-border US-China venture capital flows that were so strong — definitely have decoupled now. Most of the firms have split their China operations into separate units, separate teams, and separate funds. They have stopped investing in China. Limited partners have also taken another look at their funding of American venture capital funds into China. This is a story that's been happening over the past couple of years. We did see a lot of movement to other corridors in Asia and the Middle East, for fundraising — definitely the Middle East — instead of so much of the Western funding sources. Southeast Asia became more of a headquarters area for several venture firms that were in China and had their base in Beijing and Shanghai. They expanded to Singapore, Indonesia, and other markets. That has been a trend that's ongoing. This decoupling of the US and China — it seems people would like it to end. I talked to many on both sides who say they want to have the cooperation and collaboration that was ongoing for so many years, that led to many of these new ideas. But now China is pretty much going on its own. China is also expanding into new corridors itself with technologies, into the global south. The whole idea has become much more pan-Asian, I would say. **Bernard Leong:** Part of your book focused a lot on the Silicon Dragons of venture capital getting swept up in all these cross-currents. One of the things you described is that it's not such a golden era now for cross-Pacific venture capital. For investors and founders in our audience, what does that mean practically? Has the money simply dried up, or has it been rerouted? For example, for Chinese tech companies, is local venture capital now the only source of capital, rather than taking money from overseas investors? **Rebecca Fannin:** It depends on the sector. In the sensitive sectors — which can be AI, quantum computing, and semiconductors — that money has pretty much dried up because there are so many regulations over it that it's very difficult to get a deal through. For startups — even startups that raised China money that are in Silicon Valley or in the Western world — it can be difficult for them to get new financing because of the China connection. There's just a lot of fear around China. Startups do need to be careful about the source of their funding. Getting funding in China is very challenging now because so much of the funding is coming from the government, where it used to be more from the private sector, including the Sand Hill Road investors. It's a difficult time for startups in China, I think. **Bernard Leong:** When the other part was the China tech crackdown between 2020 to 2023, it hit a lot of companies — Grab, DiDi, Ant Tech, which we just talked about. From your point of view, was that more a strategic recalibration by Beijing, or did the government go further than intended? How would entrepreneurs in China view the regulatory environment today? **Rebecca Fannin:** We did see a reset on this regulatory environment from Beijing, where there was a door opening to entrepreneurship again. Many of the leading entrepreneurs were invited to a summit where their innovations were encouraged. When you put a dampener on this kind of entrepreneurship, you're going to see innovation suffer overall. The government did realise that maybe they had cracked down too much on these tech titans that were innovating so much, and the startup world in China that was innovating so much. We did see a backtrack on that. You also asked about how the entrepreneurs in China view the regulatory environment today. Generally, if you talk to entrepreneurs, they're so busy building their business that they're not thinking so much about the regulatory environment. On the other hand, they are getting into areas that are advocated by the government for its national ambitions. AI is a big area, and electric vehicles, new energy is a big area. The entrepreneurs today are looking at areas that are promising in China, that they know are going to move along with the economic growth and the regulatory swings in China as well. **Bernard Leong:** I had Patrick McGee, the author of *Apple in China*, on my podcast recently, and he wrote about Apple's deep entanglement with China's manufacturing ecosystem. His argument is that the dependency is almost impossible to unwind — specifically because it's impossible to transfer everything from China to India. It's still more expensive to bring an iPhone in India compared to China. On the other side of the equation, how are Chinese tech companies themselves viewing the decoupling pressure? Are they preparing for a world where Western markets become less accessible to them, where they will push to go to the rest of the world? **Rebecca Fannin:** The dependency is difficult to unwind. Moving a supply chain to another market has to be done step by step. Apple is moving some of the supply chain, and other companies are too. But this is a very challenging thing to do, because China is the world's supply chain capital. It has everything. You can make things cheaply and quickly in China — just about anything that you want. That's difficult for another market in Asia to replicate. This decoupling of supply is definitely a trend, and Western markets could benefit from it. But to replicate what China has in the supply chain, which is why Apple is so dependent on China's manufacturing ecosystem, is very challenging. **Bernard Leong:** I would also say the same for Tesla. I'm more excited reading the third part of your book — China's gains in the other sectors that matter most. Everybody wants to talk about artificial intelligence. We've got Ernie, we have Chinese AI models like Kimi, Qwen, Minimax. All the Chinese models are making headlines. The way I look at it, I remember in January 2025, nine of ten AI models were from the US and one Chinese. By almost mid-June, it was nine Chinese open-source and one US model left — that was Llama 3 at that point in time. **Rebecca Fannin:** It was very fast. You're right. **Bernard Leong:** It was very, very fast. Having observed all this going on, where does China genuinely now stand in the AI race? Where is the hype outrunning the reality? **Rebecca Fannin:** China and the US are very close competitors in the AI race, if you want to call it a race. China is ahead in commercialising many of these AI advancements, where the US is more on the innovative, theoretical side of creating new models. China's really ahead on commercialising them, and that's their advantage. Saying that China and the US are equivalent in AI is probably an overstatement. The AI center of innovation continues to be in Silicon Valley. This could change as the gap is closing. The US is still ahead, but China is catching up. This is an area to watch — another really interesting, intriguing area to watch. **Bernard Leong:** Do you find that Silicon Valley companies these days are behaving more like Chinese companies? **Rebecca Fannin:** Like Chinese companies? **Bernard Leong:** I've heard from my friends in the Bay Area these days that most of the AI companies demand 996\. There's a Ramp report on a lot of expenses being done on Saturdays at the office. If you look at how the big model companies — the frontier AI labs — are starting to go into their partner's businesses: Cursor has been superseded by Claude Code, and Perplexity was being slaughtered by OpenAI's Deep Research. It's almost what the Chinese used to do, right? You start from one vertical and then you start going after everyone within your supply chain. Don't you find that behaviour is becoming more prominent in US companies? **Rebecca Fannin:** It's more competitive because there's so much opportunity in AI. It's a fairly new field — it's an old and new field at the same time. It's a new field, yes. **Bernard Leong:** Don't you find that, specifically in the AI race, this new breed of Silicon Valley companies is aware of what the Chinese is doing and how the Chinese behave within their ecosystem, and now they're copying the entire thing over to the US in the Bay Area? **Rebecca Fannin:** I wouldn't say they're copying the entire thing over to the Bay Area, but Silicon Valley is much more aware of China today and paying close attention to it. It's not just Silicon Valley — the whole Western world is paying attention to what China is doing. We're looking at this and saying, this is pretty remarkable. **Bernard Leong:** We can have the debates at some point in time. Talking about Chinese electric vehicle makers — they're speeding past global competitors. If you look at Singapore, BYD has already reached 21% market share within the span of three years. I'm already driving a BYD these days, surpassing Tesla in unit sales in several markets. Chinese EVs are flooding into Southeast Asia and Europe. Is this where the sector has definitively gone to China, or is there still a competitive window for Western — by which I mean European cars, or even other ASEAN manufacturers like Japan and Korea? **Rebecca Fannin:** This is a market that China is winning. Chinese EVs — BYD and many others that are going global — really have hurt the European makers as well. This is definitely a sector that China has won. Tesla was surpassed by BYD in China — BYD is number one in China as well. Tesla has turned more attention to other markets, such as robotics and space. The EV race — China is the leading producer of EVs, and it's also going global and capturing other markets. In China, 50% of the new cars that are sold are electric vehicles. China is an electric vehicle market. **Bernard Leong:** Xiaomi managed to produce a car compared to Apple, which took years and years and couldn't. **Rebecca Fannin:** Absolutely. I point that out in the book. It's an interesting point. Xiaomi was able to do that partly because of its background in digital, in internet of things. They had the infrastructure to be able to move from mobile phones into cars, into smart cars. **Bernard Leong:** Even today, if you go anywhere in Southeast Asia, you see a lot of Xiaomi and Huawei shops popping up, which you don't see in Western countries. **Rebecca Fannin:** There's a reason that right now the US is preventing Chinese EVs from entering the market. **Bernard Leong:** The book's final chapter is about drones and robots. China is now dominating civilian drones through DJI, and there are a lot of robotics companies in China that we don't know of. The only one I know pretty well is Unitree. The other one is UBTech. Unitree is going IPO this year. What surprised you most in reporting about robotics? How should policy makers outside China think about it? **Rebecca Fannin:** This is another area that China is beginning to dominate. Perhaps that's not a surprise, but the advancements of some of these robotic companies — how agile they are, how fast they've advanced, doing all kinds of tasks. Everyone saw the Unitree robots during Chinese New Year doing all kinds of acrobatics. I saw many of these Chinese robotics makers at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where they were very prominent. They were showing off. Many of the people who came to see us were surprised by that. But I wasn't particularly surprised, because I've covered China tech for so long that I know how good they are at coming up with these kinds of new technologies and getting commercialised. The humanoid robot business is a huge one. It's very captivating because people enjoy looking at them, and realising that these robots can handle a lot of consumer and industrial tasks. Policy makers are a little bit nervous about what happens if these humanoid robots go offline, go crazy, whatever. There was one in a restaurant recently that they couldn't get to stop operating. There are some regulations that may be needed in this sector to control it a little bit better. But anyhow, this is an area that China is dominating. **Bernard Leong:** That comes to chip self-sufficiency, which is the most critical piece — whether you're doing robots, phones, or anything else. It's a strategic bet that China is making. How far along do you think China's semiconductor independence is going? With the current export controls, is it going to be more accelerated, or will it slow down? There is always an oscillation between whether they should sell this chip or that chip to China from the US. **Rebecca Fannin:** China's working hard to develop its own semiconductor industry. It does have its leaders, but they're not nearly as advanced as Taiwan and other markets. The semiconductor market is very global. There are many players from various locations who are dominant in a particular component of semiconductor making. But the chip making itself — Taiwan and Nvidia are ahead by far. There's been a lot of restrictions on the exports of those chips, Nvidia chips, to China. The issue is: should we go ahead and export them, or should we stop that? How will this make China more self-reliant and develop its semiconductor market faster? Or should we just go ahead and let some of the lower-end chips go out to China? The semiconductor market is one of these battlefields, and it seems to change every month — what's a restriction. **Bernard Leong:** It's very hard to tell, because the last thing they did was reach seven nanometres, going down to five nanometres. But nobody really knows how good the production yield is in terms of those chips that SMIC has produced. Reflecting on covering so much about China — from your perspective, what's the one thing you know about the Chinese tech giants that very few do? **Rebecca Fannin:** From a Western perspective, it's becoming much more known that China can be an innovator and these tech giants can dominate certain sectors. That's becoming known. Even just five years ago, that was not a universally held notion — that China tech giants could innovate, could dominate. Now this story has gotten out. It's become a mainstream issue. It's become a political issue. This is the one thing that we have become much more aware of today. **Bernard Leong:** Where will the next important stories emerge? There is AI, there is blockchain, there is quantum computing, probably as forward-looking themes. If I were to ask you to pick a bet on the sector that will define the next five years on China's tech trajectory, where will you place that bet? **Rebecca Fannin:** People talk a lot about quantum computing as a futuristic technology. That's one of the areas China is accelerating and pushing. I would say quantum computing — of course, the other areas too. I would bet on all of them. But of the three, looking into the future, longer-term, perhaps quantum computing holds the most promise. But this is still early days for quantum computing. **Bernard Leong:** From your vantage point covering both Silicon Valley and China — is framing this as US versus China in tech too binary? Do you think there might be emerging challengers in the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, or Europe that could actually reshape the entire global tech order? **Rebecca Fannin:** I've always covered technology from a global perspective. I've covered India as well, with another book called *Startup Asia*. I covered the trends that were emerging from China and going throughout Asia. Many of the same kinds of technology ideas moved into India and Southeast Asia. They were basically copied, then they got venture capital and they also became tech titans of Asia. Going forward, there's a lot more power from India today — talking about this tech triangle of India, China, and the US. India's market is growing fast. It has favourable demographics. It has many tech titan companies, a strong talent base. Many of these Indian companies are going public. This is getting traction and getting attention in the Western world — to watch India. Southeast Asia: we've seen the spread of supply chains into Southeast Asia, and we've seen companies moving headquarters to Southeast Asia, for instance Singapore. All these areas are shaping the global tech order. There are other pockets of innovation globally — Israel has long been one. There are other issues today around Israel, but watch what's happening with Saudi Arabia, and how Saudi Arabia is moving much more into tech innovation to become less dependent on an oil economy. The global tech order is shifting. It's not just Silicon Valley and China. It's much more of global pockets, and India definitely on the rise. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about your book, *The New Tech Titans of China*, that they don't? **Rebecca Fannin:** Let's see. People always ask me, how did you become interested in this? **Bernard Leong:** Maybe I should ask you why. Why are you so interested in covering China and all over the world? **Rebecca Fannin:** As a journalist covering tech innovation from Silicon Valley, at some leading magazines including *Red Herring* magazine, and a magazine in Hong Kong, I saw the rise. I followed the story with a nose for news — always a journalistic perspective. It was the biggest story happening over the past two decades of global tech development — China's rise. I had to cover it. I was very early on, though. I had a huge advantage in being early on going to China and interviewing these entrepreneurs and their investors. That gave me a lot of access and a lot of depth on what's happening in the market today. **Bernard Leong:** What does success mean for your book on *The New Tech Titans of China* and its impact to readers who are thinking about China's technology landscape moving forward? **Rebecca Fannin:** One of the big shifts is the impact of geopolitics on this story. Right now, that impact has been really strong. The West, or the US, is pushing back against China. If we could get to a place where we had the collaboration previously, which was very strong — China and US working together on innovations and cross-border deals. The cross-border deals also died. It wasn't just the venture capital, it was the mergers and acquisitions also died, and the idea of going public to the US was not nearly as strong. Going forward, the success could be that we see a reopening of avenues of collaboration between China and the US. **Bernard Leong:** I would totally hope so. Rebecca, many thanks for coming on the show and talking about the book again — for the second edition and all the changes that you have included in the new one. In closing, I have two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Rebecca Fannin:** I follow a lot of other authors. Patrick McGee — I read his book and had him speak at an event in New York City. That was inspiring. I just heard Sebastian Mallaby on his new book recently. That was inspiring. I'm going to be going to the Harvard campus. I spoke last weekend at the Harvard Business School and moderated a panel of venture capitalists — that was inspiring. This Saturday, I'm going back to Harvard, this time to Harvard College, where they're having a China forum. I'm inspired about that — looking forward to it. This is a time when many of the major Ivy League schools are having China forums. At Columbia, I'm involved with the one that's coming up in a week from now at Columbia Business School. That's a positive sign. For a while, some of these events were not happening, but now they're happening again. These are mainly student-run, but they are very classy student-run forums with great speakers. I enjoy going. I'm going again this Saturday and the next Saturday. That's inspiring me. **Bernard Leong:** How do my audience find you? **Rebecca Fannin:** My website is silicondragonventures.com. LinkedIn is a great place as well, where I post regularly. Twitter, of course, or X. I'm very social — I'm into social media. I have a newsletter, which is sent out to subscribers and is also on my website. If you're in New York or Silicon Valley, I'm doing regular events with speakers. One other thing, which I almost forgot to mention, is my online show — *Ask a VC Anything*. We've been doing that since COVID — since April 2020 was the first show. We bring on venture capitalists from globally. It's a Q&A show. I interview the VC and then we have an audience Q&A. That's online — another place to find me. The platform that encompasses all of these things is my website, silicondragonventures.com. Of course, I'm on Amazon with five books. There are a lot of places you could find me. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find our podcast everywhere. Subscribe to us on YouTube and the LinkedIn newsletter, and of course, send me any feedback as you do so. Rebecca, many thanks for coming on the show, and look forward to speaking to you soon. **Rebecca Fannin:** Great. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. [From Copier to Innovator: The Tech Titans of China with Rebecca FanninPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · May 4 · 38m![](https://static.ghost.org/v5.0.0/images/link-icon.svg)Apple Podcasts![](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts211/v4/d3/ec/d0/d3ecd0ae-2360-b76f-d5fd-a201f541e5ce/mza_1981027743420487157.jpg/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60.jpg?imgShow=Podcasts211/v4/98/6a/4b/986a4b7f-9680-2303-621e-620d1354cc71/mza_937753276425047627.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-copier-to-innovator-the-tech-titans-of/id914868245?i=1000766121181&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/Nz%5FqKQh8s%5F0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-copier-to-innovator-the-tech-titans-of/id914868245?i=1000766121181&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6KC0Cb0TTmCeXagMQeYHYG?si=hUFNVciSSYycTPyTAp87ZA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-new-tech-titans-china-rebecca-fannin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsJ9jno?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/analysepod) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analysepodcast.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://www.threads.com/@analysepod?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) ### How Trust and Safety in Match Group Became a Growth Engine, Not a Cost Center with Yoel Roth URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/how-trust-and-safety-in-match-group-became-a-growth-engine-not-a-cost-center-with-yoel-roth/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:57.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Yoel Roth, Senior Vice President and Head of Trust and Safety at Match Group, joins Bernard Leong to trace how trust and safety has evolved from a behind-the-scenes function into a board-level discipline. Drawing on his earlier work in Twitter (now known as X) and his current work across the different portfolio companies under Match Group: Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid, Yoel reframes online fraud as an economics problem — why a new face costs scammers more than a new SIM card. He unpacks why anonymity does not cause online abuse, compares the American, European, and Chinese regulatory models, and argues trust and safety belongs alongside customer acquisition cost (CAC) as a growth lever. The future, he closes with what great would look like, is governance — AI shifting practitioners from moderators to auditors. --- > "The word I always come back to when I think of the future of trust and safety is governance. We are no longer just making moderation decisions. We're no longer just banning people or deleting posts or removing accounts. We are ultimately responsible for overseeing the health of the platforms and communities that we've created. Especially in an age of AI, I think there's a huge role for the field of trust and safety in overseeing the decisions that AI makes. In a world where we automate more of our decisions, that doesn't mean that we don't have jobs anymore. It means that our jobs change. And our jobs change to being auditors and overseers of automated decisions. And then when we find problems, we're the people who are now responsible for engineering solutions to them." - Yoel Roth **Profile:** [Yoel Roth](https://yoyoel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Senior Vice President, Trust and Safety, Match Group ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoelroth/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Website](https://yoyoel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Match Group Profile](https://mtch.com/leadership/?ref=analysepodcast.com#Yoel%20Roth)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernar/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. Over the past decade, we have seen digital platforms reshape how we communicate, form relationships, consume information, and even how societies function. But with this transformation, we always have a set of challenges — online fraud, digital harm, misinformation, platform manipulation, and now increasingly AI-generated risk. Trust and safety, once a behind-the-scenes function, has now become very important to a lot of technology companies and even traditional companies out there. With me today is Yoel Roth, Senior Vice President and Head of Trust and Safety at Match Group, the parent company of Tinder, Hinge, and many other of the largest online dating platforms used by millions globally. Today we will explore trust and safety, how platforms are tackling online fraud and digital harm, and how AI is going to change the future of platform governance and online safety. Yoel, I'm a longtime fan, first time caller. Welcome to the show. **Yoel Roth:** Thank you so much for having me. **Bernard Leong:** I'll start off with your career journey. You started off doing research, studying social media, online communities, and platform governance, then moved into operational roles in trust and safety at Twitter, now known as X, and now Match Group. How did that journey actually unfold for you? **Yoel Roth:** I started studying trust and safety because I think the internet is one of the most amazing things humanity has ever created — maybe that's a big and controversial statement, but I've seen firsthand and have lived firsthand the rise of the internet, and have seen how it's changed people's lives, in my view, mostly for the better. I've also seen firsthand some of the darker sides of it. What I want to do with my life, what I get out of bed to do every day, is try to bend the arc of the internet a little bit more to the positive and a little bit further away from the negative. As an academic, I thought I could do that best by researching it. I wrote my PhD dissertation looking at some of the earliest mobile social networks — in the early days of app stores and smartphones, how they were approaching safety, privacy, and platform governance. I published some articles. I was really proud of them. They got put in some pretty good peer-reviewed journals, and nobody read them. So I realized that if I wanted to have the kind of impact on these problems that I was hoping to have, I needed to get my hands dirty. I had the opportunity while I was in graduate school to intern at Twitter, and started doing content moderation work very early on at the company, long before trust and safety was the type of professionalized field that it is today. Almost immediately I realized that the decisions we were making, the product choices that I was empowered to shape, could influence the experiences that millions of people had. I never wanted to do anything else, ever again. **Bernard Leong:** You spent more than seven years at Twitter, building and leading the teams that later became responsible for content moderation, spam, misinformation, and election security. What were the most important lessons from your career at that point that you can share with my audience today? **Yoel Roth:** I would say there were many takeaways, but two that I would call out as the most important. The first one — this seems obvious now, but it was not at the time — is that what happens on the internet doesn't just stay on the internet. We used to talk a lot about the difference between what happens IRL and what happens online. Especially on a platform like Twitter, people would say, well, why is content moderation important? It's just people saying words on the internet. In the years since I started working in this field, what we've all come to understand is that online harms don't just happen online. They can very much affect people's mental health, their state. They can radicalize people, lead them to extremism and terrorism, and create massive harms that impact the offline world as well. The first key lesson for me at Twitter was that the conversations we have online and the connections that we make are deeply impactful on the offline world, and we have to take that responsibility very seriously. The second lesson for me was the importance of good governance. When I started working in the field of trust and safety, content moderation was just something we had to do because people showed up on platforms like Twitter and did bad stuff, and we had to figure out what to do with it. We didn't view it as a governance question. We didn't look at it like the task of a government serving their citizens — but I actually think that's kind of what content moderation is. It's about a constituency, your users, and the way that you serve them. Whether it's the rules that you write, how you enforce them, how you communicate, the transparency you provide — you have to approach it with the same kind of rigor and discipline that a good government does. I don't think we always succeeded in doing that at Twitter. I don't think any platform does. But we have to strive for that. You can't be content with just treating it as, oh, we have to delete some posts, we have to moderate some stuff. It's not that simple. These are really consequential decisions. **Bernard Leong:** You have to make difficult decisions because of how far the freedom of speech, you can actually exercise your First Amendment rights in the U.S., right? **Yoel Roth:** That's right. Especially for a platform like Twitter, but it's true of all social media. This isn't just words on a screen. These are people communicating the most important ideas to them. This is a place where heads of state go to talk to each other. That was one of the really crazy moments at Twitter — when we started seeing not just some politicians and elected officials, but the leaders of the world talking to each other in public in real time. I remember thinking — I first signed up to Twitter to post what I was eating for lunch and talk to some of my friends in school. How far this has come. How much that reinforces the responsibility to treat this not just as something on the internet, but as a key part of our political and social lives. **Bernard Leong:** I first encountered you through a podcast appearance and at a conference. You had a pretty big front-row seat to one of the most consequential debates around platform governance and trust and safety. Looking back over that period of your career, what has it taught you about leadership under fire, platform accountability, and the human cost of making high-stakes safety decisions at scale? I'm sure you have gone through pretty tough times during that period. **Yoel Roth:** One of the lessons I learned about Twitter was how much people care about the platform. It's a little bit crazy to think of it in those terms, but I loved Twitter. I was one of the earliest users of it, and I cared very deeply about the product. But every decision we made, every action we took, ended up being headline news. I remember the first time a decision my team made resulted in a New York Times push alert to my phone, and I remember looking at my phone and thinking — oh, I did that. That's headline news about me and my team. I remember a time when the police in India raided Twitter's offices because of a decision that my team made. This happened during COVID, so they raided the offices and no one was there. That ended up not really mattering. But the point is — these are massively consequential decisions that can get people arrested. In my experience, the degree to which people cared about what was happening at Twitter led people to make threats against me when they disagreed with decisions that my team made. It led to a series of congressional hearings in the United States that I testified at, and all of this hammered home that the personal stakes for governance for a platform as significant as Twitter are enormous. It was certainly a scary period in my personal life after leaving Twitter. It's not an experience I would wish on anyone else. For other business leaders out there, my advice would be — think proactively about safety for your employees, especially your public-facing employees. Think about the risks people have when they are a public spokesperson. Think about what you need to do to make clear that decisions companies make are not one individual's choice; they are the company's choice. But ultimately, above everything else, think about what you as a leader need to do to keep your staff safe. Those were lessons we learned a little bit too late at Twitter, and I experienced that firsthand. I'm fortunate now, several years later, to get to keep doing what I love. I get to keep working on online safety, but in an environment where it's a little bit less in the political spotlight. I have been a fan of the online dating industry for my entire career. That was what I started off studying. I'm a dating app success story myself — I met my husband on a dating app. I love that I get to work on this now. The positive outcome at the end of a very scary journey after Twitter was finding a company where I can continue to do this work that I care so much about. **Bernard Leong:** Now, as you said, the trust and safety role has evolved. It's not a very traditional career path that most people plan for. How has the field evolved based on your time in the industry, from those days into today when you're at Match Group? **Yoel Roth:** I would say there are two really big shifts that I would call out. The first is regulation. When I first started working in trust and safety, platforms moderated because they chose to moderate. It was, in my view, an important business decision. We learned early on at Twitter that financial success and growth for the business required content moderation. We did it because we knew that not only was it morally the correct thing to do, but it was also the correct business outcome. That's certainly true today, but increasingly — you can think moderation is good, bad, important, unimportant — but you don't have a choice. Under the laws of many countries — here in Singapore there are strict online safety laws; in Europe there's the Digital Services Act; in the UK there's the Online Safety Act — pretty much everywhere other than the United States, there are clear regulations that hammer home to companies just how critical engaging in content moderation is. That's a huge shift. The second big change is the move from reactivity to proactivity. When I first started working in trust and safety, we primarily were focused on reactively reviewing reports that users submitted. Something bad would happen to you, you would submit a report and tell us about it. We would review that report and say — yes, something bad happened here, we're now going to take action on it. We learned over time that wasn't what consumers actually wanted. People want platforms to protect them. If all you're doing is cleaning up a mess after it already happens, you have fundamentally failed at your duty to protect people. We started building technology at Twitter to proactively identify harmful content. We have extensive AI tools today that help us protect users on our dating apps. The whole field has reoriented from merely reviewing reports to now being focused on proactive prevention of harmful activity. **Bernard Leong:** Does that also involve engaging with governments and working together to figure out how to deal with trust and safety on a scale that affects a population? **Yoel Roth:** Trust and safety has to be a collaboration between the private sector and the public sector. I'd also throw in there — it needs to be a collaborative effort across different companies in the industry. It needs to involve academics and civil society, but governments ultimately can help anchor what the industry does in the laws of their jurisdictions and in the values that they were elected to uphold. We see the most successful forms of online safety regulation as being principles-focused. They say — here are the standards we expect platforms to uphold, and it gives tech companies the space to do what we do best, which is innovate on the technologies to achieve those goals. I think regulation is great. The most successful types of it are regulations that say, here's the bar we want you to achieve, and then my team and I get to figure out how we build the technology to get there. **Bernard Leong:** That brings us to the main subject of the day — talking about trust and safety from the point of view of the business. You already gave a pretty good overview. Why is it a critical function for digital platforms to think about trust and safety? How should CEOs and boards think about trust and safety today? Is it just a risk management function or a policy function, or is it a competitive advantage from your point of view? **Yoel Roth:** I think it's both. Without a doubt, trust and safety is a risk management function. In my role today, I regularly report my team's activities to Match Group's audit committee in the same way that we report on our progress on privacy and cybersecurity. So yes, I would encourage CEOs and boards to view trust and safety as a part of their corporate risk management strategy and to build in governance the same way that you would for something like cybersecurity. But there's more to it than that. If you look at the research, in most consumer-facing fields, consumers want to feel safe and protected. That's true on platforms that are focused on free speech, where we see that when people don't feel safe, they don't participate. If people don't participate, there's not a conversation. So there's an imperative to engage in moderation. But it's even more true on dating platforms. In the context of Match Group's apps, we offer a freemium service. You can sign up for Tinder or Hinge completely for free, and you don't have to pay to use our apps. But 98% of our revenue as a company comes from people who voluntarily choose to pay for our services or engage in in-app purchases because they like the experience and want more of it. We know from our research that they won't do that if they feel unsafe. Critically, they won't drive the flywheel of growth by recommending our services to friends and family if they don't feel safe. There is absolutely a business imperative to engage in safety. It's not just about morality and human rights — of course that's important too. I'm a believer in those. But from a purely self-interested capitalist perspective, all of the research I've seen, all of the work I've done, indicates you cannot be successful as a consumer-facing internet service without engaging in trust and safety. **Bernard Leong:** That comes to this point. Most platforms historically tend to optimize for growth and engagement. But trust and safety always requires some form of friction — verification, moderation, or enforcement. How do tech companies balance that growth with safety today? **Yoel Roth:** We've reached a point where consumers are willing to accept a little bit of friction in service of a safer experience. The other side of that coin is — we've now seen a decade-plus of the disastrous consequences of hyperscale growth without constraints. We can learn some really important lessons from what's gone wrong in the history of social media and the internet. On the side of what consumers will accept — one of the reasons I'm in Singapore this week is to introduce a new feature on Tinder called Face Check. It's a mandatory biometric verification when users are signing up for Tinder. It's an extra step in the onboarding process. 10 years ago, if you said "extra step in onboarding" in a product review meeting at a tech company, you would be laughed out of the room. Nobody would accept it. But we've now rolled this feature out to cover a majority of our users around the world because it has such significant positive safety benefits. The end result is that we've added a little bit more friction to onboarding in order to get a massive positive safety outcome — and nobody objects. We have not seen meaningful backlash from consumers. We haven't seen that people stop signing up for our apps. But we do see that people like it when they feel safer and more respected, and that the accounts on Tinder are more authentic. The lesson for me is — maybe a little bit of friction is a good thing, and we can actually design better and safer products by adding the right forms of friction at the right times. **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you. Specifically for something like dating, where everyone wants to be safe and everybody wants to know who they're dating is a real person, verification is important. From your experience, what are the biggest mistakes companies make when they try to build trust and safety functions? **Yoel Roth:** You highlighted one of the things that I think is most important — know the product you're building, and tailor your solutions to that product, not just to some generic picture of best practices. The appropriate trust and safety measures for a dating app are different from the appropriate safety measures for a product like Twitter, and they should be. There is no universally right version of trust and safety, any more than there's a universally right way to build a car or build some other tech product. You have to understand what your consumers want, and then think about what the right approaches are. In the context of a dating app, a feature like Face Check that has mandatory verification makes a ton of sense, because we're actually bringing people together face-to-face in person, so having a little bit more friction is the right decision. Would I build the same product if I still worked at Twitter? Probably not. Leaders working in the tech space need to recognize that — understand your customers, understand your industry, start with research, then build tailored solutions. **Bernard Leong:** Is it possible for you to help my audience understand a comprehensive overview of Match Group and its subsidiaries? Everybody knows Tinder. How does trust and safety factor into the company's strategy now as a platform? Prior to this conversation, I was quite surprised by the high number of users of Hinge and Tinder in the region as well. **Yoel Roth:** Match Group — the first thing people don't always expect about Match Group is how long we've been around as a company. match.com, our namesake brand, just celebrated its 30th birthday. It's a little bit crazy. We started building internet-based and computer-based dating services before the internet was a mainstream product. Match Group as a company is built out of a variety of different platforms — in some cases that have existed for 30 years, in other cases that are being built right now for the first time. Across all of our different brands — whether it's Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, match.com — all of them are built on a foundation of trust and safety. We know that in the business of bringing people together and forming human connection, that's not going to happen if people feel unsafe. We have a portfolio with a diverse range of products. They have different user experiences, different features, but my team sits at the center of that portfolio guiding our trust and safety strategy. We've set up trust and safety as a shared service, where my team provides trust and safety technology, operations, policy, and governance to every one of our brands, to uphold a high bar of safety even as each of our brands continues to operate almost like mini startups and innovate. That portfolio approach is a real competitive advantage for us. **Bernard Leong:** Now we come to online fraud and digital harm. Specifically in Southeast Asia, there has been a massive rise in online scams, impersonation, romance scams, and financial fraud. From your perspective, why has online fraud become such a large global problem? **Yoel Roth:** One of the biggest shifts in the online fraud ecosystem happened right during the COVID pandemic. Much of it was driven by criminal enterprises primarily operating out of Southeast Asia, changing their approach. Many of these criminal organizations historically had been focused on operating things like casinos, and in the pandemic had to find a different business model — so they started to move into online and internet-enabled fraud. Specifically, we saw the rise of highly organized, industrialized criminal operations engaging in investment and romance scams. This is a huge pivot from the types of scams and fraud that have existed for years and years, where it was individual bad actors targeting people randomly. There would be losses, and it was very serious, but it was nothing like the industrialized, highly organized form of fraud that we see today. That, coupled with the emergence of generative AI, has created a fertile breeding ground for highly effective, targeted, loss-leading fraud. This doesn't just impact dating apps — it impacts the entire internet sector, the financial services sector, telecoms, crypto. The degree of sophistication and resources has markedly shifted in the last five years. **Bernard Leong:** I had the opportunity to interview people from the economies who actually exposed the scamming. The person running those scams has actually been apprehended and extradited back to China. Now you're at Match Group, you operate a lot of dating platforms, so there may be possibilities of being targeted by scams and impersonation. How has the threat landscape differed between dating platforms and traditional social media platforms? Are there differences, or are the problems actually very similar? **Yoel Roth:** The threat actors that target our platforms are similar, but there are some unique challenges in the dating space specifically. People come to dating apps looking for connection. If you're using a social media site, you might be looking to share content or build an audience or get informed, but you're not always approaching it with the emotional vulnerability of looking to connect with another person. When you go to a dating site, you're looking for that connection and that intimacy. That creates some unique challenges, because on one hand you're looking to find that connection — you're open to the possibility — but you also have to maintain a guard against the possibility of deception, fraud, and scams. We really see scammers and fraudsters targeting dating apps because they see an audience of people that are looking for exactly the kind of connections that scammers prey on. **Bernard Leong:** What role does identity verification play in reducing this? The reason you have face verification is because you also want to make sure the person verifying is not just some romance scam actor trying to target. Is that the rationale? **Yoel Roth:** I take a very economics-based view of how to combat fraud and scams. This was true of my time at Twitter as well. Scammers are primarily profit-seeking. We can understand them as bad guys, we can understand them as immoral, but fundamentally they're looking to make money. My goal is to change the P&L dynamics, the economics of it. What can I do to raise the costs on scammers? Historically, the tools that have been in our toolbox as a tech company have been things like — block their email address. Okay, you register a new email address. I can sign up for Gmail in five seconds. That's not really a real deterrent. Then we started introducing phone number verification. Now you have to get a new SIM card. **Bernard Leong:** But you can buy another SIM card too. **Yoel Roth:** Totally. There's a cost there, but it's not a super high cost. About two years ago, we started thinking at Match Group — what's something really expensive to change? We realized that it's much harder to get a new face than it is to get a new SIM card. We started looking at facial verification as a key piece of our approach to authenticity, both because it can help us confirm that the person using Tinder is the person who appears in the profile, but also because the costs for bad actors go way up. If we detect that somebody is a scammer and we block them, and we're blocking them on the basis of facial biometrics, you can't sign back up for Tinder without getting a new face. Surgery is pretty advanced these days, but it's not cheap. That really changes the economics of scams. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting. According to The Economist, the scam industry is something like 550 billion dollars. If you were able to take a chunk out of that user base by increasing the cost for scammers, then the economics may just fail. **Yoel Roth:** That's right. The individual losses to scams, especially for something like a cryptocurrency investment scam, can be significant. I was looking at data from the Singapore Police Force — last year, individual losses on average to investment scams were something like 50,000 SGD per individual per loss. One successful scam can be profitable. But again, the costs are pretty high if you're blocking a face. Imagine a situation in which you're a scammer. You sign up for Tinder, we catch you, you get blocked, and now we've blocked your facial biometrics. At that point, the only option for that individual to continue to carry out a scam is to go to some other platform. If they want to target Tinder again, they have to find a whole new person to do it. That gets at some of the real tragedies of industrial scamming, which is the human trafficking component of it. The costs also go way up. That's the first really meaningful deterrent we have in this space. **Bernard Leong:** From your point of view, are we moving towards a world where it is almost impossible to maintain anonymity? If that's the case, how do platforms need to think about things like privacy, anonymity, and safety? There's no absolute right and wrong when it comes to trust and safety. It's just a question of trade-offs, and I like the way you frame the economics of that trade-off. **Yoel Roth:** I'll go back to my comments earlier about the importance of building trust and safety solutions specifically in context. For a dating app, I think it's perfectly appropriate and important for us to build facial verification into our products, because we're bringing people together IRL and the harms of scams are so significant. But I wouldn't build the same product if I worked at Twitter, because in the context of a platform where people are talking about their political viewpoints or are engaged in dissent, having that type of requirement to unmask who you are is an invasion of privacy that is disproportionate. First and foremost, we have to tailor our solutions to different platforms. The other big watch-out I'd have here is the common misconception that when people are anonymous on the internet, they're more abusive — or the flip side of it, that if everybody has to use their real name on the internet, that's a solution to online abuse. All of the peer-reviewed research that I've ever seen conclusively disproves that. Anonymity and abuse are not correlated. In turn, requiring real names does not solve abuse. The level of online abuse and harassment I get on LinkedIn is unlike any other platform — these are people using their real names and their real jobs. Requiring real names to be used publicly is not in and of itself a solution to online safety. We need to strike a delicate balance between when we require people to identify as who they are on their driving license or their passport, and when we give people that space to use the internet pseudonymously or anonymously. **Bernard Leong:** We now have generative AI, which is increasingly being used in trust and safety for content moderation, fraud detection, bot detection, and behavioral analysis. Let's go to the positive side. How is AI changing trust and safety operations today? **Yoel Roth:** There are a few areas where I think AI has been and will continue to be transformative. The first is translation. Multinational tech companies that operate at global scale across hundreds of markets consistently face a challenge of bringing local nuance and context to the awareness of moderators. Without a doubt, large language models can be transformative — first in helping to accurately translate speech and put it in context, but then also surfacing additional information to moderators that can help them make informed decisions. I'm a big fan of assistive technologies that can not replace moderators making decisions, but give them useful tips and information. **Bernard Leong:** More as indicators rather than actual decision-making tools. **Yoel Roth:** Exactly. It's decision enablement. What's the old IBM saying? Never have a machine make a management decision. There are some types of moderation decisions that a machine can reliably make. Spam — AI is terrific at dealing with it. A lot of types of fraud — AI is better than humans are. But for those really tricky and nuanced cases, things like hate speech and harassment, there's no substitute for human judgment. In that situation, I want AI to play an assistive role rather than a decisive role. **Bernard Leong:** I have a personal experience. I was once the head of all the post offices in Singapore. One day we suddenly had a big influx of grandmothers — women above sixty — who came to the post office on the grounds of needing to remit at least about 2,000 Singapore dollars to address something that happened to their loved ones. It was triggered by a phone call from some fake officers. My staff, the ambassadors, were trying to stop the grannies from wiring. It happened to two or three of them, and they actually got a phone call, and we had to call in the police. The police came and managed to discover that it was a scam. After that experience, we did two things. We asked the police to train us on how to deal with this kind of situation. At the same time, I was at a digital conference where everybody said — you should just allow grannies to use one button to press for remittance out. I started explaining the story to everyone. I was also chief digital officer at the time, and I was telling everybody — well, if I hadn't had human beings right in front of the decision-making process, that granny would have just pressed the button and the $2,000 would have just disappeared. I'm thinking about the harm AI can do — that people now can fake the voice, fake even the face and everything. How do platforms need to think about being proactive in trust and safety from the other side of the conversation? **Yoel Roth:** That story is so powerful because it highlights so many of the different dynamics at play in something like scams and fraud. First, there's the detection piece — we need to be catching these campaigns as they're rolling out. Then there's the intervention piece — who are the people who should be stepping in in those moments to say, hang on a minute, I think this might actually be a scam. There are a few intervention points here. One is friction. If you're in a position of saying we want one-touch financial transactions with no recourse — hang on a minute, there's a risk there, you need to think about it, you need to design around it. Second, it gets at who the credible, trustworthy voices are that can step in in a moment of crisis and help somebody realize that they may be engaging with a scam. Some of the stories that are most heartbreaking when you speak with victims of scams are people who say — I saw my family member or my relative getting scammed, and I told them, you're getting scammed. They said — you don't know what you're talking about. This is just love. This is somebody who I trust and care about. When you're stuck in the spiral of a scam, it can be very hard to have that recognition that there's something suspicious happening. All the research I've read suggests that the most effective thing is hearing it from multiple different voices. Tech platforms need to be reminding people to stay scam-safe. People working in post offices, people working in bank branches — even if you're at a convenience store and you see somebody buying a lot of gift cards, that's a very common scam tactic. Maybe step in and ask what's going on. We're trained to be very private and not to get involved in other people's business, but scams are a societal-level challenge, and we all have a role to play in protecting each other ultimately from criminal activity. **Bernard Leong:** I was quite thankful that the ambassadors managed to stop this. We did receive an award, which I took on behalf of the team, but I always tell the team that we should send the service ambassador to take it because they were the ones who discovered it. How do we now combine human judgment and AI systems so that we can enhance trust and safety operations like that? **Yoel Roth:** Especially when we're dealing with emerging threats, there's no substitute for human intuition and investigative capacity. The human brain is one of the best tools that's ever been developed, ever, at spotting weird stuff. Anybody who does investigations for a living, whether they work in the police or at a tech platform, knows that sometimes you can just look at a spreadsheet of data and your eyes gravitate right to the thing that's weird. We need people to keep doing that. But having the capacity for people to do what we do best, which is find weird stuff and dig into it, requires us to automate the things that are lower judgment. My strategy at Match Group for deploying AI is — automate what we can automate. Let the robots handle the things that are low-context, low-sophistication, and which they can do reliably. Then give humans the capability to focus on those high-sophistication, high-context tasks, and really give us that space as an enterprise to focus on emerging threats and issues, rather than just getting bogged down in constant additional operational burden. **Bernard Leong:** People react very negatively to the idea — it's my money, I should be able to spend it how I want. Nobody can tell you how to spend your money or who you should spend it on, and people can react very aggressively in these moments. But it's sometimes the only option. If you get it wrong, if the police get it wrong, if your bank gets it wrong, maybe it takes a little bit of extra time for the transaction to go through. But that seems like a price worth paying. One important part is governance and regulations. You are a practitioner and also a scholar on platform governance. How have you seen regulation evolving globally for digital platforms, especially as governments now put more pressure on issues like fraud, identity, and online harm? **Yoel Roth:** We've seen the emergence of three primary approaches to governance and regulation of the internet space. The American model is pretty hands-off. The focus is on free enterprise and enabling innovation, and I think that's actually a good thing generally. We've seen a lot of companies build genuinely new products in a space where they are protected in the work they're doing and have the space to innovate. In Europe, we've seen a model that's really anchored in human rights. From the founding of the European Union onwards, in Europe there's a focus on basic human rights — rights to expression, rights to safety, rights to privacy, rights to conduct business freely. Laws like the Digital Services Act enshrine those rights and institutionalize them, and then constrain what platforms are doing based on those human rights principles. The third approach — China being the dominant example here — is an approach of the government dictating what speech is and isn't appropriate, and directing companies in the private sector around what appropriate governance looks like. So you have hands-off, principles-based, government-directed. We see different countries around the world gravitating to different points on that spectrum. Some lean a little bit more toward the American free-market model, some lean a little bit more toward the European principles-based human rights model, some lean a little bit more toward the Chinese top-down directed model. Those have emerged as the three big regimes. My bias as a trust and safety practitioner is very much toward the European model. Let's define what our values and our principles are, and what we're trying to uphold. Then let's create a regulatory framework of accountability. Let's require transparency. Let's require companies to have appropriate safeguards and risk assessments. Use that as the foundation for how you build good products. **Bernard Leong:** What do regulators often misunderstand about how content moderation and platform governance actually work? **Yoel Roth:** The biggest misunderstanding is that not all platforms are the same — this is the theme I come back to again and again. A lot of times, laws are written, frankly, for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They're not written for platforms like Tinder and Hinge. I'll give you one really specific example. On Tinder, we allow users to submit reports to us if something harmful happened to them when they're on a date. Obviously, if you meet somebody on our platform and you go on a date, we aren't there physically with you on the date. It would be a little bit weird if my team followed you around. **Bernard Leong:** That makes complete sense. **Yoel Roth:** We still want to make sure we know if something bad happened, so we give people reporting tools. On the basis of those reports, we review them, and if we find the report to be credible, we will take enforcement action. If you say — I was on a date with Yoel, he did something bad to me — we review the report; I could get banned on the basis of that report. But that's not what the Digital Services Act was really built to deal with. It was built to deal with things where you can review a post on a social media site, make a determination about whether the content of this post does or doesn't violate the rules. We've had a lot of conversations with regulators in Europe explaining that when we have to deal with in-person interactions as part of our trust and safety approach, it doesn't exactly fit into the framework of laws in Europe. They understand that, but it doesn't change that the laws weren't built to deal with platforms like ours. **Bernard Leong:** Is it because they're trying to find a one-size-fits-all law based on principles, and therefore it's difficult for them to see the trade-offs between the social media side, where you can post photos, versus when you have dating, like in your case, where there is actually translation into a real-world situation? **Yoel Roth:** I think so. The core challenge of especially big, ambitious regulation like the Digital Services Act in Europe is that you have to solve for the majority case. There's a lot that gets lost around the margins. I don't think dating apps are marginal at all. They're used by millions of people. Match Group builds the biggest dating apps in the world. It's hugely consequential. A majority of relationships are starting online. In that context, I want regulators to leave the space for us to navigate these trade-offs. But when all we're doing is writing laws that solve for how do you govern social media, how do you govern ad-driven platforms, you can end up not having the kind of nuance that allows platforms like ours to innovate. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think that with the Digital Services Act, digital platforms will eventually become more regulated like financial institutions when it comes to fraud, identity, and controls? **Yoel Roth:** In Europe and globally, there's an emerging consensus that scams and fraud are among the most severe issues that consumers face, and ones where we really need to have a coordinated and cross-sector approach. The banking sector, for lots of very good reasons, is highly regulated. When we look at the effect those regulations have, a lot of it is strict know-your-customer procedures to try to clamp down on things like fraud and money laundering. That's helpful and appropriate in that context. But the level of know-your-customer diligence that you go through when you open a bank account wouldn't really be appropriate in the context of creating a social media account. I don't want to have to provide my passport or a birth certificate or something to sign up for Tinder. In that context, we need regulation that acknowledges that every part of this economy has a part to play here — financial services, telcos, platforms — but the solutions might look different across different platforms. At a bank, maybe it's document-based KYC. On a platform like Tinder, maybe it's Face Check. We think that all of those can play a part in cracking down on fraud and scams. **Bernard Leong:** Looking ahead in the next five to 10 years, how do you think trust and safety will evolve as a function within technology companies? **Yoel Roth:** The word I always come back to when I think of the future of trust and safety is governance. We are no longer just making moderation decisions. We're no longer just banning people or deleting posts or removing accounts. We are ultimately responsible for overseeing the health of the platforms and communities that we've created, and need to be good stewards of that. Especially in an age of AI, there's a huge role for the field of trust and safety in overseeing the decisions that AI makes. I talk to my team a lot about how, in a world where we automate more of our decisions, that doesn't mean we don't have jobs anymore. It means our jobs change. Our jobs change to being auditors and overseers of automated decisions. When we find problems, we are the people now responsible for engineering solutions to them. That's different from the historical role of trust and safety as being the people who make decisions one by one by one. Now we play a governance function, not just a frontline moderation function. That's a really positive and promising direction for the field. **Bernard Leong:** If young professionals want to develop and go into the trust and safety field, what would be your advice, and what skills should they have in the era of AI? **Yoel Roth:** Curiosity is always the most important skill. That one's hard to learn, but it's easy to put into practice. Trust and safety is ultimately about trying to figure out why people are doing things, and what you can do to shape that behavior in a more positive direction. That starts with wanting to understand human behavior and society and communication, and a recognition that people are really weird. Understanding that weirdness and that nuance, and being curious about it, makes you a more effective practitioner. I would encourage people to think of themselves as researchers — lead with questions, lead with empathy and curiosity. In the age of AI or not, those are skills that are always going to serve you well. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one thing most business leaders and policymakers still misunderstand about trust and safety, but should know? **Yoel Roth:** The biggest misconception is that trust and safety is just a cost center. People sometimes think — there's not an easy way to understand the P&L of trust and safety. We spend a bunch of money on moderation and tools, and you're just another cost of doing business. I want to reframe that whole way of thinking about trust and safety to being about growth enablement. I'll give you an example. I had a conversation with Spencer Rascoff, who joined Match Group about a year ago as our CEO. There was an initiative my team wanted to pursue to drive down false positives in our enforcement. We thought there was a group of users where some automation was incorrectly banning them, and we could build something more accurate. The cost of doing that was X dollars. In the conversation I had with him, his brain immediately clicked over to thinking about the cost of addressing these false positives divided by the number of users we would now preserve on our platform by being more accurate. He said — well, the cost of saving each one of those users is lower than our cost of acquisition through marketing. So of course we should do this. It completely blew my mind. It was a way of thinking about trust and safety relative to other growth costs, CAC, in a business, and saying — actually, it's more cost-effective to do good trust and safety than it is to acquire users in some other way. That's how we have to think of this field. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about trust and safety, but don't? **Yoel Roth:** Let me think about this for a second. I get asked a lot of questions about trust and safety. A question I wish we talked more about is resilience. How do you maintain your sanity when your job is looking at the worst things on the planet? There are a lot of things that are very operational. If you work in the field of trust and safety, there are practices like limiting the amount of time that you work at a stretch, taking breaks, viewing photos in black and white — things that can really effectively preserve your mental health. But the broader message I have for my team and for other practitioners is — focus on the mission. Resilience at work in the face of adversity is ultimately something that comes from focusing on what you're trying to do in the world. I do this work not because it's easy, but because I want the internet to be better, because I think it's magical. When I have a hard day at work and I've had to look at bad content, or I've had to deal with heartbreaking reports of people who have suffered scams or fraud, I focus back on what it is that I'm trying to do, and that helps me be resilient in the face of that adversity. **Bernard Leong:** That's a very good one. There are a lot of unseen people behind the scenes who look at all that harmful online content. There are a couple of articles I read on different news publications about that. My traditional closing question — what does great look like for trust and safety from your perspective at Match Group, or even as the field itself, given this is evolving so quickly in the next couple of years? **Yoel Roth:** Great for us looks like building understanding. The reason I love conversations like this one is that I get to share the work we do in trust and safety with people who have benefited from it, but maybe have never thought about what it looks like in practice. The more that I can help expose what the field is, what we're working on, what it looks like day to day, what the trade-offs are, the better. Every person in the world will be equipped to understand the governance of the internet and why it matters. We have succeeded as a field not just when we're doing a good job keeping bad actors off our platform, but when every person using our apps understands that we are here protecting them, that we are building technology that works, and that people feel bought in on the trade-offs that we've made. **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks for coming on the show, and thank you for educating me on the many dimensions of trust and safety that I hadn't thought about until you talked about it — from the economics point of view, and even from changing the mindset from cost center to something that is essential to the growth of the platform itself. In closing, I have two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Yoel Roth:** I'm a total nerd. I recently went on a reading spree focused on financial fraud, more specifically looking at white-collar crime. I read one of the classic books about business crime — [*The Smartest Guys in the Room*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron:%5FThe%5FSmartest%5FGuys%5Fin%5Fthe%5FRoom?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is about the fraud at Enron. Then I read Andrew Ross Sorkin's book \[[Too Big to Fail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too%5FBig%5Fto%5FFail%5F%28book%29?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] about the 2008 financial crisis. What really inspired me about those books is — first, they're just fascinating. White-collar crime is always a little bit crazy. But they highlighted the ways that good people in complicated institutions can end up making catastrophic decisions. For everybody who works in management or leadership, there's a lesson to be learned about looking at how the biggest, most profitable companies in the world can end up making these incredibly disastrous choices. **Bernard Leong:** That's a good recommendation. How can my audience find your work, and anything about Match Group's trust and safety work? **Yoel Roth:** We're trying to [talk a lot about the work](https://mtch.com/trust-and-safety/?ref=analysepodcast.com) that we're doing. It's important and impactful. I am super active on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoelroth/?ref=analysepodcast.com) — you can find me under my real name. Please don't send me harassment. I'm also active on [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/yoyoel.com?ref=analysepodcast.com). My website is [yoelroth.com](https://yoyoel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find this podcast anywhere. Please send us feedback — don't worry, even if it's abusive as well, because I got it a couple of times. You can drop us a note anywhere. Yoel, many thanks for having this conversation. I really enjoyed it. **Yoel Roth:** Thank you so much for having me. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you. [How AI Is Rewriting the Future of Trust and Safety with Yoel RothPodcast Episode · Analyse Podcast · April 29 · 54m![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/icon/favicon-180.png)Apple Podcasts![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/thumbnail/1200x1200ECA.PESS01-60.jpg)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-ai-is-rewriting-the-future-of-trust-and/id914868245?i=1000764219896&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Peter introduces Pax Silica, his thesis that Singapore can serve as the neutral ground where fragmented AI communities from East and West converge through curated rooms, cultural bridging, and unreasonable hospitality. They explore why the Bay Area still doesn't understand Asia, the 12-to-18-month window before GPU backlogs clear, Singapore's unique "one to a hundred" positioning for enterprise distribution, and why AI agents — from Coinbase x402 transactions to Meta's agent-to-agent one-on-ones — are already reshaping how coordination happens at scale. --- > "I'm of like a hundred percent conviction that the majority of times when something is not aligned, it's a case of miscommunication. An inability of information to flow properly between people. And in this highly digitalized, highly fragmented and siloed world that we operate in, those things are usually not present. So bringing people into the same room and bringing them into an environment where they feel natural—as long as that room is curated in the right way—that's really going to open up these sort of icebreakers that then lead to creativity, to ideation, and to realizing that we're actually all trying to do the same thing and we're all just trying to make this entire pie grow bigger." - **Peter Noszek** **Profile:** Peter Noszek, Co-Founder, [SuperAI](https://www.superai.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Token2049](https://www.token2049.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Conferences ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/petergnoszek?ref=analysepodcast.com), [X](https://x.com/peternoszek?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/peternoszek?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Newsletter: Pax Silica](https://paxsilica.io/p/field-notes-01-becoming-the-bridge?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to the [Analyse Podcast](https://analysepodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and if there is one category of infrastructure that will determine who wins the next decade of AI, it is not the models. It is the rooms where the world's most consequential conversations happen. From TOKEN2049, the defining gathering of the blockchain generation, to SuperAI, Asia's largest frontier technology conference, my guest today has spent the better part of fifteen years building exactly those rooms — not as a passive curator, but as an architect of convergence, designing the systems, workflows and conditions for founders, investors and policy makers to find each other across geopolitical fault lines. Today, as sovereign compute reshapes where AI gets built and the Bay Area confronts a world it may have underestimated, there is no better guide. With me today is Peter Noszek, co-founder of SuperAI and TOKEN2049, to discuss AI's infrastructure moment, the concept of Pax Silica, and what it means to build the neutral ground where the world's AI powers converge. Peter, welcome to the show. **Peter Noszek:** Thanks for having me, Bernard. I love the intro — that framing around building rooms. That's exactly what's probably often overlooked, but super important. **Bernard Leong:** So we begin with your origin story. You have spent over fifteen years in the Asia Pacific building some of the region's most consequential technology gatherings. What brought you here originally, and what keeps you here now? **Peter Noszek:** This comes from my family, and primarily through my dad, who worked — or still works — his whole career at a multinational company, Nestlé. He was sent around the world to various countries. We passed through Asia a few times, passed through Singapore actually, back when I was much smaller, and ended up in the Philippines, in Manila, when I was in high school. That exposure just changed my entire perspective on how I saw the world, and it magnetised me. So when I went back to the UK for university, I knew I'd be back in the Philippines, back in Asia, and building my career from there. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting. I have attended TOKEN2049, and I've also been a crypto industry investor and advised some of the firms there. It has established you as an architect of the crypto conference world. How did that experience shape the way you built SuperAI, and what did you deliberately do differently the second time for SuperAI? **Peter Noszek:** That's a good question. If we look at the crypto world, it has developed and grown in a different way to how the broader technology sector has grown. What we saw for SuperAI last year in particular was that, for the first time really, we had a major in-person event bring together a full range of participants from across multiple silos. That's really how frontier tech is built. There are different labs, different institutions, different enterprise hyperscalers, startups — and they're spread across geographies. Communities also operate in a very node-based fashion. That's something that we for sure want to bridge. We want to bridge that with SuperAI. If we look at TOKEN2049, that never really happened, and that's because crypto was from the beginning digital-first. It's an online meeting space. People lived almost entirely online lives, especially during COVID. The real breakout year for TOKEN2049 was 2022 in Singapore, just after the pandemic. At that point, a lot of value creation had happened online, and TOKEN2049 was this opportunity for people to come together in person — maybe some co-founders or teams. I actually contributed to a DAO and had never met my team members until I met them at TOKEN2049\. This was a very real thing. So TOKEN2049 provided a physical space and a Schelling point for a digital realm. Whereas SuperAI is all about coordinating siloed communities and siloed nodes that are building at the frontier. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting. Our understanding is TOKEN2049 is in both Dubai and Singapore, and SuperAI is predominantly in Singapore. Looking across your career as a builder of global convergence platforms, what's the one counterintuitive lesson about the events and community-building business that most people from the outside would find surprising? **Peter Noszek:** I'm not sure how counterintuitive this is, but I would say — bigger is not necessarily better. There's a tendency — I was just at [Nvidia GTC](https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) the other week in San Jose, in the South Bay. That's a huge event in terms of number of participants and companies, and the technology on display is fantastic and fascinating, and it's a great networking opportunity. But it's huge in terms of the number of attendees, and when you reach a certain level, what you start missing is a quality filter. What you also miss is the ability to shape the attendee experience in the same way. So that's a lesson in how I think about events, which is about curation, and it's about unreasonable levels of hospitality. The level of attention to detail required for someone to feel truly comfortable is quite meticulous, and it's very hard to do that — perhaps unscalable when you're thinking about this at a massive level. The outcome of that is matchmaking. No matter if you deploy technology, if you deploy AI curation and matching, at the end of the day what any algorithm learns from is the underlying dataset. That dataset needs to be high quality. It needs to be high signal. So what really matters is bringing together a curated set of high-signal builders, investors and operators, and doing that in a way that doesn't go beyond a certain level of scale. **Bernard Leong:** One question I want to get to is of course the main subject of this — to talk about some of the things you've been observing in Silicon Valley. I know you have been spending the last couple of weeks in San Francisco meeting AI founders and investors. As a person working in AI myself, almost every day, every week, there's something new. Based on your current observation, what is the headline from the meetings most people in the Bay Area have not absorbed from your point of view? **Peter Noszek:** Interesting. The Bay Area kind of feels like a hive mind in a way. It's difficult to understand the intensity or the velocity of operation here until you step in. I know you, for example, are very tuned into the Bay Area, and you even operate your personal schedule and your timing to adjust to that — which you kind of have to do. But once you get in, it also has a strong tendency toward focused execution. This actually makes the Bay Area very different from somewhere like Singapore. The Bay Area feels quite fragmented. You have many different communities operating toward their own focused agendas, and they often don't even communicate amongst each other. Whereas in Singapore it feels a lot more unified. It feels like there's a single approach. There's a national AI strategy. There is a lot of coordination between various government bodies and event organisers and community leaders and enterprises. What that creates is an interesting dichotomy where the Bay Area is able to seed and bring about a lot of creative innovation, but this might not necessarily be done in the most coordinated way, with the best communication. What that results in is the slow diffusion of technology outside. There are so many opportunities for Bay Area startups to collaborate with what's going on in Asia, and that would speed up the way builders in Asia deploy new technologies — whether it's to do with new model development or the energy requirement that goes into running compute. That gap is the result of maybe this fragmentation within the ecosystem here. **Bernard Leong:** One question now where Asia is really getting very interesting is of course the Chinese large language models or the frontier models — for example, DeepSeek, MiniMax, Moonshot. They also rival most of what is being built in the Bay Area, where you are. How does this change the competitive calculus from your point of view, because you are bringing people together? Is this a race, a fork, or maybe eventually just a convergence between different parts of the world competing in the same landscape? **Peter Noszek:** It would be both. There's both a fork component and a convergence. When it comes to the models and the approaches, there is a fork — different approaches and different ways of solving for a similar outcome. But the convergence comes more on the distribution side: you have various models all trying to meet and build for the same platforms when it comes to distribution, whether it's hyperscalers or more the application layer. One interesting thing that also comes to mind is how, at least with OpenClaw there is this sense here in the US — when will we have our American open model? When will that come? That's certainly something that is felt here. **Bernard Leong:** What you have also seen is that currently there's a lot of enormous capital flowing into AI compute infrastructure within Asia. Probably in the last couple of years, billions of dollars have gone into deploying Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea. But capital deployed is always not the same as the workloads or value created. What is the gap now between investment and real-world AI output in this region today? I'm also mindful that some of the AI companies have already started to set up their Asia headquarters — I know the APAC head of Mistral, and I know OpenAI's Oliver Jay is running OpenAI for Asia Pacific. From your perspective, how do you look at that? **Peter Noszek:** This is something that is for sure going to be important at SuperAI in June, where we bring together the key players in this space. We'll have Cerebras with us — they're moving into Singapore together with AWS \[Amazon Web Services\]. We will have a number of compute platforms like the San Francisco Compute Company. They're all interested in what's going on in Asia, but as you said, there's a gap. It's probably a coordination layer. If, for example, we look at Malaysia — there is a lot of GPU capacity available there. Specifically in Johor, there is 900 megawatts of compute available. But the utilisation is low. What's missing, at least from what I'm sensing here — I hosted a dinner on Monday, for example, where we had compute providers and platforms and renters from here in the Valley connecting with the infrastructure layer over there in Asia, with Khazanah present. They just didn't know each other. So what's missing at the moment is that routing layer, perhaps. It's all converging now, so that's something I'm very optimistic about. It's about having shared spaces, as you said in the beginning — having a room where people can come together, where people can develop trust. When they can meet somewhere and say, okay, I understand what's going on here, I can step outside of my focus area and learn more about a region that is new to me. **Bernard Leong:** This is where I want to get right into the point. You talk about the conversation on the infrastructure shift. It has moved a lot to GPUs, to energy availability. I am interested specifically in the Malaysia Johor region — the 900 megawatts of installed GPU capacity, but the utilisation is still not there. I have two questions on that. First, what has changed, and what would be the strategic implications given this big infrastructure shift you're observing? And why has no one built a clean single-contract layer that actually connects that capacity to demand, from your point of view? **Peter Noszek:** That's a great question. It's hard to — I defer to those deeply embedded in these conversations, or in the industry, to answer that. That's also why I love doing what I do, because I get to be a fly on the wall, to listen to people who are far smarter than me and connect them to solve these challenges. There are a few important considerations. One aspect I'm genuinely feeling is that San Francisco and the Bay Area don't really understand Southeast Asia yet. Many builders here have never been to Southeast Asia. There are a lot of Chinese-heritage builders, a lot of Indian-heritage builders and investors, but they haven't been to Southeast Asia. When there is that visibility gap, and the time zone difference, that makes it a challenge in and of itself. The second piece is the narrative around — for example, I think it was Elon on a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel and Patrick Collison where he was talking about sending data centres to space. In order to harness the sun's power. That's a really compelling narrative, and it's so important to be so ambitious. But what it misses is there's still a lot of power, of energy, of resource available, and you don't have to go to outer space for it. You just take a brief flight — well, a 15-hour flight — to Southeast Asia. That in itself is a huge opportunity. To your question of why has this not yet emerged, it's likely a question of the silos, or likely an outcome of the silos in which the space has developed. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting, because I spoke to JP Park from Digital Edge. They build, operate and manage data centres worldwide, specifically in Asia. If we don't do Johor and we do the Philippines, they have been able to build data centres that are below 1.2 PUE, which is the global standard. That means the data centres are more efficient and use less water. This tells me a lot — even the data centres built here, the people who bring those data centres — Jay was one of the engineers who built the Open Compute Project at Meta previously. They're also trying to innovate with data centres in this part of the world. One question I probably have is, how do you think you can — by putting all these people in the room — help them get a better perception of what Asia is like? **Peter Noszek:** The key is to tee up conversations and to create environments where the ice breaks, and to do this in a way that enables conversation to flow. Again, referring back to the Pax Silica dinner I hosted a couple of days ago, what was very successful there was probably threefold. One was the room composition — having the right balance of individuals. That should be broad representation across the different verticals where AI has impact. Number two should be bringing together different approaches and methodologies from East and West. Number three should be opening conversation in a way that is not overly prompted, so it emerges naturally. What that might mean in this case — and what I'm looking to drive with Pax Silica — is to leverage Singapore's unique position as neutral ground where these conversations can take place and emerge. How does one do that? It might be — let's do this through food. Let's look at the unique food and the unique flavours and the unique history that food in Singapore has. Let's talk about it. Let's think about it. Let's enjoy it and experience it. That leads to, okay, that's familiar for me, this is where I'm coming from, it ties into what I might have built or what I might be interested in. Same thing with music. We had music curated by a Hong Kong-based DJ, and the music itself creates a certain atmosphere, certain kinds of conversation. The same thing goes for art. The same thing goes for culture. There are so many different prompts or stimuli one can bring into any given situation where the right people are sat in the room, and that opens things up. I'm of a hundred percent conviction that the majority of times when something is not aligned, it's a case of miscommunication. It's an inability of information to flow properly between people. In this highly digitalised, highly fragmented and siloed world we operate in, those things are usually not present. So bringing people into the same room, into an environment where they feel natural — as long as that room is curated in the right way — that's really going to open up the icebreakers that then lead to creativity, to ideation, and to realising that we're actually all trying to do the same thing, and we're all just trying to make this entire AI pie bigger. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting question I do have, thinking about the infrastructure — given what is going on in the world, the window for exploiting Asia's underutilised compute is probably between 12 to 18 months. What closes that particular window, and who is best positioned to move before it does? **Peter Noszek:** Right now, what we're looking at is — demand for GPUs is backed up. That means there is nothing available essentially on the market. Orders are backlogged through to 2027\. That demand will be met in 2027, which will roll onto 2028. In parallel, we have a lot of progress when it comes to compressing how much compute we actually need, how efficiently the space operates, and also just general demand for power. What we're seeing is this shift from the backlog of GPUs being cleared to — what's next? Is it going to be demand for power? How is the entire landscape going to change? That should happen over the next 12 to 18 months, and now is the opportunity for Southeast Asia to max out on what is currently underutilised, and to really catch up. Once that happens, that will bring with it everything on top — more being built on the application layer, more understanding, more utilisation and adoption of AI within society, and just generally more mindshare within all the countries in Southeast Asia. **Bernard Leong:** Given that we have just seen the Gulf — we are actually having this discussion immediately after the ceasefire — the Gulf has cheap energy, basically around 5 cents per kilowatt-hour, but still carries a lot of geopolitical uncertainty. Europe costs three to five times more, but it's bottlenecked. How would you think in terms of AI infrastructure strategies, mapping that geography right now? The other place people don't talk a lot about is China, where they also have a pretty good energy supply, given they've been spending a lot of effort leapfrogging into renewable energies, plus their oil and energy resource being able to keep them on the top of the line. Where's the thinking now? **Peter Noszek:** It will be interesting to see more and more deployment on top of what's available in the Philippines, also in Malaysia. What we're going to see, at least coming into June, is more interest coming from America into Southeast Asia. We'll see how that goes, but at least what I'm seeing is there'll be a lot of interesting conversations, a lot of deals coming through SuperAI in particular. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting question I have — you have written about insurers and banks in Southeast Asia integrating AI co-pilots to automate underwriting, credit scoring and customer advisory. From your perspective, because you see all the builders going through the different conferences, and you're in the Bay Area looking at where the frontiers are — what are the genuine production deployments now, or is it still pilot theatre from the regions you travel? Or is it really starting to shift from your perspective? **Peter Noszek:** That's something that really separates Singapore and Southeast Asia more broadly from the Bay Area. There's a feeling often that within the Bay, everyone is just selling to each other. There's a lot of early adoption when it comes to SaaS — from Uber, from Airbnb, from these tech companies. That's a relatively small addressable market. What's not really happening here is moving to the enterprise level, which is the go-to-market stage. Silicon Valley has this fantastic position to go from zero to one. What is unique in Asia, and in particular in Singapore, is that position to go from one to a hundred — how can these frontier technology companies get in the room with enterprises so they move forward with much broader distribution? A few startups immediately come to mind that are following exactly this roadmap. We have Aaru coming to SuperAI in June. Aaru is a New York-based startup. They are already valued at a billion dollars. They've had some great pilots in the States, but the reason Singapore appeals to them, and why they're opening an office in Singapore, is because they can use that as a launchpad into the large corporations within Southeast Asia. So San Miguel Corporation in the Philippines, for example. Ernst & Young, based out of Singapore. All these different enterprise players that have a huge addressable market in terms of population in particular. That's certainly a trend we're going to see more and more of. **Bernard Leong:** One thing that also happens now is we have autonomous AI agents that transact directly using digital currencies and smart contracts. At what point do you think an AI agent stops being a tool and starts being closer to a co-founder — a participant with agency in the economic system rather than an instrument of one? I'm not going to ask whether you need AI agents to do your work — your business is very involved with people, so I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. **Peter Noszek:** I remember I was having a — it was a year and a half ago in Dubai — I was chatting with [Emad Mostaque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emad%5FMostaque?ref=analysepodcast.com), who founded Intelligent Internet and before that Stability AI. He said that by SuperAI 2026, you and the team will be running it essentially purely with AI agents. It'll be a majority automated operation. In certain ways that's true, because at the end of the day, coordination requires a lot of specific tasks to be executed and agents at scale. Logistics in particular. An event is all about logistics, so agents are actually super well equipped to do that. I was speaking with a friend at Meta who said his manager has moved from in-person one-on-ones to just having one-on-ones between their own employee agents. That is maybe an early sign of what is to come when it comes to coordination, when it comes to repeatable tasks. It totally makes sense. There's going to be an interesting talk as well at SuperAI by Balaji Srinivasan, where he talks about personal, private and programmable. What we're seeing — I'm certainly seeing this in San Francisco. I was trying to get a Mac mini three, four weeks ago and I couldn't get one in SF. The only one available was at the Apple in Palo Alto, which is an hour's drive away, so I had to get one there. The entire San Jose was also sold out. It's clear that this concept of building a personal operating system — if Silicon Valley is the beacon — has already taken off. What that means is, if everyone has their second brain, what you can then put on top of that is increasing agency. I actually saw a couple of days ago — Coinbase and Shopify partnered on rolling out [x402](https://www.x402.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is their payment system that enables AI agents to make transactions. That relates very closely to Balaji's thesis, which is: we will all have our own personal operating system. On top of that operating system will be layered agents, sub-agents. These agents will be able to transact. This will be done in ways that are private and protected. I don't think that's far-fetched. What I want to see, and what I believe will happen, is that this will happen in the interest and for the benefit of human interaction. My agent — I can attest to this — since I've been in the Bay Area, my calendar has been absolutely stacked, and there is no way I could manage my calendar in this way were it not for AI agents, giving me those productivity gains, scheduling time for me, finding the best match, and so on. At this stage, I can definitely see that. **Bernard Leong:** I can buy what you're saying, because even where I'm living now in Singapore, it's already two to three weeks delay. **Peter Noszek:** That's crazy. In Asia it's even more so. Here in the Bay Area, people still for the most part use Claude Code. As their personal OS. Whereas in Singapore, OpenClaw — and in China, OpenClaw also — is much more widespread and more broadly adopted. So you can see the Mac mini thesis. **Bernard Leong:** No, I think it depends. Even for a lot of my team — we've been using so many different tools, but now we are gradually all converging, since last June, to Claude Code, because it's pretty much where we think things are going, and specifically for enterprise deployments. It's getting towards the point where it's pretty interesting. I do want to ask you — I know you do a [Pulse 2025 survey for SuperAI](https://www.superai.com/pulse-2025?ref=analysepodcast.com). One thing you showed is that 65% of respondents believe AI agents will be the most impactful development over the year. How will this shift this year's 2026 programming, the curation and the design? **Peter Noszek:** The survey you refer to came in last year ahead of SuperAI 2025\. For 2026, it's on the way in the next couple of days, if not a little bit longer. That was pretty prescient — 65% of people identified 2025 as being the year of the agent. That's exactly when a lot of these breakthroughs in Claude Code came about. I think that's really how it's played out. Going back to the Aaru example I mentioned, they're using a swarm of agents to simulate human behaviour. They model, for example, what are the effects of GLP-1s on human health and outcomes. They're trying to map out population change. Agents have been deployed in so many ways, whether on a personal level or an enterprise level. When it comes to 2026 and how we're shaping the agenda, agents have definitely taken the forefront. We do this across six main tracks. We look at frontier models. We look at AI infrastructure. We look at AI's impact in finance. We look at AI's impact in biotech and health tech — that's a very interesting space. We have a number of really innovative companies coming. For example, using AI to encode mRNA, so that when that mRNA is injected locally, it can reverse damage such as hearing damage. Then we're also going to look at AI's impact across humanity and society. Especially now, when we look at AGI timelines, it feels more and more like we're getting closer and closer to AGI. With that comes the flip side of — how are we going to plan for the future of work? How are we going to address this at a safety level? We're going to have a really interesting panel on — in air quotes — "nutritional labelling" for AI agents. What's in your AI? We're doing this with the Google Chief Data Protection Officer and a number of other enterprises that are part of the ML Commons Alliance, on making sure that we develop AI responsibly. We'll have Max Tegmark with us, who is looking at prioritising AI for the human good. It's really important to have this kind of balanced discussion. In 2025, we were looking at — we're going to see exponential improvements for AI agents and their spread. Now they very much are here. So the next question is, how do we take this to production? How do different enterprises adopt this at scale? How do we use different kinds of safe guardrails as well as safe execution environments where data isn't going to be compromised, data isn't going to be leaked? How do we do this with humans fundamentally at the centre, because that's really what this technology should be doing. It should be empowering social progress and mobility. **Bernard Leong:** For government leaders and enterprise executives in your audience when navigating the AI era, what's the one thing you know that very few do, that you can tell them their advisors are not telling them? **Peter Noszek:** Good question. Let me think. For government leaders — I haven't been in that position. When it comes to government, it's very important, I imagine, for government representatives to be sensible and sensitive as to how they communicate. I'm sure there's a lot more they know than maybe they openly communicate. There will be some really interesting voices on stage with us who have very strong views on being vocal about this — Max Tegmark of course being one of them. [Alvin Wang Graylin](https://ournextreality.com/author?ref=analysepodcast.com), who leads US-China AI policy at [Stanford HAI](https://hai.stanford.edu/?ref=analysepodcast.com), is another. They have the government connections, and they will have very strong views on bringing attention to what's happening. Fundamentally, for me, what's most important is that government, that enterprise, that startups operate in a way that they don't play a zero-sum game — because this is a fundamental paradigm shift. I don't like to think in terms of competition. The net benefit of this technological change can be so positive, as long as we all optimise for that outcome. That's what I would definitely encourage everyone involved in the space to think about — collaboration rather than competition. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question that you wish more government leaders and enterprise executives across Asia would ask you about this AI moment — whether it's OpenClaw, crypto, SuperAI, TOKEN2049 — but almost nobody is asking you that question? **Peter Noszek:** Maybe it's to do with — how can we build bridges? That's what we need to do. Nobody is asking this question, but it's something I get a lot of positive response from when I come here, when I meet startup founders, when I meet community leaders. When I meet government — even the [Economic Development Board of Singapore](https://www.edb.gov.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) — they're all building bridges between America and Southeast Asia, or between China and Southeast Asia. Everybody is doing this, but they often don't use that terminology. So when I say I'm building bridges, they say, "*Oh yeah, I'm also building bridges. Let's do this together.*" That's a terminology that can be very useful, because the more people do this, it's going to increase the flow of information in both directions. I would love to see more founders coming out to San Francisco from Singapore and understanding what this hive mind feels like over here. But I would also love to see more Bay Area investors and entrepreneurs understanding what an Indonesian artist's beautiful piece of art looks like, what the best specialty coffee in Thailand tastes like, what artisan chocolate from the Philippines tastes like. That kind of cultural bridging will also help to open minds about what we're really building for. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: What will the AI global landscape look like in the next five years, and where do you think SuperAI will sit within it? Is there a version of this where the conference is going to be co-designed and operated by AI agents, or is this something else? **Peter Noszek:** Absolutely. This is going to keep accelerating in this direction. The acceleration will only get faster. What I expect to see, and what I love to see, is the open model — the open source movement. I've seen a lot of that here in the Valley, and also in the OpenClaw community in Singapore, which is that communities come together, they build in the open, they build publicly, they share knowledge. This is done in a collaborative way. It's not done in a protective way. What that does is you open up your entire source code, you open up your work for others to replicate from, and that creates a reflexive upward cycle. That is only going to speed up the deployment and adoption of technology. The implications of something like this for an event are that increasing parts of the logistics will be run in an automated way — and more importantly, on an open dataset. Because if you have open data, then you can train these agents to be smarter, to be more accurate, to be more helpful. What I'd love to see, for example, is a year-round community where, Bernard, you're looking to do a trip to SF and you want to meet certain kinds of people you feel will help you learn, but you have no idea who they are, and you don't necessarily have any idea on how to connect with them, and you're in a rush because you're busy shipping stuff. In that case, I'd love for you to be able to gain access to an open dataset where you prompt some kind of interface and you say, hey, this is my goal. All of that data is secured, it's private, it's protected. No confidential data is shared, but the interface recommends — I'm going to set up a group chat for you with person A, B and C. This is the best match for you that'll get you started in SF and really embedded into where you want to get to. I can certainly see that happening. These are the kinds of digital bridges that will exist year round. Then there will also be physical in-person bridges as convergence points in between them. I'm very optimistic on how this will bring about greater collaboration, and we together will navigate these challenges around guardrails, around safety, around competition, and around the concentration of benefits to a very small number of individuals and companies. **Bernard Leong:** Peter, many thanks for coming on the show. In closing, I just have two quick questions. First, any recommendations that have inspired you recently? Podcasts, movies, maybe live coding or something — something that really changed your perspective lately. **Peter Noszek:** Even before the podcast, I would say travel. Travel is the number one recommendation I have for anyone. I know it's difficult now — although oil prices just took a big dip, fortunately, so hopefully that has a positive impact on airline tickets as well. But travel, for sure, for perspective. I a hundred percent recommend. When it comes to consuming information, there's a number of books I've enjoyed that I've read lately. One of them is [*The Alchemist*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FAlchemist%5F%28novel%29?ref=analysepodcast.com) (by Paul Coelho), which I read when I was younger, and it's worth a reread. It's really important to have this perspective on being deeply attuned to your intuition. Because once you are, you feel comfortable, and that helps you connect with others. Connecting is what we humanly uniquely can do that agents can't do. In terms of industry content, I would say for sure Benedict Evans. There's a reason we bring Benedict to SuperAI every year. This is where he showcases his mega 120-slide deck on here's the state of everything in the industry in AI. You should definitely subscribe, if you're not already, to his — **Bernard Leong:** I'm also a subscriber to [Benedict Evans' newsletter](https://www.ben-evans.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and he has been on the show many times. **Peter Noszek:** Oh, perfect. Exactly. If you are coming to SuperAI, then catch his presentation, because he'll release his Q1 and Q2 — so his H2 deck, H1 deck. That's going to be really cool. **Bernard Leong:** I should thank you for your last SuperAI, because we had lunch on one of those days where he was in town. My final question then — how can my audience find you and follow your journey and learn more about the SuperAI conference? **Peter Noszek:** Definitely check out superai.com for more information on the conference. We have upcoming speaker announcements pretty much every week on the website. Also check out the social channels there. For me personally, I'm on [Twitter](https://x.com/peternoszek?ref=analysepodcast.com), I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/peternoszek?ref=analysepodcast.com) at Peter Noszek — that's my name. On [Field Notes](https://paxsilica.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) — this is something Bernard has a sneak peek of — I'll be launching my Substack very soon, and I'll be dropping some field notes there. All sorts of quirky things I've seen while I've been here, whether it's founders pitching on demo day by bringing live chickens, or the interesting conversations I've had. We'll be sharing a lot more, so stay tuned on that. **Bernard Leong:** Definitely — you can find all of us anywhere. The podcast is distributed across all platforms. So Peter, many thanks for coming on the show, and look forward to seeing you at the SuperAI Conference this year. **Peter Noszek:** Amazing. Thanks so much, Bernard. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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The conversation unpacks the AI inflection point reshaping security operations — from the explosion of machine data (set to more than double in three years) to the rise of the agentic SOC, where AI agents handle detection, investigation, and response while humans focus on high-stakes decisions. John breaks down why attackers armed with AI now exploit zero-days in hours instead of weeks, why security must start with observability (including the challenge of "shadow AI"), and how CISOs are evolving from technical gatekeepers into board-level business enablers. His parting message: the entire world is learning AI together — get to it with his perspective on what great looks like for Splunk Security moving forward. --- > "The volume is increasing quite a bit. We expect in the next three years it’s gonna double. Attackers do not have a governance of regulatory and compliance restrictions on them. They just go at it and see what works. And so the volume, sophistication, speed of attacks—the only way to defend against it is to automate your responses to it. One thing that folks outside of the industry don’t maybe get is just how large the attack surface is. And how hard it is to stop—attackers need to just find one way in, and you’re trying to defend all ways in." - **John Morgan** Profile: John Morgan, General Manager and Senior Vice President, [Splunk](https://www.splunk.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Security - Cisco ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmorganinc/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Cisco](https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/executives/john-morgan.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Podcast, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and if there is one function inside the enterprise that AI is about to fundamentally change, it is security operations. The volume, velocity, and complexity of threats have long outpaced what human analysts can handle. Over the last two decades, as AI moved from assistance to autonomous agent, security operations itself is going to be reimagined. So with me today is John Morgan, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Splunk Security, to discuss the inflection AI is creating for CISOs and security teams across the world, and what the agentic SOC of the future is going to look like. John, welcome to the show. **John Morgan:** Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here. **Bernard Leong:** I'm going to start off with your personal story. How did you come into the world of cybersecurity? What kept you here? **John Morgan:** Great question. Definitely early on I was a technologist. I love technology and I wanted to learn more. So I got into computer science, engineering, electrical, a number of things — I love how systems work. That's how I got involved early on. What's kept me here is that it gives me a strong sense of purpose. I love the feeling I get when I know that I'm doing something good for the world. Helping companies endure with business continuity is a clear sense of purpose for me. **Bernard Leong:** So now you lead Splunk Security as the Senior Vice President and General Manager. What brought you into the role, and what does the mandate look like from where you're sitting? **John Morgan:** Let me hit those in reverse order. The mandate is really to help our customers with resilience and ensure that cyber attacks are not disrupting their business. I would say above that, it's not even really about cyber — it's about enabling them to do what they want to do digitally. The thing that actually got me here is AI in general. I feel that Cisco and Splunk have a disproportionate advantage when it comes to providing trust, network capacity, and access to data that's required in this era. That got me here, and that's part of the mandate as well. **Bernard Leong:** Looking across your career, what is the one counterintuitive lesson about security leadership that people outside the field might find surprising? **John Morgan:** Let me define leadership as providing market-leading solutions. I would say one thing that folks outside of the industry don't maybe get is just how large the attack surface is, and how hard it is to stop. Attackers need to find just one way in, and you're trying to defend all ways in. Part of that attack surface is the people themselves — phishing attacks and social engineering — as well as vulnerabilities. Some people may actually believe that not updating their systems keeps them safer, which is obviously not the case. You need to update. But I'd say the attack surface and how large it is — that's something folks just don't understand. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/04/DSC01003.jpeg) Photo:Bernard Leong and John Morgan in Poddster Singapore (Picture Credits: Poddster) **Bernard Leong:** It's not the technology, it's always the human beings. That comes to the main subject of data, the AI inflection point, machine data, and the new digital landscape. Splunk was built on the thesis that machine data holds the answers — log events, metrics, and traces. How has the explosion of AI-generated activity changed the nature and volume of that data? **John Morgan:** First, the volume is increasing quite a bit. We expect in the next three years it's going to more than double. We've seen that even at a large percentage of our customers. I'm in Singapore right now, obviously with you. We just had our Singapore Splunk Go event, and we have tremendous customers here in APAC in general — like LG Electronics, for example, who started off just managing the telemetry from a few million smart televisions, and now that's hundreds of millions of devices, plus their manufacturing processes and others. So the data volume is increasing. AI is creating a situation where it's actually producing data, and customers are gathering more data than they ever thought, just in hopes that it's going to be useful for certain things. The nature of change is that now with more data, you've got to curate it — give it context, put it in the right schema and form factor. You need to do more work to find and correlate incidents across that large amount of data. That's where a lot of the AI can help. **Bernard Leong:** So what you're alluding to is that AI is now both generating more signal and creating new attack surfaces. Specifically, if we look at enterprises in the Asia-Pacific — financial services in Singapore or Hong Kong, infrastructure across governments — how are the security challenges different from what you see in the U.S. and Europe? Are they similar? **John Morgan:** I would say they're similar themes, but they differ in what's driving those themes. We're seeing a lot of compliance — there are different levels of compliance in this region. We're also seeing different needs for sovereignty because there are geopolitical influences happening across the world. It's not just here — every region has these geopolitical drivers saying: How do I keep my data safe? How do I ensure that I only have access to it, that I'm in complete control, and that there are no unauthorized ways anyone can get access to my systems, governmental or otherwise. Those are some key things happening in this region and others across the world. **Bernard Leong:** When you think about the machine data that goes in, it's pretty abundant, but it's also very difficult to act on quickly. From your perspective, where does the bottleneck sit? Is it in the ingestion, the analysis, or the response? **John Morgan:** There are bottlenecks across all three, but one of the most predominant has been on the investigation side — the analysis side — because it's required a lot of humans to do it. They've missed some of that analysis — they don't actually see the detections or the correlations that would be needed. The investigation side is traditionally where humans have taken more time, and where AI can help quite a bit across the entire spectrum: ingestion, correlation, investigation. The response side has been pretty slow. Depending on the response, some humans are going to want to look at the criticality before they let it be completely autonomous. But there are a number of responses that can happen autonomously, and AI can help do that a lot faster. **Bernard Leong:** As a former CIO myself, I know Splunk sits at the intersection of observability and security. How does that dual capability give organizations a different point of view on their risk posture compared to other point security solutions? **John Morgan:** That's a great question. Security starts with observability. It's hard to secure what you can't see or you don't know about. When we look at what's happening today — agents and AI are coming into the organization, whether they're sanctioned or not. We might call that shadow AI. The level of observability you need now, given things are new — AI agents are new, vector databases, MCP servers, all the infrastructure. AI is even creating new types of data. **Bernard Leong:** Synthetic data. **John Morgan:** Yes — and prompts and system context, and synthetic data to train them. All of these things require observability to ensure they're working together. To your question, it's required for security. Being able to observe and apply the right level of security is actually paramount to the efficacy of security itself. **Bernard Leong:** I was recently at a conference giving a talk to CISOs on agentic AI and governance. The CISO role has been evolving from technical gatekeeper to board-level risk officer. How has the arrival of generative AI, and now agentic AI systems, changed what a CISO should be thinking about in 2025 and 2026? **John Morgan:** A couple of things. I talk to a lot of CISOs and I value those discussions and their inputs — I learn from them just as much as they learn from us. Security has always been about business enablement — it's not about security. But right now there's a high sense of urgency to get AI into an organization to really increase productivity, and not only increase the productivity of things they know, but to actually do things they don't know. There's such a high urgency that one of the CISO's paramount instructions today is how to enable AI in the workforce. We call that enabling trusted AI or the agentic workforce. They now have a high amount of pressure to enable that — board-level, the board on down — and of course how to secure it and provide the trust around it. There's a lot that means for their role, but I'd say they are going to be big heroes because we're going to help them provide the trust and the capacity and the things they need. Hopefully they'll be seen as business heroes at that point. That's our goal. **Bernard Leong:** Before we go deeper, because you are the expert in security, can you help define what we now call the agentic SOC? Where is the direction that security operations are heading? **John Morgan:** This is a great question. There are a couple of forces driving agentic SOCs. An agentic SOC is effectively using AI and agents within a security operations center to automate. Security operations centers have been automating for many years. However, there's an imperative now to automate even faster and more. One reason is not only to save costs and be more efficient — it's because attackers are armed with AI now. We've seen that on average, it used to take 23 or 24 days to go from a zero-day or vulnerability disclosure to actually seeing exploits in the wild. Now it takes hours. They're finding more vulnerabilities with AI. Attackers do not have governance or regulatory and compliance restrictions on them. They just go at it and see what works. The volume, sophistication, and speed of attacks — the only way to defend against it is to automate your responses. An agentic SOC is AI agents doing everything in the workflow: creating detections, detection execution, investigation, response, reporting, and then giving humans the right amount of control in that process. It's here today. We already see the pace and rate of attacks increasing, and it's going to get worse. That's what the agentic SOC is designed to do for our customers. **Bernard Leong:** One of the concerns from CISOs is alert fatigue — there are a lot of signals. How does an agentic approach change that dynamic? What would good human-agent collaboration look like inside a SOC? **John Morgan:** Alert fatigue has been a problem for many years, and it's getting exacerbated because attackers are armed with AI. It's going to continue to get worse. AI and the agentic SOC can help quite a bit there because you can auto-triage, auto-investigate, lower your false positives, decide where risk actually is — before a human even knows there's an incident. Literally the recommended set of actions, or the actions themselves, could have already been taken by AI. That's very important. To your point about where the right collaboration happens: AI and automation will be used wherever there's repetitive, time-consuming correlation across high volumes of data. The human interaction is going to be where there's high-risk, high-stakes decisions that need to be made. Put the proper guardrails on AI so that you can determine when a human should get involved. We call that human in the loop or human above the loop, depending on how autonomous you want to go. Humans have the ability to decide when they want to step in. **Bernard Leong:** I want to get into the future of intelligence in cybersecurity. There's a lot of "AI-powered security" everywhere. From your perspective, what separates genuine capability from marketing noise? **John Morgan:** I could answer this a couple of different ways. I could start talking about the tech and what it means to truly be AI-native, but I'm going to take a different approach. How you tell is on business outcomes. If you look at one of our key customers — Singapore Airlines, here in the region — they've had dramatic results when it comes to reducing the amount of issues they see or faults they actually need to address. The answer is in customer outcomes. If you see less noise, if humans for every hundred alerts that used to take many hours now take minutes, if the amount of coverage you're getting improves, if false positives are reduced — look at it in outcomes. If you're getting lower cost, higher efficacy, and fewer attacks, then you've got the results you want. Otherwise, it's just technology. **Bernard Leong:** When threat actors are using AI to craft convincing phishing mechanisms, accelerate vulnerability discovery, and automate attacks at scale — how is this arms race going to play out? Who has the structural advantage? **John Morgan:** I wish I had a better answer here. Attackers don't have regulatory and compliance bodies overseeing them. They use the technology, and their test beds are customers themselves until they get it right. They can keep trying again. There's another factor: an attacker only needs to find one way in, and you've got to stop all of them, with a large attack surface. So there's a structural advantage, unfortunately, for attackers. That's why the approach — the positive side for customers — is yes, use preventative measures. Get your security controls out there. Make sure you're patching, updating, and you've got access controls in place. But always assume there's a zero-day out there and have a resilience platform like Splunk where you can detect the attack before it becomes a real compromise and stop it. That's the resilience approach on top of all the preventative and proactive work you need to do. **Bernard Leong:** Splunk has been investing in AI-driven threat intelligence and automated investigation. What does a mature AI-native security platform look like, and how far are we from that being the norm in the enterprise? **John Morgan:** The technology we're providing is going to make that a reality. For some of our customers, it's already a reality. But when you say "a norm in the enterprise" — meaning deployed widely — I think it's going to happen pretty quickly because if you look at some of the announcements that have been made and the way attackers are creating a high sense of urgency in our customer situations, they're going to want to deploy these widely, fairly fast. It's going to look like automated investigation and response flows where humans decide how much they want to get involved and where high-stakes critical decisions are needed. I would position this in outcomes: Are you having less noise? Are you closing off more of your alerts? Are you stopping breaches before they occur? What percentage reduction of attacks do you see? That's how I would measure it, and that's what success looks like. **Bernard Leong:** Detection has been rules-based and signature-driven. How are machine learning and large language models changing the detection logic itself in security? **John Morgan:** Security has always been a defense-in-depth strategy. These things will always be a phase-one filter when it comes to signatures. However, the difference is: one, AI can create better signatures for you and still deploy those. Two, AI can be used itself to scan mass volumes of data that's been curated. We made some announcements around Cisco Data Fabric and others — that's all designed to bring context to your data so that AI and agents can scan it, correlate, and find issues and detections. That proverbial needle in the haystack. We will continue to utilize signatures for first-pass filters, but it's going to get much better with AI doing the correlation across your data. **Bernard Leong:** Since you're here meeting different CISOs, what would be your advice to them when it comes to thinking about security at scale? **John Morgan:** I think it comes down to how to trust and observe the AI infrastructure that you're enabling the business with. We talked about observability already. Your first step is to make sure you're observing all of the new technologies — the MCP agents, what's happening at the network and the endpoint. You have to have the right security controls out there to get that observability, feed it into a resilience platform like Splunk, and ensure you have the proper controls around your investigation and response. My ultimate advice would be: automate as much as possible with an agentic SOC, and then ensure you're getting the right outcomes. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more CISOs would ask you about the future of AI in security? **John Morgan:** I'd say maybe two questions. One — I want them to ask me more to speak with them and learn from them as well. But beyond that, if I'm a CISO, I'd ask: "John, how can I actually procure my data and get better use and investigation out of it?" Because that's the platform and foundation for an agentic SOC to actually work. How do I meet my data where it's at? If they ask me about that, I would love to have that discussion. **Bernard Leong:** Looking ahead the next five years, what does great look like for Splunk Security, and what does the enterprise security landscape look like around it? **John Morgan:** We better move faster than five years because this space is moving faster than that — every week we see changes. But it's a great question. In the future, success for us is our customers being successful. That's the ultimate measure. They're stopping attacks. They're able to move their business forward. They're deploying an agentic workforce in their organization. As long as our customers are doing that, that's what success is for us. I want to get there well before five years. **Bernard Leong:** Well done. Looking forward to that — and meaningful controls for human beings as well. **John Morgan:** Yes, that's correct. Thank you so much. **Bernard Leong:** John, many thanks for coming on the show. In closing, I always have two quick questions. First, any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **John Morgan:** I'm inspired by both fear and optimism. I think right now we're in an age where a healthy motivation by fear is good when it comes to AI — make sure you're relevant yourself. The optimism is, I truly believe that AI is going to help us move forward as a race. I'm very optimistic about it. The one piece of advice I would give folks: as humans, sometimes we feel a little overwhelmed learning new things. But the entire world is learning right now about AI. So if there's anyone out there who feels it might be a little too sophisticated — get to it. Get learning. The entire world is learning with you. Utilize those learnings to improve your own lives or just understand what's happening in the world. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you and learn more about what Splunk Security is doing? **John Morgan:** You can find me at Cisco and Splunk, and on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way if they want to reach out directly to me. **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks, John, for coming on the show. Of course, we \[Analyse Podcast\] can be found everywhere. Thank you so much for coming on. **John Morgan:** All right. Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He shares his career journey from nearly 17 years at Microsoft across Central Europe and Asia Pacific, to making the entrepreneurial leap and launching Poddster's first flagship studio in Dubai, followed by Singapore. Borko explains how Poddster scaled by treating operations like software — standardizing over the operational framework to run studios from UAE and Singapore to now globally across the world while building a flywheel connecting corporate brands with authentic content creators. He unpacks how Podyx, the software spinoff, hit 24 markets with zero churn on day one. Closing the conversation, Borko shares why frequency and consistency in content creation — not polish — is the single most underestimated edge in the AI era, & what great looks like for Poddster & Podyx as a global studio network and platform. --- > "So what people underestimate is frequency and consistency in posting content beats everything else. Because the future internet is about you being available online and you providing enough content, enough material, that the algorithms learn about you. If they learn enough about you, you will be recommended in searches, you will do better on SEO, you will become more discoverable than anybody else. And that's the part which I think people underestimate." - Borko Kovacevic **Profile: Borko Kovacevic,** co-founder, [Poddster](https://poddster.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Podyx](https://podyx.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/borko-kovacevic/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Podcast](https://www.analysepodcast.com/), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulses of business, technology, and media globally. I am Bernard Leong. Podcasting is no longer just a creator medium. It is becoming a strategic channel for thought leadership, audience building, trust creation, and business development. But what does it take to build not just a podcast, but the infrastructure and ecosystem behind global podcasting? With me today is Borko Kovacevic, Co-founder of [Poddster](https://poddster.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Podyx](https://podyx.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). After spending nearly 17 years at Microsoft across Europe and Asia Pacific, Borko made the leap into entrepreneurship to build one of the most ambitious podcast studio and software businesses emerging from Asia and the Middle East. Today we'll explore his career journey, the story behind Poddster and Podyx, and how he sees the global podcasting and content creator landscape evolving for businesses, PR agencies, and creators. Borko, it's been a long time coming. Welcome to the show. **Borko Kovacevic:** Thank you. Good to be here. **Bernard Leong:** I always start with your career journey. You have a pretty unusual path — you grew up in Serbia, had a very long career at Microsoft focused heavily on gaming, and now you're a business owner and entrepreneur. How did that journey come about? **Borko Kovacevic:** It's a long journey. First, thanks for having me. It's a great opportunity to talk about some lessons I've made over the last two decades. I started with Microsoft shortly after I graduated. They used to have this student consultant program where students were basically recruited during university to do projects like Microsoft Imagine Cup, which is a coding competition, and to engage other students in academia. So I started with Microsoft early on. I was a Microsoft Certified Professional, a certified DBA, following the technical track up until a certain point. After I graduated, I joined Microsoft and spent 17 years there. In my opinion, it was definitely something that shaped me because I saw at least three to four versions of Microsoft. I joined when Gates was still CEO — that was his last year. Then Ballmer took over, so a bigger part of my career was under Ballmer. Then Satya. It was multiple versions of Microsoft, not just as a whole but also across shifting regions — from Central Europe to Singapore and APAC — which shaped me in different ways. **Bernard Leong:** You spent close to 17 years in roles spanning marketing operations, business development, and country leadership across different regions, and now you're running your own business. What were the most important lessons from that chapter of your career that you can share with my audience? **Borko Kovacevic:** I've reflected on that a lot since exiting almost two decades of corporate career. One thing that happens with a lot of people in corporates is complacency. As soon as you hit your KPIs, your boss likes you, you're settled — people stop looking for growth opportunities, especially the tough ones. I achieved success at Microsoft way too early — probably earlier than I should have. Getting picked as one of the top seven people in the world at Microsoft, receiving a golden Rolex from Steve Ballmer on stage in Denver Arena in front of 30,000 people, hand signed by Bill Gates. After that, I was riding the wave, thinking things were going well. Many of my mentors were telling me: get out of your market, move to another region where you don't know anyone. At that point I was like, why would I move? Things are going well. I wasn't looking for more challenges and more opportunities until it happened to me. What I've learned — now reflecting back on more than two decades — is that people should always be looking for opportunities that push them out of their comfort zone, and doing it on their own versus waiting for things to happen to them. My move to Singapore wasn't planned in advance. Decision makers changed around me. My career was stagnating. I was even pushed out of roles — close to losing my job at some point. I couldn't believe how this could happen to me after all the accolades and annual awards. But it happens because you stop growing and become complacent. So I literally took a world map, looked at every possible country where I knew people in Microsoft — Asia, the US, Western Europe, the Middle East — and sent 50 emails, requested 50 calls, and talked to everyone I knew so I could get somewhere new. The same thing later happened in Singapore. When I was running Singapore as COO and Country Manager, I kicked myself out of that comfort zone again and moved to Asia Pacific as a region to run a totally different business. I forced myself out of Singapore Enterprise to go into startups and ventures in Asia — just to remove myself from something that was starting to feel like a groundhog day. That's my biggest learning: look for opportunities to change yourself as much as you can, because it will happen to you if you don't push yourself. **Bernard Leong:** That's a very important lesson. From that moment you decided to leave and go into global podcasting with Poddster first — was there a specific moment when you knew you wanted to leave behind your corporate career and build something on your own? **Borko Kovacevic:** I always wanted to try building something on my own. It wasn't a sudden realization. It was always there — I just couldn't articulate it properly. I heard a good quote once: everybody has inside them some kind of a fire that you either try to put out and numb yourself, or you try to let out. For me, there were always these mini attempts to do something without really committing — things like investing in a few startups and trying to live through an entrepreneur's journey through the eyes of the people running these businesses. But it doesn't work. You can't sit in a corporate role and observe someone else's path where you have maybe a 1% stake and think you're going to live through that journey vicariously. You have to do it yourself. When I spent those 17 years, the stars aligned. There were some org changes and I realized: I'm going to be shifted again, the org's going to change again. I wasn't young anymore — not in my twenties — but I wasn't 60 plus either. This was the right time to pull the trigger and go after it. Things I had been trying to do over the last almost two decades, I now had the opportunity to build. Interestingly, it coincided with the idea of Poddster and the whole market booming and opening up — the idea came together and clicked, which is why I pursued it. If I hadn't forced myself into this decision, I would've ended up in another role. Reliving the same cycle. Because here's the thing: a successful corporate career is a trap. People don't understand that success is built over and over — it's something you work on daily. There's no 20-year career where based on your CV you deserve something. You don't deserve anything. Your experience and learnings may carry you forward, but what you did seven years ago is irrelevant today. Look at AI, look at everything that's happening. The only thing you prove is that if you've been reinventing yourself over and over again, you can reinvent yourself again and do the role well. That's the only thing you prove. **Bernard Leong:** Let's go straight to the main subject. What's the origin story behind Poddster, and what market gap did you and your co-founders see at the time? **Borko Kovacevic:** Poddster is an interesting story because it didn't come from looking at research and identifying a way to disrupt a market. My co-founder and I knew each other even before Microsoft. We were friends, and we realized the same thing from different angles. At that point he was a product guy — he owned a product company doing UX, design, and mobile apps. We would often get on calls — he was in UAE, I was in Singapore — and just complain to each other about our respective lives. He'd complain about being a startup founder, I'd complain about corporate. He'd say, "It's easy for you, you have big marketing budgets." And I'd say, "It's easy for you — you can do anything you want." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/04/WhatsApp-Image-2026-04-01-at-10.52.50.jpeg) Picture: Vuk Zlatarov and Borko Kovacevic, co-founders of Poddster (Credits: Poddster) During these conversations, we touched on one of his problems: how do you go and attract clients when you have zero marketing budget? And we toyed with this idea. I said, why don't you start a podcast and invite people you want to sell to — but don't sell them anything. Target C-suite, but don't pitch because as soon as you start selling you lose credibility. Just introduce yourself, slip in a business card, talk about innovation, talk about things they care about. He started generating leads because he was meeting interesting people. At the same time I started doing the same at Microsoft — getting people to record video interviews with leaders. One thing that's important in corporate is you don't get to have all the glory yourself; you need to share it because there's a high degree of politics. So we started video recording. On the back of this podcasting exercise, we both realized the same thing. In his case, a lot of people started asking: "Can I use your setup? It seems to be running well — you have an operator, an editing team — can I just pay and use your setup?" He was like, why are people asking me for this service? There must be something in Dubai you can just rent and use. There wasn't. In parallel, when I looked at my marketing bill, I asked my team: why are we paying four or five thousand dollars for one shoot? They said, "You need to bring five people in the office — a sound guy, a camera guy — they come in for a one-hour interview." And I thought, there's got to be a better way. So I insourced and built a mini prototype of a studio inside Microsoft. At the same time, the Dubai setup was taking off — my co-founder was already renting it out to pay his own rent. We got together one day and agreed: this seems to be a market no one is serving. We invested in a bigger setup in Al Barsha — the first flagship Poddster location in Dubai with multiple rooms — and it took off like no one's business. At that point I realized: if one company, Microsoft, could run anywhere between 50 to 100 shoots a month in a single in-house facility — because I went to marketing, HR, sales, and the learning team and consolidated all their mini purchase orders into one studio — and five to seven times the content output versus one-off shoots, then there had to be dozens, hundreds of other companies with the same need. I'd visited DBS's fully equipped studio in MBFC — a proper broadcast-grade facility — and asked them what it costs to run. They gave me a crazy figure and told me only the CEO and minus-one actually use it because it costs 10 to 20 thousand just to fire it up. There was no democratization. That's how Poddster started in Dubai. The model was simple: how do you run this like McDonald's — standardizing 90% of operations so it scales to multiple markets in the same repeatable way? Now, running 14 sets across 12 rooms in different parts of UAE and Singapore, that repeatable and scalable thinking clearly works. **Bernard Leong:** You ran an MVP first and then figured out how to build it. But today Poddster is more than a podcast studio — there's a community, there are different aspects of podcasting that people don't talk about. How do you define the business today? **Borko Kovacevic:** It evolved over time. It started as one room, then multiple rooms, then standardized setup. But that infrastructure — the democratized way for content creators to come and create content — worked both for content creators and for corporates. It also found its way to people who don't call themselves content creators because they don't do it full time, but who also aren't large corporates: startups, VCs, lawyers, fitness consultants, and so on. It became a platform for everyone to create content. What started happening is it became a center of gravity — which led us to ask: what if Poddster, on the back of its infrastructure and studio network, became a network where content creators can find corporates, and corporates can find content creators? And that's working, because corporates are not tuned into this market. They don't know what to do. Content creators are, but the way podcasting has evolved in the last 10 to 15 years — very authentic, very different from moderated panel discussions — there needed to be some bridging between these two worlds. Poddster became a place where corporates hire us because they trust our quality and our delivery. On the back of that, content creators started getting contacts with corporates. We call it the Poddster network — another layer that brings something missing from the market. Every piece of content that comes out of most companies looks and sounds the same. Whoever differentiates themselves does it by understanding how to curate content that people trust. That comes from community — a community of people craving authentic content rather than something scripted and full of red tape. Poddster found its way there because we were a center of gravity for all these recordings happening, which allowed us to evolve into something that's more than just a room with three cameras. **Bernard Leong:** It feels like you've got a flywheel happening. **Borko Kovacevic:** Yes. **Bernard Leong:** Is that perception right? For example, as a solo podcaster I don't interact as much with the community, but once I access a physical location I meet fellow content creators, I meet people like yourself connecting me to other creators. You start to feel a sense of belonging and can collaborate on projects. Poddster also does outside-venue work as well — you set up studios for conferences. Can you talk about that? **Borko Kovacevic:** That came on the back of events presenting real opportunities. Studios are highly optimized for sound and visuals, but there are also opportunities to create really good content on location — events like Singapore FinTech Festival where you get the CEO of Binance or the CEO of Nets, people who are really hard to book under normal circumstances. Conferences like SFF, Databricks, and the larger events we've done all have a concentration of high-quality guests and speakers that you can access right there. That format became very popular. We go onsite, set up nearly the same studio quality — you can't get the same soundproofing as a studio, but you can get close if you advise properly. We do a site recce, advise on where the shoot should be done to get the optimal outcome, versus just showing up with cameras. It complements the need to record both onsite and in-studio. We've done Cisco Live in Melbourne, shoots in Hawaii, Miami, Nice, Amsterdam — wherever clients have their own events. We expand beyond our physical studios because either we have access to content creators anchoring those events, or companies trust us to deliver the work and hire us to run it for them. **Bernard Leong:** I should thank you — my last guest, Ken Exner from Elastic, we did the recordings for the Elastic Corner as well. **Borko Kovacevic:** Yes, that was great. **Bernard Leong:** The same thing happened with Databricks — I could just focus on my craft and the interview rather than worrying about where the cameras should be. Now, you've gone from first studio to global network. How do you go about expanding from UAE and Singapore to across the world? **Borko Kovacevic:** We realized that the key to running a great local network of studios is having strong local operators. We've launched, in what you might call a private preview, our franchising concept. We also own a community of podcast studio owners — more than 150 studio owners across the world. Through that network, we've met people who either want to take their studio to the next level, are just starting out, or want to expand and see Poddster as a model. I can claim that Poddster is probably the biggest studio network I know of that exists. There are some really good ones — Moon in Miami, Gotham Studios in New York, a number in London — but in terms of the volume and the scale of operations, we've probably developed this further than others. The business model differs — some are more agency-oriented with a few anchor clients going very deep — but what I'm looking for is a network of studios democratizing access to high-quality content creation. We are talking to a number of them around setting up in New York — the first location we're planning to launch, probably by September. After that, Los Angeles and London. The franchising model works as a JV where we bring everything that makes Poddster what it is: more than 200 SOPs on how to run the business, a strong brand carrying recognition from the Middle East and Asia, and central marketing, sales, and operations. Poddster runs as scripted as possible. When you reach out online, you get a response within three to five minutes. You get booked either on your own or with help through our proprietary software called Podyx. Everything we've built is designed to enable a new location — New York, London, Madrid, wherever we end up — to land with all these key components already in place. We already own more than 20 domains across the world: Hong Kong Podcast Studio, Madrid Podcast Studio, Amsterdam Podcast Studio. We renew them every year and run SEO and ads on them. When we land in a location, we deploy these levers: Pod Club — our community of Poddster podcasters — which has more than a thousand members in UAE, very active, with monthly meetups. Masterclass and Pod Academy run much better in Singapore than in UAE. But these constructs to educate the market, help podcasters start, and help corporates bridge with content creators — they're deployable. When we go to London, New York, LA — we deploy the levers, sense the market, and see which pedal to press. New York is the big push this year. Through expanding the footprint, we strengthen the value proposition that Poddster has as a global network. **Bernard Leong:** If I'm going to New York for a conference and want to interview someone, I could call you and use your New York studio. **Borko Kovacevic:** Absolutely. We get this question almost every day in Singapore: can you recommend a studio in London? Can you recommend one in New York? We have a network of podcast studios. We also own a global aggregator called Pod Spotters, under the Podyx platform — you can go and see more than 1,400 studios available anywhere. But if you want to talk to us directly and get a studio we know is legit, we can send you to one we work with closely. For corporates, we go one step beyond — they often ask us to run multi-country shoots. We've orchestrated shoots with three or four concurrent speakers in multiple cities simultaneously. For Microsoft, we orchestrated a shoot between North Carolina, Seoul, Singapore, and Sydney. The corporate comes in and says: my client is in London, another executive is in Singapore — make it happen. We do a studio-to-studio shoot and edit everything in post. Getting to a point where you evolve from your own network to more of a platform and marketplace where these services can be rendered seamlessly to corporates — that's what corporates are finally getting access to. If you need to pay three to five thousand dollars for a shoot in each major city, multi-location shoots become very expensive very quickly. What we do is democratize that access by having a vetted network of studio partners. Before we commit to a partnership with a studio in Hong Kong or Sydney, we vet their environment, look at their sets and quality of shoots, and then promote them as part of the Poddster partnership network. That's how we ran the Honolulu shoot. Microsoft, Cisco, Frost and Sullivan — so many companies have these multi-country scenarios, and having a trusted network of studio owners makes it possible to deliver. **Bernard Leong:** Full disclosure — I'm an investor in Podyx because I love the business. Let's talk about the origins of Podyx. Why did Poddster build a software layer, and what problems is Podyx trying to solve for podcast studios and operators? **Borko Kovacevic:** Same story I mentioned for Poddster — Podyx wasn't created from day one when I decided to leave corporate. Similarly, Podyx started as a prototype that served Poddster only. It was under Poddster internally. The reason it came about is that as we scaled the number of shoots and our operations, we initially used things like Calendly and Zapier flows. The more the operations became complex — more WhatsApp messages, more emails, messier workflows — we realized there was no single tool that helped this specific industry. There were tools for yoga studios, hair salons, fitness gyms, but podcasting studios were different. You need to configure things like how many microphones and seats are in a room, select add-on services like post-production, deal with file sharing and storage. It required a different workflow than booking a hair salon or a spin class. So we built a light prototype MVP and used it ourselves. One of my ideas before Poddster even existed was: I want to leave corporate, start a venture studio, and build new ventures and products. That was my original passion. What I realized is that this is now an even better and stronger realization of that vision — because you have an industry where you anchor everything. You build products around a real problem statement versus theoretically building products for the sake of it. Podyx was spun off at the point when we realized that not only was Poddster using it to run hundreds of bookings — now, two years after Singapore opened, three years after Dubai opened, we run anywhere between 600 and 700 shoots a month. Imagine handling that volume of bookings, add-ons, and changes through WhatsApp and forms. Impossible. When we saw the scale happening and realized Podyx could work beyond our own operations, that's when studios started coming to us and asking: "What are you using? We saw something on your website that we don't recognize." At that point we said, maybe we should proactively talk to these studios and spin off a real product — shaped by user feedback, triaged, prioritized. And that's how Podyx got shaped: Poddster is still the best living lab and R&D environment you could want for any studio software. Now, because of the volume Podyx has — we process more than $6 million of transactions across 160 paying studios — we are Stripe's preferred partner and highest-growing vertical SaaS company from Singapore last year. Stripe told us we're probably, based on their data, the fastest-growing global footprint startup in our stage. The reason that's true is that most vertical SaaS companies start in one market, win it, and then expand geographically. We started monetizing Podyx in October last year, and in the first month of paying subscriptions we got over a hundred studios across 24 markets from day one — with zero churn. For Stripe, that was a massive signal: global from day one, fast-moving, processing significant transaction volume, very sticky. It's sticky because it solves critical issues podcast studios face — bundles, subscriptions, bookings, rebooking, cancellations, refunds, BNPL — all through a workflow that integrates with Stripe. Someone said: your goal when launching a product should be to treat your first hundred clients as if they were a single client. That's exactly what we did. The first 50 at least — and beyond — were personally onboarded by my co-founder and me. We went on calls. We did not have a salesperson. As founders running Poddster simultaneously, the time commitment of taking calls with US studios at 11 PM was significant. But it was important because it was an immediate credibility boost. I wasn't approaching studios as, "Hey, buy my software." It was, "I run studios. We have 10 studios. Our operations run more than 300 to 400 shoots a month." The conversation usually started with them being skeptical — especially from the US: "Singapore? Where's that?" — but we'd bond quickly over shared problems. Tell me what's your biggest issue? "I go crazy when I say two people are shooting and four show up." And we'd say: yeah, we have the same problem. We preempt the questions — things like bundles, taking cash in advance, cancellation fees, promo codes. We live and breathe the problems. That's what built the relationship between studio owners and us. **Bernard Leong:** Do you find that your tech background actually helped you figure out the correct solutions to build on top of that infrastructure? **Borko Kovacevic:** Yes. Both of us have a tech background, and it shapes the thinking. Poddster could have been built differently by someone from a media background — and there's nothing wrong with media background; it's great for going very deep in one area. But for us, Poddster was never supposed to compete with high-end production companies in UAE or Singapore. We can't compete with them, and that was never the goal. Some people come in and say, "I want a full-frame camera or a crane." And we say: not for $250\. Choose which you want. For us it was always: how do we scale this? How do we make it a repeatable business? Not an agency model where every project is different and bespoke. Repeatable and scalable — which comes from the software industry. Software is repeatable and scalable. So we were always thinking: how do we make Poddster operate like software? It's impossible — it's a services business — but on the back of that thinking we asked: what part of this can be productized? That's how Podyx started. We took the SOPs we'd built for running Poddster and asked: which parts are easiest to manage as software? Customer experience, bookings, payments — all the things that deal with the client so we can handle the studio operations without distraction from booking chaos. Something we'll probably touch on later is how Podyx is now evolving with things like an AI concierge, AI-assisted scripting and guest research. All these things are coming as a layer on top of Podyx. But the first basic layer was productized out of the learnings from Poddster, which was built because of this scale-first thinking we had as software people. We were never thinking of Poddster as building one big agency. It was always: what happens if I end up opening five, ten more locations? When someone now comes in and proposes a new process, my first question is: how do you do this ten more times? If a process can't be described as an SOP and can't land in ten more locations, we don't adopt it. Because if it only lives in someone's head, if it's too bespoke — it means you can't repeat and scale it. It might be good for an agency. It doesn't fit the repeatable nature of Poddster. **Bernard Leong:** Can you share any highlights about Poddster so far — interesting guests or experiences? **Borko Kovacevic:** When Poddster opened, I realized something. When I was in big tech, I had relationships with all the big tech people in the region because you naturally meet the same circle. When we opened Poddster, we suddenly had access to people from all spheres of life, all industries — and then global celebrities like Steven Bartlett, the host of Diary of a CEO. For fans of the All-In Podcast, Jason Calacanis was here with Balaji. We had Sir Martin Sorrell, founder of WPP. In UAE, at the Sharjah Innovation Summit, we had Khabib. In our Abu Dhabi studio, we had CZ, the founder of Binance, and Chamath. There's a story I love about Zlatan Ibrahimović. When he moved from Ajax to Juventus, he walked into the locker room and saw Zidane and Del Piero. He said he was pinching himself — "A month ago I was playing these guys on PlayStation and now I'm in the locker room with them. Am I dreaming?" The next day he came back to the same locker room and the same people were there. "I'm not dreaming." That's how it felt when globally known characters suddenly walked into our studio. But there's a flip side — you can't be in multiple locations at the same time. And more importantly: this is a business. Running a company like this is not about celebrities. The first six or seven months, we had some really famous people come in — the founder of Banyan Tree, the CEO of DBS. Everybody said, "Wow, can you send me the link?" It helps credibility. But honestly, if I'm talking to the average client and I mention we did a shoot with Steven Bartlett at Changi Jewel, they say "Yeah okay, but can I get a 10% discount?" Running a business requires you to demonstrate that you can service the quality Steven Bartlett expects, while simultaneously running the scale and engine that helps an average corporate achieve their goals. The fact that you've hosted a global celebrity doesn't mean you'll help Cisco achieve what they need on their podcast tomorrow. At the end of the day, it's what you do for the client that counts. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one thing you know about podcasting that very few people do? **Borko Kovacevic:** I posted about this recently when I reflected on Nir Eyal's success — a New York Times number one bestseller. A lot of people still think content creation and podcasting is for YouTubers and people who want to get famous. What people underestimate is that any piece of content that goes out is how the world — and increasingly the LLMs and agents — looks at you. The world we're headed into is going to learn from content available online. The amount of YouTube videos Gemini processes, the transcriptions and Spotify content and LinkedIn posts that Claude and GPT scrape to learn is immense. As a content creator, if you push content out consistently, the likelihood that you'll be ahead of everyone else is super high. What people underestimate is that frequency and consistency in posting content beats everything else. The future internet is about being available online and providing enough material that the algorithms and agents learn about you. If they learn enough about you, you will be recommended in searches, you will do better on SEO, you will become more discoverable than anybody else. People think: if I post once a month or make my content super polished with animated graphics, that's enough. Diary of a CEO is great at quality — and he posts very regularly. If you have 10 people dedicated to content and the budget to match, do it. Otherwise, frequency and consistency is how algorithms and agents will discover you in the future. It's a marathon, it's a long game. **Bernard Leong:** Look at yourself — almost 11 years, coming to 12. **Borko Kovacevic:** Exactly. And people are like, "Bernard, what's your hack?" 11 years. That's the hack. **Bernard Leong:** I've constantly pivoted. The biggest pivot was when I moved from audio to video — the hardest thing for me because I always thought I'm not photogenic and had no chance of doing a studio. Then the opportunity to collaborate came about. Now everybody asks which studio I'm using next — I've been trying them all to find where I'm most comfortable. **Borko Kovacevic:** That's what I mean when I tell people it's a long game. There's no hack. You can't do one or two days of shoots, publish, and expect miracles. **Bernard Leong:** After 50 episodes, if you can still stay on, you're probably already in the top 4% of the entire podcasting world. I want to ask you something you have a very different way of thinking about. How has podcasting evolved over the years — and now that we have podcasts created by passion-driven creators and also businesses with their own shows, are they solving the same problems or fundamentally different ones? **Borko Kovacevic:** It's a very good question because a lot of people are lost there. This is happening right now — it's very new, very recent. Corporates suffer from the same issues that generic advertising suffers. Ads don't work as much because they're all the same, all scripted. When people see an ad — even a disclosed paid ad — the trust level is zero. I call ads reminders. If I already trust someone and they pop up, I say, "Oh yeah, I forgot to buy this." It's more of a reminder than a convincing. What podcasts do well is create trust and build credibility because conversations are longer and there's more context. There's a great book by Gary Vaynerchuk on the attention economy — he talks about how we're constantly trading on attention. But more importantly: context and trust. You can capture someone's attention, but you'll lose it in five seconds if you don't provide context. You won't build deeper trust. Especially in B2B — B2B buyers don't make decisions after watching a five-second reel. There needs to be context and depth. Corporates usually struggle with that because they're not used to long form. Even executives who come here often arrive ready for a media interview — someone shooting scripted questions, ready answers. That doesn't work in this space. It works for a press conference where you line up ten media outlets and know exactly what they'll ask. But audiences can see through that completely. You can tell, "This is what they told me to say." Nobody's going to do a media conference and say they actually have problems. Everything's going to be: we're the best, the safest, the right choice. What corporates are discovering now is that in this kind of conversation, people are a lot more human. They share stories from both sides. They give more context and actually earn the trust of the audience because the audience gets to become part of the story. They try to reflect, to get a deeper understanding of why that company does what it does. That's still missing. I hope Poddster can partially solve it — because we can enable a platform with a common language where creators work with brands and brands work with creators. What I've learned in corporate is that proof of concept is really important. Big companies often come here and say: "We saw this other company doing that. Can we do the same but slightly different?" If Cisco, Nutanix, or HP are already trialing something, that's the signal others need to act. **Bernard Leong:** I think that's the interesting thing. When people pitch me from a business standpoint, I always tell them: frame the correct story. A lot of businesses aren't thinking about the right stories. People ask why I accept some guests and not others — it's the story. Is it a worthwhile story to tell? If it is, I can make it work. If you give me a story that doesn't work, the interview won't create authenticity or trust for my audience. I like the point you made recently about podcasting as one of the networking hacks in business. Why is it becoming increasingly relevant for executives, founders, investors, and domain experts as a leadership vehicle? And how should PR agencies work with content creators? **Borko Kovacevic:** There's a dated approach to this, mainly because people don't understand how to jump on this train. Podcasting is a networking hack because imagine this: you're an executive at a large company and you want an endorsement from your clients. There are two ways. One: you ask another executive from your client company and tell them to say exactly what you script — that your company is the best, your product is the best. That's how every customer testimonial and case study worked for the last ten years. Someone talking to a camera: "I've been really happy using this product for two years. I'm very happy with this partnership." That's stone age. What happens now is different. We had AWS and Cisco come here together to run a series of interviews about their partnership — but they didn't do a two-minute scripted stage discussion. They had executive-to-executive dialogue about things that matter to the end client, not to themselves. Through that conversation, the end client picks up: these companies work together, they're partners, they're doing something that benefits me. That's the best way to demonstrate an alliance and have a customer-centric conversation — versus a two-minute pitch on why this product is the best. **Bernard Leong:** I had a similar experience with the Databricks conversation. They brought a customer in to talk about how Databricks affected the freight industry using generative AI — it wasn't about what the product does, it was about what the product solved for the customer. They let the customer tell the story. **Bernard Leong:** Borko, it's been a great masterclass on podcasting. Quick closing questions. What's the one thing you wish more people would ask you about Poddster and Podyx that they typically don't? **Borko Kovacevic:** What I'd like to be asked more is: how can they benefit from this format? A lot of people are still not well-educated on it. I'd love more people to approach and ask: how can we as a company, or we as a VC, benefit from the format? It seems to be in demand globally. I think that's the main way Poddster can be most relevant to others. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what does great look like for you for Poddster and Podyx moving in the next few years? **Borko Kovacevic:** For Poddster — a global footprint with several more locations across the world serving many more clients. For Podyx — used by a thousand studios across the world, becoming the operating system for the global studio landscape, and through that, serving tens of thousands of end clients and delivering on what Podyx promises. **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks for doing this interview and giving me this masterclass on podcasting. We'll have a follow-up conversation again soon. Thanks for coming on the show. We will speak soon. **Borko Kovacevic:** Thank you so much. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He shares his career journey from database programming during the early internet era, to spending over 16 years at Amazon building the internal tools and resilience practices behind AWS, and now leading product strategy at Elastic where search, observability, and security converge into a unified AI infrastructure platform. Ken explains that context engineering — not just prompt engineering — is the defining discipline of the AI age, where developers are becoming managers of agents focused on goal-setting and relevance rather than writing code, while enterprises need retrieval and relevance layers to bridge their messy, siloed data stores with LLMs. He highlights how Elastic's 15-year head start in enterprise-grade capabilities — from vector search since 2017 to two orders of magnitude improvement in memory efficiency — positions it ahead of purpose-built competitors, while its ability to deploy on battleships, Mars rovers, and air-gapped government environments makes it uniquely suited for public sector AI transformation. Closing the conversation, Ken shares what great looks like for Elastic to become the foundational relevance and retrieval layer between enterprise data and LLMs while disrupting observability and security from within. --- > "I like to think of the future of software development is—developers will be managers of agents. They're no longer going to be ICs \[Individual Contributors\], they’re going to be managers. Every developer is going to be a manager of agents and they’re going to be doing context engineering. They’re going to be figuring out how to pass context and data to an LLM or an agent. And they’re going to be goal setting. They’re going to have their team of agents, and they’re going to give them goals, and they’re going to review the output." - Ken Exner Profile: Ken Exner, Chief Product Officer, [Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-exner-b914542/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Blog](https://www.elastic.co/blog/author/ken-exner?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to the [Analyse Podcast](https://www.analysepodcast.com/), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the powers of business, technology, and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and one of the biggest challenges for enterprise AI today is not just models, but how organizations connect those models to their data systems and workflows. Elastic started as the company behind Elasticsearch, one of the most widely used open-source search technologies in the world today. The company has expanded into observability, security, and increasingly into the infrastructure layer powering AI systems and agents. With me today is Ken Exner, Chief Product Officer of Elastic, to discuss how Elastic evolved from search infrastructure into what it now calls the context layer for AI applications and agent systems. Ken, welcome to the show. Welcome to Singapore as well. **Ken Exner:** Thank you. Love coming to Singapore, so it's good to be back. **Bernard Leong:** You just came straight from the keynote \[from [ElasticON ](https://www.elastic.co/events/elasticon?ref=analysepodcast.com)Singapore 2026\]. **Ken Exner:** I just came off stage, so hopefully my voice survives through this. Good to be with you, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** Just relax and we will start. The first important thing is I want to start with your origin story, as we always do. How did you start your career in technology? **Ken Exner:** How did I start my career? Well, this is a long time ago because I'm old, but I actually began as a database programmer and statistician. I worked as a database programmer and statistician at a marketing company. It was a little bit boring, but I thought it was pretty cool. After that, the internet happened. I had been learning HTML and CGI scripting, and ended up pivoting from database programming into web programming. That took me to SGI and a bunch of startups, and I eventually found my way to Amazon, where I spent a lot of my career. I was at Amazon for over 16 years. **Bernard Leong:** You are definitely one of the true ex-Amazonians that I know. What attracted you to Elastic, and how did you come to your present role as Chief Product Officer? **Ken Exner:** From AWS, I could see which segments were growing and interesting. I started getting curious about some of the observability and security spaces. But I also saw what was starting to happen with generative AI. This is right when I started at Elastic. You could start seeing that a lot of the new models and stuff happening with OpenAI — this was even before ChatGPT — was very promising. In Elastic, I found a company that did all three. They were poised to do well in the AI age with their vector search capabilities, and they were leaders in observability and security as well. I was like, well, this is great. This is perfect. Let's do this. **Bernard Leong:** If you were to look back at your career journey across all these large-scale infrastructure platforms, what lessons would you share with my audience about building products that operate at enterprise scale — or internet scale, as we call it today? **Ken Exner:** You always learn from mistakes and outages. We had a few of those at AWS over the years. Part of my job, at least in the middle part of my AWS career, was building all the internal tools and development practices that Amazon uses. I was responsible for the software development lifecycle, including how we operate software. I was constantly trying to figure out how to make us more resilient and how to solve the problems of outages — reducing their impact not only for Amazon, but for AWS customers. Initially, we focused a lot on preventing issues through testing, but eventually you start to realize that's not enough. Mistakes will get through. It was only when we started also focusing on two things — MTTR \[Mean Time To Repair\], making sure you can remediate an issue as quickly as possible, and blast radius reduction — that things clicked. The combination of the three: preventing issues through better testing, reducing impact through blast radius mitigations like cellular architectures, and being able to resolve things quickly by rolling back — that was core to why AWS was able to have such resilient operations. They focus on all three, not just mitigation, but reducing impact. If there is an impact, roll back as quickly as possible. **Bernard Leong:** I'm going to come to the main subject of the day. We are going to talk about Elastic, and thanks to the pre-call we had, I now understand that Elastic has evolved from search to AI infrastructure. To baseline my audience, can you explain what Elastic originally set out to do and why search infrastructure has now become so fundamental in today's modern AI applications? **Ken Exner:** As you mentioned before, we're one of the most popular open-source projects of all time — Elasticsearch. The original reason that Shay Banon, the founder, created it was actually to help his wife manage her recipes. It was a search engine and data store for recipes. But it ended up becoming a very popular search engine for all kinds of different use cases. Initially, people were using it to add search to websites or search to products. But one of the things people realized is that search was a good foundational technology. You can actually build all kinds of applications on top of search. People started using us to build things like Uber matchmaking — matching a car to a rider — matchmaking sites, recommendation engines, signal intelligence systems, and a lot more. Search became a foundational building block, a foundational platform. A couple of things led to where we are today. Early on, people wanted to do more than just search through text. They wanted to search through images or videos. Adobe, for example, was an early customer. They wanted to search through images. So we needed to be a vector search engine as well. We were actually one of the very first vector search engines out there. That poised us to be ready for the age of generative AI, because we were a vector search engine as early as 2017 — way before generative AI was even a thing. We were supporting vector search in Elastic. The other thing that happened is people started using us to search through logs. That's what took us into the observability space, and that's what took us into the security space as well. Once you start searching through logs, it's a natural evolution to start searching through metrics and everything else. We became a full observability platform. Searching through logs and security event data took us into the security space, where we are one of the most popular SIEMs — security analytics platforms — out there. From there, we expanded to cover other areas of security, including endpoint protection and more. Today, we are more than just a search engine. We are a solution for context engineering and building AI applications. We are also a full observability platform. Then finally, we are a complete solution for the modern-day SOC \[System and Organization Controls\] , helping with security operations. **Bernard Leong:** Today, Elastic offers the full platform across search, observability, and security. How do these three areas actually reinforce each other in the enterprise stack when customers adopt Elastic? **Ken Exner:** Security and observability are easy because they're different sides of the same coin. You typically have the same log data being used for observability and for security. A lot of things we do in one area tend to improve the experience for the other. When we introduced Discover and Timelines for one solution, that became useful to the other. When we introduced [ES|QL](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/query-languages/esql?ref=analysepodcast.com), our piped query language for security, that became super useful for observability as well. They're self-reinforcing. They use the same collection techniques. They have a lot of the same analytics capabilities but support slightly different workflows, slightly different users, and they benefit from the improvements we make to the other. With search and our AI capabilities, this is interesting because we started developing technologies to help people build AI applications. The interesting thing is, within observability and security, we get to use those same tools. One of the reasons we've been early pioneers in leveraging AI to transform the observability and security space is because we build tools for AI practitioners and AI developers. We get to use those same things ourselves. I'm often surprised when I look at the products out there — they seem like we've shown them the path of how to use AI in security, for example, and they still haven't caught up. I think a lot of it is because of the natural advantage we have. We get to use our own tools. We leverage being a vector database and a context engineering solution. All this is built into the platform, so we get to move faster. **Bernard Leong:** Given these three big areas, how does it reshape the company's product strategy moving ahead? Is it about integration points, or is it more like you're still discovering innovations along the way that will take it to the next level? **Ken Exner:** One thing is, I fundamentally believe that observability and security are going to be transformed by AI. There's no doubt in my mind. The experience for observability and security practitioners in a couple of years, maybe even sooner, is going to be very different than what it is today. Even the term "observability" is quaint and antiquated — it's describing the act of observing infrastructure. What do we do in observability? We look at graphs, we try to visually look for anomalies. All these things are going to be better done by machines than by people. You're going to start seeing a lot of the work that goes into discovering issues — whether it's a security issue or an observability issue — all driven by AI. As runbooks and playbooks for remediation get automated, a lot of that's going to be handled by AI as well. The experience is going to be fundamentally transformed. **Bernard Leong:** You alluded earlier that Elastic implemented vector search pretty early for semantic search and recommendation use cases. I want to dive deeper into this. How did that prepare Elastic for the generative AI wave? Was it very natural — you started doing vector search for images and videos, and then discovered the next stage of where AI is going together with what you already had? **Ken Exner:** I'd love to lie and say that we knew exactly where the AI industry was going, but I think a lot of it was just that we saw what customers were doing and were able to start providing additional capabilities. It started with being a vector database. People wanted to start augmenting prompts with data, which led to retrieval-augmented generation. You augment a prompt with data rather than just passing a prompt. We started providing additional capabilities to make that easier for our customers. As you moved into agentic architectures, things changed a bit. People wanted to not just pass data into a context window. They wanted to develop MCP tools on top of data, or they wanted to develop skills on top of data. We provided those capabilities. We've been evolving and staying ahead of what people are wanting to do with AI, and also broadening our platform — covering not just retrieval techniques, but helping people get data into our ecosystem. We have tons of different connectors into different data systems. We have embedding models, vision models, and OCR models for helping parse data. We've been broadening our capabilities to cover all the different aspects of context engineering — from ingesting data and polling data from different data sources, to retrieval techniques, to LLM observability, to evaluation frameworks, to agent building and more. There's a whole set of capabilities that we now have for context engineering. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting thing with respect to retrieval-augmented generation is dealing with a lot of unstructured data. There's still the structured data part that needs certain integration, like transactional data. Where does Elastic sit within this modern AI architecture stack? Or is it still evolving? **Ken Exner:** We're agnostic. It doesn't matter to us — if data is messy and unstructured, we work with it. If it's structured, we work with it. We can help pull data from across different data sources. We have connectors into every type of major enterprise system. We can run retrieval techniques across these different data sources, both for ingesting and indexing information, but also for federated search. We're helping with the hard problem of how you find relevance across different data sources through things like re-ranking models. Where search is going today is interesting. Up until now, it's been using search to power AI — the consumer of search is AI. You're building a search result for an AI-based system rather than for a human. But the other thing happening right now is we're starting to use AI to power search. It's AI powering search, which is powering AI. **Bernard Leong:** It's a flywheel loop. **Ken Exner:** It's inception. **Bernard Leong:** Many companies are experimenting with vector databases today. What differentiates Elastic's approach to vector search and retrieval for enterprise workloads? One thing I know is that across the largest enterprises, when they want to do something as important as RAG, the vector database has to be enterprise-grade. What is the differentiation? **Ken Exner:** You're setting me up. Well, first of all, to be a great vector database, you have to be highly performant and highly efficient. I'm always going to be trying to make sure that we are the most efficient, most performant vector database. Period, bar none. But one of the things that really distinguishes us and is one of the reasons why so many enterprises and governments use us is that we have all the enterprise capabilities they need — whether it's the security model or permissions model. RBAC \[role-based access control\], ABAC \[attribute-based access control\], attribute-level, file-level permissions. We have audit logging, all the enterprise-grade capabilities you would need for a database in an enterprise. The reason is because we built this into our search engine, into our data store, that we've been working on for 15 years. I sometimes get asked, what do you think Pinecone or Weaviate or some of these smaller purpose-built vector databases are going to be working on over the next 10 years? I said, I know what they're going to work on. It's going to be what we worked on the last 10 years — making sure that they can provide enterprise capabilities. We already do that. The other thing we do that's different than most vector databases is that we know it's not just about vectors. It's not just about how you store and query vector embeddings. There's a lot more you need to do as part of that typical workflow for RAG or for agent building. It's figuring out a chunking strategy, figuring out how to parse data, running embedding models — multilingual, multimodal embedding models — combining different retrieval techniques. There's a lot more that's part of that workflow, and we're solving all of it, not just the storage and querying of vectors. **Bernard Leong:** I speak to many business leaders in enterprises and work with them on generative AI. One thing that clearly stands out is sometimes they have this notion that if ChatGPT can do it, so can their engineering leaders. I have to tell them, in order to do the retrieval part, you must have a proper vector database and you must know how to chunk. Your engineers need to know how to chunk the documents, but they have no context of the business problem. So you have to help them. Are there other things that may also be important when building the retrieval piece? **Ken Exner:** Well, the embedding — you need to create the vector embeddings, which means you need an efficient, accurate, performant way of running inference on that data to create the vector embeddings. Being a great vector database means you store it efficiently. We want to make sure that we're always the most efficient place to store vector embeddings while delivering performance at the same time. I'm very proud that over the last 18 months, we have introduced two orders of magnitude improvement in memory utilization — much more efficient than any other. I think we're seven times more efficient than OpenSearch. But still also delivering really good performance. Then it's combining different retrieval techniques to make sure we're helping customers tune for relevance. At the end of the day, you're not just trying to store and query vector embeddings. You're trying to create relevant results so that the AI system you're building gives you relevant answers and takes relevant actions. All that takes work to make sure you're tuning for relevance. **Bernard Leong:** I come to one of my favorite questions. What is the one thing you know about Elastic the company that very few people do? **Ken Exner:** One is that we like to use our own capabilities. Our InfoSec team uses our security products. Our SRE teams use our observability products. We also use our own AI capabilities as I've been talking about. I think this has made us a better product development team because we are our own customers. But we also are able to move faster because we're leveraging these phenomenal capabilities for doing observability, for doing security, for building AI applications. As I mentioned before, being able to use our own tools for AI has made us really good at AI in observability and security. I think it's a powerful story to talk about being customer zero. **Bernard Leong:** I want to come to the discussion on context engineering. Recently, I've been reading a lot of articles on Elastic talking about context engineering. From your standpoint, can you explain what context engineering means today and why it's now becoming critical in building reliable AI systems? **Ken Exner:** This is something we've been hearing in the industry a lot over the last six to twelve months, and I think we're going to hear the term context engineering a lot going forward. It's critical to doing AI right. It started with prompt engineering and expanded into RAG, but as the different tools and techniques for passing data to an LLM or an agent kept evolving — whether through the use of MCP tools, skills, or CLI — you now have a number of different techniques for how to do this. That broader discipline is called context engineering. It's everything from how you get data — connectors into data, federated search — to running inference on data, to different retrieval techniques. All of it is context engineering. It's important because it's what differentiates a good AI application from one that isn't performing as well. It's also increasingly how we are going to build and use AI-based systems. I was talking to one of the developers on my team — one of the developers who has been embracing AI coding tools. I asked him, now that you're using AI coding tools for everything, what is software development like for you these days? What do you do? His answer was: context engineering. I said, what do you mean? He said, that's all I do all day long — context engineering. I figure out what prompts and what data to pass to an LLM. I found that fascinating. In some ways, context engineering is the new architecture, the new application architecture. It is how we build AI systems. It's how we drive the results we want from an AI-based system. **Bernard Leong:** If I look at the big AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google — the maximum context window today is probably about two million tokens. I used to work in the construction space, so I have this fondness for dealing with building information models, which are all gigabyte files with very large token counts. Do you see the ability to increase context scaling further? Or is it still a matter of figuring out, as your engineer says, dealing with different context? **Ken Exner:** You don't want to pass all the data in the world into an LLM via context window, even if you could. Because it's expensive, it will take time, and you still need to get to the right information. The other part is that data is dynamic. Data is constantly changing. Data is also variable based on the user. You interacting with an AI system are going to have a different set of permissions and information that you have access to than me. How do you model that? You still need to make sure you are using search and retrieval techniques to get to the most accurate information relevant to that user — not shoving every possible thing into the context window. **Bernard Leong:** So even for very large data, you can split it into different parts and use that as part of the context to drive the application itself. **Ken Exner:** Some of it is because you're trying to reflect the user's permissions. Some of it is you're trying not to pass an entire product catalog into a context. You can pass all of an eCommerce store's product catalog into a context window. That's not a smart thing to do. Or you can figure out how to dynamically present relevant information and get the LLM to focus on the right context. There's also a narrowing part of this. You need to scope the result and not just provide all the information. You need to make sure you're driving focus on a particular corpus of data. There's a narrowing effect to search that gets the LLM to focus on the right thing. **Bernard Leong:** How does Elastic help organizations bridge the gap between enterprise data — which is very large — and large language models? When you think about just having five MCP connections, it's already making AI agents slow down significantly because most MCP connections are single-threaded. From your standpoint, from how Elastic has been working with customers, where are you with that? **Ken Exner:** Stepping back, we are the bridge between companies' data and LLMs. That's the role we play. We're the search and relevance layer that helps them connect all their different data sources to these LLMs. Typically, companies have a lot of data tucked away in different applications, different data silos. As we mentioned before, some of it's structured, some of it's unstructured. We have connectors into all those different systems and we can help make sure we provide relevance and retrieval layers in between all that data tucked away inside an enterprise and the LLM or agent they're trying to connect to. **Bernard Leong:** I want to get into the agents part because I know you've introduced Agent Builder, which allows developers to build AI agents grounded in enterprise data. You've also introduced Workflows to orchestrate actions across systems. What are the problems you're trying to solve with these two solutions? **Ken Exner:** The interesting thing about Agent Builder is that we were originally trying to solve an internal problem. We had been starting to develop lots of agent-based applications inside Elastic — like Attack Discovery in security, for example. Each of them used a slightly different architecture, and we wanted to create a unified way of building these agents. So we started creating the platform that became Agent Builder. What we realized is that this wasn't just useful for us. This was going to be a useful way for anyone to build an agent application on top of Elastic. We had customers who wanted to do more than just RAG. They wanted to build MCP tools on top of data, or they wanted to build skills on top of data. So how do you do that? We created Agent Builder for helping customers do all the configuration management, prompt management, tool building, memory management, knowledge graphs — all the things you need for a modern agentic architecture. It even comes with a default conversational agent you can use for talking to your data, but you can use it as a reference architecture for building your own agentic applications. Workflows was a sister release to Agent Builder because it helped with building agentic workflows. It also helps with a bunch of other things — it's a core primitive in Elastic. You can use it for observability workflows, like ticket routing or alert deduplication. **Bernard Leong:** So you're trying to get deterministic behavior as well? **Ken Exner:** Workflows is about deterministic, rules-based workflows. In the case of AI, sometimes you want deterministic workflows. You don't want the LLM applying reasoning or judgment to something like a payment system. You don't want the LLM making a decision about how often to pay you a paycheck. You want it to use a deterministic tool. So you apply an agentic workflow to doing something like that. But the combination of Workflows and Agent Builder is interesting because it works in both directions. It's about creating deterministic tools that an agent or LLM can use, but it's also the other way around — you can now embed reasoning steps and the capabilities of LLMs into workflows as well. It's powerful that you can do both. You can add reasoning to workflows, and you can add workflows to reasoning-based systems. **Bernard Leong:** The Elastic framework is focused a lot on data, tools, and context. Some frameworks also talk about a reasoning layer. Why is the approach of data, tools, and context important from Elastic's perspective? **Ken Exner:** Tools are a way to express data to an LLM or an agent. I always say that this is the latest hotness — actually, the latest hotness is probably skills and CLI. But this will keep changing. The techniques for how we pass data to an LLM or how we pass context to an LLM will continue to evolve. Context engineering is an evolving discipline. It started with prompts, moved into RAG, moved into tool building, resource building, skills, and CLI. We will continue to evolve the architectures and ways of passing information. The great thing for Elastic customers is we will continue to evolve and be leaders in defining the new architectures and techniques for how you pass data and context to an LLM. **Bernard Leong:** Many governments and regulated industries today are still running on-premises in air-gapped environments. How important is this capability for Elastic when thinking about deploying AI infrastructure — when they need their large language model within their on-premises system and it needs to be fine-tuned most of the time? **Ken Exner:** Public sector is actually our largest sector at Elastic. One of the reasons is that we support cloud-based deployments as well as a serverless architecture on cloud, but we also support on-premise, self-managed deployments. Customers can use Elastic their way. If they want to run it in an air-gapped environment, they can do that. We have people running Elastic on battleships. We have a rover on Mars that uses our endpoint. You can use this in all kinds of different contexts — not just our cloud-based services but in all kinds of unique public sector use cases as well. This applies not just to our AI-based capabilities, but to our security product and our observability product. You are able to use any of them in air-gapped or on-premise environments as well as cloud. **Bernard Leong:** You mentioned earlier your developer told you that everything he's doing is context engineering. That really makes me think about how AI tools are transforming software development. From your perspective today, how is software engineering going to change — with entry-level engineers and very experienced engineers coming in at the same time, how are they going to use AI coding assistants and development tools? I'm of the camp that the software engineering job is not going to go away, but it's going to be transformed. Where do you think that transformation will be? **Ken Exner:** It's happening fast. The last few months have been disorienting. It started around November, early December. The new coding models — like Opus 4.5 and the new Codex model — were remarkably better. That, combined with the new AI tools that were now agentic in nature, suddenly everything came together and clicked. One of the things people started reporting over December and January is that these tools had just gotten remarkably better — not just incrementally, but orders of magnitude better. Suddenly, these AI coding tools were better at coding than people. It's been an interesting couple of months in the software development industry. Everything we've taken for granted about software development — that developers code, that developers comment and write documentation — these things are now better handled by these new models and AI coding tools. Where we go in software development: I like to think of the future as developers will be managers of agents. They're no longer going to be ICs — they're going to be managers. Every developer is going to be a manager of agents. They're going to be doing context engineering. They're going to be figuring out how to pass context and data to an LLM or an agent. They're going to be goal-setting. They're going to have their team of agents and they're going to give them goals and review the output. The work is going to change. How we do software development is going to change. But I do think all of it will be additive, not subtractive. It'll allow us to uplevel what we do and focus on creating goals for these agentic-based systems. But it'll be disorienting because a lot of the things we've taken for granted about software development is changing. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of the popular AI coding tools are still operating locally in user environments. What are the challenges in bringing these agent systems into enterprise environments where security, governance, and reliability really matter? I think you're running one of those organizations, so I don't assume you'd just say, "We use the user environment AI coding tools." **Ken Exner:** A lot of these new autonomous AI systems or AI coding tools operate in user space, which is good and convenient. But the problem is they operate in user space. If you're an enterprise, this is the problem we've had for a long time. We used to have personal access tokens and delegation approaches to security. But we don't like those because you have credential leakage. They're not very secure ways to manage your enterprise. You want to move to things like service roles and ephemeral service identities. The challenge we're going to have with these autonomous AI assistants is that you want to have differently scoped permissions and roles than what the user has. Right now, they all operate in user space, and that's going to be a long-term problem. You're also going to have to figure out how to determine whether this agent is really the representative of this person, and how to separate those permissions out. **Bernard Leong:** The authentication protocol. **Ken Exner:** How do you authenticate that this person is actually acting on behalf of this person? How do you authenticate a real person versus an agent? There are some big challenges ahead of us. **Bernard Leong:** I have two more questions. The first one is, what's the one question you wish more people would ask you about the future of AI infrastructure? **Ken Exner:** Where is the knowledge? The reason I say that is because everyone always thinks the knowledge is in the LLM. Kind of. But where does the LLM get it? They get it from data systems. For most enterprises, the knowledge is in all their different data stores. It's in all their logs. It's in all the operational data they have. It's in the security events. The knowledge is in all these different messy data stores across the enterprise. Figuring out how to get value from these is about figuring out how to provide the right retrieval and relevance capabilities that pass this information to an LLM. The LLM does not have that knowledge. It needs to get that knowledge. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what does great look like for Elastic in the next five years? **Ken Exner:** One is that we become a foundational part of the modern generative AI and agentic AI tech stack. We have a huge opportunity to be that layer in between companies' data and LLMs — that relevance and retrieval layer. That is a huge opportunity for us. On the observability and security side, as I mentioned, these areas are going to be fundamentally transformed by AI, and I want to be the one disrupting ourselves. I want to be the one disrupting the observability and security space and transforming what observability and security tools look like going forward. **Bernard Leong:** Ken, many thanks for coming on the show. I really enjoyed geeking out about where software development is going, where generative AI is going, and most importantly, I learned so much about Elastic through this conversation with you. In closing — any recommendations that have inspired you recently? Books, articles, movies, ideas? **Ken Exner:** You know what I watched recently? I watched WarGames again. I don't know if you remember this. **Bernard Leong:** That's my all-time favorite too. **Ken Exner:** Is it really? It was amazing because it's an AI-based system that controls the nuclear arsenal for the United States. I remember watching it when I was a kid and I was fascinated by it. I watched it again as a teenager and said, this is ridiculous — autonomous weapon systems, that's crazy. Well, autonomous weapon systems are actually possible now, and these conversational AI-based experiences are very real. Now, with a lot of the political conversations going on around Anthropic and others, these are very real conversations that we need to have. It's interesting to see that the thing that seemed so fanciful 20 or 30 years ago actually seems very real. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you and everything about Elastic? **Ken Exner:** You can find me on LinkedIn — LinkedIn is my social media channel of choice. Follow me or add me as a friend and we can have a conversation there. Elastic.co is our website. **Bernard Leong:** You can find this podcast anywhere. Subscribe to us and drop me any feedback possible. Ken, many thanks for coming on the show and I look forward to geeking out again. **Ken Exner:** Sounds good. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Nir shared his personal origin story of childhood obesity that revealed how we escape uncomfortable feelings through habitual behaviors, and progressed through the Hook Model that democratized Silicon Valley's habit-formation secrets for building products like Duolingo and Fitbod. He unpacks the critical insight that the opposite of distraction isn't focus—it's traction—and introduces the Motivation Triangle framework explaining why knowing what to do isn't enough without belief. Throughout the conversation, Nir demonstrates how 90% of our distractions stem from internal triggers rather than technology itself, and challenges the moral panic around AI by drawing parallels to historical fears from the written word to social media. Last but not least, he argues that beliefs are tools, not truths, revealing how our hidden convictions fundamentally alter what we see, feel, and do—and provides a science-backed path for transforming limiting beliefs into liberating ones that unlock previously impossible performance. --- > "Motivation is a **triangle**. It requires: **Behavior:** What am I going to do? **Benefit:** Why am I going to do it? **Belief.** If you don’t have those three areas of your life in concert, all the advice in the world is going to go in one ear and out the other. **Beliefs are tools, not truths.** The majority of our problems today—cultural, geopolitical, personal—come from the fact that we think our faith is fact, and we confuse facts for what are beliefs. Everything worth having in life is on the other side of discomfort. So if you can learn to manage discomfort through the **power of belief**, what couldn't you accomplish? Everything." - Nir Eyal **Profile: Nir Eyal**, author of "[Beyond Belief](https://www.nirandfar.com/beyond-belief/?ref=analysepodcast.com)", "[Indistractable](https://www.nirandfar.com/indistractable/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" and "[Hooked](https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nireyal/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Website](https://www.nirandfar.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to the Analyse Podcast, the premium podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and today we are examining how technology shapes human behavior, from how products form habits to how individuals reclaim their attention, and ultimately how beliefs define the limits of what we think is possible. We meet today, Nir Eyal, best-selling author of a few books that two books I've read to dear to my heart. One was Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention, and I know you're having an upcoming book called Beyond Belief, where he explores how deeply held assumptions quietly constrain performance, decision-making, and success. So Nir, welcome to the show. **Nir Eyal:** Thank you, great to be here. **Bernard Leong:** I always start off by asking my guests their origin stories. How did your career journey begin and what drew you to this intersection between psychology, technology, and human behavior put together? **Nir Eyal:** How far back do you want to go? **Bernard Leong:** Just maybe a good quick version. **Nir Eyal:** I will start in my childhood, actually. I grew up clinically obese, not just overweight, but obese. I remember my mom took me to the doctor and he had this chart and he said, okay Nir, here's the green zone, this is a healthy weight for someone your age. Here's overweight, here's you, you're way over here in this red zone of being obese. I remember as a kid feeling like food controlled me. It wasn't until I understood later in life that I wasn't obese because food was delicious. I wasn't overweight because I liked to eat a lot. It was because I was eating my feelings. It was that I was eating because I was bored. I was eating because I was lonely. I was eating because I was ashamed about how much I had just eaten. If you really dive deep into why we overdo things, why we become distracted by technology or why we overeat or overdrink or do these things that are against our better interest, which is not a new problem, in fact, Plato talked about this problem twenty-five hundred years before the internet, he called it akrasia, the tendency to do things against our better interests. So we all have that tendency in us. Some of us go way too far and it becomes not just a bad habit, not just a distraction, but even an addiction. The common trait is always that we are trying to escape our feelings. We're not looking for a high, we're looking to go back to baseline. When I realized that, I started getting more control over my life. That fascination with how products can change behavior, in my case the product was food and how I was overdoing on food to escape an uncomfortable reality, those same lessons carried over into consumer psychology and carried over into distraction and now carried over into my third book, Beyond Belief, which is all about how beliefs change our reality. **Bernard Leong:** How does your career experiences now relate to how you write your first book Hooked until today then? **Nir Eyal:** Hooked came out of a need that I had. All my books, I don't write what I know, I write what I want to know. When I'm looking for an answer to a question, there's lots and lots of books that answer most of our problems today. If you don't know the answer to your problem, Google it, ask ChatGPT, there's lots of places we can find the answers to our questions. Every once in a while, about once every five years, I have a problem that no one answers to my satisfaction. With Hooked, I remember this was back in 2012 or so that I started writing Hooked, and I was looking for how to build habit-forming products. I couldn't find a book on the topic. Because I could see that as the interface was shrinking, as we were going from desktop screens to laptop screens to mobile device screens to wearable screens, as the real estate shrunk, habits would become more important. Because there's just less real estate to trigger people with what's called an external trigger. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/03/hooked_highres.jpg) There's just, you know, fewer pixels to do that in. So I realized that habits would become more important. If you can't be the first thing that people turn to with little or no conscious thought, if you're the third thing on the third page of someone's phone, they're going to forget about you. You're not going to exist. So I was looking for, hey, how do you build consumer habits? I had an in in that my last business was in Silicon Valley, many of my clients were companies like Facebook and Zynga and Amazon. I knew many of these companies and I was looking for, hey, how do they do this? How do the video game companies, how do the social media companies get people hooked? The goal of Hooked was to democratize their secrets, to steal their secrets so that the rest of us could build businesses that are habit-forming for good. I didn't write Hooked for the social media companies and the gaming companies. They already know these tactics. They've been using them for decades. I wanted to write it for the rest of us. So Duolingo uses the Hook model to get people hooked to learning a new language. Fitbod uses the Hook model to get people hooked to exercise. That's really the goal of Hooked. Hooked was about healthy habits. Indistractable was the other side. If Hooked was about how do we build good habits, Indistractable is how do we break bad habits. Not to the same products. We want to get hooked on the good behaviors, exercising more, saving more, being with our friends and loved ones, those are healthy habits and technology can facilitate many of those things. Indistractable is how do we break the bad habits around distractions. So that was the linkage between those two. **Bernard Leong:** This is interesting because my wife bought Hooked in 2014 and I was taking a glance of the book and I remembered the most important message when you said what startups sell is a painkiller not a vitamin. I thought that that was one of the clearest insights on that. I always felt that when reading Indistractable I feel that there seems to be some kind of like, in what Chinese say, you know the yin and the yang in kind of that feel from your writing style and thinking about the subject itself. **Nir Eyal:** That's right. They say that to know something truly and deeply you have to look at it from multiple angles. Part of my life philosophy is that if you can't argue the other perspective you should shut up. You have nothing to say unless you can argue both sides. What I wanted to do is to look at both those perspectives, is to look at the perspective of how do we use technology to build good habits and also how do we make sure that technology serves us rather than hurts us when it comes to these bad habits. But again, not to the same products. We don't want to build Facebook and stop using Facebook. No, no. We want to build the good habits around saving money, exercising more, etc. and then break the bad habits around the technologies, by the way, that are ancient. People have been drinking too much, eating too much, smoking too much, all kinds of too much for millennia. Distraction is nothing new. Distraction didn't come from technology. Distraction comes from up here. Distraction comes from our uncomfortable feelings that we are looking to escape. If we don't understand that, if we don't start with that principle, that is the source of 90 percent of our distractions, they're called internal triggers, then we keep blaming our devices, but that's not the cause of the problem. That's the proximal cause, it's not the root cause. **Bernard Leong:** Just before we get to the main subject of the day, I just want to ask you what are the key lessons you can share with my younger audience about building products and lives with intention rather than having the default behavior you talk about, that bad habit that you're trying to get them to overcome. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/03/indistractable.jpg) **Nir Eyal:** Sure. So this is a big part of Indistractable where I start by doing something that I think few authors do, which is to actually define what we're talking about. What are we talking about here? Distraction. What is distraction? So the best way to understand what distraction is is to understand what it is not. What is the opposite of distraction? Most people will tell you the opposite of distraction is focus. I don't want to be distracted, I want to be focused. Incorrect. The opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction is traction. That's right. Of course it is. Think about it. Traction, distraction. Both words come from the same Latin root, trahare, it means to pull, and they both end in the same word, A-C-T-I-O-N, that spells action. So traction by definition is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. Things that move you closer to your values and help you become the person you want to become. Those are acts of traction. The opposite of traction, distraction, is any action that pulls you away from what you said you were going to do. Further away from your goals, further away from becoming the kind of person you want to be. So to answer your question, how do we live a life with intent? We do what we say we're going to do. So if that means exercising when we say we will, eating right if we say we will, being with loved ones when we say we will, playing video games when we say we will. If we say we're going to play video games, play video games. There's nothing wrong with playing video games or watching YouTube or going on social media, do it. Do the fun stuff. But do it on your schedule and according to your values, not the media company's. That's the critical lesson of Indistractable and I think what makes it so different from every other tech critic out there who says, oh, the social media companies, they're rotting my brain, they're telling me what to do, they're addicting everybody. Bullshit. It is not true. You have way more control than you think you do as long as you believe you are capable. The mistake that a lot of people make is they say I'm powerless, there's nothing I can do, my kids are addicted, I'm addicted, everybody's addicted. No, you're not. You're distracted. Because an addiction is is a medical diagnosis. We love to medicalize things these days, everything becomes a diagnosis. Vast majority of people are not addicted, they're just distracted and they like it. 'Cause it's fun! It's fun to go on social media, it's fun to watch videos on Netflix, it's fun. The problem is when we give over control and we say well there's nothing we can do about it and we believe these chicken little tech critics that tell us the sky is falling and technology is so bad for us and you tell people there's nothing you can do, guess what they do? Nothing. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think that whole thing about the distraction also applies now to AI as well? As in the habit-forming piece that you outsource your brain to the AI rather than you should be thinking critically and use the AI as a co-pilot. **Nir Eyal:** So this was the most predictable moral panic ever. In fact, a few years ago I was saying that the moral panic around social media, remember a few years ago, oh social media is the worst ever, we had that movie, now I can't even remember the name, the Social Dilemma movie came out on Netflix, everybody saw that movie, oh my god it's so terrible, and I said back then just wait a few years there'll be another moral panic. Now hey, the moral panic is here, now it's about AI. By the way, this moral panic has been going on with every new technology. Rock and roll music, and rap music, and the radio, and the television, the bicycle, even all the way to the written word. You know that Socrates said that the written word would enfeeble men's minds. The written word, the technology of writing things down. Terrible, terrible thing, we should not do that, terrible technology. You know what's interesting? He was right. You know why? Because we can't do what the ancient Greeks could do. You know the ancient Greeks could memorize volumes of information, all in their heads, because they didn't write it down. So they trained themselves, they used various techniques to memorize things. Songs, memory palaces, they were incredible. Today they would be geniuses if we thought wow, all the things that they could remember in their brains. Because they could do something we don't have to do. We have books where we can write things down in. They didn't have to do that. So we are able to mentally outsource a lot of our thinking and brain processing to things outside our brain. Now you say well but that's terrible, we can't do the things the ancient Greeks could do. But they can't do a lot of things we can do. So this is the problem. We love black and white thinking. Is technology good or bad? Is social media good or bad? Is AI good or bad? The answer is yes. Sophocles beautifully said that nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse. So if something is vast as the internet or the written word or AI enters our lives, it's going to come with good as well as a curse. That's always the deal. That doesn't mean we should stop using it, it means we should use it smarter. That's exactly what we need to do. **Bernard Leong:** I think that most people don't realize technology is neutral, it's actually the human mind that decides how this technology is going to be adopted, right? **Nir Eyal:** Well, I'm not sure if it's exactly neutral per se because the design choices, they're called affordances, so if you have a door handle, the affordance of the door handle is to either be pushed or pulled based on how you design it. So I'm not sure if technology is per se neutral, it's that technology doesn't solve problems. **Bernard Leong:** Correct. Why do you say correct? Because I made this comment this morning on X, I was saying something like every software solution arrived usually creates another ten more software problems. I borrow that line from George Bernard Shaw on science. Science never solves a problem without creating ten more. **Nir Eyal:** Right. So I say it a little different, I say technology doesn't solve problems it gives us better problems. Better problems. You're right, it does both, it gives us ten more problems, but I would much rather have the problems of today's technology than the problems of yesterday's technology. I mean Singapore is such a wonderful example of this. Sixty years ago, this was a swamp that got flooded with the rains and there were diseases and there was poverty and it's amazing what Singapore's accomplished. But now we have new problems. We have problems of abundance. If you look at the world, this is the first time in two hundred thousand years of human history where we don't have mass starvation. There are localized pockets, but it's man-made. We have for the first time in two hundred thousand years of human history, we have enough calories to feed every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. That's never happened before, first generation that that's happened. Global poverty is at record lows for the history of mankind. But the cost of that, the curse that comes with this vast technology of the productivity of how much we can make these days in terms of calories, is that now we have diseases of excess. That's right. The new problem of diabetes and obesity and all these other problems that come with diseases of excess. But I would much rather have diseases of excess than diseases of scarcity. That's the same thing that's happened with our technology. For all of two hundred thousand years, having this precious resource of knowledge, of information was incredibly scarce. You had libraries that kept scrolls and books and they were incredibly precious commodities. This is the first time where you can get you can know anything virtually in an instant in the palm of your hand. I mean that is amazing. That would have been science fiction a generation ago. Yet we take it for granted today. So the price of all that progress, the price of never having to be bored, the price of having the world's information at your fingertips, is that we have to learn how to live with the technology. How to live better with it so that it serves us rather than hurts us. **Bernard Leong:** I think just for a very quick one because I think we get the main subject of today, I want to I actually I thought through this whole interview with you I try to formulate around three themes: habits, attention and belief systems. Maybe I'll start from the first one which is habits. For listeners who are actually unfamiliar with your work, can you briefly just explain the core thesis behind the Hook model and why is it resonated so strongly with a lot of product builders including myself. My wife actually was the one who introduced your book to me and I was reading through and I did find a lot of inspiration when I design some of the products you see in Singapore today, for example, the PopStation parcel locker. **Nir Eyal:** Oh very cool. Very cool. Excellent. Oh I would love to see a breakdown of how you use the Hook model. That sounds fascinating but to give listeners kind of a very brief overview of course there's a whole book on this but basically the Hook model as described in the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, shows that there are four steps to every habit-forming product. Every habit-forming has a trigger, an action, a reward and an investment. When you have those four steps, unlike a general habit that we have, how to exercise more or learn a musical instrument, a product habit has specific characteristics in order to make that product part of your day-to-day life. The goal is that you're moving from what's called an external trigger, a ping, a ding, a ring, all these notifications in our outside environment, to creating an association with an internal trigger so that you're using the product habitually. When you do that, it becomes part of people's everyday lives. So the products that succeed these days are the ones that build these crucial consumer habits. **Bernard Leong:** I think one interesting thing because I still apply the same set of principles when come to designing AI products. I think in the case of AI, the user experience tend not to be closed-loop. It can be open-loop because you can talk to the chatbot for a very very long time, like say two to three hours. It's almost like an infinite game as such. How do you think now product leaders think about forming habit-forming design in the era of AI and with automation and also increasingly I think it's passive and persuasive technology. **Nir Eyal:** So I think what's changed that I predicted several years ago and has come to fruition is that the investment phase, so the Hook model has four steps: trigger, action, reward and investment. That's right. The investment phase is where all the AI genius is headed. This is what's happening. So the investment phase is where the user puts something into the product that makes it better with use. I see. So it's storing value. Stored value is a really really important characteristic because if you think about everything in the physical world, this couch, your car, your clothing, these things depreciate. The things made out of bits out of atoms rather than bits, they lose value with wear and tear, with usage. Habit-forming products do the opposite. This is a cardinal trait of habit-forming products, that investment phase, if you don't have the investment phase it's not a habit-forming product, it must get better with use. It must store value. So that investment phase is absolutely critical and so what's happening now is that I call it the TikTok-ification of everything. Because just like TikTok, the moment as soon as you start using the product, it's learning from you. The algorithm is getting better at serving you what you want. That is going to be a trait across products and services across the economy. In fact your customers are going to expect the product to improve and if it doesn't, they're going to go to your competition and you're going to lose your customers, they're going to churn out. That's really where I see the opportunity for AI is being able to personalize and customize experiences based on user information, based on their data, based on their preferences, based on how they're interacting with the product, the product has to accrue value, it has to store value the more it's used. **Bernard Leong:** I think it's personalized because of the way how like for example ChatGPT stores your memory as such. **Nir Eyal:** A perfect example of that and I can see myself getting hooked to ChatGPT even though I subscribe to all the AI services, I still go to ChatGPT first even if the model isn't the best model. This is what's so interesting about habit-forming products, they don't necessarily have to be the best in class. As long as they're—but let me let me just say the point here. How does ChatGPT do it? They have that daily digest. That's right. So it's genius. I check it every single day based on what I'm doing with ChatGPT and of course the more information you allow it, if you let it get access to your calendar, if you give it access to your email inbox, it's amazing how much value it gives you. So let's walk through the Hook model. The internal trigger is I wonder what ChatGPT found for me today, what did it cook up for me overnight, that's the internal trigger. The external trigger is that as soon as you use ChatGPT it has a notification telling you hey here's your daily digest. The action is to click one button and you see these curated articles, they look like articles but they're AI-generated from the LLM. The variable reward is what's in it, right? What new information did I find? And the investment is based on which ones I read and whether I like some versus others, say this is valuable this is not valuable, it gets better every single day. That's something I have not seen yet, maybe I've missed it, but I have not seen the other companies do and I think we're going to see all of them eventually moving to that model. **Bernard Leong:** I'm an AI practitioner. I thought I should talk about this interesting phenomenon. So one thing I tend to do is to actually delete memory. I know you talk about mass customization, the more they know about you, but when I was working in the Human Genome Project as a scientist, I once told a biologist colleague that you know the AI will be able to remember everything, to be able to help you like an assistant. That was like 2005\. Then he just made a very I would say a very interesting remark by saying, "Bernard, do you understand what's the evolutionary gain that humans have in forgetting? Because we have the ability to unlearn and relearn." **Nir Eyal:** That's very good point. So why do you delete the memory? **Bernard Leong:** Because I just want to give the AI, I try not to get the AI to maximize what I want. I like to take things in a very balanced viewpoint. So if it tries to tailor too much to me, sometimes it also tailor my bias or systematic errors. As a theoretical physicist myself I always think about how to put myself to see different perspectives of the problem. So that's how I that's the justification for why I do it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2026/03/beyond_belief.jpg) **Nir Eyal:** Nice. Actually you're going to love Beyond Belief, that's exactly what I train myself and I hope others will adopt as well is is consciously and deliberately looking at things from other perspectives. **Bernard Leong:** So where do you draw the line say in the Hook model between creating value through habits or the product crossing into manipulation or exploitation. Many know tech news about products being bad I think is overblown. I think they don't I think a lot of media outlets don't give the product a chance to explain what happened rather than just insisting that they cause the addiction. **Nir Eyal:** So I talk about this in a chapter in the book called The Morality of Manipulation and I make the case that there's nothing wrong with manipulation. Why? Because there's two kinds of manipulation. Manipulation is a neutral term. There are two kinds of manipulation, one is good and one is bad. The good kind is called persuasion. Persuasion is when we help people do the things they themselves want to do. So you want to exercise but you don't find time for it, it's too difficult, you don't know exactly how, you use an app, for example Fitbod, uses the Hook model to get people hooked to exercising. So if that's something you want to do and now here is a persuasive technology that helps you do it, awesome. In fact, it is morally and ethically wrong to not use persuasive technology. If you can help people live longer, happier lives by using technology to help them do the thing they want to do, it's your ethical obligation to build that product. So that's good manipulation. The opposite of persuasion is coercion. Persuasion is helping people do things they want to do, coercion is getting people to do things they did not want to do. That is unethical. There's only really one party that can coerce you ethically, which is the government. If they have a sign that says don't go over a certain miles per hour, the government can coerce you by giving you a ticket to change your behavior. But in business we can't coerce people. We can't force people to do something. Unless you're a scammer. So we would never want to use persuasive technology to coerce people into doing something they later regret. Not only is that ethically dubious, it's bad for business. Because in this day and age, if you get people to do something that they later regret, not only will they not do business with you anymore, they're going to tell everybody they know not to do business with you either. So it's not only ethically bad, it's also bad for business to be on that wrong side of this manipulation idea. **Bernard Leong:** I want to come to Indistractable because I like the thesis that distraction is not a technology problem but a human one. How should leaders and organizations design work environments that support being indistractable rather than intentionally promote manipulation? **Nir Eyal:** So what we see, there's a whole chapter in the book in Indistractable about how to build an indistractable workplace. It turns out that there are three characteristics of an indistractable workplace. Number one is that they let employees talk about this problem. It turns out that distraction in the workplace is a symptom of dysfunction. I'll say that again, distraction is a symptom of dysfunction. Because if you can't talk about this problem, if you can't raise your hand and say hey boss, you know what, I can't do my best work if I'm constantly interrupted every thirty seconds, if you can't talk about that, that is the problem. That's got nothing to do with technology, it's got to do with the fact that you can't talk about your problems. If you can't talk about the problem of distraction at work, I guarantee you you have all kinds of other skeletons in the closet, things you can't talk about. So giving people the psychological safety to talk about these problems, that's step number one. Characteristic number two is that there's a forum to talk about the problem. So in the book I talk about a few companies, Boston Consulting Group, BCG, my first job out of college, which when I worked there back in 2001 was a really tough place to work. They had very high employee turnover, very stressful, I didn't last very long there, I did my two-year program and I got out because it was a really it was a place a lot of people burned out. Today it's one of America's best places to work as ranked. Part of what they did was they tried this strategy called PTO, predictable time off, where they gave people a forum, a special place to talk about this problem of how do we make sure that people can work without distraction and live life outside of work as well in order to be their best self at work, and it turned out it was a problem like any other. Once they had a place to talk about the problem with the psychological safety to talk about the problem, they could solve it, it was no big deal. Then the third characteristic and the most important is that leaders need to exemplify what it means to be indistractable. I can't tell you how many clients I have that they call me, they hire me to do a big expensive presentation on how to build an indistractable workplace, and who is it in the back of the room who's on their phone? Is it the young kids? No, it's not. You know who it is? Bosses. It's the boomer boss in his forties or fifties using their phone in the back of the room because they're so important they constantly have to be connected. We can't be hypocrites. If we want our employees to do their best work and work without distraction, we know that you cannot do your best work if you're constantly interrupted and you're constantly expected to be connected, if we want them to be do their best work, we have to show them what that looks like. So if you want an indistractable workplace you have to be an indistractable boss. By the way, if you want to have indistractable kids, you need to be an indistractable parent. We can't be hypocrites. So those are the three characteristics. Remember, distraction is a symptom of dysfunction, cultural dysfunction. So you need to give psychological safety, a forum to talk about the problem and exemplify what it means to be an indistractable leader. **Bernard Leong:** From your research, what practical behavior changes actually make the biggest difference for individuals trying to become indistractable? Like for example I always like to look at my phone. Like what you said, sometimes all founders work zero-zero-seven, zero-A-M to zero-P-M, seven days a week, and they sometimes really have the anxiety of what is happening. Maybe my question is: how do you so that you can focus your attention better or like time is money, so you have to be very frugal about the amount of time you have. **Nir Eyal:** The most important thing is to recognize your internal triggers. This is the icky sticky truth that many founders don't like to think about is that the reason you are checking your phone so much is because you are escaping a feeling. That's the number one reason. We know that we've done studies on this that show that only 10 percent of the time people blame their phones. They say oh my phone is ringing, the notification, my boss, blah blah blah all this stuff outside of us. Turns out that's only 10 percent of the time. 10 percent of the time you look at your phone is because of a ping, ding, a ring, an external trigger. 90 percent of the time that you check your phone, it's because of an internal trigger. A feeling. Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, anxiety. That is the source of 90 percent of our distractions. Because distractions begin from within. So the most important thing you can do, if you're struggling with distraction, the first step, it's not the only step, there's four steps, but the first step before you look for tips and tricks and life hacks, all that stuff doesn't work if you don't first understand why you're checking your device so much. Or why you're giving into any distraction whether it's drinking too much, too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook, all of it has the same source. It's about escaping discomfort. Kind of like what I was telling in the very beginning around when I was overweight. It's about a feeling. But we don't like to think about that. Can't I just install an app to fix this problem? Can't I blame Facebook? Can't I ask the government to fix this problem? No. They're not going to fix it. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. You didn't invent Facebook, you didn't invent ChatGPT, you didn't invent this amazing technology. But it is your responsibility. **Bernard Leong:** What I like about the way you put it is humans are ultimately responsible for their own addiction. **Nir Eyal:** Well, who else could it be? Who else's responsibility could it possibly be? It doesn't again, I'm not saying it's easy. I hear this a lot. People say well that's not easy, how do I... Well, everything worth having in life is on the other side of hard. You want a good family? You want to have a great relationships with your spouse or your kids? Hard work. I have a seventeen year old and I've been married for twenty-five years. Sometimes it's hard work. You want to build a business? You tell me. Hard work, right? It doesn't come easy. You want to get in shape, have good health? It's not easy. The easiest thing in the world is to do the lazy stuff, is to eat junk food and to treat people however you want to treat them and not be mindful and you know, that's the easiest thing in the world. But you don't get an outstanding life that way. Sometimes you have to do hard work. The price of all this progress, the price of these amazing tools, is that we have to adapt. We have to learn new ways of being in order to get the best out of these tools. **Bernard Leong:** So I'm going to come to now your latest book, Beyond Belief. So your upcoming book Beyond Belief is explores how deeply held beliefs can limit performance. I guess what prompt you to focus on belief systems after habits and attention? **Nir Eyal:** So I wrote Indistractable and I started doing these office hours where anybody can book time with me. I wanted to hear feedback about what they thought and I still do this, that anybody can book fifteen minutes, I do this for one hour a week, you book fifteen minutes with me and ask me anything you want. For years I've been doing this and it's very valuable I hear all kinds of great feedback. But with Indistractable maybe like one out of twenty calls, somebody would call and they would wait for months sometimes to talk to me. Sometimes there was a backlog and they'd have to wait a few months. They'd call me up and the call would sound like this. It would say something like, "Hey Nir, I read Indistractable, it was great book, really enjoyed it, but it didn't work for me." Oh my gosh tell me, I spent five years writing it, I have thirty pages of peer-reviewed studies, citations, so tell me what didn't work, I'd love to know more. "Well you know I didn't do step one." Oh okay no problem, you didn't do step one. No problem. Tell me about step two. How did step two go? "Ah you know I read step two. I read step two. I just didn't I just didn't do step two." I thought wait what the heck is going on here? Here's this problem that everybody complains about, distraction and this and that, here I gave you the solution on a silver platter, five years of research, here you go, it's two hundred fifty pages, take you a couple hours to read it and it's going to change your life. Just do what's in the book. People would wait for months to tell me that the technique that they didn't do didn't work. It blew my mind. How could that be? Then I realized wait a minute, I do this all the time. I have books on the bookshelf full of great advice that I don't use. Or coaches and mentors that I've heard from and I didn't do what they said I should do. I thought well what's going on here? Why is it that despite knowing what to do, we don't do it? What's missing? What am I not understanding here? I realized that our basic understanding of motivation is missing something. We think if I tell people what to do or if I tell myself what to do, the behavior, what do I do, the behavior, and why I should do it, the benefit, well it's a straight line. Do this, get that. Makes sense. That's how our jobs work. If you do this job, you get this paycheck. Great. But there's something missing. If it was that easy, everybody would have six-pack abs and we'd all be millionaires. It's not how it works. What's missing is belief. If I don't believe that I will get the benefit, or if I don't believe I can do the behavior, I'm not going to do it. I lose motivation. That's what happens. So before you read another self-help book, before you listen to another guru, before you take any advice you're not going to use, you have to understand the fundamental mechanism of how motivation works. Motivation is a triangle. It requires the behavior, what am I going to do? It requires the benefit, why am I going to do it? And then it requires the belief. If you don't have those three areas of your life in concert, all the advice in the world is going to go in one ear and out the other. **Bernard Leong:** So what are the common limiting beliefs that you see among leaders, founders or even knowledge workers today then? **Nir Eyal:** Oh where do we start? I mean I'm too old, people like me can't succeed at this, it's too late, I'm too this, I'm too that. It's you name it. The problem isn't the limiting beliefs we can articulate. We've all heard someone say something that you look and say no that's not just do it, just try it, see what happens. When it's other people. When it's for ourselves, we can't see our limiting beliefs. They're hidden to us. We all have limiting beliefs. I've spoken to billionaires, I've spoken to high school kids who are just getting starting in life. We all have them in different areas of our life. You know I've talked to billionaires who have so many liberating beliefs about their ability to succeed in business. We see it all the time, we call it the reality distortion field. People said this about Steve Jobs in his book Walter Isaacson coined that term, that he had such liberating beliefs that everything would work out, that he would will things to happen and it was his defining trait. Trump by the way shows this whatever you believe politically also, he just wills reality into existence and he believes it's the case no matter what. But what's interesting is that you can have those liberating beliefs in one area of your life, but in another area of your life you're full of limiting beliefs about your health, your body, your relationships. So the idea of the book is how do we discover those limiting beliefs that each of us have in various domains of our life and how can we turn those limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs? **Bernard Leong:** This is where I'm going to ask you a really personal question. As an entrepreneur myself, my desire is to actually build this product to disrupt the existing business. I'm always juggling between two perspectives. One, I can fake it till you make it, raise a lot of money and get there, or I could choose the slower approach where I try to get everything correct first and really experiment and but then sometimes because of that I try not to raise and sometimes people think that that's a limiting-limiting yourself belief. I've constantly think founders have this kind of back and forth. How do you see in from the Beyond Belief's point of view how do I overcome this kind of push and pull between the two extremes? **Nir Eyal:** So what is the belief? Can you state it in a sentence? **Bernard Leong:** My belief is that I would be able to build that product and be successful. I still believed in that. But what was the fake it till you make it part? The fake it till you make it part is like when if maybe to succeed I should be like other founders, raise tons of money, you know, hire the quickest team possible, burn a lot of cash, which doesn't suits me very well. But sometimes—why is that faking it, I don't understand? Sometimes people just fake metrics to get to where they are in the next round of finance. Which I see it a lot in Southeast Asia, not necessarily in the US but I've seen it a lot around the environment I'm in. It's what I think what I'm hearing is that in order to succeed you have to fake it till you make it. **Bernard Leong:** Sometimes you get examples like these. Is that what you believe? **Bernard Leong:** No it's not what I believe, but it's an observation I make. I'm consciously telling myself— **Nir Eyal:** But what's the belief that you have that you think might be that you're struggling with that might be limiting you? **Bernard Leong:** What I'm struggling with is should I think bigger and should I be more aggressive against the current how the ecosystem or I should be contrarian have a point of view and do what is necessary to build a sustainable business rather than thinking about all these what I called vanity things around. **Nir Eyal:** What do you want for your business? **Bernard Leong:** I would actually want customers to just use the product. I don't have to raise a lot of money. I think this is where I struggle a lot where you get a lot of external peer pressure and maybe just a vocally self-critical... **Nir Eyal:** So you want a small business. You want a what we call a lifestyle business versus a venture scale business. **Bernard Leong:** No, no. I'm building a venture scale business but I just want to have enough time before I get onto the treadmill of the before you raise money. **Nir Eyal:** Before you raise money. **Bernard Leong:** Before I raise money. Good news is at the moment I don't seek them out so they don't seek me out. Some people are tracking me but I'm trying not to. **Nir Eyal:** I would cross that bridge when you get to it. I would I think some people think that, not saying that you think this, but some people think that raising a lot of money, you know you see headlines of oh so and so raised ten million dollars, raised a hundred million dollars, oh my god billions of dollars they've raised. They think that the raise is the outcome. That's the starting line. That's right. There's nothing glorious about raising money. I mean okay it was a landmark that's great you should okay terrific, you didn't not raise money which would equal failure. But that's not the end destination. Raising money is a tool to reach the end goal. But what you need to focus on, I don't know exactly what stage you're in, but serving your customers, having a validating a business model, that's the most important thing you can do. Like in an early stage, every business has these three pillars. It's what I call GEM, actually Reed Hoffman created this, I can't take credit for it, but GEM stands for growth engagement monetization. So a startup needs to have two of the three and a plan for the third. So most of the time they're working on growth and engagement, that's the most important two things to focus on and then monetization comes at some point. So you need some kind of business model that can deliver monetization. But no startup, if you have all three you're a validated business, you're no longer a startup. So in the early stages I'd worry about growth. How do you acquire customers profitably so that lifetime value is greater than the cost of acquisition. Engagement, how do you keep people coming back so that so that you can have low churn and high value per customer. Then monetization, you know that comes later how do you have a sustainable business. But that's where venture capital helps is that if you don't have- if you're not profitable up front, okay you can raise your money to to gap that time or to put the fuel on the fire and say hey you know if we could grow super fast if we could put more money towards sales or whatever the case might be. So until you're there I wouldn't worry about venture capital at all, frankly. I would worry about delivering value to customers. **Bernard Leong:** I think maybe one thing I probably think about is like the similar companies in what I'm working on have already raised a lot of money and sometimes I'm asking myself that the limiting belief maybe I should have done the same on there from time to time as a form of reflection as well. **Nir Eyal:** I think following the competition is always a terrible idea. I think the best thing to do is to stay focused on your customers. Because I can give you an endless list of companies that raised money or followed other people raising money that are in the graveyards of Silicon Valley. So just because someone raises money doesn't mean anything. I mean there's a sucker born every minute. You can find someone to give you a few million bucks, it's you know it's not that hard with your pedigree, I'm sure you can do it pretty easily. It's much more important to be to have conviction about whether the timing is right. You know we talk about you don't want to be too late. There's a huge risk to being too early. Huge risk. If you think about Apple, Apple was never first at anything. At anything. They weren't the first, the iPod, there was tons of MP3 players. They didn't make the first laptop, they didn't make the first desktop, they didn't make the first what today is the iPhone. They were second, third or fourth at all those things. So it's not necessarily the best thing, you don't always have to be first at things. Sometimes you want to wait a little bit so that you're not first, but you're last. You're the one who makes the market who actually defines that market. I'd rather have conviction that something is going to work based on customer feedback versus well it seems like everybody else is raising money so I gotta get after it too. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about human behavior whether habits, attention or even beliefs that very few people do but should? **Nir Eyal:** Where do we start? I mean I think the most important thing is to realize that facts are different from beliefs and beliefs are different from faith. That we confuse those three terms. A fact is an objective truth. It's true no matter what you think. The earth is more like a sphere than it is flat, it doesn't care what you believe. Then on the other end of the spectrum from a fact is faith. Faith is a conviction that does not require evidence. So in the New Testament in Hebrews it says that faith is that which you cannot see. It does not require evidence. God rewards the righteous. That is something that does not require evidence, it's faith. Then there's something in the middle which is a belief. A belief is a strongly held conviction open to new evidence. A strongly held conviction open to new evidence. So the point of Beyond Belief is to show folks what I've learned and what's changed my life over the past several years is that beliefs are tools, not truths. Beliefs are tools, not truths. Because the majority of our problems today, cultural, geopolitical, personal problems come from the fact that we think that our faith is fact and we confuse facts for what our beliefs. The whole idea behind the book is to bring us back to a point of intellectual humility. We can look around us and notice that the vast majority of things in life will never be facts. They're beliefs. Should I marry this person? Should I start this business? Should I take this path in life? There will never be certainty, they will never be objective facts. Yet we want to put them in these nice clean buckets of true and false. That's not reality. Rather what we should do is to be militant about nuance and understanding and humility. To constantly ask ourselves, is this belief serving me or am I serving the belief? Because a belief does not have to be true for it to be useful. If we can evaluate our life, our personal life, our relationships, our business, our society through that lens of is this belief serving us? Turns out we do better in business, we can succeed and see opportunities other people never saw because they don't believe they exist. We can live longer, do you know that people who have a healthy belief about aging live seven and a half years longer, which is a greater effect than stopping smoking or lowering cholesterol, seven and a half years longer if you have positive beliefs about aging. We can change our relationships. I mean this book and the techniques I describe are the secret to why I have a marriage now for twenty-five years. Because the interpersonal relationship between my daughter and my wife and I has never been better because we don't realize that we don't see people as they are, we see people as our beliefs say they are. So beliefs touch every area of our life. So it's it's that I think what I'd most like to convey is that these beliefs are tools, not truths. **Bernard Leong:** If I were to ask is belief something that's like a intrinsic motivation, less of an extrinsic motivation that is validated by others. **Nir Eyal:** So intrinsic, extrinsic, it's a little there's a there's a long science around all that. But I think the important thing is to realize that what matters is that motivation triangle we talked about. Is do I believe that the benefit is going to accrue, and let's say that's some kind of extrinsic benefit of, you know, do I trust my boss or the company to deliver my bonus or whatever, so that could be extrinsic. The intrinsic part has to do with the behavior. What we see with these limiting beliefs is that we tend to quit way too soon because we don't believe in our own ability to do what we know we should do. We basically know that if you want to get in shape, you gotta go to the gym, you gotta eat right, we know what to do. It's not that hard, you don't need to buy a book from some guru, we all know how to get in shape. It's not that hard. But do we believe in our ability to follow through? We have all these limiting beliefs of I don't I don't have time, I'm too old, I'm too this, I'm too that. These are our limiting beliefs. To start a business, how many people say oh I can't do a business because of reasons X, Y, Z, right? There's all kinds of reasons. So many times that the extrinsic part is around the benefits and the intrinsic part is around the beliefs in ourselves in that behavior. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one question you wish more people would ask you about your work but they don't? **Nir Eyal:** About my work. Well you've asked some good ones, I can't I don't know if I would say there's one question that I should be asked more. I think maybe there's a big component around agency. **Bernard Leong:** Tell me more about agency. **Nir Eyal:** So that's the so the book is organized according to these three powers of belief. That beliefs fundamentally change what you see, what you feel and what you do. It's attention, anticipation and agency. It blew my mind. Like the research and I'm not a very you know woo-woo type of person, I hate that stuff. Like I need to see the data, I need to see the studies. That's why there's over thirty pages of peer-reviewed studies citations in this book, I'm very very research backed. That's why it's a scientific a science-backed technique. The research is just mind-blowing. How in the in the second chapter of the book, I talk about hypnosedation and this gentleman Daniel Gissler who is a commodities trader in his fifties and he goes under surgery to remove screws from his ankle with no anesthesia. None. Not general anesthesia, not local anesthesia, none, just using the power of his mind. I'm not advocating for hypnosedation, I'm not sure I would do it frankly, but I use that example to show people, and by the way he's not alone, tens of thousands of people in Switzerland, in France, in Belgium, this is now a widely used practice. It turns out that people heal much quicker when they don't go under general anesthesia. The reason I use that example is that wow, you know if we can use the power of the mind, the power of our beliefs to reshape our attention, anticipation and agency so that we can overcome the pain of surgery without anesthesia, what else can we do? Because remember we talked about earlier that everything worth having in life is on the other side of discomfort. So if you can learn to manage discomfort through the power of belief, what couldn't you accomplish? Everything. You know, everything's on the other side of discomfort. So if you can manage discomfort better by re-evaluating your beliefs, wow, you can not only do the things you know you need to do, you can do them without the difficulty that you're currently suffering through. **Bernard Leong:** It reminds me of the recent documentary I saw with Chris Hemsworth on Limitless where he actually have to defy belief that he can do play the drums within a performance in front of 70,000 people and he had to do in two months and also the pain management part in the other episode as such. So my traditional closing question then. What does great look like for you for Beyond Belief, how do you measure if the book has been successful among others? **Nir Eyal:** My measurement has always been did it help me. I don't write books to become successful. I write books to answer my questions. That's always been the way I've written. I've always followed my curiosity because I'm looking for the answer, not because I found the answer. That journey is is what drives me, that curiosity that I follow. In this book, nothing has changed my life more than writing this book. I do all kinds of things today that I didn't do before, and so to me it's already success because it's improved my life so much. I hope that it helps others as well. **Bernard Leong:** I already pre-ordered the Apple book copy so I should be getting it soon when it comes out. Nir, many thanks for coming on the show. **Nir Eyal:** My pleasure. Thanks. **Bernard Leong:** We have two closing questions. My first one is any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Nir Eyal:** Any recommendations? Well, if you're listening to this podcast and you're not in Singapore, I would highly recommend coming to Singapore. I think I lived here for six years and the book Beyond Belief is in some parts you could say it's a love letter to Singapore. Because the society we have here in Singapore is so special, is so unique on earth. There's a there's a chapter in the book about why prayer works even without faith. It is a chapter that I could not have written anywhere else on earth. Because only in Singapore could I have gone to a rabbi who introduced me to an imam, who introduced me to a swami, who introduced me to a monk, who introduced me to a priest. I went to all five of them asking the same question: how do you pray even if you have uncertainties about God? I took away something from each and every one of them and now I pray. Even though I don't subscribe to a particular faith, it's enhanced my life so much because the science is unequivocal. Even if you don't believe in a supernatural power, the science around prayer is very hard to ignore. People who pray are happier, they live longer, they're more connected to their community, they contribute more. Lots of good things happen when you pray. Only in Singapore could I get this diverse perspective and so my recommendation for anyone who hasn't lived in Singapore, been to Singapore, is to come check it out. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you so much on that. My final question. How do my audience find you and where do they find the book? **Nir Eyal:** Thanks. So it's sold all over Singapore today and all over the world, on Amazon or your local bookseller will probably have it, if they don't please ask them to stock it. The book comes out March 10th is when it'll be available worldwide. If you go to my website NirAndFar.com, there's actually a thirty-day belief transformation journal, which is absolutely free, if you order the book, you can if you pre-order the book you'll get it there and that's at NirAndFar again, Nir spelled like my first name N-I-R, and far dot com. **Bernard Leong:** For all those who wants to follow our show, you can definitely subscribe to us on YouTube, LinkedIn and all the other channels. Nir, many thanks for coming on the show to share with me about Beyond Belief. Something that I've been thinking quite a lot with and I hope your book can also help me to address some of those questions I have in my mind. Thank you so much. **Nir Eyal:** Thanks so much. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Beginning with his transition from Databricks to Arize AI, Patrick explained how the company's mission centers on making AI work for people by helping teams observe, evaluate, and continuously improve their AI agents in production. Emphasizing that evaluations are the most important requirement for AI systems in 2025-2026, he revealed a striking insight: approximately 50% of AI agents fail silently in production because organizations don't know what's happening. Through compelling case studies from Booking.com, Flipkart, and AT&T, Patrick explained how Arize AI enables real-time observability and online evaluations, achieving results like 40% accuracy improvements and 84% cost reductions. He highlighted the company's open-source Phoenix platform and Open Inference standard as entry points for developers, while discussing emerging trends like "cursor for X" and the rise of AI product managers. Patrick concluded by sharing his vision for success across Asia Pacific's diverse markets - from regulatory frameworks in Korea and Singapore to language localization challenges in Vietnam - emphasizing the three pillars that remain constant: helping customers make money, control costs, and manage risk in an era where AI governance has become paramount. Last but not least, he shares what great would look like for Arize AI in the Asia Pacific --- > "The mission is to make AI work for the people. It’s about getting AI working for everybody—consumers, customers, and businesses at large. Evals are the most important things that we’ve seen through 2025 and will see more of into 2026; they are the most important thing for systems to work. When I'm working with a customer, I ask: How are we going to help them make money? How are we going to help them control costs? And how are we going to help them manage risk? A lot of AI now is about managing risk." - **Patrick Kelly, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Arize AI** **Profile: Patrick Kelly,** Vice President, Asia Pacific, [**Arize AI** ](https://arize.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-kelly-aab6168/?ref=analyse.asia)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to Analyse podcast, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of technology, media, and business globally. I'm Bernard Leong. How do we know the large language models or any AI agents are doing the right thing? Today we're going to explore the evolving world of AI agents evaluation and infrastructure through the lens of Asia Pacific. With me today is Patrick Kelly, an old friend of the podcast, Vice President for Asia Pacific at Arize AI, which I also gladly take some lessons from your founder in deep learning.ai, one of the leading companies helping the world to build and ship reliable AI agents in production. So Patrick, welcome to the show. **Patrick Kelly:** Awesome, thanks. Great to be here again, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** Congratulations on your new role with Arize AI. As you have been on the show before and shared your early career journey and your last role, what have you been up to and what's the thing that led you to the current role? **Patrick Kelly:** Last time we spoke, I was at [Databricks](https://databricks.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). That's right, quite a while ago. I spent two years at Databricks and had a great experience. We're building out the business, building great outcomes for customers across Southeast Asia, and I think you've seen that at Data World tour last year. That's right. You were r[unning the podcast during that event](https://www.analysepodcast.com/enterprise-ai-why-data-matters-and-mosaic-ai-with-nick-eayrs-simon-fassot-and-craig-wiley/) with two ex-colleagues of mine and you were interviewing our customer: Hafnia, which was fantastic. Data rich, great company, great vision, Lakehouse, having that kind of common source of data and then just the opportunity to build something new again. We are builders at heart, coming from Amazon days, and it really got me that Arize AI came along and said, we're looking to build the business in APAC and if you look at what AI is trying to do, it's all about how do you ship AI that works? **Bernard Leong:** Making AI work for the people, right? **Patrick Kelly:** That's right. **Bernard Leong:** Arize is probably first very well known for large language model evaluations. Now we go into agent evaluations and even in terms of thinking about the infrastructure side as well. I also found out from you that it's not just on the cloud, but also on-prem, but we are going to dive deeper into this, which comes to the main subject of the day where I want to talk about Arize AI and what's the market opportunity for them in the Asia Pacific. Maybe to simplify this, first is what is Arize AI's core mission? How does the company actually enable teams to build with large language models and AI agents? **Patrick Kelly:** Really the mission is to make AI work and make AI work for the people. It's all about getting AI working for everybody—consumers, customers, businesses at large. I really think that we're at an area of AI adoption where the last couple of years since GPT came out, we've had chatbots, we've had RAG, we've had LLMs and some of them have been very successful around performing outcomes for customers. A lot of what Arize does is really helping customers observe what's happening in your AI solution or AI application, then being able to understand if something's going wrong—how do I evaluate it? And then how do I get that feedback loop back into the system again? Everyone's talking about agentic or agents at the moment and everyone's moving towards that as well. We just think agentic is just another series of steps that a system will take to get an outcome. So there may be an LLM call to OpenAI and then there'll be an API call to another system and then there'd be a call to read or retrieve something from the system, be it a database or a PDF, and then you put all of them together and that will deliver the response back to the user of the agent. So it's just an amalgamation of a lot of different systems coming together, but as that becomes more complex— **Bernard Leong:** How do you understand the whole session end to end? **Patrick Kelly:** That complexity also exacerbates if you have something a model context protocol, what people are going to call MCP servers, because you're trying to take different information from different servers and then you want to compress that context and then get the AI agent to do the work on all the different data and then synthesize what they're supposed to do for you. **Bernard Leong:** Just to baseline my audience a bit, can you help them understand what a platform that supports AI agents really looks like from the Arize point of view? How do things development, observability, and evaluation come into play when you are thinking about generative AI applications? **Patrick Kelly:** The first step is observing your system—understanding your system, seeing what it's doing, and that will tell you if there's a problem. That's step one. Second, then you think about, I know there's a problem, and then you find out what are the symptoms. I think about diagnostics. There's a bit of medical analogy here. Think about doctors. You've got symptoms. You go to a doctor. I've got symptoms. He's going to evaluate you. He's going to look at you. You've got a runny nose, your eyes are watering a bit. I think it might be COVID or might be influenza. But then you need to evaluate against a certain playbook or data. Doctors will measure you against certain temperatures and everything else. Same as in any system to evaluate. We can do prompt engineering, we can then understand what data is causing this hallucination in the LLM or the chatbot. Then most importantly, when you're doing the development, redevelopment of the application, you want to push that improvement back into the system. We think about how do you develop agents or AI systems, and then how do you push them into production? When you're in production, you observe and then you evaluate and you create this continuous cycle so hopefully your quality and your performance and everything is improving for the whole application. **Bernard Leong:** That is transfer learning on what the evaluation sends back to the system so they can iterate and self-learn. One question is probably just a side note to this—it also goes through different types of environments? I'm talking about on-premises cloud or even what is called an air gap type environment. Am I right to say that? **Patrick Kelly:** Yes. We have many customers—we operate in the different cloud providers, so Google, Microsoft, and AWS. But we can deploy on any piece of compute infrastructure, which is super important. **Bernard Leong:** That is the biggest surprise for me. **Patrick Kelly:** There are some enterprises where they need very air gap type applications. Could be factories, manufacturing, where they don't want to have any other people to access it. **Bernard Leong:** So the Arize platform is pushing a container into the on-premises system? **Patrick Kelly:** We run on premises. If they're running DeepSeek or any small language model or open source \[LLM\] models on their own GPU stack, we can then collect all the telemetry data, which is [OpenTelemetry](https://arize.com/docs/ax/integrations/opentelemetry/opentelemetry-arize-otel?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Arize-OTel). We're a vendor agnostic company from the platform or the infrastructure we run on to the technologies that gather information OTel and everything else. Then as we move further up the stack on how you build an agent—LangGraph, LlamaIndex and CrewAI—we support all those frameworks as well. You can see us as supporting the whole ecosystem and it's super important for us to have open source at the core, which is OpenTelemetry. Then there's [Open Inference](https://github.com/Arize-ai/openinference?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is created by Arize AI, which is further semantics that can help understand what the LLM is doing. **Bernard Leong:** When I teach the large language model courses to engineers, I deal with a lot more students who are working in on-prem environments. Evaluations is one of the biggest challenges. The only ones I knew about was often through cloud environment. Thanks for giving me this tip. I can go back and tell them, because I use Arize as an example in my classes, that they also do on-prem environments as well. Many listeners will be very familiar with what is called traditional A/B testing or maybe machine learning metrics, but I think AI evaluations are really different because you can prompt anything and then the AI can come back with a lot of different things. Can you help us understand what evaluation means in the context of large language models, LLMs and agents, and why they matter? **Patrick Kelly:** Super important. You nailed it. Evals \[Evaluations\], I think, are the most important things that we've seen through 2025 and I see more into 2026 is the most important thing for systems to work. Coming back to when we worked at AWS and machine learning, we were thinking about how do we get a forecasting model to a certain level of deterministic outcome. Then we keep training the model, keep training the model, and then we get to a score that we want, which is very important. In the large language model world, in the Generative AI world, it's not as easy because it's non-deterministic. The output can be very different. Ask the same question to GPT twice and you get two different answers. We really want to make sure how are we able to bring in elements of evals. I think it's very important that there's two types. One is the offline evaluation. Give you an example—let's say your public sector or government customer is building some kind of system. They're developing and then they want to test it. So that's offline. There's a set of data and they're testing prompts against it. And then they're measuring—is it hallucination, is it toxic? Is it disclosing information? That's one type of it. But as you get into production, you want to be able to do that online as well. We're seeing a lot of techniques around online evaluations in production. For example, this is an example for us from Booking.com. They've got a couple of agents for trip planning and different systems. What they're able to see is how is that agent performing in production in real time? They can do AB tests online in production. Product managers are quite important now in this space. You have the AI engineer and developer, but the product manager in the company is deciding what does this AI system look like? How do I do that online and be able to switch on the fly for customers? Then obviously over time they'll bring it back into development environment and update things. But sometimes this is a customer facing agent—you want to be able to catch it in real time, so it's minimal downtime. **Bernard Leong:** If I can intercept here for the customer service bot example, typically there would be a customer service chatbot to do with specific products and services and then most people usually test with one, two questions. One of the things I always tell my class, please do not do that. Take the first two questions and go through ChatGPT or Claude and say, can you tell me what are the 40 to 50 ways of asking the same questions? They will generate all the questions and then you use that whole list of questions as a form of evaluating the prompts and the answers. Does it help in terms of from the Arize viewpoint when we look at traces and observability? Is that how you can even deal with things chatbot answering that gives you very nonlinear, two different answers maybe to the same question? **Patrick Kelly:** Absolutely. You'd collect all those responses and then be able to put them into a certain dataset and then you'd be able to take that dataset back into your development environment and then you'd be able to run that testing against it to see what are the outcomes. Then you're able to score them and see this prompt triggered this. Maybe I could change the model as an example. That's possible. Or I could instruct it, put some instruction, I could change some code, I could put some different steps in to change things. All of that is available, and that really comes into the whole improvement piece. Once you get to the evaluation, then you improve—I'm going to improve this and this, and then I'm going to test it again. So all that's available. **Bernard Leong:** I find it interesting because in most cloud environments these days, the AI builder actually gets the choice of which model to use, whether it's Azure Foundry, whether it's Amazon Bedrock, or even the Google Cloud platforms environment. Essentially you can actually slip in the evaluations even as if, let's say we switch models and your system should be able to tell that. **Patrick Kelly:** A hundred percent. There's a playground where you can start running these prompts and you can play it GPT-4 and then I'll compare it against GPT-5 or I want to change it to Gemini. All that's available because we're pulling all the traces from all these different models using OpenTelemetry. **Bernard Leong:** Let's walk through, let's say how a typical customer works with Arize. Where do they usually start? Is it mainly starting from the observability, the evaluation, the tracing, or is it something else? **Patrick Kelly:** I'll always think back to what Peter Drucker says in business principles—you can't manage what you can't measure. Back to our Amazon days, we were very focused on: What are we going to measure? What are the elements of success here when we develop any business or technology? It really does start around the observability or tracing. About 50% of customers start there because they built some app and they're testing it and they're running it. That really comes to our open source area, which I'll speak about in a moment. That's about 50% there. We do see some customers who are very early—they're building the application and they start doing some evaluation on that in the development environment. But most of it does start in the observability piece. But then even those ones that start in development, they quickly get it into some kind of production or testing environment because you will never know how this AI application or agent works until you get user interaction. **Bernard Leong:** Getting into that observability piece very quickly is very important. I guess most developers know through Phoenix—is that the open source version that usually how people get into the Arize AI ecosystem? **Patrick Kelly:** We have Phoenix and we have Arize. [Phoenix](https://phoenix.arize.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is the open source version where part of the community really embraces OTel and where Open Inference really started. That's where any developer can go download Phoenix, run on their laptop, build some AI application, and just start testing it and evaluating it. **Bernard Leong:** I forgot to mention Arize is actually responsible for Open Inference. You want to elaborate on that? **Patrick Kelly:** I'll just say that we've seen with OTel and then with LLM and semantics, there's a lot of other elements that need to be understood. Open Inference is super important that we built that on top and we see that's now being adopted by lots of different players in the industry, as well as OTel and Open Inference are really the standard now around how we're going to build evaluations. **Bernard Leong:** Patrick, I really appreciate that you come on so early after you step into this role. **Patrick Kelly:** Three weeks already. **Bernard Leong:** It wouldn't be very fair if I were to ask you a question on how many customers are there already in Asia Pacific. That would be the wrong question. But what I want to know is maybe I do see some of the customer use cases from the website. Can you tell me some more stories that stand out to you so far? I know you already mentioned Booking.com, but I'm pretty sure there are other companies or maybe they might be in the region that are particularly exciting for you starting out in this region now? **Patrick Kelly:** I mentioned Booking.com. I think that's a great use case for us. The travel industry is pretty interesting for us—Skyscanner and a lot of pricing. **Bernard Leong:** Because of travel planning in AI. **Patrick Kelly:** Exactly. Being such a cost sensitive market with dynamic pricing and everything else. We really want to capture a lot of customers and make sure to get them in and be able to drive that outcome. When we think about enterprise scale, think about Flipkart in India—one of the biggest e-commerce retailers, 600 million customers. **Bernard Leong:** Flipkart is now owned by Walmart now. **Patrick Kelly:** Exactly. That really shows massive scale, and that's where we help them on their customer facing agent of how to understand what the customer's doing, how to deflect any customer queries, and just having that kind of automation that can help drive down cost on their side, but then also drive GMV. Gross merchandise value (GMV) is so important for retailers so they could get more customers into the system and get them their products organized and get more sales through the whole platform. **Bernard Leong:** What you are saying is that the customers, other than just doing the evaluations, they do the optimization at the same time when they're in the Arize platform, orchestrated, doesn't matter which cloud you're on. Is that correct? **Patrick Kelly:** Yes, it is auto-optimization. **Bernard Leong:** As in trying to optimize the agents to be able to try to optimize less amount of tokens. **Patrick Kelly:** Yes. One of the big things we can track is all the cost—how much tokens are being generated. Even this morning I was playing around with the system and I was comparing GPT-4 and GPT-5\. GPT-5 generates a lot more tokens. **Bernard Leong:** As I know, 4.5 also generates a lot more tokens. Having a particular system that can actually help you to even visualize this—I think there's already a lot of value in that. Can you share also examples where you have a team that struggled to ship a lot of agents out there, and then how does Arize as a company help them to turn that around? **Patrick Kelly:** A great example is AT&T in the US, obviously one of the world's biggest telcos. This is a RAG \[retrieval augmented generation\] use case where they had for their customer agents, the customer logs in, asks questions about my account, retrieving information about them, and then generating the response. They were having real problems with accuracy of the data. In that case, we worked with NVIDIA. NVIDIA was fine tuning the model to make sure it got better. We were using LLM as a judge, which is another type of evaluation. LLM as a judge is getting another LLM to measure that LLM and be able to tune it as well. Human interaction is great on these systems, but scale can be a problem. Bringing SMEs in is always super important, but we've got to think about scaling as well around using LLM as a judge. The output of that was we got a 40% improvement in accuracy and then 84% reduction in cost, which is massive for quite a lot of the amount of agents. Between human agents and then the AI agents, when you put that together, it just really helps them drive a lot of scale in the business. **Bernard Leong:** This is the second time you're on the podcast, so this question shouldn't be difficult. What's the one thing you know about building or shipping AI agents in Asia Pacific that very few people do, but they should? **Patrick Kelly:** I like this question. I think last time the MIT report just came out—the 95% of AI pilots kind of fail. I think that's still there. I think a lot of systems have been launched—a lot of successful LLMs, RAG systems, AI apps have been launched. I think the more interesting one is that agents that have been launched, about 50% of them fail in production because we don't know what's happening. This is what we see in Arize. But this is also backed up by SMU, the study from Singapore Management University. It's about this silent failure—we've shipped out these agents, but we don't actually know what's happening and are they actually producing any output? **Bernard Leong:** When I was on the Arize website doing research for this episode, one of the things I think Arize seems to emphasize is building agents is hard, shipping them is harder. If I were to ask you this question—what does that mean in practical terms for teams building in Asia Pacific, but it can be anywhere? **Patrick Kelly:** A prelude to that just in Asia Pacific is a lot of governments and regulatory are taking steps for this. That's right. Korea just launched a risk management framework for AI for financial services, making sure that every company needs to adopt this framework. It brings it back to the early cloud days—cost controls, cloud controls, security controls. **Bernard Leong:** But you also have the same AI framework in Singapore, MAS for example, the transparency and all that. Correct. So it's the same thing? **Patrick Kelly:** Correct. With MAS \[Monetary Authority of Singapore\], they just released a call for consultation again around the AI risk framework. That's going to close end of January. Then they're going to release what are the guidelines going to be for companies around AI risk management, which is super interesting. **Bernard Leong:** Do you see institutions or maybe even research groups that actually deal specifically with the evaluation side or accessibility of safety? Because I think Arize in terms of what it's really trying to do is to make sure that the AI agents or the large language models are doing the right thing and also using different techniques LLM as a judge to help them to work through that at the same time. **Patrick Kelly:** We do a lot of work on the academic side, working with a lot of researchers from foundation models labs, really understanding the technology piece—what is the future of, what does this look like? So we can then bubble that out into the market as well and make sure academia and R&D is going in the right direction as well. That's very important for us. Then obviously working with highly regulated industries banking and telco, which will have that really high standard of what can be done and what cannot be done within certain use cases. **Bernard Leong:** Healthcare is in there. **Patrick Kelly:** Healthcare is super important. We as a platform have all the certifications ISO and HIPAA and everyone else. That is very important that we can deploy for these markets. **Bernard Leong:** I saw your CEO, Jason Lopatacki, has made [10 predictions for AI in 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-lopatecki-9509941%5Fover-the-course-of-the-holidays-ive-been-activity-7414014563915890688-d1sz/?utm%5Fsource=share&utm%5Fmedium=member%5Fandroid&rcm=ACoAAAGDx6MBb3WTiMAp6637DWRCuvmvUw2r9sM). One of the questions—you mentioned something sessions matter or harness as a buzzword. Can you tell me from his 10 predictions, which are the ones that the trends you see are actually most actively now playing out in Asia Pacific? **Patrick Kelly:** I think the top one is cursor for X. It's cursor for everything. Cursor for AI engineering, cursor for product development. **Bernard Leong:** I thought it would be Claude Code for everything now. **Patrick Kelly:** Probably Claude Code now as well. Cursor's just one word. It's that cursor experience, the software dev, that kind of vibe experience is really important. For ourselves, we've built our own AI engineering assistant called Alex, which is in the platform. When we come back to that evaluation piece again, let's say you're observing some issue or hallucination, you can ask Alex, hey, what's happening with this AI application? And it will diagnose what's happening, give you an understanding—here's where the problem is. Maybe generate some kind of dataset to test again, and then you can run some evaluation framework off the back of it. The reason this is important—big companies have lots of data and millions of traces. How can they humanly manage all this? This cursor for X, this AI engineering assistant, Alex is super important for that. **Bernard Leong:** If I were to dive deeper into the same question—is it because of what Arize is helping you to do is also to help you to work through what the context is when the AI agent makes a mistake? Because when you have information, for example a chatbot pulls context from different documents and sometimes having too much information actually makes its performance do badly. Part of that observability and evaluation is also where your technology is actually helping them to make that correct evaluation? **Patrick Kelly:** Most definitely. Context matters. State matters. What is happening and what are we pulling from different systems? The idea is to hone in on, because the session will tell you everything end to end, and then you can hone in on specific pieces. You can test against that and remove it, but then you want to do some session evaluation as well. That's the next one. Cursor for X, and then session matters. **Bernard Leong:** Session matters. I think you're right because from the cursor for X, the way I interpreted that prediction is more of saying that actually context does matter because of how you select that piece of information, how you optimize that. I give you an example—say you have a log summary of a chatbot per day. How do the companies able to know what are the most important issues that have come up for the customer service side? What they do is they run something called compressed context technique where they will do a daily summary and then they try to see these are the five things that happen. Maybe tomorrow we should try to push that in. A lot of that is actually sitting in the evaluation side. **Patrick Kelly:** Yes, absolutely. You nailed it. You're an expert, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** I'm trying to make sure and working with an expert with you to work out whether I'm understanding this correctly and then also try to bring the context in because even as an AI builder, I will need to explain to people what the day to day AI looks like. Coming back, how are now enterprises here adapting to ideas feedback loops, online evaluations, and session level agent testing? **Patrick Kelly:** If we think about what we said at the start, a lot of customers have built some AI applications—be a simple RAG chatbot or there's still a lot of companies have not. Where we really want to help is we think about AI engineering as an overall discipline or process. Really starting with where customers are and maybe they have an open source model, and they're really just defined for a specific industry niche or even simple HR internal use case. That's still super important that they're understanding it's given the right information to employees. But then as we merge out into the agentic world, that's where the real sessions come into play. Also Jason, our CEO, he talked about the word harness. **Bernard Leong:** Which will be the new buzzword for orchestrating agent architectures. That will come out as well. Not to confuse with the company Harness, that's the software delivery company. **Patrick Kelly:** Correct. Kudos to Adam Crew, my ex-colleague, he just joined as VP for Asia. Maybe could be another candidate for the podcast. **Bernard Leong:** I'm going to get back to the podcast, but I want to get your sense on this. Do you find that most of these AI builders now are coming more towards to think through how do they know if their AI agents are doing the right thing? I give you an example—say if you ask the AI agent to plan the action, a lot of AI builders conveniently give it a step one, step two, step three, step four, and then sometimes the AI decided to be smart and gets ahead of the problem, tries step four, step three, step one, and step two, totally bypassing in order to achieve a velocity in terms of trying to get a job done. Do you find that enterprises here are actually more conscious about when their AI agents actually start making certain decisions that they shouldn't have? This ties in things hallucination with the AI agents maybe losing context as well. **Patrick Kelly:** Absolutely. It's really about what is the system designed or what is the flow of different steps this AI application is going to take? Some of it is an LLM call. Some of it is an API call. Some of it is a database call. All these different things need to be mapped in. To your point where the LLM will get constructive around how you might prompt engineer as well. That's where we really want to get into—how do we manage prompts and how do we define prompts for our agent? Because someone may try to hack the system with a prompt. When this prompt comes in, this is what the system should do and should say—direct over here, or I don't know the answer, or define that as well. That's all in the control of when we do the eval and then when we do the actual feedback loop in how we define that back through the system. **Bernard Leong:** I usually use a trigger test. The trigger test is this—I say something along the lines if the question is not relevant to what the customer chatbot is supposed to do, do not answer the question and say something funny. **Patrick Kelly:** I don't know the answer. **Bernard Leong:** That's it. I don't know. But I still want to see the trigger because I want to see that thing. It's an easier way to show my students, hey, how do you know if this is not working? I can only do it that way. One thing is getting interesting because you see this in AWS, then you see this in Databricks, and now you see this in Arize—what I want to talk about is actually how is the market evolving? Do you see more companies moving from LLM experiments to truly scalable AI agent systems? **Patrick Kelly:** I still think we're a bit early for agents. Some companies are in the forefront. They're making moves to have very end-to-end agent flow and different routers going this way. Let's say the task comes in and the router can take five different steps to go. They design it through a LangGraph or a different system that. I think we're seeing some companies doing it, but we're still seeing some companies getting great value out of just having RAG within their business or just having some kind of chatbot that can actually give some value back. We really want to start with where customers are around their AI journey. But I think with agentic, it's really going to kick up this year, especially with the whole cursor for X, Claude Code for X, as we see more and more development of systems. **Bernard Leong:** Do you find that the complexity of these tasks also makes it challenging from the evaluation point of view? Do you have some kind of point of view—maybe there's certain set of problems look this, certain set of problems look this and this is how we can do the evaluation? **Patrick Kelly:** A hundred percent. That's where we built Alex, which is our system off the back of that. Because we've seen all these common patterns and trends of different systems and then we're able to build our—Alex is an agent we built ourselves internally. That's all trained based on what we know already. Then we're able to revise that back into the system and then give that all customers can use that based on their own data, their own traces. **Bernard Leong:** Does Alex give any recommendations? Let's say if the evaluations is not giving me a very clear answer, what's going on? **Patrick Kelly:** Yes, absolutely. Based on what it knows and it's continuously learning over time, which is really great because it's great value for engineering teams, which is very important. But then I think the product managers or domain users, not the technical users will come in and see, let me look at that output and then be able to put my view on it. For the travel use case, for example, this product manager, actually that's not what this booking system should say. Maybe it's a technical answer, but that should be enriched with business human annotation data along with what Alex can do as well. **Bernard Leong:** The ideal customer profile for someone looking for Arize probably would be in the product side or maybe the business owner side as well? **Patrick Kelly:** It's both. As I said, we really start on developers with the Phoenix—developers, AI engineers really work on the platform and use it to understand the application that's been built. But the product manager and now we're seeing the rise of the AI product manager. **Bernard Leong:** It's the classic one—AI's not going to take your job, but product managers who are using AI might take your job. **Patrick Kelly:** That's right. And then any SMEs are super important—really experts within the domain if it's manufacturing or banking or telco. Within telco, customer experience, advisor, how to monetize, they really know around customers and churn and ARPU. What does that really mean for how does the agent understand when customers are asking certain questions? **Bernard Leong:** Do you see where in terms of this, a lot more enterprises will think of putting more evaluations to tests, or do they actually have a fixed set of tests and then throw it to the wild and let the feedback get back? Or is it just more trying to prevent as many disasters as possible? **Patrick Kelly:** Should prevent as many as possible. But as we know, there's probably some AI systems in the wild already which people have just put out. We think that you can only test as much as you want before you ship. In software development, you test, then you ship, something will go wrong. **Bernard Leong:** But the unknown unknowns are bigger in AI. Don't you notice that? **Patrick Kelly:** Totally true. But that's the reason why I think online evaluations is going to be super important—online in production eval. We're actually online. We're actually understanding what it is and we're making these changes. **Bernard Leong:** I appreciate what Arize is doing. Sometimes I felt they have a much more difficult task because there's so much unknown unknowns. Even as an AI builder, some days I'm asking myself—I'm going to release this AI agent. What's the chance of this AI agent doing something that was not supposed to do? **Patrick Kelly:** We try to test as much as possible in development. That means really detailed structured evaluation of different edge cases. There'll always be edge cases. **Bernard Leong:** The other magic question—what is the one question that you wish more people would ask you about AI infrastructure, specifically on development, observability and evaluation about Arize, but they don't? **Patrick Kelly:** I think the main one is today about how do I get a full system into production that is then going to deliver the business metric. **Bernard Leong:** I'm going to ask you that question then. **Patrick Kelly:** I think the main one is if any company—if I'm working with any company and I've worked in software companies for many years and I'm working with a customer—how are we going to help them make money? How are we going to help them control costs, and how are we going to help them manage risk? I think a lot of it in AI now is managing risk. How do you manage that risk around your AI system, application agent? That's something that Arize, we really wake up every day and try and help customers. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting you just mentioned something, what stays the same? How do you make money and how do they make sure that they control their costs and manage risk. Typically most of the time throughout our careers, looking at cloud computing, looking at data infrastructure and AI, we are always—it's always the first two questions. I think this third question is actually becoming much more important. **Patrick Kelly:** Super important, especially in regulated industries. Managing risk and anyone, any customer or company that has touch with us as consumers with banking—they've got millions of customers. We've had some cases of chatbots gone rogue. We won't mention the names of very famous cases, and that has financial implications, it has regulatory implications. **Bernard Leong:** Have you ever checked in the archives at Arize? Have they done anything forensic where AI agents go back? **Patrick Kelly:** We've seen the cases in other companies. It has been the case where customers we've worked with before, and then we worked with them and we did the evals and observability, and then we fixed it, which is great. **Bernard Leong:** I'm pretty sure. That's a fair answer. What does success look like for Arize AI in the Asia Pacific region you're going to be working for the next few years? **Patrick Kelly:** I just love Asia Pacific as a region. It's so diverse. We're all the way from India to Singapore, China, which is where most of the AI money boom is going—a lot of those AI startups. Japan and Korea, unique markets. Japan is really focused on innovation now. There's a lot of companies building lots of different applications. Korea with the regulatory stuff, they're really pushing ahead. And Australia, as we know, is a really super diverse market from heavy industry mining, but then also a bit of financial powerhouse as well. I think success is just how are we solving these problems? How are we managing risks for customers? And just building a really great business and building a great team that can help service customers. **Bernard Leong:** But also I think you probably understood the complexity in Asia Pacific of its diversity as well. Do you think that things maybe language cultural nuances would also have a big impact on how the Arize platform can actually do things evaluations because there's evaluations in different languages? There's evaluations based on maybe some nuance, maybe some AI agents is supposed to—some nuance processes due to cultural reasons. Do you see those things coming in and just giving you new challenges? **Patrick Kelly:** Absolutely. Especially as it gets into, let's say, a market Vietnam, for example, where it's one similar language. It really depends on the model—how can the model handle that local language as well? I think we've seen that over the years and the great work by the AI Singapore team on Singapore LLM to really adapt models for those local languages is super important. We would just really hook into that system. We really work with all these model providers that have great language capability, vernacular capability, and then we are able to pull all those traces. But to your point, if it's a particular market, then we'd really rely on, if it's a customer in Korea, obviously they speak Korean. That's the human annotation on the output. They're able to see the output of this in Korean, actually that sounds a bit off, or it's not right, or the context is off. That's the subject matter experts, human annotation that we'd look for. **Bernard Leong:** Patrick, thank you so much for coming on the show and educating me on what Arize is doing. Thank you so much. In closing, I still have two more questions. One, any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Patrick Kelly:** I think the [State of AI 2025 from Air Street Capital](https://www.stateof.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I'm sure you read it. You read them all. I've probably seen your link. You've probably posted, but that was awesome because it started all the way from what's happening in research in AI, all through to political industry area. I thought that was super well rounded. It's a 300 page deck or something, but it's a great read for anyone to look at as well. I think that's fantastic. **Bernard Leong:** It does help when you have NotebookLM now. **Patrick Kelly:** Yes, exactly. NotebookLM can summarize. **Bernard Leong:** I was wondering how does Google do their eval for NotebookLM? Sometimes they don't pull everything out, so I have to check on that. Second question. How do my audience find you and Arize AI? **Patrick Kelly:** Find me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-kelly-aab6168/?ref=analysepodcast.com): [Patrick Kelly](https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-kelly-aab6168/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and email address pkelly at arize dot com. Arize AI is A-R-I-Z-E dot com. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find the podcast in any podcast channel and of course subscribe to us and of course drop us any feedback. Patrick, many thanks for coming on the show and we will talk again soon. **Patrick Kelly:** Thanks very much. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Fresh off India's record-breaking IPO wave that's drawing regional companies like Pine Labs to redomicile, they dissect what this exit boom means for a Southeast Asian ecosystem still struggling with venture returns. Michael delivers his characteristically unflinching take on why "the year of \[insert country\]" never materializes beyond Singapore and Indonesia, while making the provocative case that most VCs fundamentally misunderstand B2B distribution strategy—specifically how hyperscaler marketplaces like AWS and Microsoft provide the GTM playbook that separates successful exits from perennial fundraising. Daniel shares emerging insights from the SME acquisition space, revealing the stark reality that traditional businesses are "seeing black" while venture-backed startups continue "seeing red." Together, they debate whether we're witnessing an AI infrastructure bubble that will pop or simply taper, examine why Southeast Asia leads globally in AI adoption despite the disconnect with venture outcomes, and question the fragility of cloud infrastructure after recent AWS and CloudFlare outages. The conversation culminates in a sobering assessment: the region has achieved a remarkable $300 billion digital economy milestone, but the path forward may require accepting longer timelines, smaller profitable exits over unicorn dreams, and modernizing traditional businesses rather than building the next ByteDance. --- > "If you don't think we're gonna get there, then you should all get outta tech because we're gonna get there. And if you're gonna get there, we barely have the horsepower to do the Google Docs that we have today, let alone the world I just described." - **Michael Smith Jr** > On AI Assistance - “If you can get 90% of the stuff done, I just need to say yes or no. And that is like my \[ideal state\]." - **Daniel Cerventus** > "I try to keep myself sane by saying that I still have a little bit of control, human part that gives AI context. But I know that what you're saying is a reality." - **Bernard Leong** On AI Context and Control ### Profile: - Michael Smith Jr., Cloud Evangelist, [Oracle](https://www.oracle.com/?ref=analyse.asia) and Co-host, [The Generalists Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/@TheGeneralistsPodcast?ref=analyse.asia) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/smittysgp/?ref=analyse.asia)) - Daniel Cerventus Lim, Daniel Cerventus Lim, semi-retired entrepreneur, Community Builder in Malaysia and [TEDxKL founder](https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/62732?ref=analysepodcast.com). ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cerventus/?ref=analyse.asia), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/NextUpAsia)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to the [Analyse Podcast](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I have two of my very favorite guests, and I think this is some feedback I've been requested to get them back on the show just to have a lot of quick talk. **Michael Smith Jr:** Can I call it "This Week in Asia"? You still get to call it Analyse Asia? **Bernard Leong:** No, I can call it "This Week in Asia" if it suits both of you. **Michael Smith Jr:** In Asia, my presence. **Daniel Cerventus:** I'm kidding. **Michael Smith Jr:** Sometime around This Week in Asia. **Daniel Cerventus:** They're shilling for TEDx? **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I am. Welcome back, Daniel. Welcome back. First I need you to introduce my two commentators. **Michael Smith Jr:** So Daniel, please introduce yourself. Nice TEDx KL T-shirt, by the way. **Daniel Cerventus:** Back in action after a long retirement of a lot of stuff, including TEDx KL. So, [TEDx KL](https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/62732?ref=analysepodcast.com) just came back. We hosted one 15—it was a couple days back actually. Which is quite fun. But technically now from Acquired Street and also from the Next Up Asia, which is the entrepreneur community that I run. **Michael Smith Jr:** So technically not retired? **Daniel Cerventus:** Technically, no longer retired, unfortunately. **Bernard Leong:** Of course I have Smitty. You know, you've been running a lot of shows lately with the Generalist. You've got an education series on top topics. Where are you going with Raz? **Michael Smith Jr:** We're branching out. No, we just keep experimenting, to be honest with you. **Bernard Leong:** I enjoy coming on your show just to have a quick talk about AI. **Michael Smith Jr:** That was fun. Thanks for doing it. **Daniel Cerventus:** It's such a general thing. **Michael Smith Jr:** Look, it's an umbrella moniker. **Bernard Leong:** Do you want to talk about your live show recently? **Michael Smith Jr:** The live show that we did? It went pretty good. I mean, it's another experiment. I'm pretty transparent about all this stuff. We're experimenting and finding things that work. So we tried to sell tickets. We sold out. It wasn't like a big venue, but it was fun. Now I'm trying to figure out if there's a bigger venue where we can still do something but still have the camera set up. **Bernard Leong:** You give me a lot of inspiration. I'm thinking of doing a live show in January \[now postponed to March\]. **Michael Smith Jr:** I've seen a few people now who are close to us doing it, so it's okay. I like being a trailblazer. **Bernard Leong:** Good. So I'm thinking we got a lot of topics to talk about today. **Michael Smith Jr:** I don't know where to start. **Bernard Leong:** Let's talk about record India IPOs. This is something I really don't know much about. There's fintech and startups. Maybe you can educate me about India. **Michael Smith Jr:** Well, like look at Pine Labs and a bunch of them. If you notice, there's been the redomiciling of some companies out of Singapore, which has been a net loss to Singapore. I think it's largely, you know, even if they're not saying it, it's because they can't go public here. But if you're going to go public in India, you have to be an India company. A lot of them were top-coded here for obvious reasons. They've got to move that stuff. I think a lot of this stuff is even more coming if you ask me. Now, some of this is because of the markets—the Indian market's hot. Now, whether that stays could change a lot, but I think you strike while the iron's hot. I think there's more coming. I've heard that there are two or three other ones that are public, not secrets or anything. So more are coming. These have done well, and there's some pretty big exit numbers with these. India's a big market. From my perspective, you've always had the American market, which we all know is where the big ones are. There's the European market with the London Stock Exchange, which is supposedly going to get Revolut, Monzo—you have this weird FinTech global thing. Then you have India and China, and not Southeast Asia. **Bernard Leong:** Sorry to hear that about Southeast Asia. **Michael Smith Jr:** No, but I think it's just calling it the facts. Now this India thing's really kicking along. **Bernard Leong:** I just want to give some numbers. So I think [Groww](https://groww.in/?ref=analysepodcast.com) was something like 750 million. [Pine Labs](https://www.pinelabs.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) was 440 million. **Michael Smith Jr:** Which, by the way, that's just so people know, Pine Labs is providing a pretty big Southeast Asia exit because that's Fave. Fave and all that stuff under it is inside of that. There are pictures of all of them at the listing, and that's their exit. So that's pretty good for Southeast Asia. But I thought it was kind of funny that the big thing in Southeast Asia is getting its exit through India. **Bernard Leong:** Then you have [Lenskart](https://www.lenskart.sg/?srsltid=AfmBOooo9c6gtMgh%5F09K3JqwqkedoNC-qD6ffGd0ATF2inSI9IffabKq&ref=analysepodcast.com), I think something like raising $821 million for the IPO. Then there's this thing called PhysicsWallah, which is India's first ad tech unicorn, raised about 392 million. So I recall there was a few years ago a kind of disgraced unicorn called Byju. **Michael Smith Jr:** That's just insane, right? The money lost there. You guys still trying, right? **Bernard Leong:** Right. So I think with all this, what does it tell me now? Is it that everybody's going to switch gears to go to India? **Michael Smith Jr:** Well, I don't think you can switch gears if you're not an India company. Let's be clear, these are all Indian companies. So I don't think there's any gear switching, but I think there's top-co switching for these things. There's a few of these. I think some have made press about switching. There's a couple in the Jungle portfolio, like [Moglix](https://www.moglix.com/?srsltid=AfmBOopp9x-YIBJLV0SafTQKDtWy%5FNc5VW9RnwGP452C2Q4xan5ky-bk&ref=analysepodcast.com)—the furniture one where they're regional Asia businesses that chose Singapore top-co, but they have a large India business, and they're, as I understand it, redomiciling to eventually go public in India. **Bernard Leong:** You were involved in Moglix, right? **Michael Smith Jr:** Well, Wavemaker was early on. **Bernard Leong:** How did it become such a big regional powerhouse now? **Michael Smith Jr:** I don't think they are actually. I'm sure the founder's going to WhatsApp me and tell me I'm wrong, but I think it's mostly India. But I think, again, it was the top-co game. Not no shade to that—because you could raise more capital here, you have different tax structures. Remember, the taxes in India are higher. So I think if you're a Singapore domiciled thing and you're not going to go public in the NASDAQ, and we should probably talk about Hong Kong getting a little bit of stuff—you're probably not going to go to Hong Kong. If you have an India business, you're going to take advantage of India. But to do that, you're going to have to redomicile. **Bernard Leong:** Right. But would there be any tax implications for these companies? **Michael Smith Jr:** Look, I can't speak out of things that I don't know. There are tax implications when you make these moves. But I think the math is they can exit or they can go public. **Daniel Cerventus:** I think there's just essentially a bit of a high tide in terms of how it's definitely good for the Indian market, basically. **Michael Smith Jr:** But I think if the markets—if we juxtapose this over, the markets are hot now. Like the last four days, I'm sure all of these— **Daniel Cerventus:** Which is the other weird point. We all see red right now. **Michael Smith Jr:** If the market pops, which I don't believe is going to happen—I think we're just in a correction—India or anybody else probably isn't safe from that. But if you look at the money being made from these people going public, it's worth it to them individually. So I think it's a global macro kind of thing. Strike while the iron's hot. Will it stay hot? I don't know. **Daniel Cerventus:** So like one of the investors for Pine Labs is actually PayPal, basically. So they're riding along for this IPO. **Bernard Leong:** So I think this time around when we talk about the last time we were complaining that there were no exits, and now this time we start out with tons of exits. **Daniel Cerventus:** No, but we'll still be correct. Like we talk about there's no exits in Southeast Asia, basically. **Michael Smith Jr:** I think it's still a fair statement. **Bernard Leong:** I think it's—but I also saw some other exits coming out from Hong Kong. **Michael Smith Jr:** I don't know anything about the NYG. **Daniel Cerventus:** It's not the NYG one, it's the SAY, basically. **Bernard Leong:** Correct. **Daniel Cerventus:** So SAY is basically an influencer marketing agency in the model of NYG. NYG is pretty much started by Ray. Ray's an old friend, and they got acquired, basically. **Michael Smith Jr:** Publicis. **Daniel Cerventus:** Publicis. **Michael Smith Jr:** But these guys—what they started and what they became is very different. They turned into [Hepmil Media](https://www.hepmil.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I don't know if that's the correct pronunciation. They have properties in a lot of the countries. They have a Filipino Gag, Thai Gag, and then they started doing influencer-driven through their machinery branding for businesses, which is why Publicis is buying this. So I think what they've started out as and what they've become are very different things, but it's the same founders. They've been at this for what, eight or nine years or longer? So I think it's interesting to see a media thing. I think it's interesting to see what they kind of pivoted to. From what everybody thinks, it's a fairly good exit. You have a few people bragging about 20X angel returns and stuff, which—I'd be happy with a 20X return in some of my angel deals. I'd probably leak the news and brag about it too. So I think that's what's happening here. Now, the final numbers, I don't know if anybody actually—somebody knows, but they haven't really come out. **Daniel Cerventus:** I do have another exit that I haven't actually put in the notes, basically. So Foodie Media, which actually runs a whole bunch of Instagram pages like KL Foodie, Penang Foodie and stuff—they're going IPO. **Michael Smith Jr:** On the Malaysia stock exchange, which has been on fire. **Daniel Cerventus:** Especially food-related stuff for some strange reason. **Michael Smith Jr:** Why is that? **Daniel Cerventus:** I have no idea. Really? No idea. Because it started with Oriental Coffee and a whole bunch of it, and then it's just— **Michael Smith Jr:** But I see this as like there's momentum in the Malaysian stock market. I don't think you have to be profitable. They are, probably. You have to go proper. Do you have to be? You have to be. Okay. I'm sure there's various ways to manipulate the books, depending which one. But what I'm saying is, if I'm one of these entities and I have enough of the rails to go public, and then you go and look at them—I'm Malaysian and the Malaysian stock market's on fire—why wouldn't you do it? **Bernard Leong:** Well, I think it's a good thing right now. You see exits there, but then I was also looking through, and then I see Daniel just popping up something that I thought was really quite strange, which is actually coming from South China Morning Post, which is Malaysia's venture capital having a deep freeze. So you have a lot of exits, but then you don't want to have venture capital. **Daniel Cerventus:** Which is always a weird part about Malaysia. Like Malaysia is always a land of contradiction. There is definitely a lot of people who constantly want to raise, but there's not much money. **Michael Smith Jr:** But who's doing the freeze? Like Malaysian VCs? Because there's not—let's be fair, there's not a lot of Malaysian VCs anyway. **Daniel Cerventus:** There's not a lot of VCs in the Malaysia startup ecosystem. **Michael Smith Jr:** VCs in the Malaysia startups. Although that being said, recently—not recently, but a year ago—Khazanah, which is our sovereign fund, merged with this thing called MAVCAP, which is our Malaysia VC arm, to form this thing called J1 Capital. J1 Capital is supposed to be the fund of funds that is actually managing—they are investing in a bunch of new VCs. **Michael Smith Jr:** Which will all take time. **Daniel Cerventus:** Will all take time to mobilize. **Michael Smith Jr:** So in a couple years we could check in on this and see if it's changed. **Daniel Cerventus:** But at this point in time, I think it's not a good time to raise in Malaysia, especially building a startup. **Michael Smith Jr:** But I think there's always this—you know, I'll get slammed for this and go ahead, slam me everybody—like every year we read about the non-Singapore Southeast ASEAN companies. This is the year, the stars are aligned, and it's the Philippines in one year. It's Thailand in one year. It's never Cambodia. It's Vietnam. If we add this record up over a macro many years, one, it never materialized to be fair. They're all in the same boat that they've been in. Sure, you could be doing your startup in these places and you're excited about your startup and I get it, but the action was always Singapore and Indonesia. Now Indonesia's taking a huge hit. I don't think it's going to easily bounce back, in my opinion. We'll see. Singapore keeps chugging along because it's the capital for all this stuff. But the year of whatever is never actually the year of whatever. It won't be next year or the year of whatever either. That's my take. **Daniel Cerventus:** It is always going to be the right vintage for a startup. No. **Michael Smith Jr:** Or the funds in these places. **Bernard Leong:** Well, all the funds now have to report their DPI, and I don't think the DPI is there. So maybe— **Michael Smith Jr:** Well, they don't—where do they report them to? Their LPs. **Bernard Leong:** To the LPs, right? **Michael Smith Jr:** Nowhere else. **Bernard Leong:** I mean, the secondary markets are not really moving either. So I think one interesting thing—there's also the regional markets. In the last couple days, there's some correction going on. **Michael Smith Jr:** The correction feels global. **Bernard Leong:** Totally. **Michael Smith Jr:** I haven't checked the European markets. **Bernard Leong:** So I think the cryptocurrencies were the first indicator, then followed by the tech stocks because there was a lot of talk about the AI bubble and all that. Is the bubble popping? I don't know. What's your feeling? **Michael Smith Jr:** The other thing people forget—remember with Trump's nuttiness or whatever you want to call it—there's been no US data for a month and a half after the shutdown. So people are flying blind with macro data. Usually America's the gold standard for macro data, and there's been none. It just starts to—supposedly tomorrow's going to be the big day. So we're recording this on November 19th. The big day tomorrow is data, first bits of data that haven't been collected in a while coming out that could be good or bad. NVIDIA, you know— **Bernard Leong:** But essentially a bit— **Michael Smith Jr:** We don't know if NVIDIA's going to see their shadow or not when they come out. **Bernard Leong:** There's also some time lag. **Michael Smith Jr:** But I just think that there's been no data, now they're going to get data. There is a lag to it. Then so I—you see a bunch of things happening. So I put in there, you see the S&P moving average, which is a big deal, is now finally hitting lows that are months and months long. The Fed is no longer voting in unison on rate costs—interest rate things—which is a new thing. Tariffs are all over the map, and he's starting to give some of them back. Because the Republicans lost a bunch of votes, you see Trump changing his stance on how he's treating these things. It's all compounding together that it's creating what I think in the market is just uncertainty. When you start to see the selloffs and uncertainty—honestly, you should never feel bad about, in my opinion, selling any of these things over the last couple weeks, knowing that you've been up double-digit percentages for a long time. May not be a bad idea. **Daniel Cerventus:** But the reality is like, I know—at least you and I, or Bernard, we don't think there's a bubble or anything, but— **Michael Smith Jr:** I do think there's a bubble. **Daniel Cerventus:** Do you think it will pop? **Michael Smith Jr:** Well see, I think this is where you get into like a debate around there's always bubbles. Bubbles create an amazing amount of forward momentum and rational exuberance and confidence and build out whatever you're building out. It was train tracks in one thing. It was fiber optics in another build-out. It was the internet in another build-out. We're building out AI. They had this infrastructure. It probably is a bubble. Bubbles actually have always been with us in every big thing. The question is, does it pop? Does it fizzle? Does it taper? **Bernard Leong:** It feels to me that when we talk about bubble these days, there's a very quick correction that comes immediately. Remember in 2012 during the Euro crisis, there was a bubble about all these companies. Then actually the correction happened. But then after that, from 2012 all the way to 2018, everything starts to grow again. Because that market correction just has to happen in order to stop the bubble from growing bigger. **Michael Smith Jr:** But it's been doing that now for a good 10 years plus. Maybe you do need a correction, and the question is, is it a big correction? **Bernard Leong:** I have a data point on this. So I went back to look at my notes. If you think about the dotcom bubble, it was 20% of the entire GDP of the US. Then you go to the railroads— **Michael Smith Jr:** This current— **Bernard Leong:** Did some estimation—about 10%. There is not a big portion of the GDP, right? So the current one is about 2%. That was a very good article that talks about the infrastructure, but I suspect it's not 2%. I suspect somewhere around 5 to 6% because there's a lot of hidden balance sheet now with all the data centers. **Michael Smith Jr:** But I think that's what people are commenting about where it's getting rickety—which is, up until this point, and I won't mention any names because I work for some of them—it's been cash balance sheet funding. Now it's shifting into borrowing. So Amazon's borrowing, Google's borrowing, Microsoft has borrowed. They're all borrowing to do this. So now you get into, "Oh, wait a sec, why are they borrowing to do this? Is it—" You know, it's not a cash flow issue. So that's where I think—I'm not saying it's the catalyst, but now it's a new thing where people are saying, "Well, wait a sec, Google and Microsoft could have done this forever with cash, and now they're borrowing to do it. Is that because they wanted to be off their—" Like, so I think all this stuff's coming together. Again, it could all change tomorrow with NVIDIA saying, "Well, we just blew out our numbers again." It's— **Bernard Leong:** Oh yeah. **Michael Smith Jr:** It's— **Bernard Leong:** But we don't know. **Michael Smith Jr:** Which I actually think they will. So I think the party will keep going. **Daniel Cerventus:** I mean, I know you can comment on it, but Oracle's deal with OpenAI—it's now worth $75 million. **Michael Smith Jr:** I don't know how anybody has a calculation on that, to be honest with you. I saw that. I was like, okay, whatever. **Daniel Cerventus:** I just look at it as a data point. **Michael Smith Jr:** A lot of people are asking, "How do they come up with that number? Where is it?" **Bernard Leong:** I think the much more fun part is that every time you mention OpenAI with someone, everything would just blow up. So if you think about what OpenAI did to AMD—it's like, "Hey, I'm going to make this announcement." You just went from a $31 billion company to now become $125 billion. But look at market cap of these companies. **Michael Smith Jr:** There has never been a product to grow as fast as them, and it still appears that they're still growing as fast as they have been. Nothing's ever been that big. So you have to put them in some pantheon. I've had my own narrative on this, which not everybody agrees with. My narrative on this is we have yet to see over the last, say, five, 10 years—you know, I don't want to say a hyperscaler getting built—a new large global tech company that is now in the pantheon of a Google, a Microsoft. It hasn't been happening. **Daniel Cerventus:** For the last 20 years, I think. **Michael Smith Jr:** So that's not a Palantir, just to be clear. **Bernard Leong:** By OpenAI, you don't consider them? **Michael Smith Jr:** No, no. I'm saying they're not there yet. I'm saying they want to get there. That's the goal. That's why Jony Ive is there. That's why they're working on it. They want to get there. What I'm saying is it hasn't happened because there are gatekeepers. So again, I don't want to get into brand names. You can figure this out. There are gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers have the money, the consumer monopoly that they own, and then they also have the capital and they have the data centers. So to become one of these new things—if we say it's OpenAI, you could pretend it could be a threat, whatever—they also have to become as big as these other players in compute. To get there, you actually have to put in front a roadmap that's like, "I will become as big as these other players in compute." Because if you go just—a lot of people have done this math—just get away from model building and inference and just realize when you have a large consumer app, how much processing power you need, how much networking you need, how much data— I'm privy to some of these kinds of customers I've had at three hyperscalers. When you're a ByteDance, when you are whoever, and you think about when CloudFlare went down, when everything breaks—a large consumer app that might have like 10% of the world's population using it, let alone the model building, is going to need an extraordinary amount of compute. **Bernard Leong:** But then you see in the last— **Michael Smith Jr:** they don't own that. Their competitors own that compute. **Bernard Leong:** You say that. So last two months—AWS outage. Yesterday, CloudFlare outage. What is happening? **Daniel Cerventus:** I said the sharks will bite the cables the next round, but yeah, it's— **Michael Smith Jr:** Cables are getting cut all the time, and that doesn't usually cause all the time. **Bernard Leong:** You have an engineer who pushed the wrong code. Then you have this very nice meme saying you have only one job. **Michael Smith Jr:** I think the only answer here is this stuff is very complicated stuff, and a lot of times it's made to seem like it's not. Then mistakes happen, probably by humans. Things break. **Daniel Cerventus:** Definitely. But that's how fragile the internet is at this point in time because there's so much centralization. **Michael Smith Jr:** I think it's always been fragile. **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you. **Michael Smith Jr:** I don't think it's because it's centralized. It's because it's getting bigger and maybe more concentrated, more complicated. But I don't think because the people centralize it don't want to go down. They take big hits when they go down. So it is concentrated, but I think it's always been—you know, not necessarily distributed. I always laugh at the crypto thing when they say it's distributed. They go down sometimes too. **Bernard Leong:** No, they go down first. They're usually the leading— **Michael Smith Jr:** They're sitting on centralized servers. Hello. So I don't know what the answer is. I use simple explanations when I try to—when I'm talking to say relatives, family—there's no way that we're sitting here today that you're in the world that we think we all might get to. Whether you want to call it Star Trek or Star Wars, whatever science fiction movie floats your boat—the one where it's one small device doing everything and it knows everything about you. When I get a phone call from Bernard and you're there, it'll immediately say, "Yeah, Bernard's calendar's this, Daniel's is that. I booked podcasts, and this thing in your chat—we've already started the document. The agents went out and verified." Was it 9 gig or 5 gig? If you don't think we're going to get there, then you should all get out of tech because we're going to get there. If you're going to get there, we barely have the horsepower to do the Google Docs that we have today, let alone the world I just described. **Bernard Leong:** Please let all our audience know that we are using AI agents. **Michael Smith Jr:** Hey, if you're not—it is us typing into WhatsApp. Come on, let's— **Bernard Leong:** We are not typing into our WhatsApp. We have gotten more sophisticated in that. **Michael Smith Jr:** But what I'm saying is, let's be honest about we're barely scratching the surface. You know, I have kids, and I use this example all the time. I'm sure, you know, maybe you figured out a way around this. You have your kids, and I always laugh about the amount of tooling that I don't have. When I think about it, everything I need to do things is actually here. By the way, iPhone—great phone. But it doesn't do anything on my behalf. So I'll give you an example. When I'm in the 1,800 parent-child website groups that you're in to manage our schools, when a form comes in, you're still filling out that damn form. Now, maybe you can pull it up in Apple Preview and it knows some of your text fields. Maybe between that and 1Password, it gets about 40% full. But you know, it doesn't remember that my kid's passport number is that, and the expiration dates. So I just laugh at people who think we have intelligence yet. We have a bunch of dumb stuff. It's just that there's more data and more things. But eventually, at some point, it's going to just do these things for me because I'll go, "I'll trust the data, I'll trust Apple, wherever your phone vendor is." Then it'll just like, "Hey Michael, the form came in WhatsApp. I've gone and filled it out. I just need you to sign it. Or do you want me to sign it for you?" If that's the world we're going to get to— **Daniel Cerventus:** That's the dream. **Bernard Leong:** Wait, but are you sure you want to give out all your context to the AI? **Daniel Cerventus:** I think it's a bit too late, actually. **Michael Smith Jr:** Well, the AI—because I'm going to—the AI is going to be on my phone. It doesn't need to go to the cloud to do things, I think. What's going to happen in these things. So yeah, if I don't—you trust your phone now with a bunch of stuff. What—why wouldn't you trust it to fill out a form for you? **Bernard Leong:** I try to keep myself sane by saying that I still have a little bit of a control, human part that gives AI context. But I know that what you're saying is a reality. **Michael Smith Jr:** But doing things for me that I get to check is a time saver. It's like I'll go and do other things with my time. **Daniel Cerventus:** Exactly. Like I do agree because if you can get 90% of the stuff done, I just need to say yes or no. **Michael Smith Jr:** Exactly. **Daniel Cerventus:** That is my— **Michael Smith Jr:** It will get complicated, and it will be—you know, like your health records and these other things. It'll help you live longer. But we're so far away from this. In my mind, we're at the rocks and scissors, stones era of AI, which just explains where it's going to go. **Bernard Leong:** Why do some of these people who are the titans of tech decide that they want to start another company again? Like our former big boss, you know, Mr. Jeff \[Bezos\]? **Michael Smith Jr:** This one kind of stuns me. We know he's been an investor in Blue Origin. There's that truck company. I'm sure he writes lots of checks. I mean, he's famous for being early in Google or something, I think. **Bernard Leong:** That's why he made his money, by the way. **Michael Smith Jr:** One of it. I think he's made it a lot of ways, but I was kind of surprised to see he's doing something new. It's not quite sure what it is. People say it's physical world AI kind of things, which now is a thing because you have the Facebook guy—Yann LeCun—leaving to go do stuff. But the fact that he's being back into a CEO position, co-CEO, is interesting. Now I'm kind of curious what they're going to do. They've raised $6.2 billion actually before they've started. **Bernard Leong:** I can see what he's trying to do because if you ask me today, based on all the large language models, we don't have a good enough vector database to put in real-world models. Real models like building information models—BIM for construction. Say manufacturing, you have Revit models. There's no generative AI components of those. **Michael Smith Jr:** I don't even know if generative AI is even going to be the answer. But I think the notion of—I've dealt with some customers already that, you know, they're in manufacturing, large-scale manufacturing things, and they expose kind of workflow processes where you can go, "Okay, we can write code to automate." But it's a totally different thing of like, "Hey, we're going to have vision on the assembly line to figure out a problem, make a decision." Like to your point, the models can't really handle that. Now there are people—I'm sure Tesla and Omni have automated factories—but they're tech companies. So what I'm talking about—when you go to the non-tech companies and try to automate them—it's a completely different thing. So it sounds like he's getting into that. It's called Prometheus. **Daniel Cerventus:** I think that's actually quite interesting, basically. The way how even Tesla—when you look at all those automation for everything's in place—this is real world. Everything is not in place. How can they process it? **Bernard Leong:** But if you—if like me, if I use X AI \[Grok\] and Claude Max for things like engineering, sciences, computation, they're extremely good. I think the data that they use to do the large language model computation is extremely sophisticated. This is the problem that people don't realize. X AI, which Elon has, has actually got the SpaceX data and the Tesla data, and these are real stuff. Twitter. So when I see the type of engineering powers that came out from X AI for the reasoning models, I can see that it's actually using a lot of very high-level engineering data. I can see why Jeff is going into this space because I think that for robotics, you really need to get into this tertiary data now. **Michael Smith Jr:** When you know whether or not NVIDIA blows out their numbers and whether you think a $5 trillion company becomes $6 trillion, I think when you hear Jensen speak about what we're doing today—it's literally like maybe step one or two to where you get to real-world models and vision, understanding, and robotics. We just have a long way to go. I think you could be scared about this and think there's bad things to happen from it, or you could sense that it's actually going to take a lot longer than you think, and there's a lot more learnings to come. **Bernard Leong:** I usually think it's longer than I think. That's just my theory that it will take longer. **Michael Smith Jr:** It should take longer. I mean, somebody was asking me— **Bernard Leong:** A side note, but you know, you had these people like, "Oh, we're a year away from AGI," and they're like, "Oh, we're not." **Daniel Cerventus:** No, but I mean, that's the sales talk. That's the sales. **Michael Smith Jr:** But these are coming from companies like Anthropic and the tech saying this, selling what they're—because what they say actually scares people a lot of times. **Bernard Leong:** No, but you know what's funny? Then they get reprimanded by their elders, saying, "Stop going with this AI talk." If you look at China, they're just building AI to make sure that they get their P&L \[profit and loss\] covered. **Michael Smith Jr:** I'm—but this is in the nodes. But when you mention like, you have all these luminaries—I'm not saying I'm one of these people or should be ascertaining them, is what I'm trying to say. I'm a normal human being here. But I was surprised at—you know, David Marcus, who was the guy that did the crypto stuff at Meta. He's written this scathing thing about what a fraud Yann LeCun is and that he's moving out of this stuff because Zuckerberg's done with him and that he hasn't really—I'm not saying this is the thing, but I'm just like, I had stumbled across this. **Bernard Leong:** I just think it's just a difference of point of view. To be fair to what Yann LeCun is saying, he's right. **Daniel Cerventus:** David Marcus. **Michael Smith Jr:** David Marcus, thank you. Well done. He feels that—he's moving into real-life models too, which—because a lot of people are like, that's the next thing. Vision and understanding and all this. I just think we have so far to go. **Daniel Cerventus:** That is really far to go. But I mean, if you look at Exped, one of the Chinese car manufacturers—they have to prove, "Okay, this is a real robot," by actually doing an operation, cutting off the skin where you see some of the demos. What was the one? **Michael Smith Jr:** The one where they're controlling it through the eyes of it. It's like— **Daniel Cerventus:** That one cracked me up. But you and I both know that we will get there. Like you will get to some sort of— **Michael Smith Jr:** But it's going to be longer than we see. **Daniel Cerventus:** It's going to be longer. **Michael Smith Jr:** I don't even know if it's humanoid. It could be something more purpose-built. But at some point, there's like—I'm sure a robot can do the laundry at some point. Why would I bother? **Daniel Cerventus:** I want to get there. Let's be clear. Get there. **Bernard Leong:** I know you want to get there. I want to get back to here. So I think there were two things. I think NTT Group has just started a new Southeast Asia startup fund. It's called ESEAsia Ventures, targeting AI, IoT, smart cities. **Michael Smith Jr:** I hope you're right on the name. **Bernard Leong:** Japanese have a lot of corporate venture funds. We have seen Marubeni, we've seen KKR, all the different— **Michael Smith Jr:** Track record, not great on a lot of these corporate ventures. So I don't know if this one—this one didn't feel like it's corporate ventures in focus. It's more like, "Hey, we're starting a fund." I mean, I thought it was cool. It's got a pretty heavy hitter in charge of it. **Daniel Cerventus:** Well, that's the thing that I was quite confused—this is like something new for them in Southeast Asia, basically. For what we were looking in terms of the search market, basically—a lot of Japanese folks are actually looking in Southeast Asia because they are ASEAN population at the end of the day. **Michael Smith Jr:** I think they're looking to acquire things, and they invest. I think they do well coming here versus, you know, they're not going to go into China. That's not what's happening there. **Bernard Leong:** But then you also see China's success in our markets too. You look at BYD cars on the road now. **Michael Smith Jr:** I mean, I think it's great to have another fund. I was just more curious—is it really corporate venturing? Is it NTT as the singular LP? I didn't dig enough to find that out. Well, I also wanted to talk about—there is a company, a B2B SaaS startup that listed in NASDAQ and Singapore. It's called AppPoint. AppPoint does a bunch of—so they're a large Microsoft partner. I think they're entirely a Microsoft stack. It's started by this guy, TJ. I think he's Taiwanese, stays here. They build a bunch of things on top of the Microsoft stack specific for the education sector—not ed tech, but the tooling inside education, government, a lot of security products. **Daniel Cerventus:** More SI or— **Michael Smith Jr:** With product. The thing I find interesting about it—I've been trying to get on my show, I haven't been able to do it. TJ, if you're listening, come on. They have a decent-size Asia market, but the thing I always kind of question people's strategy when you do a startup here is, "Oh, let me do a startup here and try to do the Singapore market and then I'm going to try to go here and here and here." But if you take big tech, they roll something out in America first and then generally Europe and then generally Asia. That's their pecking order because that's kind of how revenue works. What I like what AppPoint's done—it's not necessarily to a Taiwan and he might even say it's not exactly—it was almost America first for a lot of their stuff. Built a fairly sizable market there. I think all along they were still selling here, then went public in America. It's done quite well. They have a pretty good track record quarter, quarter of nice laddering growth. Then they've continued to expand in other markets, and then they've come to SGX to do a dual listing, dual listing as a tracking stock to the NASDAQ stock. I just think that—I saw them when they were at the SGX and they had their—no one talks about it. I'm kind of like, this is a Singapore success story and a pretty good model for—I think there's even talk of them doing a Japanese listing because they have a Japanese business as well. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Michael Smith Jr:** Yet no one talks about this from like, this is how it could be done, folks. It is the same thing I talk about—a lot of startups, they don't want to partner with the hyperscalers, using them as the— **Michael Smith Jr:** that's what AppPoint is—100%. Like, it's actually Microsoft only. **Bernard Leong:** I made this comment on Jeremy's podcast. When I started my company, I'm a partner to AWS, and some of my core AI startup founders were saying that that's dirty. I'm like, no, Databricks—you're just picking— **Michael Smith Jr:** You're just picking a distribution method. **Bernard Leong:** Correct. So Databricks, Snowflake, they're all built on AWS marketplace. What are you talking about? These are billion-dollar companies. I'm like, why aren't you— **Michael Smith Jr:** They all do all the marketplaces once you get bigger. But which— **Bernard Leong:** Is what the guy is doing. I've always talked to VCs and a few B2B startups because when you work at AWS or Microsoft, you see how it works. Microsoft is actually one of the best with "I sell through a marketplace." You always tell these startups, "Look, you go and look at any startup in the US from about Series B on. They focused on their sell-through distribution." That becomes half of their business. Then you look at these ASEAN startups, they'll tell you, "Well, what do you mean I should be a partner to—" **Bernard Leong:** I was— **Michael Smith Jr:** It's distribution. **Bernard Leong:** What was my biggest challenge is trying to make sure that I signed on, getting all the certifications done. It's a lot of work. **Michael Smith Jr:** It's a lot of work. **Bernard Leong:** It's a lot of work. But it's worth it because the more they actually—what people don't know—you're a green light. Once you get it done, you get a green light, you actually start to get customers from them. Then they help you to actually point you to like, "Hey, you can work with this company, this company, these customers." How you scale. This scaling function, how you— **Michael Smith Jr:** Yeah. **Daniel Cerventus:** But can you enlighten me in terms of why you have to go and play by that certain rulebook in terms of not being in a marketplace? **Michael Smith Jr:** Well— **Bernard Leong:** I don't know. I find that— **Daniel Cerventus:** Don't you want to make money in the marketplace? You're not making money. **Bernard Leong:** No, no, no. It's very simple. **Daniel Cerventus:** That's what I'm curious. **Bernard Leong:** If you are a B2B company, you need distribution. The best place to work with distribution is to work with someone who has the distribution—in this case, hyperscalers. All these cloud companies service all the businesses. So if I list my solution on their marketplace, it is very easy for me to touch some of these customers. **Michael Smith Jr:** It's very easy for them to sell it. So you now get their sales force selling it. The last point that he didn't bring up is when I go and sign a contract with Microsoft or AWS, his product is inside that contract. AWS is the biller. So now the customer doesn't have to onboard Bernard as a biller. **Daniel Cerventus:** So why do people pooh-pooh this, basically? **Michael Smith Jr:** Because I don't want to use—like, they don't pay attention. But I don't think they realize that this is a GTM strategy for B2B because they just think they should find their own customers. **Bernard Leong:** They think of finding their own customers, and they think that doing these things like AWS certification is a waste of time. Putting yourself into the AWS marketplace is a waste of time. But I find it super useful for me because when I start doing all these things, the AWS account manager will ping me and say, "Hey, I got this customer. Are you happy to meet them? I got this breakfast meeting and you can go to where I got five customers." **Michael Smith Jr:** Microsoft's really good at that. **Bernard Leong:** It is a growth, go-to-market strategy, but some founders just think that you should just start from scratch. I'm like, this is not a scaling function. **Daniel Cerventus:** That is just the ego speaking, basically. **Michael Smith Jr:** I think some of them don't know how it works, or they look at the amount of work you've got to do to get into it and get certified—it's not simple. But you know, the other thing is—what's the Charlie Munger quote? "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome." Remember, the sales reps at these hyperscalers are not going to get out of bed for you if you're not in their marketplace because that's how they get paid. They're going to make money on your name. **Bernard Leong:** On my thing. So actually that's the—remember in those days when we go to Malaysia and we need to become onboarded vendors and all that, it's so difficult to collect money. Now that I can just leverage on AWS to collect the money for me, then it saves up a lot of time in terms of revenue. I mean, I'm not big enough in that sense that I should do it now, but you know, later stage I can always build it by myself. But at this early juncture— **Michael Smith Jr:** then there are actually, for the people that are not well-versed in this, there are startups that do this—that have a product to help you get into multiple marketplaces and kind of manage the process. You lose a little bit of the money, or you pay them like a SaaS subscription. So it's not impossible to do. I think a lot of people, and it is not just the startups—you'd be surprised how many VCs in Southeast Asia with their B2B startups don't even know that this is the thing that they should— **Bernard Leong:** I want to be fair. Recently one of the AI startup founders came to me and asked me for advice on that. I have to give her credit for that. This TikTok founder funded by our good friend Temasek. She was asking me how to be a partner. So I started explaining the mechanism, and she immediately got it done. Then she even asked me, "Well, how do I make sure I get into the APM program?" So actually it's just signed out. **Michael Smith Jr:** But if you take like an a16z or somebody, they have people on staff. **Bernard Leong:** Which our VCs don't understand. **Michael Smith Jr:** Who get their startups into the marketplace. **Bernard Leong:** Let me tell you something. A prominent VC here, which shall I not name, man, explained to me—because I was explaining this is how I'm going to do my go-to-market strategy. He said, "But Bernard, do you know any two kids from a university can get through a partner ecosystem on your GTM strategy," and trying to mansplain to me how to sell enterprise. You know what? In my mind I was saying, "I am not going to take money from you for the fact that you don't even understand how it works." In order to get yourself approved as a partner, do you know I can make a phone call to my former colleague who I wrote the promotion document for on the day I left the company and say, "Hey, I know now you're heading up partners. Can you approve the status of my company to a partner?" They usually take you two to three months to get approval. I got it done in 7 days. **Michael Smith Jr:** Click the button please. **Bernard Leong:** I just got the click the button. It's like, can you— **Michael Smith Jr:** then—let's be fair, it's matured into a racket because these marketplaces are huge and everybody—so it's like it's a check-the-box thing, but it's an important check-the-box because you can ride on bigger contracts. You have the sales force working in your favour. Then they also do some marketing. They'll do events. **Bernard Leong:** I'll just give you an example. I got what is called the Foundation Tier Review. That means my solution is certified to run on the platform. Immediately I send it to my customer who signed the SOW for me. It's very standard. I have gotten approval. Now I can deploy this solution securely on your platform. So I really don't understand why even VCs do not understand. **Michael Smith Jr:** To me it's no different than a consumer app advertising on Facebook. B2B app gets in marketplace. **Daniel Cerventus:** I mean, it's a simple thing in terms of when the iPhone came out, the App Store and stuff like that. So you're just leveraging on the distribution channel, basically. So is there any downside? **Bernard Leong:** No downside at this— **Michael Smith Jr:** Inside? Why? It's work to be fair. You were inside the system. It is work. **Daniel Cerventus:** Let's say two months— **Michael Smith Jr:** Of certifications you've got to go get and test. But I don't think there's a downside, as in doing that work wouldn't be seen as very worthwhile. **Daniel Cerventus:** No, Bernard and I are in the training space, basically. The certification works because it's like, "Hey, this—" **Michael Smith Jr:** It's a badge. **Bernard Leong:** I think it was worth it because I feel that I actually got the certification. I was working with my ex-colleagues, and my ex-colleagues were helping me to find new customers. But I don't want to get into this whole B2B bitching about VCs. But I want to get into the Google SEA economy report. I just interviewed all the three stakeholders. **Michael Smith Jr:** I didn't dig through all those stats. **Bernard Leong:** Actually this year was a bit of a repeat of last year's stats, except that the penetration of digital payments has gone to 60% from 50%. **Michael Smith Jr:** Seems low. **Bernard Leong:** So, and then there's the other thing about the Indonesian e-commerce—the video commerce has gone up by 5X: TikTok and also YouTube Shorts as well. Then there's also the other part about they have now included—instead of the famous ASEAN six countries, now it's all the 10, which is adding the remaining Southeast Asia countries. **Daniel Cerventus:** Oh God. **Bernard Leong:** But I think it was just first initial numbers. So I think where they're now seeing is that there are a lot of companies this year that are going to go profitable thanks to, of course, you know, circumstances. **Michael Smith Jr:** As they had to, to survive because they're not getting funded. **Bernard Leong:** But I was quite surprised that Southeast Asia is three times more AI curious than other regions. **Daniel Cerventus:** How do you define that, actually? **Bernard Leong:** So the way they defined it was they say that based on the AI usage from the different platforms—for example, you do know that Singapore has the top 10 usage in OpenAI ChatGPT. **Daniel Cerventus:** Really? **Bernard Leong:** Top 10 globally.Global usage by capital. That means a lot of people are using ChatGPT here. **Daniel Cerventus:** I don't know, but I think Southeast Asia jumps into trends really fast. Like next week, a bunch of us, we are hosting a 1,200-people hackathon for Cursor in Malaysia. **Michael Smith Jr:** Is that part of Sherry's thing or a different thing? **Daniel Cerventus:** It's part of the Build Club folks, basically. So different. **Bernard Leong:** I think we usually jump on quite fast as well. I think— **Daniel Cerventus:** There's the web3 market, the crypto— **Michael Smith Jr:** But the Cisco data showed this too. We're talking about it. You know, I always try just to wrap my head around why is it happening. I think when you miss these gaps of infrastructure, you can take advantage of tooling that allows you to kind of—someone in Thailand could be as AI proficient as somebody in America given the access because there's the internet mobility, and there's even different pricing that I think some of these people naturally see as like, "Hey, I can jump into the fray and be as advanced as everybody else, no matter where I come from." That's correct. It's pretty impressive. I guess I didn't glean anything new. Maybe we're just in that era now where there isn't something new to learn. **Bernard Leong:** I had the same feeling when I was interviewing them because when they were just reiterating some of the common numbers. **Michael Smith Jr:** Like, we've heard this before. **Bernard Leong:** We've heard this before. I didn't hear anything new and insightful. Where I think last year was quite interesting because it was the first time the digital financial transactions have gone more digital than cash. That's something new to me. But to be fair to the three companies who actually are Google, Temasek, and Bain, you can't expect every year to have groundbreaking— **Michael Smith Jr:** No, no. That's what I'm saying. I think this is no different to me than, you know, is your iPhone 16 different? It is not. Because they've come all so far that these are all just incremental things. **Bernard Leong:** But the best result is that they predicted a $200 billion economy by 2025\. Now they have—we actually reached $300 billion economy for this year already. So there is a great milestone where, you know, sometimes everybody's doubting the region, like, "Oh yeah, nobody cares about this region anymore." No, that's the economy. **Michael Smith Jr:** No, I think sometimes we've got to check our silliness and realize—go back 10 years. If you can recall, because we were here, just remember what you had then versus now, and you kind of got to go, "Okay, it's come a long way." **Daniel Cerventus:** It's definitely a long way. But the thing I'm really surprised is basically three out of five people purchase something online. I'm surprised it's quite low. **Michael Smith Jr:** It seems low. You think it'd be like five out of five. **Daniel Cerventus:** Like 4.5. **Michael Smith Jr:** But I think it's a generational thing. You still have a lot of old people that probably don't buy online. **Daniel Cerventus:** Really? **Michael Smith Jr:** I'm not saying that they can't. I'm just saying you have a lot of— **Daniel Cerventus:** No, like especially the live streamers—a lot of older generations are buying online. So like whether this is the younger generation, or do they have— **Bernard Leong:** No, the people within my generation are all using Lazada or using TikTok shopping. **Daniel Cerventus:** You are not that old. I'm saying older than us. **Michael Smith Jr:** We're talking about way older. **Bernard Leong:** No, no, they're way older than us. Even my in-laws are doing it. **Michael Smith Jr:** Where are the other two people? They don't have a phone. They— **Daniel Cerventus:** Yeah. Are they not like— **Michael Smith Jr:** It's bad. **Bernard Leong:** But you do have to give me the two out of five. But Indonesia, we still have a lot of rural areas. I mean, when we talk about the— **Daniel Cerventus:** No, no, fair enough. But I mean, to a certain extent, they will still have like Gojek or Tokopedia or something like that. **Michael Smith Jr:** Think that there's the case? Well, there's that whole notion of first-tier, second-tier, third-tier markets. You have a lot of products that try to even work in tier two that don't even get the third tier when it comes to—but what— **Bernard Leong:** So this is a question that I always don't understand. Maybe you can help me a little bit with. Why is it that in China when we go from first-tier, second-tier, third-tier, it seems that it can still trickle down, and then even now you can go into fourth-tier, fifth-tier markets and then you can create companies like Pinduoduo. But whereas in our region where, let's say first-tier, like Jakarta going into, say, Bandung— **Michael Smith Jr:** I think it's the one-country thing. Because the one country is so big, the amount of revenue and volume happening in tier one and two tiers is funding getting to three and four and five. It's the same company, the same product. I think if you take Indonesia, none of these guys have gotten that profitable in a core market to keep putting more money into second and third and fourth. There is no notion of doing this regionally. That's been tough. I just think it's a difference in the amount of money, the rails, you know—in China, it's all in Chinese, it's—you know, it's RMB, the same everywhere. The wallet's the same everywhere. **Daniel Cerventus:** At least there's two wallets. **Bernard Leong:** There's a Grab wallet and there's a GoTo wallet. **Michael Smith Jr:** So I think it's like, for you to be that big, that China-scale big, you'd have to be regional. But now you have each language, each—I think it's always that problem. I'm guessing in China that just doesn't happen. It's all the same. **Daniel Cerventus:** So the thing about China that's actually very interesting—certain regions are very hyper-focused on different niches, basically. If you look at certain parts, like, "Okay, we are manufacturing for this." Alibaba brought us to this particular village called Bawan Village. All they do is—when we were there, it looked—it was supposed to be this rural area. It used to be poor 10 years back. People were driving Ferraris. People were driving Mustangs and stuff like that. Like, what do they sell? They sell walnuts, and everyone sells walnuts, basically. It's so weird. It's so bizarre. **Michael Smith Jr:** But they're probably selling in all of China. **Daniel Cerventus:** Exactly. they're hyper-specialized until there is actually a communal processing plant where every single family will just come and process their walnut order. **Bernard Leong:** It just reminds me—recently when I was in Japan, I went to Uji, which is the place where all matcha is made. Like if you go into the whole region, everything there is just matcha. **Daniel Cerventus:** Matcha. **Michael Smith Jr:** But I think if you took the walnut example and just pretend for a second that this city in Indonesia has the best walnuts—they're not going to be able to become a Southeast ASEAN-wide walnut dominant player. Where in China, that guy can get all the traffic. **Daniel Cerventus:** That's why we come back to the distribution because they just plug into Taobao, they plug into JD. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe it was like Malaysia. Durian plantation owners are making quite a lot with durian because now China is a super big market. **Daniel Cerventus:** Oh. It's always been a super big market. **Michael Smith Jr:** But these are like edge cases. **Daniel Cerventus:** No, it's always big. It's always big market. That's crazy. **Michael Smith Jr:** But I think there's—you know, I believe the narrative has shifted a little bit in the Southeast Asia stuff with—this data kind of supports it—that we're incrementally getting better, we're incrementally accessing more of the markets. There's some reality now about valuations and exits that it's—you know, talk to VCs right now. I don't think enough checks are being written. Maybe they have too many choices. But you hear about nominal valuations again, some reasonableness in people's terms. **Bernard Leong:** You know— **Michael Smith Jr:** So— **Daniel Cerventus:** I'm sorry, there's a return to sanity. **Michael Smith Jr:** I think that's what it is. Or reality, you know. **Bernard Leong:** You know, I always find it very strange, and I think this is probably the way we are thinking about it—we're always having these two extremes. Return to founder-friendly.Bombastic return to sanity, like the markets. **Daniel Cerventus:** But welcome to the startup world, man. We ride on hype and bubbles. **Michael Smith Jr:** No, but that's what was fun when I talked to those search fund guys. Just kind of the stats around—even myself, I don't realize the amount of SMEs, the volume of them, the age of the people running them, the things—I don't, because I'm always in this startup or enterprise bubble. I don't see the—maybe it's the middle of the—what, you know, 70 million SMEs across Southeast Asia that are big employers, move on. I just don't realize it. I talk to them a lot. It's a good business. **Daniel Cerventus:** No, and the best part is I think I mentioned that when I spoke to some of the M&A folks in the startup space and the M&A folks in the SME space—the startup space, they are all seeing red, and we are all seeing black, basically. **Michael Smith Jr:** That's a good one. Like a roulette table. **Bernard Leong:** So I think we are just almost at anything on the table that we want to talk about. **Michael Smith Jr:** No. We've made everything— **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, I'm in the chitchatting. I don't know, I just always wonder—is there any subjects to talk about? I hardly can get you both onto one room to just have this conversation. Maybe I might just want to ask you one of my favorite questions. What is just the one thing you wish more people would ask you about the Southeast Asia region that they don't ask you about? **Michael Smith Jr:** Interesting. They don't ask me about it. I think it's—I don't know if they don't ask me, but I know when I am speaking with people, when I, especially when I go back to America, is that in their mind—I don't know if exotic is the word—they still have in their mind that it's like white elephants. Maybe it is exotic and that it's like, "Oh, tell me something." You just try to tell them that, look, there are definitely places you can go that feel off the beaten path and that. But if you land in, I would argue, any of the core Southeast ASEAN cities, it's not going to be that shocking to you. Sure, the food will be different and the smells and the languages, but it's very accessible. It's not crazy to think that you could even move to these places. You should just realize that what's in your mind is this place 20 years ago. It's—you know, I don't even know if it's a good thing—it's homogenized and modernized to the point that it's major cities, quite comfortable. **Daniel Cerventus:** You look at the CBD \[central business district\], you look at the malls. You can't tell. **Michael Smith Jr:** God, there's more malls there than where these people come from. **Daniel Cerventus:** Literally, I've been trying to think about it, but most of the time people are asking me a lot of questions about SMEs these days. **Bernard Leong:** Good question. **Daniel Cerventus:** why is there a market there? Because I feel like, "Look, these businesses are all aging, run by old owners and et cetera." But why are we interested in it at the first place? Because Malaysia, Singapore is roughly about what, 50%, 70% powered by SMEs, essentially. **Michael Smith Jr:** That's the two biggest— **Daniel Cerventus:** Yeah. Areas for them. So that's a bit of a national threat in terms of what we need to preserve. They hire a lot of people, they provide a lot of jobs, but there's also a lot of room for growth because most of them are either geographically bound—Malaysia regional or et cetera. So there's a lot more room to go— **Bernard Leong:** Or maybe a heritage that is required to be modernized. I felt that is always the case when we think about— **Michael Smith Jr:** But I think that the—you know, I'm not trying to shill for GenCap, but just because that's who I talked to and—No, no, no, I know that. But I think the interesting thing is, you know, you have this, "Hey, I'm going to be a startup, zero to one, raise capital." That's very hard to do. You guys all know this. You may make it, you may not make it. You know, how do you attract people into the, "Hey, rather than you go and do your zero-to-one thing, come over here and do one to two." But it's in an SME. It's not technical. I think that's a hard pitch to the generation that you need to come into these things. What's the advertisement there to get people hooked? **Daniel Cerventus:** So basically, I mean, one thing is definitely risk, but the second thing in terms of this—there's a well— **Michael Smith Jr:** Less risk than a startup. **Daniel Cerventus:** Definitely less risk than a startup. It's going to be hard, but there's a big opportunity of modernisation, basically. That's a big gap that people are— **Michael Smith Jr:** That's my suspicion, but I'm still saying, "How do you get this group of operators who might have been—" and maybe it's different cohorts—it's the retired executives. It could be people coming from big tech. **Daniel Cerventus:** Well, failed startup. **Michael Smith Jr:** Operator. It's just like, I see this. There's almost more of this thing that you could buy and automate than the people that might be attracted to go in and do it. **Daniel Cerventus:** Not going to lie, it's not an easy sell for operators, but it's an easy sell for investors. **Michael Smith Jr:** Yeah. **Daniel Cerventus:** So investors are keen on putting money. Operators are still something to look forward to. **Michael Smith Jr:** That's the trick. But I think that it's interesting because I think in this part of the world, there's a lot of these, and they're aging out. But the businesses are good businesses. **Bernard Leong:** Well, I think it's a pretty good place to wrap. Sure. So where do they find you both? **Michael Smith Jr:** I just tell people LinkedIn's the best place. The Generalist podcast, which I post on LinkedIn, but that's usually where I hang out. **Daniel Cerventus:** I'm strangely on Facebook, basically. **Bernard Leong:** I just don't understand the Facebook when people— **Daniel Cerventus:** X \[or formerly tweet\]. **Michael Smith Jr:** I've logged out. **Bernard Leong:** You definitely can find me anywhere. So thanks once again. I think we are going to do it again soon. **Michael Smith Jr:** We will. **Daniel Cerventus:** Thank you, guys. **Bernard Leong:** We'll do it again. Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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He shares his career journey from scaling the internet at Akamai Technologies during the dot-com boom, to leading infrastructure at Facebook through the mobile revolution, and now driving Microsoft's AI-first transformation where the definition of "developer" itself is rapidly evolving. Jay explains that Microsoft's Core AI team, is moving beyond traditional tiered architecture to a new paradigm where large language models can think, reason, plan, and interact with tools—shifting developer time from typing code to specification and verification while enabling parallel project execution through specialized AI agents. He highlights how organizations like Singapore Airlines cut project timelines from 11 weeks to 5 weeks using GitHub Copilot and challenges both individuals and enterprises to raise their level of ambition: moving from being amazed by AI to being frustrated it can't do more, while building cultural experiments that unlock this exponential technology. Closing the conversation, Jay shares what great looks like for Microsoft's Core AI to enable AI transformation for every organization around the world. --- > "There's this set of people that are using these AI-powered tools and they're like, 'Wow, that's amazing!' Stunned as to how incredible the response is from AI. Then there's another set of people that have these experiences when they work with AI—they’re frustrated with it because they're just like, 'Why can't it do this for me yet?'And they're pushing the envelope of what this LLM or what this system can do, what this tool can do. If you are in the former group, then you need to raise your level of ambition. You need to delegate harder things to it. And if you're in the second group, then you need to learn more about how these things work." - **Jay Parikh** **Profile: Jay Parikh**, Executive Vice President, [Core AI](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2025/01/13/introducing-core-ai-platform-and-tools/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Microsoft](https://microsoft.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayparikh?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Podcast, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and today we are diving deeply into Microsoft's Core AI strategy & what it means for developers, enterprises, and startups in Asia and beyond. With me today is Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President of Core AI at Microsoft, now at the heart of Microsoft's AI transformation. So Jay, welcome to the show. **Jay Parikh:** Thank you. It's a pleasure being here. **Bernard Leong:** Of course. We always begin with trying to hear the origin stories about guests. My first question is, how did your career journey begin and what eventually led you into Microsoft? **Jay Parikh:** I started my career at the beginning of basically the dot-com boom. I think the arcs that kind of define my career: one is working at a company, Akamai Technologies, back in the day that really helped scale the internet. From there I moved to Facebook where we were scaling social networking and also mobile, because we had the mobile challenge as well. Now I'm at Microsoft. I joined last year really to help the company and to help our customers and partners transform their companies around AI. **Bernard Leong:** In looking back at the career journey, given that you started in the dot-com era, we went through Web 2.0, then after that mobile, and now AI. If you look back through your career, what are the key lessons from your journey that you can share with my audience? **Jay Parikh:** For me, I think it's always just been this pursuit of hard problems and, in some ways, not getting stuck in the status quo or things that are maybe linear in growth. When I go back and I look through, I guess, just the rise of the internet and how that scaled, and how quickly and exponentially that was in terms of impact and change in the world, you look at then social media, then mobile, and now AI. I would just say for me, being comfortable was always the thing that got me to pick up and move and go somewhere else and get onto what I would call the steep part of the S-curve in terms of learning. **Bernard Leong:** So there's always this unlearning and then relearning again. **Jay Parikh:** For sure. I mean, there's always unlearning, maybe how an organization worked or a business model, and then learning and transforming and changing and evolving on the new thing. That's why I always like to push myself to be someplace where you're uncomfortable, where you're learning from the people around you. You're building, you're creating, you're solving hard problems—not just technical problems, but business, society, organizational. The whole system needs to evolve quickly. **Bernard Leong:** So I want to really get to the subject of the day, because there's a lot that we want to cover on Microsoft Core AI. I'm quite curious. For our audience, can you share your role as the Executive Vice President of Core AI in Microsoft? What does it entail and what do you cover? **Jay Parikh:** We started the Core AI team in January of this year, and what we did is we said we need to take a different approach to how we're going to help the world build software for the future with AI. As you know, it's changing so fast. Really, if you look at the old way of building software, you and I would go talk to customers, partners, we'd get requirements, we'd come back, we'd design probably some database schema to be the store of record, build some application logic, and then design some UI—maybe a mobile app, a website. That was traditionally how we did things. This tiered architecture. Now in the new world, when you think about these models—large language models, multimodal, et cetera—these things can think, they can reason, they can plan, they can interact with other tools, they can do lots of different things that we are still very much scratching the surface of. Then the way we build software and applications with the model at the center needs to completely change. That is the focus, the main focus of the Core AI team, which is really focused on empowering every developer. Really I think that term "developer" is changing also really rapidly to shape the future with AI. **Bernard Leong:** So how does Microsoft now uniquely support developers and startups to be globally competitive with other ecosystems? I think you point out the software development cycle has actually drastically changed. People are now doing vibe coding, and I think business owners actually get this instant gratification of seeing the front end. But they don't think about the real heavy lifting that is done in the backend. **Jay Parikh:** I think in our Core AI focus, we think about basically helping developers reinvent every part of the software development lifecycle. So it's not just the code part of it. It's the specification, the ideation, the creation side of it, then it's the code generation side of it, then it's the code review, the unit test, the deployment, the operationalization of it, the monitoring, the fixing of it when something goes bad in production, updating your security vulnerabilities. So we're thinking about bringing AI-powered tools through that entire lifecycle for developers. That does include front end, backend, middleware, everything. Then these applications get deployed on what we call our AI and agent factory known as Foundry. That's where these applications are running in the backend. Where we then bring in a number of different other components, and security and trust are woven through that from the start. Then we provide a flexible deployment model, which most today is done in the cloud, but you can also deploy these applications on the edge as well. So that's the stack of what we're trying to do to help really change the paradigm of how we build software with these models or AI at the center of it. **Bernard Leong:** If I were to dive a bit deeper, what really stays the same and what changes in the software development cycle at this stage? When you talk to developers today—I think you rightfully pointed out that the job nature has also changed—how is the conversation with your customers? **Jay Parikh:** I think it's changing, so I don't know that we are at the end state. I know we're at the beginning stage—no way we are at the end state yet. I think what it was a year ago versus what it is today versus what it'll be six months from now—I think we're still on some moving train here in terms of that process evolution. What I would say though is that when I see our teams building software and they have access to all of this AI-powered capability, you see now what's happening is the emphasis, where your time is being spent, instead of lots of time spent typing in code and all the characters in syntax and doing all of that, the time spent is actually moving to the upfront creation, specification, requirements side of it, getting all the context right, and then letting the LLM, letting the coding agent go and create this thing. But then also you're spending time as a human on the verification side of it. So your time moves from what was in the middle—we used to spend a little bit of time writing a spec, a lot of time writing code, a little bit of time testing. In reality, now it's sort of going to the ends, where we're spending a lot more time in that specification, that ideation. Ideation is way more free now because I can kick off lots of different prototypes. I can actually have the code gen come out and now I can see these things, I can react to them, and then I can create those evals, those tests that then feed back in and do that iterative process. Now, the only other thing I want to mention is how we used to do these projects. If you think of a classic development team, they were tracked on some schedule. You would have different tasks scheduled out, but they were kind of linear in terms of what humans could work on, because you would go and say, "Hey, I have to go refactor this component," and that takes me a week to go refactor it. Now, if I can employ these agents, these software development agents that can do different tasks, I can bring in the right agents, I can put them together, give them the specification, then say go, and then basically this coding process now is co-... it's merging with compilation. Before you'd say make, and it would go off and do the thing. Now I just say, "Here's the spec," now it's going to code, it's going to iterate, it's going to do the research, it's going to test things, then you're going to be able to validate, verify the end result, and then you're going to be able to have many different projects in parallel. We see that happening already today, where people will use, say, a CLI and have a project going on here, a different project going on here, a different project going on here. That I think is really the transformation that we're early seeing. **Bernard Leong:** I'm glad you mentioned this because my team and I were using Visual Studio and we were running Claude Code. Now I think there's a very good integration with Claude Code with GitHub Actions. We can actually... our time used to be linear, but we can actually, within the instance, work on multiple features in parallel. I think that's the kind of automation that we don't see that was in the past. **Jay Parikh:** Correct. The way we would do that is we would just take longer to do these things, or we would have to not experiment as much. I think there are two things that are interesting here. One is it's still changing. I think this is very early on and it's super exciting. This may be in some ways one of the biggest and most profound shifts in how software is made in a very, very, very long time. With that, you could also then assume that we may have only written a very, very tiny, tiny portion of the software in the world compared to what is going to be created in the future. If you think about all of the excitement around what humankind could go discover and make and build and create, now when you get this type of automation, this type of gain from a throughput perspective, you think about all the different types of problems and businesses that can be created going forward. **Bernard Leong:** So the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, has often spoken of mobile first, cloud first, and now evolving to AI first. How is Microsoft's vision under his leadership influencing how you're thinking in Core AI? **Jay Parikh:** I think in Core AI, everything's about AI. It is AI-first in everything we do in the team. That's, I think, implicit in the name as well. A few things here. One is that we are building that infra, that platform, those tools so that we can help our first-party product teams as well. So you think about M365, you think about the security team, you think about all of these different products that our customers globally use. We want to help our internal teams be able to unlock that creativity, that value in these products and remake these products with AI really being this shift in value and creativity that the end user, the knowledge worker, gets to take out of it or experience. Then there's the platform and the tools that we provide to our third-party customers. So you think about all of the startup companies, the bigger, larger enterprises that are all AI-first, or they're trying to become AI-first and do the transformation. We are producing and packaging and creating that platform, those tools to enable that transformation for these companies. So that is everything we do. It's how our end-user products are experienced with AI everywhere. It's also how we are working to drive our own creativity and productivity with AI. **Bernard Leong:** I noticed a big shift now with Office 365\. I was using Microsoft Word in preparation for this interview, and I had to prompt it a few times to get the interview laid out in the format that I was asking questions about. What I would like to examine, the flow this way. I find it actually is a very different way of working when I use Microsoft Word now. You talk about redefining how software is built, operated, and evolves. What does this look like for developers today? Maybe, how far are we? I don't want to ask about the future, but maybe what is the next intermediate state that these developers will go towards? **Jay Parikh:** There are a few things here. One is, in how we think about building this end-to-end system for developers, I would say the first thing that we should note is the definition of software developer I think is expanding, is changing. As you see how much more approachable coding is today, it's not something that is so maybe scary or hard to grasp anymore, because literally anybody can come in, start writing a prompt. Just persistence, curiosity, iteration is all it takes today to build something in software. For us, the things that we are focused on from a product perspective: first, make sure that we are bringing these AI-powered tools to wherever the developer is from a workbench perspective. So in Visual Studio Code, in Visual Studio, in the different IDEs—maybe IntelliJ or Xcode, you name it. Now we also announced the [GitHub Copilot](https://github.com/features/copilot?ref=analysepodcast.com) CLI last week. So we have a lot of different surfaces that we want to bring this AI power to the developer. The second is actually building up the platform. Now GitHub is long past just being a place where you store your code. There's GitHub Actions, there's issues, there's a ton of context that we have other than just the code base. There's documentation, there's issues, there's security vulnerabilities. All of this sits in this platform. You think about it as context around what a developer can interact with and how you can hook up the LLMs to be able to generate and do even more for you. So that platform, in terms of the context that we have, and also then providing the runtime for these different types of agents—so there's a coding agent, there's a code review agent, there's a testing agent. So you think about all the different types of maybe specialized agents that are required across that software development lifecycle. They all need a coordination mechanism to orchestrate these different projects. Then the third area is just because the enterprises—and listen, I would say that everybody requires these things, but there's a whole grade of just scale-important things like identity and security, and this is all part of our enterprise infrastructure that needs to scale as well. So those are the three areas that we generally think about in terms of how we invest, how we make product, and how we iterate rapidly. **Bernard Leong:** I'm so glad you talked about all the new developments with the CLI, the GitHub stuff, because I think when I was teaching large language models in the universities—enterprise customers of yours—they have difficulty trying to use the modern tools because it bypasses a lot of what is called the security piece. Now with integrations with GitHub Actions, I think it has made some more experienced developers much more susceptible to convert to an AI-first world. So GitHub and Azure AI Foundry, which are pretty central to actually enabling AI-powered development. How are these platforms helping organizations now to go beyond what we call first-generation AI applications, now going into what we call dynamic, intelligent agents? **Jay Parikh:** There are lots of great examples here. I think that we're moving, at least in the tools, beyond just doing code completions. We're delegating entire pretty big tasks to these agents to go and work on, and then I have to keep an eye on the work and make sure that it's not just stuck or that it produces something that has lots of problems with it. So there's still lots of work in terms of how to craft the tools and the models and the evals and the whole system to get accuracy and speed, and also make them cost efficient as well. I think for the organizations out there, the benefits are obviously time saved. This is a productivity gain, but other organizations out there are actually being able to drive top-line creativity, top-line growth. One of our customers here, Singapore Airlines, had a feature, a major feature they needed to add to the consumer app. Originally the team, when they specced this out, that feature or that project was going to take 11 weeks. 11 weeks, almost a quarter. Then they got this team together. They used GitHub Copilot, they designed it, they did all the work. They got this project done in five weeks. That was a pretty big time savings. That's not very common to be able to save that much time in the project. Then later, the team came back to the partner and to the lead, and they actually had finished and drained their entire backlog. So they got everything done that was in their backlog too, which is pretty astonishing to be able to see that small team with these AI-powered tools, GitHub Copilot, be able to get projects done much quicker, to be able to go through the entire backlog much quicker. So then you start to think, oh wow, I'm always used to being behind schedule or having infinite things in my backlog. Now wait, I'm getting stuff done faster and I'm able to keep up with the load that I have—customer support tickets, bugs, et cetera, et cetera. Then I'm able to modernize. Listen, the enterprise out there, all of us deal with code that's not just vibe-coded stuff. It's stuff that's been here for 10, 20, or more years that still runs most of these enterprises. So these AI-powered tools will help us modernize this code faster as well, so that we can get out of the past, get to the present, and start then looking forward and investing in building for the future. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about building AI platforms at scale that very few people do, but they should know? **Jay Parikh:** I would say for me, it's be more ambitious. I kind of have these two... I see these two different mindsets when I talk to people. I'm kind of curious—I'm guessing where you are and what you see here in Singapore as well. But there's this set of people that are using these AI-powered tools, whether it be GitHub Copilot or another copilot. They do something, they're prepping a doc or summarizing an email, and they're like, "Wow, that's amazing." Kind of stunned as to how incredible the response is from AI. They're surprised and they're happy with the results. Then there's another mindset or another set of people I think that have these experiences when they work with AI. They're frustrated with it because they're just like, "Why can't it do this for me yet? It's not... it's broken. It needs too much help. It needs too much context." They're pushing the envelope of what this LLM or what this system can do, what this tool can do. That's where I see, and I have these conversations, which is like, which one of these mindsets or which one of these experiences do you typically live in most days? Are you in the former mindset, which is you're amazed by what LLMs can do or what GPT can do? Or are you frustrated that it can't do more for you? I think that we're trying to get people, and I talk about is, if you are in the former group, then you need to raise your level of ambition. You need to delegate harder things to it. You need to use LLMs and copilots more. If you're in the second group, then you need to learn more about how these things work. You need to experiment with more models. You need to try different tools. You need to learn more of these techniques. Maybe it's fine-tuning, RLHF, or be able to better context-engineer, all of the above. So staying curious and going deeper and deeper, because chances are that in a week or a month, that task that you're already giving it to, that it's not doing so well, it will be able to do it. Because that's the rate of kind of scale advancements that we're on. It's this exponential curve, and you can't stay close to this if you're being surprised by it. You should be pushing yourself, pushing these tools. **Bernard Leong:** So my observation, just to take into consideration what you were asking me about, what is the trend like between both groups. I find that there is a group which they got very excited with the technology. They can do what's called a zero to 70%. That means they get something that they can build up, software coded very quickly, without any knowledge about the programming language. Then what they would end up doing is they end up in a state where they try to push the boundaries and got more and more frustrated. This is where I would tell them, maybe you should take a full-day class of this language that you want to learn, like maybe learning how to develop properly, learn the actual software engineering so that you can understand how this is being done. Then there is the second group, which I think are really very good software engineers, and of course now with things like Copilot, GitHub CLI, they really have their ready-made GitHub Actions probably done now. They became a hundred-x, a thousand-x engineer. Where it is really tricky is that middle remaining 70 to 100 percent group, where they're very established engineers, but they have difficulties because maybe they will operate, as you rightfully pointed out, in the enterprise space, where they're trying, they want to use it, but they also have that difficulty, and the protocols of the company don't allow them to actually experiment the way. Then they will try to put up walls to say no, the DevOps cannot allow, et cetera. But there is this... I think that group is starting to actually kind of diffuse because the boundaries of this stage are pushing. I think that is pushing on from both ends. On that, I don't know, does that really gel with how you see it? **Jay Parikh:** I think so. It just depends on the organization. I mean, you work with a ton of startups, and so do I, and it's very different in startups in terms of what's happening. Then you get to the enterprises and you'll see certain groups that look and resemble startups and then others that are still in maybe earlier or mid stages of diffusion. They really haven't... they're still maybe dabbling with code completion or thereabouts, and they haven't really, I think, delegated again, maybe because of corporate culture, corporate policies. I think those things are changing though, because I think the companies are starting to realize that this has to change. Their competitors... it's what these developers do in their nights and weekends for their hobby projects. They're using these tools and they want access to these tools in the enterprise in their day job too. So it's kind of coming. I agree that it is getting smashed together from both sides, which is good because then the overall adoption, the overall productivity, the overall creativity of these organizations should go up, and then that should push on the advancements of the tools too. **Bernard Leong:** I just came back from the Philippines teaching business owners of several conglomerates on generative AI, and I think one of the biggest difficulties, even with developers or maybe even the other support units, is what tools are we allowed? It seems that even trying to agree on the tools seems to be like the first level of difficulty. I think, of course, given what I've seen in the last couple of months and weeks where I start seeing so much Office 365 changes, I'm beginning to see that maybe those organizations specifically who are all adopting Microsoft already would gradually make their life easier. I don't know whether it is because there was always a lot of point solutions, tools, and no one actually bringing them end to end. I think the end-to-end is coming. Maybe from your point of view, I think that's where you are also driving towards. **Jay Parikh:** For sure. I think that with the entire team and the company across all of our products—the office products and Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, everything there. Then you look at everything that we're doing in security with Security Copilot, you look at our Dragon Copilot for healthcare. You look at everything that's happening in the platform. Developers, you see, you talk to Doug and the Azure team as well, and you know how much they're investing in and helping out the rest of the company. So that thread of just transforming all of our products to really unlock that creativity, that productivity, is our major focus. **Bernard Leong:** So I have you here, so I want to talk to you about leadership and also something on trends and AI as well. What leadership principles have guided you in building high-performing and cross-cultural teams? I mean, specifically AI is moving so fast. I'm sure there will always be this thing when you have to talk to them and say, "We gotta go move faster." The teams are like, "Yeah, we are going to move faster too." **Jay Parikh:** I think for me it's always been, even I would say even before AI, I think with the boom of the internet and scaling that and then seeing social networking and mobile, and now AI, it's always been, again, for me, just that pace of learning. So I have this notion of a learning loop. As you get into an organization, that organization gets bigger because it's more successful. There's more people, there's more customers, there's more code, there's more products. That loop, that circle gets bigger. You travel around that loop or that circle slower. So being able to do one cycle of learning just ends up being slower and slower as you get and as you scale. So everything, when I think about the organization, when I think about the culture, when I think about the way we work, the people we hire, how we develop people, how we communicate, share context, it is all about trying to scrunch that wheel or that circle back down into a smaller circle and to propel ourselves as an organization around that loop faster. So ultimately you want to just learn faster. Despite your scale, where your people are, your people are globally, that doesn't mean you should learn slower. You should then have this mindset, which is like, "Hey, what do I do to take advantage of all of these smart teams around the world or smart, different product teams to help us learn faster?" So for me, it's, obviously, I really think because I've done a lot of startups and then scaled and seen scale, which is small teams moving fast is the sweet spot. Small teams, they're multidisciplinary. You have different functions in there. They have a ton of context, and they are given a high amount of agency to go and be able to drive that part of their business. Now they do need to iterate quickly. That's learning. So being able to ship and try things out, experiment with things—that is and has got to be a way of working. Then the other thing is making sure that you have this ability to self-reflect as an organization, as an individual. So you're not going to get it right every loop, every iteration, every version that you put out there. You're not going to get it right every time. But if you're able to quickly learn and then tweak whatever it is in the product and then do another iteration, and you do that faster and faster than most or all of your competitors, then you will deliver the best experience, the most value for your customers and partners. **Bernard Leong:** Then how do you maintain, given the speed of the teams, these distributed teams are faster... how do you maintain alignment and momentum across a global organization like Microsoft? I mean, there's also trying to make sure they have this mindset, growth mindset, within these distributed teams. **Jay Parikh:** I think you have to maintain a certain level of alignment, and I think that alignment is met by a few things. One is making sure that everybody subscribes to the same sort of mission and values. Everybody in a company like Microsoft, there's such a very diverse product set. While we're trying to work hard to drive this AI transformation in our products and the customers using those products, we really want to make sure that the products also then come together where they need to come together. So for example, in Core AI, the developer tools and the developer platform do need to actually be aligned. Now for us, it doesn't mean that we need to tightly couple everything. For us, it's going to be: make sure that these teams have the right amount of context. They sort of know what the North Star is and that they're heading in the same direction. Then you really want to make sure you share context, and then you learn as you go and you have these sync points. You have these ability, these points where the teams are learning from each other. So I think it's like alignment is important, but I think not everything needs to be synchronized. I think we can have this done in a way where you want to have people working quickly and learning and not have to tightly get stuck together. **Bernard Leong:** So how would you think about, now we're in the AI world and where we are now, having this open versus closed large language model foundation models, that's become quite a hot debate. Given that you're building the platform tools for a lot of developers, how do you see this to shape the ecosystem? What guidance do you have for startups navigating across all these different models? **Jay Parikh:** I think the choice for startups is fantastic. I think that you have to stay curious about what's happening with these models. Sometimes there's going to be use cases in your product that requires maybe a really big closed model because it gives you some unlock to your product idea that you can't achieve anywhere else. Then there's going to be places where, "Hey, I can actually produce this part of the experience and I can go with something that is open source and I can get it to be pretty good, but it's much cheaper and faster for me." Then with the open source models, then I can also do more advanced processing of those models. Maybe I need to fine-tune it. Maybe I need to RL it. Maybe I need to do something else. So I think right now it's really understand, as a startup, as a builder, you're building some product. That product may not only require one model to serve the entire surface area of that product. You may be able to split the experience into multiple sub-experiences. Then each one of those sub-experiences could be different agents, they could be different models. I think building that capability, that intuition into your product experience gives you long-term flexibility because it's going to be both. From a platform perspective, from a tool perspective, we want to give developers choice. We want to give the folks that are building AI applications model choice as well. So that is just going to be something where if you think about that and build that into your startup idea, then you give yourself that flexibility and that ability to ride these different innovation curves for both open source models as well as the closed source models. **Bernard Leong:** I think in Azure's Foundry, you can actually decide to select which models you want. There are a lot of open models there. Actually one of my favorite models, which Claude model has just been turned on there, because we deploy for multiple cloud platforms. So it's actually, for us, better because we have the choice of models in the era of generative AI. What would be your advice to startups in Asia Pacific, where I live, on how to build and differentiate effectively? **Jay Parikh:** One of the things that has come to mind in many of the conversations I have with startups is being able to tell the story. It's not a technical answer—you might have been expecting a technical answer. **Bernard Leong:** No, I expect that. This is a great point. **Jay Parikh:** But I find that today, because—and you advise and invest in a ton of startups—at some point, the technology and how you explain it in your elevator pitch, it can sound very similar to lots of other competitors or lots of other companies that may be in the space. So how do you spend enough time really telling that captivating story about why your product is better, how it has effected and improved, demonstrated this ROI it has, this level of taste in it? It's whatever it is, that story that as a founder, as the early team there, making sure that everybody on the team really iterates and builds this story and has that conviction, has that passion that it comes through. It can't just be, as I say, a bunch of whats, like a bunch of what your thing does. It has to have the why. It has to have the why and the how. Then you can get to the what. But I think as technologists, we often lead with the what, what, what. Then we forget the why and the how, and then you just end up blending in with everybody else. **Bernard Leong:** That's very good advice. Given AI is almost changing every two weeks, what are the concrete trends in AI in software development that you think leaders and startups, whether it's in Asia or across the world, should be paying attention to right now? **Jay Parikh:** So I would say, we talked a little bit about this already, which is use these tools. If you're building a new application, a new product, make sure your team has access to these things. Go and use these tools. If you have projects that are, let's say, modernization things—you have technical debt somewhere, you have to upgrade some version of Java or something like that—use these tools. Microsoft is putting a lot of effort into helping you build new applications, greenfield applications. But we're also investing a lot in making sure these tools are helpful in the brownfield applications, which powers all the enterprises today. So use these tools. I think the other part of this that I would say is really important to understand is what is happening from a model development perspective. Don't take these models just off the shelf and use them. Think about how your own data, your own startup data, your enterprise data, can really help you build more intelligent agents. Because you can take some base model, an open source model, an OpenAI model, an Anthropic model, whatever, and then from there, how do you start to give it more context? How do you think about, in certain models, fine-tuning it or using RL to give this model, this agent more intelligence so that it's going to demonstrate or deliver a higher ROI for that task that it is or that workflow that it's designed to do? So that work to understand how these models can be tuned, tweaked further, given further intelligence, I think is another trend because it's not just about prompt engineering, context engineering anymore. It's not just about fine-tuning a model anymore. There's a lot of excitement. There's a lot of startups. There's a lot of continued research going on in RL \[reinforcement learning\]. So getting, pushing that and getting that into your organization's KPIs, learning that talent, et cetera, I think is really important. Then I'd say that the third thing is making sure that you are cross-connecting different parts of the org. That's, I think, one of the things that I'm observing when I talk to the larger enterprises. They're all curious about how to transform their cultures. In addition to building AI applications, when they talk, they're always trying to get some advice, some guidance, some stories around, "We have to change our people, how they work. We have to change how our organizations, our processes." This has nothing to do with the LLM, which model they pick. It's the cultural change. So really trying these... what are these cultural experiments that you can do if you're a leader in a larger enterprise and not just waiting for it to just figure itself out. You're going to have to go and make changes and try different ways of working to really unlock the power that's there with AI today. **Bernard Leong:** Very interesting point. I want to get to the enterprise side. Security and trust are built into Microsoft's AI stack because you have obviously a large pool of enterprise customers. How are you now approaching responsible AI at scale, especially where you have a lot of developers now orchestrating increasingly autonomous agents? **Jay Parikh:** It is baked in from the start. We've always thought in building out the platform and building out the tools that we don't want this stuff to be an afterthought or a feature that we do later. So there's a huge amount of focus in making sure that when we build out the platform Foundry or we're building out GitHub and VS Code and these tools, that security is there all along the way. I'll give you some examples here. So one is, you're using anything in GitHub and it has all of these enterprise features to control identity and security and all of this entitlement work in there. So that as an enterprise, as a small startup, you can kind of tweak where you are in that slider of risk. Then if you're a larger enterprise, like here's how it flows into your compliance programs, into your security audit programs. If you're a startup and you don't have any of that, then you can move fast and you'll hopefully have those problems when you get a million times bigger in scale and you're super successful. In Foundry, the platform where these AI applications and agents are built and are run, responsible AI is a huge part of the user experience in Foundry. From making sure that you can... we have a red teaming agent that can actually red team your application and then help you score and understand where your application might go off into places that you don't want your customers to experience. So it can help you find those problems from a responsible AI perspective early. We have all of this observability and monitoring that you can tap into as well to see how your AI applications are performing in the wild, in real life—not just performance and cost and those things, but correctness—and being able to then go and tweak them and update and change the evals so that you can keep the system really on the right set of rails that you prefer. Then the last part of this is making sure that the platform and these agents now can tie into the rest of Microsoft security portfolio. So for example, when you build an agent, you deploy it, it automatically gets an agent ID that is tracked in Entra, which is our identity system. These things, these agents, when they're needing to access data, they're going to go through first checks through a system called Purview that we have, which is also another important system that enterprises deploy. So everything that we're doing has that connection to security and into responsible AI. **Bernard Leong:** So I'm very lucky to have you here. You're in Singapore to meet with startup founders over the next two days. What inspired you about the innovation that you're seeing in Asia? **Jay Parikh:** It's just a really, really fast... it's a really fast-paced part of the world. I mean, two-thirds of the world's developers are here in Asia. I believe 75% of the AI patents in the world have been started here, or created here, are published here. So you just start to look at all of the developments that are happening here. You look at what's happening in open source, LLM development. You see, and I'm curious what you see in your startup talks, what are those exciting trends from the startups. But there's just a lot of startup energy here with the amount of developers here, with the technology, with open source, and that's what I'm excited to spend time with a ton of companies. I'm going to be spending time with Pantheon Labs, which is building these digital human-like avatars for customer service types of use cases. Then the Manus folks as well. They have built an incredibly cool application that you can give very complicated and hard challenges and tasks to, to help you solve them. **Bernard Leong:** So I think one question I have—given that the US is also at the forefront of AI development, with your conversations with, say, ecosystem players there, what do startups maybe here need to learn from, to think about when they scale with AI, and how do they work with Microsoft? **Jay Parikh:** So we have a number of different programs, and I think our team here is happy to spend time with the different teams and find what they need and how best to work. Because part of it is we have a number of programs to help startups build on Azure and on Foundry and with our tools. So we have a number of different programs there to help them get going. Then, as they scale and become more advanced, how does that turn into more co-building together? Like how do we build our products together and how there may be integrations that help us solve that customer problem, that customer opportunity better together. Then I'd say the next phase is how we co-sell and how we co-market together. Because how do we use the Microsoft team connections in the world with enterprises to then bring better combined solutions to these enterprises that we serve along with these different startup partners that we have? **Bernard Leong:** I'm very curious. What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about Microsoft's approach to AI, but they don't? **Jay Parikh:** I would say for me, I talked a little bit about this, but it's this notion of having enough ambition. It's like, what could we do together? It's maybe less about Microsoft, but how do we raise our level of ambition in co-building these applications, these agents, these solutions together, so that we really unlock the next levels of human creativity, of human collaboration, of discovery. That I think is just something where the amount of potential intelligence that is stored in all of these models, closed, open, whatever is happening in the enterprise to fine-tune RL of these models, the amount of potential and intelligence is just massive. I just really want, and I encourage our teams and push myself too, to really try to do more ambitious things with these models in terms of our applications. We have to get out of this linear way of thinking of software development and application development that we've been doing for a really long period of time. Because I think the future of where this is all going is just going crazy fast. **Bernard Leong:** I was listening to the history of Microsoft recently, and I remember there was a very important part of the story when Bill Gates and Paul Allen were talking about the trends of the microchip. When commenting on this, Bill said, "This is an exponential technology. That means it's going to be very important and we have to get involved in that technology." We're still talking about the same thing even today. So I have a very traditional closing question. What does great look like for Microsoft's Core AI in the next couple of years? **Jay Parikh:** I think what great looks like for the Core AI team and for Microsoft at large here is really delivering the right tools, the right products, the right platform, all with security, responsible AI in mind to help this transformation of all of the organizations out there that we serve. Because ultimately, the startups that we're all working with, we want to partner with them. We want them to help us build better products, to help us push what the state of the art is possible in terms of how we scale, how we build the technology. But then we want to be able to support the larger organizations to be able to move faster in this AI world. So really it's this, I would say, focus on delivering this and unlocking this value of AI in every organization around the world. **Bernard Leong:** Jay, many thanks for coming on the show. In closing, just two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Jay Parikh:** It's a book I read a while ago. I'm sure you're familiar with it. It's the book \["[Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological%5FRevolutions%5Fand%5FFinancial%5FCapital?ref=analysepodcast.com)"\] written by [Carlota Perez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlota%5FPerez?ref=analysepodcast.com) on how these technological transformations happen and the cycle and the boom-bust and stuff. Those cycles are just... I think a lot about that book given what we're experiencing right now. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience connect with you and maybe learn more about Microsoft's work on Core AI? **Jay Parikh:** We publish a lot of updates. Pay attention to the [GitHub blog](https://github.blog/?ref=analysepodcast.com). There's a lot of new stuff coming out there weekly, almost daily. We are obviously communicating a ton in terms of where the platform is going, where the products are going, on the [Microsoft blog](https://blogs.microsoft.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and send us any feedback. We're always looking to do better. **Bernard Leong:** You can find us anywhere—YouTube, Spotify, or across the world. Jay, thanks for coming on the show and thank you for sharing your beautiful Sunday with me here in Singapore. Thank you so much. **Jay Parikh:** Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Drawing from his experience building Smartkarma's independent research platform, Raghav explained how client demand for pre-IPO coverage led to creating PvtIQ, an intelligence platform designed to bridge the critical information gap in Southeast Asia's private markets. We discussed the striking imbalance where $74 billion has been invested into the region's tech ecosystem but only $23 billion has been returned through exits, highlighting the urgent need for better data infrastructure and price discovery. Raghav shared unique insights on how families dominate the region's investment landscape, why private and public markets are converging into one, and his vision for PvtIQ to become the intelligence backbone supporting companies, investors, and regulators in bringing more transparency and efficiency to Asia's rapidly evolving private market ecosystem. --- > "Public markets are behaving more like private markets. Private markets want to behave more like public markets. So actually, they're just one market.What's not the same is the level of research, information, data disclosure. Correct. That's the only difference. It's this information gap that, to us, is the single biggest opportunity now.We think over the course of the next five to 10 years, there'll be more trading venues, more liquidity providers, more market makers, more investor types—all of that. And I think what Smartkarma has always done is be the information flow for part of capital markets.In fact, that sort of 74 billion number, I think, is quite conservative. I've seen other estimates that are close to 120 billion. So it depends on what you see as sort of growth and what you see beyond. But regardless, I think it’s very large numbers, and the ratio of exit to invested capital is extremely low. A 50 billion hole is a pretty big hole." **\- Raghav Kapoor, CEO of Smartkarma** Profile: Raghav Kapoor, CEO and co-founder of [Smartkarma](https://www.smartkarma.com/home/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ragkap/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse podcast](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong. Today we are diving into a structural shift that has been building in Asia for years. Private markets going mainstream. Investors are now chasing growth outside public exchanges, but the region still lacks a lot of transparency. So data and research infrastructure needed for smarter market capital allocation. Smartkarma, who I have known for many years, long known for bringing clarity to the public markets, have just launched [PvtIQ](https://www.pvtiq.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Private IQ), an independent intelligence platform designed to illuminate Asia's private markets and strengthen Singapore's position as a premier capital raising hub. So with me today, Raghav Kapoor, or I call him Raj, CEO and co-founder of [Smartkarma](https://www.smartkarma.com/home/?ref=analysepodcast.com), to unpack the big picture, the information gap, and what the future really looks like for private markets, and is there a time when the private and public markets are finally converged. So Raj, welcome to the show. **Raghav Kapoor:** Hey, thank you Bernard. Love to be here. **Bernard Leong:** Since you have been on the show many years ago, somewhere between episode 60 to 70\. So let's go straight into the conversation. Smartkarma, at that point, was still raising Series A. Now Smartkarma is an established company. So Smartkarma has just launched PvtIQ. What was the catalyst behind creating this dedicated intelligence platform for ASEAN private markets? **Raghav Kapoor:** It was a natural evolution of the way Smartkarma was going. I think Smartkarma started out as a platform to bring together the best, most independent analysts that were covering capital markets, starting with APAC and then more globally. So along the way, one of the areas that we focused a lot of time and attention on was equity capital markets, which is essentially independent coverage of IPOs and placements. We felt that the only information that used to come to market came from book runners. Of course, that's one side of the story. Today investors want to hear other perspectives. So that particular vertical grew to a very credible size. We had great critical mass, and we started to get a lot of requests from our clients asking for the same companies to be covered much earlier in their journeys, maybe three years before IPO. We realized that it's actually quite difficult. It wasn't until maybe a year or a year and a half ago when we started to feel that the VC and private equity investors who owned large chunks of these companies were now desperately seeking better ways to find exits. So at least we felt that the market has come to a place where there is willingness for corporates and their private investors to now start sharing more data. At the same time, we also felt that regulators in the region, especially in Singapore, were galvanizing together to provide smoother exits, better exit pathways. So two or three main stakeholders were now at the table. So we worked quite hard behind the scenes with these stakeholders before we launched PvtIQ. **Bernard Leong:** You launched PvtIQ last week at the [Singapore FinTech Festival 2025](https://www.fintechfestival.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com). It is positioned to support MAS equity market development program. How does this initiative strengthen Singapore's current position as a premier capital raising hub? **Raghav Kapoor:** For a long time Singapore has had an ambition to move beyond just capital raising, but also play an important part in price discovery. I think the price discovery of companies now doesn't just happen at the time of IPO. It happens over several rounds leading up to the IPO, which could last many years. So there's always been an ambition to play a more important role there. As you know, Singapore sets very high standards when it comes to data governance, legal governance structures and so forth, which suit the framework of institutional investors looking at private markets. So I think that has always been the case, but public markets in Singapore had languished. So even though its seat as a private market investment destination had grown, it was still not the best or most obvious exit destination. That started to change last year around November when we saw the MAS set up a committee to look very closely at the state of capital markets and put in place several mechanisms, several new policies to improve the state of affairs. We've seen that translate into very impressive performance of public markets in Singapore this year. I think as a continuation of that effort, we as Smartkarma wanted to do our part, which is to make sure that we think beyond, even before I should say, things get listed and what we can do to improve better decision making, better price discovery, better disclosure, and overall just a more robust framework for private markets. **Bernard Leong:** How do you see PvtIQ in terms of helping private companies to chart a clearer path from fundraising to eventual public listing? I think before any private companies usually go public, they probably have this three year pre-period to try to make sure they report financials every quarter. They need to set the kind of discipline before they can actually go public. There's a lot of work that goes in between, maybe you can share on that. **Raghav Kapoor:** If you look at public markets for a hint here, the beauty with public markets is that there are very defined disclosure guidelines, timeliness, level of disclosure, and that allows a certain data taxonomy to be formed, which can be compared, and time series can be built. With private markets, there's no such standards. There's very little guidelines. In fact, to a certain extent, in the early years, private markets thrived on that opacity, that information asymmetry, so to speak. But I think what started to happen now is this convergence. So the same investor that invests in public markets is also investing in private markets. So they're used to a certain level of discipline and disclosure and governance on one side, but finding it very hard to obtain the same on the other. Now, if you look at the U.S., we all know businesses like CB Insights, PitchBook and so on. I think they've played their part in putting together some data sets largely on the US space, maybe Europe to a certain extent. There's a very big white space here that just isn't covered in a systematic way. So I think for us, it's sort of like back to being a startup again, going back 10 years to when we started Smartkarma. A lot of what we did around independent research and data in public markets, we're now just doing the same thing in private markets. But a very important piece here is getting the right stakeholders together. So we've worked to build the right relationships with organizations like the SVCA \[Singapore Venture Capital Association\], which is the Singapore Venture Capital Association. There are about 300 members, all the prominent PE and VC firms. With their support, with the support of the regulators, with the support of the exchange, I think what we can do is unlock new data sets, then work very hard to standardize, clean, do the sort of stuff that was used in public markets with them. **Bernard Leong:** There were some numbers which I thought were pretty striking. For example, you have over 74 billion being invested into Southeast Asian tech since 2014, but now less than 23 billion in exit proceeds. So what does that say about the structural gaps in the region's private markets? I know there were some high profile fraud cases that went on last year, but where do you see the region going through this? **Raghav Kapoor:** In fact, that $74 billion number I think is quite conservative. I've seen other estimates that are close to 120 billion. So it depends on what you see as growth and what you see beyond, but regardless, these are very large numbers and the ratio of exit to invested capital is extremely low. But it points to the fact that the capital availability has actually outstripped the exit maturity or maybe, I guess to a certain extent, the IPO readiness. So I feel a lot of these companies need a lot of support to be at a place where they can exit and return capital back. But that's extremely important. You know, a $50 billion hole is a pretty big hole. There are LPs to these VC and PE funds who also expect that capital back now. So I think firms like us are very happy to engage with these companies, not just research and analyze and provide data from a distance, but also work with them on a bespoke basis as required to help them get the maturity that's required. So I think given our experience with IPO and beyond, I think we're in a natural position to extend that and bring some of those insights in. I think there are some regional disparities here as well. So the annoying thing is that capital is global in nature, but data and data disclosure tends to be very local in nature. So I think we need to uplift the region as a whole and do our role at a very grassroots level, so to speak. **Bernard Leong:** I see. But help me understand this. Why has mid-stage and pre-IPO research been so underdeveloped? From your position, I think now you're using PvtIQ to fill that gap. Why is that? **Raghav Kapoor:** To be honest, if you look at it, if you go back to fundamentals, demand and supply, I think capital came quickly and in abundance to this region. As a result, it was capital chasing deals versus the other way around. But now we're in a very different market environment where companies need to work harder and their existing investors need to work harder to get those exits back. So now the focus has shifted from chasing deals to improving price discovery, improving disclosure, and attracting more public capital or more institutional capital. **Bernard Leong:** I see. Private markets have actually gone mainstream worldwide. So what is unique about this shift that's unfolding now in Southeast Asia? Is it very different, say like East Asia where there's actually quite a strong private market capital structure? **Raghav Kapoor:** With Southeast Asia, it's extremely fragmented. There's a lot of regional differences between the different countries. But I think when it comes to the public market side, which is when you have your eventual exit, the differences are even more extreme. Then the last part, this is where it gets a little bit more technical, but a lot of the Southeast Asian countries, their weights in the benchmarks, like the large indices, are very small. So there isn't natural passive liquidity that flows into these countries through ETFs and through just allocated capital. So I mean, just as an example, let's say there's a very large company that decides to IPO in the Philippines. The allocation that a global emerging markets manager can put into Philippines would be ridiculously small. So they're competing for a few basis points of the total capital that's available to global managers. So we have a benchmark problem that only exists in Southeast Asia. So it will take a very long time to solve for that. In absence of that, you need more active investors to look at these things. I think that ecosystem in this part of the world is not as mature as in other parts, so that creates a big difference as well. The comparisons are very different. **Bernard Leong:** So what is the one thing that you know about private markets in Southeast Asia that very few people do, but they should? **Raghav Kapoor:** Well, I think a lot of private markets in Southeast Asia are influenced by families. This is quite different from other places. A lot of families, big prominent families, own the prominent assets, conglomerates specifically. They own the prominent assets. They're first to enter into new situations. They create these virtual monopolistic advantages around some of their companies. Plus their companies versus companies of competitors seem to get orders of magnitude more funding very quickly. Many people sort of miss out on that. So I think after having spent enough time in the region, you start to understand that following the families is a very important part of mapping out the ecosystem. They also have a longer term view in terms of the families. Absolutely. They're strategic investors in that business, so to speak, from inception. So I think that's extremely different from the rest of the world. **Bernard Leong:** What are the other bigger structural challenges that investors face in navigating these private markets in the region? **Raghav Kapoor:** There's just a complete lack of data and that has started to now run into serious issues. As you mentioned, we had some fraudulent behavior in the market as well. So what started to happen is diligence periods have gone longer, which is actually a cost and a friction point to investing. If you think about it, where a round might have taken three to six months, that's now become six to 12 months. So where the function of markets is to be efficient and to be timely, actually decision making has become slower. So that's been an especially big challenge. Many of the businesses here tend to be regional, so more than one country. But then the regulatory regime in the countries is not uniform. Everything is very different. The TAMs are really split out by nation. So I think all of that makes comparisons difficult. I remember just sharing an anecdote. I remember one of the larger VCs coming to us six, seven years ago and saying, "*Hey, why is it that Philippines banks trade on much lower multiples compared to Indonesian banks?*" They just couldn't figure it out. There were no structural reasons. The profitabilities were not that different, so we had to bring them all the way back to the nineties and what happened post-ASEAN financial crisis and why the two ecosystems have very different valuation comparisons. So for a lot of investors, these quirks are very challenging to navigate. **Bernard Leong:** But you actually have to uncover it for them. I mean, a lot of public markets is built on comparability and disclosures. Private markets are actually more fragmented and relationship driven. How do we make sure that this information infrastructure becomes more equal and why is it that it's still so lagging behind? **Raghav Kapoor:** We talked about some of the reasons why it's lagged behind. I think the incentives were just not in place. If you think about private markets in this part of the world, by and large, they're less than 15 years old. The first part of that cycle, we're talking post-GFC \[Great Financial Crisis\], the first part of the cycle was capital chasing deals. So the problem has really come to a head in the last five years, and now the incentives are aligned, I guess, to focus a lot more on efficient data disclosure and price discovery. Which is where we come in as that data bridge between private capital and public markets. But the other thing, as I was mentioning, is the regulators and the exchange operators desire more listings. So I don't know if you've ever looked at this, but company formation is a direct function of digitalization and demographics. **Bernard Leong:** That's an interesting point. **Raghav Kapoor:** So if you look at this part of the world, you've got great demographics by and large, maybe barring talent, and you've got excellent digitalization happening everywhere. You know, just look at the SEA economy report that comes out. So company formation here is really robust, but those companies, in order for them to have maximum multiplier effect, need capital and need velocity and exit of that capital. So it's a structural thing that regulators need to emphasize on. So now I think this lag that has happened, we need to catch up. So agencies like us will work hard to bridge that. **Bernard Leong:** It's a good public service that you are doing for the markets because you're trying to make sure that there's not a lack of information. I mean, if you think about it, how would institutions, for example, private equity, venture capital, sovereign wealth funds, even family offices, they seem to be trying to compensate for the lack of reliable data when evaluating deals. So how do you bridge that? **Raghav Kapoor:** Well, before I answer that, you know, there is a certain quip that a lot of people have made around private market investors, especially VC investors, which is they're mostly momentum investors. There's a lot of FOMO \[Fear Of Missing Out\]. They chase momentum. That's changing. Now most private market investors have the opportunity to take a step back and a breather and start evaluating more closely. So now they're looking for the data sets and they're looking for that independent research. So our job is really just back to basics. We've put together a world-class team that has experience in private markets and has experience in business building themselves. We've given them the toolkits that public market analysts have had for a long time. We've also given them a pretty strong AI bench actually. With that we are doing a lot of primary research, putting together a lot of the stuff that only comes from having coffees with people, interviews, meetings, and tire kicking and so on. Apply that to private markets. Take the output of all of that and convert that into structured data sets so that you can start building those time series. Then on the other side, there are nice little swaths of private markets where disclosure actually is pretty good. So if you look at digital banks as an example, they're all private right now, barring one or two in Indonesia. They're all regulated. Because they're regulated, they need to put out certain filings with the regulators. So actually if you are a clever analyst, you can spend quite a lot of time on them and start putting together relative market shares, relative metrics, and create brand new nomenclature, taxonomy, indices, ratings, et cetera. So it's really creative work. It's hard work, but I think it will add a lot of value and you will see a lot of new benchmarks emerge now. It's that sort of intellectual property that PvtIQ really aims to create. **Bernard Leong:** I think it's something like now, even with AI adding in, it's actually even going to be simplifying a lot of that work, but it actually gives the analyst more time to do the correct benchmarking. **Raghav Kapoor:** That's right. There's the way I put it. You end up getting more time to do primary research and the desktop research part gets amped up and simplified a lot through a more tech-heavy bench. **Bernard Leong:** So, you know, late stage private rounds now look a lot more like a public IPO. Do you see a future where private markets are behaving more like public markets in terms of visibility and expectations? Like say for example, let's say a company reaches a certain stage, would it actually be in their interest to come to you and say, "*Hey, PvtIQ, I would like to be closer, just to be prepared myself for going public.*" They start to really work with you to try to make themselves IPO ready, or they will stay at a private stage? Raghav Kapoor: Well, I'll put a question to you. What's the line? What makes it a private market deal versus a public market? Bernard Leong: As a layman, I would think in terms of whether you're being listed. Then basically the shares go into public sale. Then you have retail investors looking at it. It's the kind of disclosures you make. Going public is a pretty big task. There's a lot of things involved: D&O (Directors & Officers) insurance that's involved. So it's not a very simple activity. **Raghav Kapoor:** Every single thing you mentioned, now I can say the same thing and replace the word public with private, you know. More and more, like last night, Databricks announced Series L. You can imagine how many shareholders they have. How many of those are institutional, family office, high net worth, maybe even retail. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, right. SPVs \[Special Investment Vehicles\]. **Raghav Kapoor:** Correct. We've had crowdsourcing platforms alive for a while. We have secondary market exchanges, we have tokenization platforms. So actually what's happening is more and more different types of investors have been investing in private markets over the last 10 years. That's why private markets have done well. So from a shareholder composition perspective, private markets have gone public for a while anyway. They might not be listed on a public exchange, but the shares are trading somewhere, somehow, anywhere. The difference is, and this is quite important, **liquidity without the right information is just volatility. But liquidity with the right information is price discovery.** **Bernard Leong:** Good point. So since you mentioned this, how would you perceive secondary platforms and digital exchanges where you can actually privately trade these private shares? Do you see that as a public event or from your perspective, is it still in the realms of private markets? **Raghav Kapoor:** I think by the time you and I do our next podcast episode, we'll stop talking about private versus public. It'll just be one market. It might be fully tokenized, for instance. So I think the convergence is very real. The labels have not converged, but the mechanisms at the late stage have largely converged. I mean, I would say public markets are starting to behave more like private markets. I'll give you one of my favorite examples. It's an obscure one. If you look at Sweden, for instance, about a decade ago, roughly, the Swedish Stock Exchange did a partnership with NASDAQ and they created a new exchange, which is called First North. Over the course of the next decade, 2000 companies IPO'd on it, but the size of the companies is like the size of an early stage seed stage round in Singapore, you know, $2 million, $5 million, $10 million type companies. **Bernard Leong:** That's similar to AIM in London. Much smaller. **Raghav Kapoor:** Even smaller. But you see what's happened over the course of those 10 years is that some have gone on to become multi-billion dollar companies. Some have disappeared. So actually it's just a listed representation of an early stage VC market. But it's a public exchange. So to me that's like public markets are behaving more like private markets. Private markets want to behave more like public markets. So actually they're just one market. What's not the same is level of research, information, data disclosure. That's the only difference. From infrastructure, sophistication, participation basis, it's kind of the same. So I think it's this information gap that to us is the single biggest opportunity now. We think over the course of the next five to 10 years, there'll be more trading venues, more liquidity providers, more market makers, more investor types, all of that. I think what Smartkarma has always done is be the information flow part of capital markets. So that's the sort of thing that will really change. Now, I think you and I will be sitting here talking about relative valuations of the digital banks in Southeast Asia. That's a conversation no one's been able to have right now. **Bernard Leong:** You're the first person to actually tell me that there's really not much distinction between public and private markets. So what is the one question that you wish more people would ask you about the private market intelligence market where Smartkarma sits in, but they actually don't ask you? **Raghav Kapoor:** Actually, I was thinking about something similar and I was chatting with my colleague. You know, sometimes the mistake that business owners make is they forget to look at any new business opportunity the way they would look at a business you were acquiring or when you were starting out a business completely. So I was asking my colleagues, what's the TAM for private markets now? Research and data. We actually dug deep into this. So I was pleasantly surprised that the TAM for private market research and data already is $8 billion a year. **Bernard Leong:** I can believe that. **Raghav Kapoor:** It's projected to grow roughly 12% a year. **Bernard Leong:** Oh, that's a large growth rate. **Raghav Kapoor:** Yeah, it's pretty solid. So you're gonna be in the low teens, mid-teens by the end of this decade, which is not very far. That's roughly half the TAM for public market research. But then if you look at APAC, what names come to mind? So the question that I'd like more people to ask me is, how can we get there faster? How can we have a big impact? How do we get there faster? Exactly. I think, you know, so many people are talking about AI at the moment and data and so on. I think this is one of the best use cases of all of that brought together. You know, the right intellectual capital, bringing together the right technology partners, bringing together the right distribution partners, and really capture this. A lot of regulators are allowing retail, at least high net worth money to go into private markets through funds directly. Now you saw announcements on that, so capital has all been mobilized, but what's the basis of decision making? That I think needs to be expanded very rapidly. **Bernard Leong:** So I've asked you since episode 60 plus, and now I'm gonna ask you again. I think Smartkarma has come a really long way for you. What does great look like now for Smartkarma and also what you want to establish with PvtIQ in the next few years? How do you define success? **Raghav Kapoor:** Look, there are a few different ways. First of all, we just want to be the intelligence backbone for private markets here. What that means is very deep and wide coverage. Thousands of companies, lots of sectors, indices, benchmarks, comparisons. You know, interview transcripts, all of that, a rich, robust data set. We want great connectivity with private market investors. We want them to feel that we are a credible knowledge partner to them and a supporter to them. Importantly, we want to be the biggest source of help for companies. We feel that private company life can be a lonely journey sometimes. So we want to be very strong pillars of support for the founders of private companies who might not be the best at making investment decks or might not be the best at telling their stories or building an IR program or looking for new forms of capital. Now a lot of that work has been done by boutique advisory firms and so on and so forth. Great. But we want to, as a platform, help them out as much as possible in that journey. We want to work very closely with regulators because, you know, for example, Singapore, you cannot be the biggest wealth market in the world and not have a very vibrant public market. It just can't happen. So all hands on deck. So we're just another safe pair of hands that wants to work with regulators and exchanges as well to help them accomplish their missions, to bring more companies to market. **Bernard Leong:** Probably the next time when we have the conversation, you're gonna tell me there's no more distinction between public and private markets. Hey Raj, many thanks for coming on the show. if I look back from that original conversation to Smartkarma today, from yesterday to today, there's so much change involved. So in closing, I should also ask: any recommendations that have inspired you recently? Raghav Kapoor: You mean in terms of content, books, or something? So I've gotten very audio, which is kind of nice to be on your podcast as well. But for me, I feel one of the podcasts that has really captured my share of time is [In Good Company by Nicolai Tangen](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzYp5zh-CrBUX%5F4WnPCO1jj5v6jMuQjKe&ref=analysepodcast.com). I mean, he is an ex-equity analyst, of course CIO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. He goes and meets top CEOs of large companies, mostly public, but sometimes private as well. I like his style. He's very punchy. It's better than reading a lot of management textbooks because he gets to the heart of the matter, and he asks tough questions of CEOs. One of the interviews that I really enjoyed was him interviewing the founder of TCI, which is a semi-activist hedge fund, one of the most successful hedge funds in Europe. The CIO's name is [Sir Chris Hohn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPNs8DZ0FvE&ref=analysepodcast.com), a really thought-provoking guy. For me, one of the things that I learned a lot was in the world of instant gratification, he's a very long horizon investor. How he drowns out noise, that's very interesting. So he literally just focuses on companies with extremely durable pricing power. Now in private markets, so many companies are pre-revenue. How do you think about pricing power from a private company perspective? That's really exciting and interesting. That's a go-to content source for me at the moment. Of course, your podcast too. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you so much. So how can my audience find you as Smartkarma and also how do they look for PvtIQ as well? **Raghav Kapoor:** So I'll start with PvtIQ. The domain name is pvtiq.com. Quite straightforward. As for finding me, I think LinkedIn, just drop me a message, drop me a connect invite, that's straightforward. I think Smartkarma has got a pretty busy Twitter account as well. You can drop in a message, we respond pretty quickly. So those are the easiest channels. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you so much for coming on, and I'm so glad that we have this conversation here. So of course you can find us anywhere, but of course, take a look at what Smartkarma is doing in the private markets. Many thanks for coming on the show, Raj. We are gonna talk soon. **Raghav Kapoor:** Thanks Bernard. Appreciate it. Cheers. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. 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Karen traces her journey from mechanical engineering at MIT to becoming one of the tech industry's most critical voices, sharing how Silicon Valley's innovation ecosystem has distorted toward self-interest rather than the public good. She unpacks the four characteristics that make AI companies mirror colonial empires: resource extraction through data scraping, labor exploitation of annotation workers, knowledge monopolies where most AI researchers are industry-funded, and quasi-religious quests to build an "AI God." Throughout the conversation, Karen reveals OpenAI's governance dysfunction stemming from its contradictory non-profit-for-profit structure and shares the inspiring story of Chilean water activists who successfully blocked Google's data center from draining their community's freshwater resources. She explains how Sam Altman's plans for 250 gigawatts of data center capacity—equivalent to four dozen New York Cities—would be environmentally catastrophic, while demonstrating how China's export restrictions paradoxically spurred more efficient AI innovation. Last but not least, she argues that empathy-driven journalism remains irreplaceable and calls for global citizens to hold these companies accountable to the broader public interest. --- > "These empires are amassing extraordinary amounts of resources by dispossessing a majority of the world. That includes like the data that they're extracting from people by just scraping it from online or intellectual property that they're taking from artists and creators. Most AI researchers now work for the AI industry and/or are funded in part by the AI industry. Even academics that have stayed within universities are often funded by the AI industry, and the effect that that has had on knowledge production is akin to the effect we would imagine if most climate scientists were bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry. I cannot stress enough how much they genuinely believe that they are on the path to creating something akin to an AI god, and that this is going to have cataclysmic shifts on civilization." - Karen Hao, Author of Empire of AI **Profile: Karen Hao**, Author of Empire of AI and Investigative Journalist ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karendhao/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Website](https://karendhao.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse podcast, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the power of business, technology, and media globally. Today we explore one of the most consequential questions of our era: Who owns the empire of AI? With me is Karen Hao, investigative journalist and author of her very famous book, *Empire of AI*, a sweeping examination of how companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI have become modern empires shaping the future of society, labor, geopolitics, and democracy itself. Karen, welcome to the show. **Karen Hao:** Thank you so much for having me. **Bernard Leong:** I think we crossed paths with a couple of friends, and they all recommended you to me. So I have to thank Grace Shao and Jing Yang for getting you onto the show. Let's start by understanding how your career journey began and what led you from doing mechanical engineering at MIT into journalism and now deep diving into the coverage of artificial intelligence? **Karen Hao:** It was very much by accident that I got into this career path. I studied engineering thinking that I would go work in the tech industry and have a very traditional trajectory in tech. But when I started working in San Francisco at a startup and being part of Silicon Valley, I realized that the Silicon Valley model of innovation incentivizes profitable technologies, but not necessarily technologies in the public interest. That's why I went into tech—I wanted to build tech in the public interest. When I didn't really see a pathway forward within San Francisco, I thought maybe I could just switch to a more publicly aligned industry, and that's when I went into journalism and started covering the tech industry. My first job just so happens that I was assigned to cover artificial intelligence. **Bernard Leong:** I think you've covered the tech industry for years. You've seen both idealism and its dysfunction as well. What are the biggest lessons you've taken away from reporting on AI within Silicon Valley and the culture that shapes AI today? **Karen Hao:** My biggest takeaway is that the initial feelings I had working in tech have largely played out and gotten worse. This industry has become more and more powerful over time and has wielded that power in ways that continue to distort the ecosystem of innovation towards making technologies that primarily benefit them, rather than benefit a broad base of people around the world. One of the important functions of journalism is to hold power to account. Whereas before, I think tech journalism was seen more as similar to science reporting, where primarily the role is for the journalist to explain a technology to a lay audience, now I think of tech journalism as more akin to political reporting where you are trying to hold a core power center of the world accountable to other people. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe we should just get straight into the main subject. I want to start with the core of your book. Why do you propose that companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI can be understood as empires of AI? I think that's the core part of how this book is built. **Karen Hao:** Very related to what we were just talking about, these companies have consolidated an extraordinary amount of not just economic power, but also political power. The way that they're going about consolidating this power is very similar in terms of tactics to what I call the empires of old. There are basically four parallels that I lay out in my book, but you could broadly summarize them as this: these empires are amassing extraordinary amounts of resources by dispossessing a majority of the world. That includes the data that they're extracting from people by just scraping it from online, intellectual property that they're taking from artists and creators, and the economic value that they're extracting from labor that rarely sees proportionate economic value in return. It also involves this ideological quest that undergirds the AI industry's expansion. If you look at what the AI industry does purely from a profit perspective, you actually wouldn't get a full picture of why it's doing what it is, because the business logic is not 100% sound. But there is this kind of quasi-religious quest that also pushes the industry towards building larger and larger models and consuming more and more resources to do so. It's because they believe that they're ultimately trying to build an artificial general intelligence, an AI system—a theoretical AI system—that would be akin to a human or what some people colloquially call an AI God. So the fusion of capitalism and ideology, the extractivism and the expansionism—all of these things are essentially very fundamental characteristics of empire. **Bernard Leong:** The four traits you mentioned are resource extraction, labor exploitation, knowledge monopolies, and this good versus evil narrative, coupled with this obsession about building AGI. Which of these do you think the world still underestimates most when they see these AI companies at work? **Karen Hao:** It's a good question. I would say the third one is probably the knowledge monopolies. Most people don't realize how much AI research as a scientific discipline is no longer truly scientific because most AI researchers now work for the AI industry, or are funded in part by the AI industry. Even academics that have stayed within universities are often funded by the AI industry. The effect that has had on knowledge production is akin to the effect we would imagine if most climate scientists were bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry. We would not get a clear picture of the climate crisis, and we're not getting a clear picture of the true limitations and capabilities of AI, especially these frontier models. This is one of the things that when I speak with policymakers is central to their inability to consult with independent experts to put together sensible policy for holding the companies accountable or even just fact-checking the company's claims. Most of the experts that they can consult are in some way financially tied to the industry. So there's just this echo chamber of self-reinforcing opinions that all lead to people agreeing with what the AI industry says and its agenda. That is a very shaky foundation upon which the industry has been allowed to continue doing what it's doing without really having many people challenge what it says. **Bernard Leong:** To be told, I was working in AI in the Human Genome Project, and when I recently looked at all the LinkedIn profiles of the people I worked with, including myself, none of us escaped working for a tech company. One curious question: what's the one thing you know about the global AI industry now that very few people do, but they should? **Karen Hao:** Different from the previous answer, I guess I would pick the fourth parallel that I draw, which is this ideological aspect. The thing that people don't really pick up on is the degree to which there are what I describe as quasi-religious movements in Silicon Valley. It's really hard sometimes to explain the cultural aspects of San Francisco in particular to someone who's never been there, who's never talked with these people. Because anything that you say to describe these people sounds crazy if you haven't been exposed to their ideology directly. I cannot stress enough how much they genuinely believe that they are on the path to creating something akin to an AI God, and that this is going to have cataclysmic shifts on civilization. They've developed an entire vocabulary around this. When you listen to them talk, if you have not been exposed to their fanaticism in the past, you wouldn't even understand what they're saying because their vocabulary has become so specialized. **Bernard Leong:** It is actually due a lot to science fiction. But science fiction also gives you parallels. Like in Foundation, they end up destroying all the robots, and in Dune, the same thing happened—they destroy all the AI as well. **Karen Hao:** There is definitely a science fiction element to it. A lot of the people who work in the AI industry and are big fanatics of creating AI were huge science fiction buffs growing up. There's this kind of tantalizing premise of getting to be part of now the quest to turn these science fiction dreams into reality. **Bernard Leong:** One thing I picked up from the book, and also looking at all the different AI books I've read, is that the founding of OpenAI—the origin story—is actually quite interesting. Particularly the Sam Altman and Elon Musk dynamics and that unusual non-profit-for-profit structure. How did it create the kind of governance problems that we see today? Also, all the offshoots—the Anthropic team also came from OpenAI and broke out and started their own team, and now we have SSI and all the different companies that evolved from that. **Karen Hao:** At the time, Musk and Altman created OpenAI as a nonprofit specifically because Musk in particular really did not like the fact that Google was dominating AI development and Google was a for-profit. So they thought, let's create something that's the antithesis to Google. After reporting out the whole first 10 years inside story of OpenAI, in hindsight, my guess is that there was not high conviction from Altman in keeping OpenAI a nonprofit even back then. I think he probably saw high utility to starting it as a nonprofit to accumulate some goodwill, create a positive narrative around the org, and also to recruit talent because they couldn't compete with Google on salaries, but they could compete with Google on a sense of mission. That is in fact what allowed them to recruit Ilya Sutskever, who became the chief scientist of OpenAI and was the first major important hire for the company. But of course, within a very short amount of time, OpenAI decided they wanted to pursue a path of AI development that was very capital intensive. They couldn't retain a pure nonprofit, so they created this for-profit arm within the nonprofit, and that is the heart of all of the governance challenges that OpenAI then faced. They recruited some people on the basis that OpenAI is a nonprofit and they recruited other people on the basis that OpenAI is a for-profit. It's one of the only organizations I've ever covered where there's a fundamental confusion among employees about what the organization actually is—is it mission driven or is it profit driven? Because of that clash, there are different factions within the company that believed in one or the other, and they would have these really big fights over whether a decision about building this technology or that technology, deploying it faster or slower, were tied up in their philosophical differences about what they believed OpenAI was. Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives because they disagreed on this fundamental premise. **Bernard Leong:** I guess this was one of the aspects. Two years back we had that firing of Sam Altman, which was also quite dramatic in tech history. From how you observe it and looking backwards now two years later, what do you think was the board's decision then? Does it actually, on hindsight, if everything had played out then versus today, reveal how the governance of AI has actually now accelerated more as compared to it was within control at that point in time? Or maybe all along this whole AI train was just going to go in the trajectory it should have been? **Karen Hao:** I don't think the board makeup at that time was in any way effectively holding the company accountable. Clearly it did not, because when it tried to hold the company accountable, it failed. I think part of it is because inherently even that board was acting in a very anti-democratic way. They weren't broadly consulting lots of different stakeholders about the direction of the company. They were deciding amongst themselves what the direction of the company should be, just in the same way that OpenAI's current executives are deciding amongst themselves without actually consulting with the public about what the direction of OpenAI should be. It's just that each group has a different idea of what the direction should be. Basically what happened was that the board was much more leaning towards the doomer ideology, which—part of these quasi-religious movements—believes that AGI is imminent and the cataclysmic shift that arises will potentially be devastating to humanity. OpenAI's actions at the time were more boomer leaning, which is this belief that the AGI, the cataclysmic shift that comes, will be extremely utopic. So they clashed. The board was deeply concerned about the direction that Altman was taking the organization, and they were also deeply concerned about feedback that they were getting from Altman himself or about Altman himself from his senior lieutenants who were flagging that they felt that he had a pattern of abusive behavior, of manipulative tactics, of being untrustworthy. That is what led them to decide that they should oust him. But you could say that OpenAI has since then accelerated more because the board is no longer philosophically opposed to the CEO and executives. The board are now pointing in the direction of boomer, just pedal to the metal, accelerate the expansion of this technology as quickly as possible. But in terms of the governance of the org, I don't think we were in a better state before than we are now. All of it was not a good robust setup for governing one of the most consequential technologies of this era. **Bernard Leong:** Now it's a lot more reviewed with the recent deposition from Ilya during the xAI-OpenAI trial. You also have some information from The Information which recently talked about Dario almost coming back to take it over and all that. Had that alternative history happened, we would be really interesting to see what the alternate universe looked like. But let me ask this question: given that all the founders now left OpenAI, or even part of the founding team of OpenAI have now created their own labs to pursue their own idealized versions of what AI should be, are we witnessing more fragmentation or more consolidation of AI power amongst all these players? **Karen Hao:** We're definitely seeing more fragmentation in terms of the number of competitors that there are. It is not a coincidence that every single billionaire has an AI startup. I think this is evidence number one for realizing that the AI race is driven in large part by ego. Each billionaire wants to make AI in their own image and has a story that they tell themselves and the public about why their version of AI is the more superior version as compared to all of the other billionaires' versions of AI. But I said fragmented, but I think it would be a mistake for people to view this as somehow power being distributed more evenly across the broader public, because of course it's still all elites that are consolidating their approach to AI. **Bernard Leong:** It's actually maybe concentrated between two countries, which I didn't mention—China and the U.S. There is this point of view that U.S. policymakers and even all the American AI builders use China as the rhetorical shoe to resist regulation. I don't know how much your understanding of the China AI ecosystem is. How do you compare and contrast between the U.S. and the China AI ecosystems from your perspective, just seeing how things played out publicly so far? **Karen Hao:** I'm definitely not an expert on the China AI ecosystem, and I would direct people once again to Grace and Jing's reporting. They're my go-to sources as well. But I think broadly, just from reading some of their reporting and watching the movements in the industry, I would say that the biggest difference that has happened this year is that because for the last few years, China did not have access to cutting-edge computer chips because of U.S. export controls, many Chinese companies ended up just taking a different path from Silicon Valley where they are innovating around the constraints. Instead of trying to just scale, scale, scale and build larger models based on the amount of computational resources they have, they innovated around and found ways to do it much more efficiently. That is what's leading to a blossoming of a lot of different, more efficient models that they are open sourcing. This has led companies in the U.S. as well as academics in the U.S. to actually increasingly turn to Chinese open source AI models instead of American closed source ones, which has been one of the most fascinating trends that's happened. **Bernard Leong:** It's quite interesting to see Anthropic's CEO talking about Qwen as the model that they use. He's not usually given the OpenAI open models. Isn't that ironic from that point of view? **Karen Hao:** It's super ironic. I think there's this really big narrative in the U.S. and Europe right now—I don't know if this is also true in Asia—that regulation is antithetical to innovation. Yet this case study shows that with the right regulation you can spur enormous amounts of innovation. Because when the U.S. placed export controls on these Chinese companies, that was a form of regulation that hindered their ability to take the same path as Silicon Valley, and then within that pressure cooker, they figured out a way around it. It's just incredibly funny how things panned out this way. **Bernard Leong:** I find it ironic because the most controlled environment is open-sourcing it, and the most democratic environment is trying to control it. So it seems like they're doing what each other don't want each other to do. But for a global audience, what are the biggest misconceptions governments have when they think about how AI is developed, deployed, and monetized? **Karen Hao:** A common misconception that I've heard is people believing that American companies somehow have American values. They think that Silicon Valley, because it is in the U.S., which is on paper a democracy, that somehow these companies are also ultimately trying to build democratic AI. OpenAI perpetuates this narrative by saying in company blog posts that they want to bring democratic AI to countries around the world. This is how they're courting a lot of governments. What I'm trying to help people realize in part through the book is that actually Silicon Valley should not be thought of as part of American democracy. It is its own power center with its own political agenda that is not in line with the American political agenda most of the time. It's actually an inherently very anti-democratic place, which is why you see them really trying to exert more and more control and develop closed source models rather than the open source approach. I think if policymakers understood that more—that they are ultimately interfacing with companies that have their own ideological bent—that would lead to more sound understanding of who they are actually interacting with. **Bernard Leong:** I thought one of the most striking parts of your book, which I read and use in a class I teach on generative AI at the university here in Singapore, is the part about the real AI supply chain. We talk about the annotation workers, the content moderators, the communities that are hosting data centers. I do tell one of those stories: the AI that you are using shouldn't be taken for granted because there are a lot of people who put blood, sweat, and tears into it. What does that actually teach you about the things that Silicon Valley—the AI companies—consistently overlook? **Karen Hao:** I don't know if it's overlooked more than just deprioritized, or they do not care about, or are negligent of. It's the fact that they're perfectly comfortable with the degree to which their technologies are built on labor exploitation and environmental extraction. There's not any confusion among employees about the fact that this happens. It's more just that they justify it because they use a utilitarian, "the ends justify the means" kind of logic, where they think that if they're ultimately on the path to AGI, then it doesn't really matter what harms are inflicted along the way. That is the ruthlessness of the empire. **Bernard Leong:** Then of course the story of the Chilean water activists that resisted a data center. What are the things that the global audience or maybe other parts of the world can learn from this experience as well? I thought it was quite an interesting story to talk about. **Karen Hao:** There's this group of Chilean water activists called ModaCat that I profile in the book. In 2019, they realized that there was a Google data center being proposed within their community that could use freshwater resources to cool the facility. When they started looking into the numbers, they were completely alarmed by the degree to which this facility could take up their water resources at a time when Chile was suffering a historic drought. So they just decided not to accept the project and they essentially protested in every form possible. They protested in the streets by canvassing their neighbors. They protested to local politicians and really applied a lot of pressure to local politicians to do something to stop the project. They were so effective at raising the alarm around this particular facility that it escalated all the way to Google Mountain View, which then sent representatives to speak with the communities, and then escalated all the way to the Chilean national government where the government started thinking about how do we actually make sure that other data center facilities that come into our country do not end up engaging in this kind of extraction. The outcome, which is still ongoing, is that thus far Google has agreed with the community that they're not going to use freshwater for cooling the facility anymore, which is a major win. Also, the Chilean government has created this roundtable to consult with residents and activists for all future data center projects to establish a more democratic governance structure around these projects. To me, this was such an inspiring story of how to actually hold these companies accountable. You could say that these Chilean water activists have the least amount of power in the global world order. They are in a developing country and in an impoverished neighborhood within that developing country. They all work on a volunteer basis, they don't have any funding, and yet they're going up against one of the most powerful companies in the world from the most powerful nation in the world. They were still able to significantly establish guardrails around that company's activities as well as future activities to come. That is the kind of spirit that I think everyone, no matter where you sit in society, needs to have to hold these companies and technology development accountable to the broader global public. Everyone should feel that they have agency and voice to push back when these companies do things, whether in their local community or their country or their broader global community, that they don't actually agree with. If we all did what the Chilean water activists did, I think we would get to a much better place with technology development where we see the innovation ecosystem bend more towards the public interest. **Bernard Leong:** There are similar cases that just happened in the last couple months in the U.S. There was a Microsoft and a Google data center project that was blocked by local communities. I think we all know, even as AI people ourselves, that the environmental demands of AI—specifically energy, water, and compute—are rarely part of that conversation. We talk about it, but people don't realize how important it is. How severe are these externalities and what kind of trajectory are we now on in terms of the natural resource side that's inflicted by where AI is going? **Karen Hao:** When I wrote the book, the numbers that I have in my book were based on reporting that had come out at that time that OpenAI was considering building supercomputers that could eventually, within a few years, be powered by five gigawatts. At that time, five gigawatts is almost equivalent to the average power demand of New York City. So they were talking about this one facility that could take the power demand of this huge metropolis. That in and of itself was already shocking. Now fast forward a year and Altman is talking about building 250 gigawatts of data center capacity, which he estimates could cost $10 trillion. That is now four dozen New York cities of power, because New York is 5.5 gigawatts average power demand. If we actually follow through with what the AI industry wants—and that's just one CEO, one company—then think about all of the other companies that would then try to compete to build similar degrees of infrastructure. That would be incredibly environmentally devastating because the energy that would be used to power those facilities will largely come from fossil fuels around the world since there is not enough nuclear capacity. We wouldn't be able to build the nuclear capacity fast enough, and renewable energies are just not sufficient for running these facilities 24/7\. That would be huge amounts of emissions that go into the atmosphere as well as huge amounts of pollutants that go into people's air and water and lead to an exacerbation of existing public health crises. We cannot allow, we cannot afford to allow this to pass. **Bernard Leong:** But then also, do you feel that now in terms of the frontier model research, it's also slowly reaching some kind of asymptote ceiling and maybe shifting towards products? What does that really mean for AI development in the next five years then? **Karen Hao:** What we've seen is specifically scaling the base model has seen it approach an asymptote. But the companies are now shifting to continuing to scale the inference compute, and that hasn't approached an asymptote yet in terms of how Silicon Valley wants to approach things. Just to highlight again, even though we've already talked about this, this scaling is actually completely scientifically and technically unnecessary because that's why we've seen Chinese companies be able to do the same exact thing with significantly less compute resources. But from Silicon Valley's perspective, this is what they know. This is how they've been gaining over the last few years. It is the most intellectually lazy yet most time-guaranteed way of achieving the kinds of gains that they hope to achieve, at least it seems for now. So they're just going to continue pursuing that. That's why even though we've seen scaling base models reach an asymptote, Altman is still talking about building $10 trillion of data centers. It's because the overall compute scaling has not reached its end from Silicon Valley's perspective. **Bernard Leong:** But then there's also the problem with evaluation. Not all AI evaluation is accurate because we don't know what the training data is. Whether the open source or closed source model, they don't review their training data. One of the questions even I have myself is: what should policymakers or even the public understand about the limits of even the current AI benchmarks? Is there a benchmark actually? **Karen Hao:** What they should understand is that benchmarks are extremely faulty, in part because even determining what benchmark you should use to measure a model is more art than science. Why do we decide to measure some model's capabilities on the LSAT versus the AP biology exam versus a game versus complex logic puzzles? That's why benchmarks are constantly shifting again and again in ways that are not exactly helping improve public clarity. But the other aspect which you were getting at is that we literally don't know what is being put into the models, and therefore any benchmark measuring the capabilities—the results—cannot be relied upon because literally the essence of the science of deep learning is that you need to know what goes in to know whether the capabilities on the way out are actually learned capabilities or just memorization and regurgitation of the training data. All of the benchmarks of closed source models are effectively useless. **Bernard Leong:** If I were to ask you to look from the other side and provide an argument that is in favor of AI development, not just for the sake of trying to steelman them, what would the argument be? If there's a powerful AI advancement, what would be your argument for AI advancement? **Karen Hao:** For scaling? Their best argument is that this is an approach that has worked, that is the most predictable because it follows scaling laws. When you are able to advance AI based on certain types of observable measures, then you can know roughly in advance how capabilities might shift and change. That in and of itself is helpful to figure out what outcomes—societal or economic or whatever—might come of the next generation of models. The other one being that if AGI is going to arrive at the end of this path, then it's all going to be worth it. So I think there are multiple different arguments and tactics that they usually take to justify why they're doing this thing. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about your book, Empire of AI, but they don't? **Karen Hao:** I feel like most of the questions—I've been surprised by the diversity of questions that I've been asked about the book. I feel like I've often covered pretty much every aspect of the book. But one of the things that I don't cover as often is the journalistic process that went into producing the book. **Bernard Leong:** So if I ask you what's the journalistic process that produced the book, can you talk about it now? **Karen Hao:** I think this is part of also why I'm not very bullish on the idea that AI is ultimately going to take away a ton of jobs and somehow produce the same quality of those jobs, especially when it comes to information processing. Some people say, "Well, journalism is ultimately information processing, so why are we not automating journalism away?" I think the core thing about my reporting process was that the number one tool for me to connect to, to ultimately get all of these details and find all these stories, was empathy. It required me traveling to a lot of different places and sitting with people for long amounts of time to slowly give them a listening ear and to slowly tease out all of the different lived experiences that they had as part of grappling with the AI industry. I don't think that can be underestimated. Some of the Kenyan workers, for example—I spent a week in Kenya and my interviews with these workers were hours and hours long, sometimes the entire day. With OpenAI researchers, there were many who sat with me for 10 hours to recount all of the different things that had happened during their time at the company. It was ultimately because I took the time to ask them, to build a connection with them, and then to listen and just keep listening and listening, and give them that sense that they finally were able to talk about something that was on their mind and that they had lived through. I hope that ultimately the book is not just the content—not just a celebration of the importance of centering people and centering humanity—but also that the process was as well. **Bernard Leong:** I think of the book as a reflection of where the acceleration goes and some of the human costs that it bears, and what we need to do to address the human cost. That's my view after reading the book. Even though I'm in the AI space myself as an entrepreneur and even teaching it, I also bear those costs in mind to know that in order for us to reach this, these are the costs that we have to bear. But maybe my last and traditional closing question: what does success look like for you with your book, Empire of AI? **Karen Hao:** Sparking that conversation that you just mentioned. Helping people realize that there is another side to the equation that is often not talked about. Hopefully once we have all of the costs and benefits—a more nuanced picture of them—then we can really map out how do we make sure that AI can broadly benefit the global public rather than just a tiny few. **Bernard Leong:** That's a good place to end. Karen, many thanks for coming on for the conversation. I truly enjoyed your book because it actually took me an entire weekend to think through some of the things and even brought to some of the things I teach in the university so that people understand that all these advances that brought about AI—just because you can summarize and generate a picture doesn't mean it doesn't come with actual human cost. In closing, I have two questions for you. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Karen Hao:** I really love the book [Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hope-Dark-Untold-Histories-Possibilities/dp/1608465764?ref=analysepodcast.com), which most people would on the surface think that it's not related to my book, but it really is about how to continue having human agency in a world that often feels like it's trying to extract that agency away and how to build progressive movements that lead to social progress, not just technological progress. I really enjoy reading Brian Merchant's Substack [Blood in the Machine](https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), as well as this newsletter from Latin America that's in Spanish called [La Neta](https://nataliavc.substack.com/). It's a Latin American perspective on AI development. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you and your book and your ongoing work? **Karen Hao:** I'm on [Twitter](https://x.com/%5FKarenHao?ref=analysepodcast.com), [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/karenhao.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karendhao/?ref=analysepodcast.com). That's where I post all of my work. I have a website, [karendhao.com](https://karendhao.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) or [empireofai.com](https://karendhao.com/empire?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find us on any of the podcast distribution channels and subscribe to us at AnalyseAsia.com. Karen, many thanks for having this conversation and I'm truly glad to be able to talk to the author of the book that I've enjoyed reading. Thank you very much. **Karen Hao:** Thank you so much, Bernard. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He shares his journey from the BBC to nearly 14 years at Meta, where he built policy teams from the ground up to lead Meta's Asia Pacific strategy. Simon unpacks Meta's open source philosophy behind the ILAMA models, explaining how openness accelerates innovation through community scrutiny, provides governments greater control over sensitive data, and enables local developers to fine-tune models for languages like Korean, Vietnamese, and Bahasa Indonesia. He highlights compelling use cases across the region—from AISee helping the visually impaired navigate Singapore to JAMSTEC advancing scientific discovery in Japan and AIM Intelligence strengthening AI safety in Korea. Looking ahead, Simon reveals why the future of AI isn't on our phones but in wearables like AI-enabled glasses that create always-on assistants seeing what we see and hearing what we hear, enabling us to be more present in the world while Meta supercharges its family of apps serving billions globally. Last but not least he shares what great looks like for Meta in the Asia Pacific on open source AI. --- > "We believe that openness is actually a really key feature of accelerating innovation because it fosters inclusion, it builds trust, and it ensures that the benefits of AI are more evenly distributed around the world.The openness of models allows other people to, as they were, push and pull and prod at the models at a fundamental level in order to see where might the problems be. And so that kind of community, the developer community scrutiny around open source is fundamental to spotting issues and addressing them quickly.Actually, the story of AI is about yes... that is important. The investments that companies like Meta and others are making is important, but actually, it's really about local ownership and local innovation." - **Simon Milner** **Profile:** Simon Milner, Vice President of Public Policy for Asia Pacific at Meta ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-milner-4790205/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to Analyse, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the powers of business, technology, and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and with me today is Simon Milner, Vice President of Public Policy for Asia Pacific at Meta. As Asia rises in the global AI conversation, we want to explore Meta's vision for open source AI, the [ILAMA incubator's recent launch in Singapore](https://www.edb.gov.sg/en/about-edb/media-releases-publications/meta-boosts-ai-innovation-in-singapore-with-llama-demo-day.html?ref=analysepodcast.com), and what openness might shape up the future of AI policy, innovation and governance across the region. So, Simon, welcome to the show. **Simon Milner:** Thanks very much, Bernard. It's a real pleasure to be with you and your listeners. **Bernard Leong:** Before we begin, I also would like to know my guests better. Can you share how your journey in public policy led to your current role at Meta? **Simon Milner:** This is a bit of a long story because I am so old compared to probably a lot of the other people that you interview. But I guess there were three big companies that have been important to me in my career. The first was the BBC, which I think everybody knows. The other is BT, which is an old British telecoms company. Then I joined Facebook almost 14 years ago, and obviously we became Meta more recently. One thing I've done, particularly in this company, is build teams because when I joined this company, we were only 3,000 people and now we are many tens of thousands of people. I've been there through this journey and our policy team has also grown. For instance, I grew the first team in the company to handle policy relationships for the Middle East and Africa. It wasn't a part of the world I knew well, but I did know the company well. Then when I moved to this region to live and work in Singapore in 2018, I built our team—effectively built most of our team for the Asia Pacific region. So that's how I got here. I think one thing I've learned in my career is it's pretty important when opportunities come along that yes, of course every career opportunity involves risk, but unless you take risk, you will never move. So taking, not just anything that comes along, but taking relatively risky opportunities has been part of what my career has been about. **Bernard Leong:** I think you have worked across different markets starting from the United Kingdom, Europe, and now Asia Pacific, Middle East as well. What are some of the defining lessons in navigating technology policy across maybe very diverse regulatory landscapes? **Simon Milner:** Great question. Look, one thing I would say is actually the policy issues that I'm typically—myself and my team and colleagues—are talking with policy makers about are pretty much the same everywhere. I mean, if you think about the issues that we're going to be discussing during the course of this podcast, those are the issues that technology-focused policy makers are asking Meta and other companies about around the globe, whether they're in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, or here in Asia Pacific. I think in terms of what I've learned, it is really important to have empathy for policy makers. These are hard jobs, right? Trying to figure out what's the best way of enabling our people and our economy and our society to get the best out of technology whilst also managing the downside risk is not easy. There's no template. So we need to be empathetic towards policy makers. I think it's really important to be excited about the technology and the products that you're building and about the benefits they can bring. Frankly, if you're not excited about them, then you shouldn't be working in this space. I mean, because if you are not excited, how can you possibly get other people excited? The third thing I'd say is it's really important to turn up. So when people are talking about your company or the technologies or the products that you are building, if you are not in the room, how can you ensure that that conversation's informed? So I think a big part of what I've learned is even if you're going to get a hard time, people are going to think, well, you know, you've shown up here, therefore I'm going to have a real go at you. At least you can try to inform the conversation and show empathy for the people you are engaging with. Those are some of the things I've learned over the years. **Bernard Leong:** That's really great, and I think you're very excited about the intersection between AI policy and economic development in Asia. I can hear it from your enthusiasm, but I just want to ask, for youngsters out there who are listening to this podcast, what will be the core lessons of your career journey you can share with the audience? **Simon Milner:** Well, I've shared some of them. One thing is you can never quite know what's going to come along. When I reflect on my career, and I expect you may be the same, Bernard and many of the other people that you interview, there's probably nobody who has been able to say, all right, when I was 20, this is what I was going to do for the next 30 years. Right? In my case, nearly 40 years. I didn't know I was going to go work at the BBC when I was an academic like you are, working at the London School of Economics. I didn't expect to end up at the BBC. I certainly thought when I left the BBC I would never work for a more important organization. I now think I do work for a more important organization in terms of the sheer number of people that use Meta services. You know, many times the number of people that consume the BBC. Doesn't mean the BBC is not important. Of course it is. But Meta, I would suggest, is more important to more people more of the time in more countries. Frankly, the range of policy issues that we therefore have to handle as a policy team are much greater and frankly have more significance across quite a range of sectors and cultures and economies. So take opportunities and don't expect the plan that you have when, say, you're 20 is going to play out quite the way it was. Be open to opportunities and recognize that some things may not work out. But if you don't try them, you'll never know. **Bernard Leong:** Great career advice. So we get to the main track of the day, which is talking about Meta's open source AI strategy. I think open source AI is core to Meta's strategy. As a university lecturer teaching large language models, the [ILAMA models](https://www.llama.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) are one of the most important ones. Of course, in our daily lives we're either using Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram to communicate with friends across. So maybe to start off, let's talk about the AI strategy. What does openness mean to Meta, and why is it a deliberate choice in a landscape that is actually currently shaped a lot by the closed models out there? **Simon Milner:** I mean, look, there's a lot to unpack here, and I know we're going to talk further about this. So let me just try and frame it for you. We believe that openness is actually a really key feature of accelerating innovation because it fosters inclusion, it builds trust, and it ensures that the benefits of AI are more evenly distributed around the world. So this is a commitment that we brought not just to AI, but to a number of different technologies that we built over the years, including, for instance, around infrastructure and data centers. It's a very deliberate choice to try to democratize access to AI and really to drive positive impact at scale. So it's about making our really very advanced AI models and tools and research widely accessible to developers, to businesses and communities. When we started our original research foundation more than 10 years ago, FAIR, you can see that over the years they have produced hundreds, if not thousands of different research papers and models and all kinds of different technologies which have been open. As you know, as an academic, that's a big part of also the academic environment because how do you collectively learn if you're not sharing your research. So we think it's fundamental, it's a deliberate choice to, as I say, accelerate innovation and provide equitable access to build trust, transparency, and security. Also to help to drive global standards and responsible development about AI. I might also say it's not just Meta. I know you said it's a world built around closed models, but actually there are other companies that have open source models and some of the companies that we associate with being closed have also produced open source versions of their models. So I think it's actually much more of a mosaic now than it was perhaps a year ago. So we're pleased about that. We certainly don't want to be the only company that's got open source models. So I think now there's generally accepted that this is a very important part of the AI landscape in these still relatively early years of its development. **Bernard Leong:** I think it's actually because Meta started the trend of having these committed to the open models and it actually pushes, like, for example, OpenAI to actually recently release their open weight models. Not truly open, but also the Chinese AI companies also doing the same. I think one interesting thing, of course, everybody has recently known that [Meta SuperIntelligence team](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta%5FSuperintelligence%5FLabs?ref=analysepodcast.com) made big news by bringing very influential AI leaders like Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman, who basically signalled the acceleration of your AI ambitions. I think one question I have is how do we now think about the evolution of Meta's open source AI strategy in light of these new additions? What kind of shifts or refinements do you see in taking this openness forward that's implemented going forward? **Simon Milner:** Look, I mean, I appreciate that you've seen that and others have seen that as a really pretty significant additional investment by Meta and the creation of Meta's SuperIntelligence. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. And also Mark's open article on [personal intelligence](https://www.meta.com/superintelligence/?srsltid=AfmBOooUM-5zW-B3eMqcuHYEzgyJBizmrsgV6mw9H0B8LTpM9A8LOLcN&ref=analysepodcast.com) article as well. **Simon Milner:** Yes. So there's a lot there that demonstrates what we're about is this core focus on building the best AI models and products. That's what we're about. As is typically the case in a company like ours where we are really at the bleeding edge of innovation, then of course we're looking for the best talent. We are sometimes reshaping the way that talent works within the company. We are not standing on, well, we've always had this structure, we're going to keep it. Mark has always shown as a very future-focused CEO, and I've worked for him all my time in this company. I've seen it time and again—Mark is looking much further ahead than anybody else that works for him. Right? So this is part of that. Part of that is about who we hire and who we put in charge of things. But at the heart of it is this sense of, look, we want to build the best models and the best products that enable us to fulfil our ambition to bring the benefits of these technologies to the world and to kind everybody. That means both incorporating the value, incorporating these into our existing family of apps, really supercharging the benefits that those apps bring to individuals, to communities, to small businesses, to whole economies and into the world, but then also looking to build wholly new products. I don't know what's coming. Right. I'm excited about what's coming because I can see that with Mark, he's continued to focus on having the best possible teams and talent and structure within the company to enable people to do their best work. Certainly, my experience of working in this company is we have this—one of our ambitions is that people do the best work of their career here. So when you hire the best people who've already done amazing work in their career to come and work here, you can be really sure that what they produce will be world-changing. So I'm excited about what's to come. But just to be clear, it builds on the success of the company, right? This doesn't come out of fresh air. So that's what we're really about in hiring great talent. **Bernard Leong:** So I should focus more on thinking from a policy perspective. What are the key differences now in thinking about innovation, safety, and control between open source and closed large language models given the landscape out there? **Simon Milner:** Sure. Thanks, Bernard and I appreciate you coming back to my field. I'm the policy guy. I'm not a product leader or an engineer. So when we talk about—but equally, look, one of the reasons why I'm doing my job as opposed to those people is I also can speak in the language of policy makers because most policy makers are also not deep—you know, many of them, some of them are technologically experienced. Many of them are not, and they're generalists, like me. So it's about also interpreting between the deep product and engineering and AI specialists for them. So, look, the way we explain this, and I think we've been reasonably successful given where we are now in the policy discussion, is what open source models allow on the innovation side is things to be driven faster because more people, not just the people inside the company that are employed by Meta, but many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who then use those open source models can help to make them better. Because, so the, their very openness and the transparency around that is a positive thing from an innovation perspective. Whereas closed models, to some extent, can limit innovation because the only people who work on them are the people employed in that company. On safety, the openness of models allows other people to push and pull and probe the models at a very, at a fundamental level in order to see where might the problems be. So that kind of community, the developer community scrutiny around open source is fundamental to our kind of addressing, spotting issues and addressing them quickly, whereas closed models might rely more on internal processes within the company. Then when it comes to control, one of the main things we've seen, particularly from governments about why they have been enthusiastic about open source is you can take that model and deploy it on your technology, on your systems. You do not have to keep doing callbacks to the original company owning the closed model. So that openness gives much more control to whoever wants to use it. That's particularly attractive for governments, for instance, who may be dealing with very sensitive citizens' data, say in a health setting or education setting. All kinds of reasons why they might want to do that. So we see some real benefits in open models and I'd say in open source models. I've seen that in my dialogue over the last couple of years, and my team's dialogue with policy makers across the Asia Pacific region. Many examples of that in practice. **Bernard Leong:** Then I think one question is usually there are two sides of it. There are also critics who argue that open source large language models could accelerate misuse or proliferation of unsafe AIs. I think there's no right or wrong here, but maybe from your viewpoint, how do you address criticisms of such nature? **Simon Milner:** I would say those were particularly vociferous, loud criticisms two years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, when really the world was becoming very interested in this whole question about AI, the growth of AI and open source versus closed and safety issues. There were a lot of doomsayers who were saying, well, we clearly got to regulate open source models much harder because there's greater risk. That has not proved to be the case. We have not seen, I would say, really extensive or well-evidenced examples of that being true or mass. It's also important to note that closed models can and have been compromised by bad actors as well. What crowdsource security expertise enables, which is what you get with open source models, that means that you can identify security issues much more quickly. Whereas in closed models that may, they'll be the case. Our experience, and this is the key thing, I think our experience is that the catastrophes, the doomsayers were wrong so far. That's not been, that's not how things have played out. Certainly in respect of Meta's Llama models. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting thing is I teach some of the AI governance and of course we usually take out different kinds of responsible AI documents: Meta's [Responsible AI document](https://ai.meta.com/static-resource/responsible-use-guide/?ref=analysepodcast.com), one of them, I'm quite curious to hear from you from the horse's mouth. What are the governance mechanisms or guardrails that can make actually open source AI both safe and sustainable from your perspective? **Simon Milner:** I'm happy to give you my perspective, but I would also love to hear yours, but I mean, you're teaching this. I'd love to, it's always good to get feedback and you're a real expert, so maybe I'll give you my perspective and then— **Bernard Leong:** That one I can share, but what I think— **Simon Milner:** I think the great thing about a podcast conversation is it's a conversation, right? So I'd love to hear yours. Look, in terms of some of the mechanisms that we have in place and the kind of guardrails, we're pretty careful about release. We only kind of release our open source models where we're confident in their quality and that we can deliver them in a way which is valuable for people. So one of our highest priorities is to ensure that they meet the highest standards for safety and reliability before we consider them for open release. We build in safeguards. Whether that's about red teaming, feedback tools, enhanced transparency within the models themselves. Ongoing collaboration, as I talked about in response to other questions, is an important part of this. It's not just kind of release a model and then get on with the next one. Certainly one thing with my team. So I have a team of people who are based right across the Asia Pacific region. We do a number of different events with developers and governments and academics on our models and ask them to tell us about their experience of using our products. That's incredibly valuable in telling us about things that they see where we might have some vulnerabilities. So overall it's about transparency, accountability, and community engagement. As, you know, genuine kind of ways in which we provide governance and guardrails around our open source models as we release. What's your experience? **Bernard Leong:** My experience with Llama's responsible AI document—I think the transparency piece is a key and important part from my viewpoint when I explain it to maybe, sometimes I teach government leaders and I teach business leaders. The ability to decipher AI as a black box is relatively important to them. What are the guardrails to deal with the inputs and the outputs like securing, securing the information and the call, but innovate around the edges, I think where everybody is not sure is how sophisticated these models are. So I think everybody has very varying degrees of seeing the model. I think by actually, even just by laying out the lay of the land, just comparing between different, how different companies think about the responsible AI policy. My general reaction from my students would be like, oh, you mean they actually have documents like this? So I find they're very surprised, right? What usually happens, it's just a question of education. Then I say, before you put any judgment on the company and their AI policy, maybe you should take a look at how they explain their responsible AI policy. That will be a more fruitful conversation as you have also done with communities who use Llama to do with open source efforts. Given the source code has been open source and also the weights, it gives a lot of confidence for people to know exactly what kind of AI model they're using. That's something that I think has actually benefited across different regions given the last two years of accelerated AI development that I've seen. **Simon Milner:** That's terrific. I really appreciate you explaining that. Again, to me, that's great feedback on these things. I would say as well, look, we've been around quite a while as a company. We're, you know, 20 years old last year. We've had to learn a lot about what it means to provide services to billions of people around the world and to enable them to communicate. So we've learned a lot about how do you—what should be the standards that you apply in these different communities, and then how do you enforce those standards? AI has been a very important part of that, not about setting the standards, about the enforcement. So we have, I'd say as a company, we've learned a lot about the importance of transparency, about explaining things and about recognizing there's a kind of whole of society or a whole of AI community approach that's required. We have absolutely some really core responsibilities as a company providing models and products. But it's not just going to be Meta—how well, how hard we try, you know, somebody could still try to create harm or cause abuse. So it is about working with others, working with developers, working with governments, thinking about what's the right framework of regulation and just being open-minded and open in our approach to that. So some of the things that you've described come from our history as a company and what we've learned from that. Some come from looking at other companies and seeing how are they doing it. So a lot of the time when we're talking about new issues within the AI world, we'll say, well, how are the other companies approaching this? So the fact that there is actually movement around the companies, people who have, may have worked at OpenAI come have worked here and vice versa, et cetera. That's also a good thing. We learn from each other. We're all kept trying to grapple with the same problems. Moving collectively together and working with governments on some of these issues, I think is tremendously important just as it's been in the previous age of technology development that we've been part of. **Bernard Leong:** Do you have any like examples of how like open models like Llama are being adopted by, say, startups or developers in Asia? I'm sure you speak to some of the community and get their points of view on how they're using the technology. Do you have any stories to share? **Simon Milner:** I do. I mean, look, one thing that I think it's incredibly exciting about being based in Singapore and working across the vast and diverse APAC region is generally the incredible enthusiasm that most people I meet have for new technology and innovation. That includes policy makers, that includes people running small businesses. That includes, for want of a better phrase, ordinary people who are just using our products. This is a part of the world where generally people will only assume things might not be great if they've got some good evidence for it. Whereas there's certainly some other parts of the world that are generally a bit more ludic, I would say, in their approach towards regulation. So to give you some examples, we see in Singapore, where you and I both are, there's an organization called [AiSee which is using open source AI to help blind](https://www.meta.com/apac/innovation-hub/open-source-ai/?srsltid=AfmBOoqUe9OifRueah67%5Fdp6r8-J-irJnhi2N-Qz3YNujlpjhkBW4gKi&ref=analysepodcast.com) and visually impaired people navigate the world with greater confidence. Indeed, this is an area I think we're going to talk a bit more later about some of the hardware that people will use AI in. We believe that our wearables, but we've seen a number of examples of our wearables being used by people who are visually impaired to help them see the world better. In Japan there's an organization called [JAMstec which is using open source models to advance scientific discovery and environmental research](https://www.meta.com/apac/innovation-hub/jamstec/?srsltid=AfmBOoofzv7i5KHyZyOULyVq2CCAeeFJwkr%5F1qHvRe8tCPIRyHnS1GnA&ref=analysepodcast.com). In Korea, where I was recently at the APEC conference, there's an organization called [AIM Intelligence](https://www.meta.com/apac/innovation-hub/aim-intelligence/?srsltid=AfmBOor%5FEl7jhlF1PO9cJruy92rwUVX4dV1ShSZqgtpL0Q5yF1K6MU7N&ref=analysepodcast.com) which is using open source AI to make technology safer and more culturally aware. So as you can imagine, in a country like Korea where there's a unique language, fine-tuning models for the Korean language to address sensitive topics and strengthening AI safety is really hard and we see AIM Intelligence doing that. So that's just three examples. We've got many others that we see around the region and we're always fascinated when we meet up with developers or small businesses and academics who are using our technologies to help communities they understand better than we do. **Bernard Leong:** Sometimes the better stories on AI is not like what you just said, right? The blindness situation. This is clearly an area where you can actually help people and how to accelerate scientific discoveries. I have a question—what's the one thing you know about public policy on open source AI or its potential in Asia that very few people do, but should? **Simon Milner:** One aspect of this is a lot of people think open source AI—indeed, AI generally—is all about big American and big Chinese companies creating hugely expensive models, which they are. I mean, just to be clear. Like frankly, where everybody else is just waiting around for one of these big companies to produce the latest model, right? Where without that, everybody's kind of stuck. That's just not true. Actually the story of AI is about, yes, that is important. The investments that companies like Meta and others are making is important, but actually it's really about local ownership and local innovation. We see tremendous examples of this and local companies, developers coming up with amazing products that are like the ones I mentioned earlier, which are incredibly well-tuned for communities. Either thinking about the blind or visually impaired community there, that's a global community. Well, it's a global group of people that can benefit from those technologies. When it comes to the Korean language, most of the people who speak Korean are in Korea. So this is really about people in Korea, but I think that local innovation and useful, the local usefulness of AI being deployed is incredibly important. Asia is where this is happening more than anywhere else. Now, that could be just because I'm based here, and therefore that's where I focus. But certainly from a company perspective, there's tremendous interest at the company leadership level of what is happening in APAC and making sure that we are not just creating for APAC or this, but we're listening and learning about what's happening here. What are others doing? So I think that's a fundamental part of the story that most people aren't aware of. **Bernard Leong:** I think also I've seen local universities, even not just within Singapore, but maybe the surrounding Southeast Asia, they're also using Llama to fine-tune, say like, for example, Vietnamese or Bahasa for Indonesia or Malay, right? So the use of open source AI is actually quite crucial to how they can fine-tune for their languages within these different cultures. Maybe from your viewpoint, how is Meta actually thinking about AI development in a person of this diverse, geopolitically fragmented type world? Especially we are now seeing more national champions in different countries, but I think there's still some interconnectedness between us to share knowledge from that perspective. **Simon Milner:** Yes, look, it's something that we are very focused on as a company. We want to ensure that the benefits the world has seen, genuinely, the world has seen from the open internet, from the ability of people with an internet connection, providing they're not in a country that blocks our services, to be able to use our products very easily pretty much for free, apart from the cost of their data, which hopefully in most cases is pretty cheap, to connect with people all over the world. Whether that's just the people that they already know or there many others they'll get to know. That is also true of AI. I mean, the benefits of AI are undoubtedly going to be greater. The more open the world is to enabling people to use different AI models and products all over the world, just like they use the internet, internet-based services today. So one of the areas that, or one of the issues therefore, that myself and my policy team are very focused on, is trying to ensure that we don't get new barriers to openness in the AI space. So for instance, one of the issues that's talked about is sovereign AI and this idea of that actually each country should somehow own or frame, somehow protect the AI space within their country to be purely sovereign. But that's a pretty dangerous concept in terms of where it might lead, in terms of the benefits of AI, that a world of separated off AI bubbles is going to be a much lesser, less beneficial environment than one where AI is allowed, AI is allowed to flourish and be connected across borders just like the internet that we've all grown up with over the last three decades. So that's an area of a pretty significant focus for us. Now, I'm not suggesting there's any way doing it just yet, but certainly I think an important area that is going to be, for instance, debated at the upcoming AI Impact Summit in India next February. **Bernard Leong:** I think because you see how the development of AI and regulation are going hand in hand across this region. Do you have any perspective in what governments in Asia Pacific can better do to support that open innovation while also at the same time safeguard their national interest then? **Simon Milner:** It's something that we are very focused on trying to work with governments. Look, we are an American company, just to be clear about that. We're proud of that, and we're proud to be able to bring American, in the investments we make in the U.S., which is our home, to the world. That's something we've been doing by the first 21 years of our existence, and that is absolutely the case when it comes to AI. We want to help ensure that the benefits of AI are widely shared, not concentrated, in that the U.S. and its allies can set the standards for responsible, transparent and inclusive AI development. In this region, there are a lot of allies of the U.S. There are some countries that are a bit more neutral, if you like, and we also want to help them in setting good policies around setting, having a national AI strategy about being focused on AI skills and AI literacy. We have a number of programs of our own which are focused on that. Then ensuring that policy making is well-informed. That's where we play a role. As I mentioned right at the start of our conversation, we need to be in the room when these conversations are happening, and we find that whether it's in Vietnam or Australia or Korea or here in Singapore, that's how we show up. In general, we find that most countries, they are just keen to figure out, okay, how do we prepare us? How do we make the most of these technologies now? How do we prepare ourselves for what's to come? How do we ensure that we can adapt to—yes, there are going to be some pretty significant transitions in economies because of these technologies that we're ready for that. Therefore being open to listening to companies like Meta and many others, and experts like yourself, Bernard. That's incredibly important. So there's a whole range of things that are involved in that, but these big summits that have happened around the world, including in Korea last year and next year in India, are an important part of that dialogue. So we'll be there in force and really wanted to contribute positively to— **Bernard Leong:** I think it's really— **Simon Milner:** That conversation. **Bernard Leong:** To be part of that conversation. I think recently I had a guest who came onto my show who wrote a book on AI, and his view was that everybody should be part of that conversation. I think I always have this question on my, what's the one question you wish more people would ask you about Meta's current AI strategy or public policies, but they don't ask you? **Simon Milner:** I actually think the one thing that's, aside from all the investments we've made to build great models and products, actually we are having a conversation about how are we actually going to use these technologies in the future. At the moment, I think most people just assume, alright, it's going to be apps on my phone because that's how we think about the most of the ways that people use online technologies. In our view, that is way too prosaic. It's way too much of current day thinking. Experience shows that if you assume technology is going to be just like it is today, you're going to be wrong. It's not going to be like that. So actually being open-minded about how else might I be using AI other than on my phone, to me feels like the most important question. **Bernard Leong:** Then if I were to follow and ask you, then how are we going to be using the technologies? Where are you going to point me? Wearables? **Simon Milner:** In here, in our [\[Meta AI\] glasses](https://www.meta.com/sg/ai-glasses/?srsltid=AfmBOoqIo3Chq396J58ZCXmf-tiNP6vvHan79xf86QL%5FeG7dfTFNnUtP&ref=analysepodcast.com). As it happened, just because I'm talking to you, it feels easier not to wear my AI-enabled glasses, but when I do, they enable just a completely different experience because rather than me on my phone typing in what it is I'd like some help with, the AI in my glasses sees what I'm seeing and hears what I'm hearing. Now, we're still very early stages. We started to prototype some of these things. We demonstrated at our Connect conference a couple of months ago. But we envisage a world that's not too far off you could have, I think we're almost on, always-on AI, which is listening in and it can see what you see, is listening to your conversations and is giving you advice. It's giving you the answers, maybe warning you about something that you haven't seen yourself. Can just do, just be that kind of always-on assistant which is completely different from how you're looking at a phone and enables actually to be more present in the world than is currently feasible. So we think that the wearables is a fascinating area for AI use. We're already seeing some terrific examples of what it can achieve. When I was at the APEC conference a couple of weeks ago in Korea, we had a booth with some of our devices. It was amazing just to see the enthusiasm, whether it were, you know, from yes, some young folk, but also some people who are my age, who are policy makers in countries that are traditionally seen as perhaps rather more traditional, like Korea or Japan, are incredibly enthusiastic about our devices and wanting to experience them as the new versions of them and being very excited about bringing these technologies to their own countries. So I think we've found, we've hit a really rich vein of excitement here around a new way, a new computing platform and a new way of experiencing AI, not just experiencing AI, but AI being useful to me. That's why that's the core of what this should always be about. **Bernard Leong:** You know, when you talk about the glasses, one of the things I really thought about is every time when I'm in Japan, I'm lost in translation because everything is speaking in Japanese and all the characters in the signs, signs, and out there. Then sometimes I really wish that there is something like glasses that just tell me exactly what I see is translated to what, so that I know exactly where I'm going on the, just very little bit basic. **Simon Milner:** It's very basic, but also much easier than getting your phone out and pointing it at something. So actually just to look at that sign or listen to maybe the announcement on a subway train and be able to understand it without having to, you know, that's the thing. You don't have to get your phone out and find the relevant app, et cetera. I mean, you know, we're still, we're building some of the technology. We can also, we are already demonstrating, some of them are already integrated into products, which are being consumed at a reasonably high level. But there's so much more to come in this space. It's incredibly exciting and it's, somebody's been wearing glasses for, you know, more than 50 years. I'm pretty excited about it. **Bernard Leong:** You got to show me the glasses next time when I pop by Meta. **Simon Milner:** Next time. Absolutely. We'll do that. **Bernard Leong:** Okay. So I have a traditional closing question. What does great look like for Meta's AI initiatives in the Asia Pacific for the next few years? **Simon Milner:** The key thing for us is, on the one hand, we want to supercharge the benefits that our family of apps already provide for people by further integrating AI features within them. Whether you are an individual, well, we're all individuals, for individuals, for communities, for businesses, for whole economies. So there's a lot more to come on that front. I'm incredibly excited about that. Then there's also these, the whole new product area. So I've already talked about wearables. I think we're all excited to see what Alexandr Wang and his team at Meta Super Intelligence and labs are going to produce. So look, we're going to build on success. We're going to build on what we've done as a company, a company that is very focused on bringing the benefits of these technologies to billions of people, and in the Asia Pacific region, we've been, I think, pretty successful so far. But wow, there's so much more that we can achieve over the next three to five and I think 10 to 15 years. Bernard, let's not stop at five. If you're interviewing Mark, and I know you'd love to do that, he would say, that's not about five years. Let's talk about 15 and what— **Bernard Leong:** 30 years I think. **Simon Milner:** It's an incredibly exciting period to be working for a company like Meta and to be focused on these technologies. I love the fact that you're a real champion for being excited about technologies, being realistic about how do we, that we've got to manage some risks associated with them. But by being engaged together in a conversation about this, we can all move forward and ensure as practically as possible that everybody gets to benefit. That's what certainly what we're about, and I know that's what you are about with this podcast. I appreciate you having me. **Bernard Leong:** So Simon, many thanks for coming on show, and thank you for spending the quality time with me to really help me understand a little bit more about Meta's policy in terms of thinking about AI and all the different initiatives. Of course I'm excited about the wearables, but in closing, I have two more questions to ask you. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Simon Milner:** Look, there's a book called [From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks](https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/From-Strength-to-Strength-by-Arthur-C-Brooks/9781472989758?gad%5Fsource=1&gad%5Fcampaignid=20920751754&gbraid=0AAAAADsTpARYys1nFo88ph87wQXx-%5F3kF&gclid=CjwKCAiAlrXJBhBAEiwA-5pgwumZnkLyTKqdYjB1lxJH6DpHTaEFeXFD01q%5F-hiNT4H16vNCHCiUHRoCpQ8QAvD%5FBwE&ref=analysepodcast.com), which I read recently, which was recommended to me by a former colleague. It's all about how our intelligence changes as we get older. I am, as I've mentioned, I'm in my fifties now and I'm thinking about aspects of that, and it's a really interesting book. So if I know you're very focused on youngsters, but if you have any other, any listeners who are also in that kind of generation, I'd really encourage them. I thought it was a great read. **Bernard Leong:** I've read that book actually. I'm also in my fifties, and I'm also thinking about the transition of a role. **Simon Milner:** Bernard. No way. I can't believe it's true. **Bernard Leong:** Last but not least, how can our audience follow your work or stay updated on Meta's initiatives in the AI space across Asia? **Simon Milner:** Okay, well, look, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so that's a good place to see, to get updates that I'm involved in. But we also, you know, we have an active newsroom where we post about what we're doing. So I'd encourage people to check that out. Then we're also pretty active on social media, so follow some of our leaders, like Mark and whenever we launch something new, Mark will post about it on Instagram or Threads or Facebook. So check those out. I'm really delighted that you and your audience are interested in what Meta is up to. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find the podcast anywhere. So subscribe to us at Analyse Asia. We're on LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, and everywhere else, including Meta as well. So Simon, many thanks for coming on the show and I look forward to speak to you soon. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He shares his career journey from a computer science geek working on distributed databases to leading technology strategy across a market representing two-thirds of the world's population. Chris explains Oracle's comprehensive four-tier AI stack—infrastructure, data platform, applications, and agentic orchestration—emphasizing how this unique full-stack ownership enables enterprises to consume AI out of the box and extend seamlessly without ripping and replacing existing systems. He highlights compelling use cases from financial fraud detection and healthcare automation to precision agriculture and energy grid optimization. Closing the conversation, Chris shares his vision for what great Oracle will look like in Asia Pacific, continuing its 50-year legacy as the behind-the-scenes platform provider powering everything from OpenAI and TikTok to global banking infrastructure. --- > What's been consistent for Oracle is to be a platform provider that helps organizations unlock full value of their data. Today it is all about AI and unlocking the value of your data in AI, and cloud is a mandatory enabler. With AI and agentic AI, an agent is effectively an employee—it's an automated employee, a process, a workflow. You want your employees to be within your ecosystem, within your firewall. AI thrives at the edge because that's where inference happens. With AI and agentic AI, an agent is effectively an employee—it's an automated employee, a process, a workflow. You want your employees to be within your ecosystem, within your firewall. AI thrives at the edge because that's where inference happens. **\- Chris Chelliah** **Profile:** Chris Chelliah, Senior Vice President of Technology and Customer Strategy for Japan and Asia Pacific at [Oracle](https://www.oracle.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrischelliah/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to Analyse podcast, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. I'm Bernard Leong, and Oracle has been in the headlines on AI & data centers, but today we are diving into how Oracle is shaping the next generation of enterprise AI across the region of Asia Pacific and Japan. With me today is Chris Chelliah, Senior Vice President, Technology and Customer Strategy, Japan and Asia Pacific at Oracle. So Chris, welcome to the show and thank you for joining us post Oracle AI World 2025\. I bet it must be exciting in Las Vegas. **Chris Chelliah:** Well, thank you, Bernard. Yes, recovering from the jet lag. Extremely excited to be here. Thank you for having me. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, we also have that pre-launch chat about discussing what is coming. Of course, as with all guests on the show, I always want to find out about the origin story. So how did your career journey begin and what led you into the world of enterprise technology? **Chris Chelliah:** Well, let's see. I'm a bit of a geek, so computer science and math was my background. My research thesis post-grad was on distributed databases. Java was emerging when I was just coming out of university. So the world was moving from client server to the internet, right? The problem of the day in that era was surfacing data that used to be inside an enterprise to the internet. Doing that securely across the big wide internet. At that point in time, the Oracle database was portable across platforms. Java as a language was portable across platforms, and both were central to the internet era, right? So, as an engineer, which engineer doesn't love a problem like that to solve? We see a lot of parallels today in the AI world, but that's how I started. **Bernard Leong:** So over the years you've held various leadership roles across Oracle globally. What drew you to your current position leading technology and customer strategy in Japan and Asia Pacific? **Chris Chelliah:** Well, technology is definitely in my blood. I think I'm a bit of a tinkerer by nature. That would be the best way to describe me. My home has been running Linux since the late nineties. So I've always got pretty much at least a half a dozen projects on the go that I'm tinkering with and working on. For me, Oracle was a bit of a natural place. It encouraged innovation. We have a mantra of always being customer zero. When I joined Oracle it was a very early nascent database company. Using this technology and being able to be customer zero of all of this emerging technology and then taking that to enterprise scale, that was definitely interesting. I joined Oracle back in Perth, Western Australia but I've worked with Oracle across the UK and France and Sweden, in the Bay Area for at least three or four years and then back in Singapore for a good 15 odd years. Probably three things drew me back to this role. Number one, obviously it's family. I had to come back closer to home. The second is really the potential in this market, right? The potential in this market. We have two thirds of the world's population in Asia Pacific and Japan, and this population is digital native. It's a digital native generation. Huge opportunity there. The third thing, like I said, is technology just gets me out of bed every day. I'm super excited. So, it was a good combination to bring me back to do technology in this part of the market. **Bernard Leong:** So from your diverse experience, what are the key lessons you can share with my audience on your career journey? **Chris Chelliah:** Listen, I think there's a couple of things and I say this to new hires and when I'm interviewing into the organization as well. Find your passion wherever you're going to go. Like I said, I happen to be a tinkerer and Oracle happened to have areas that I could play with. So certainly find your passion. In Oracle we are in FinTech and construction and biotech. Find something that would excite you to give more than your best every day. The second thing I always tell folks is you own your own career. You own your own brand. Yes, a company has a culture and a company has tools and processes and certain segments that they work in. When I speak to my team or my new hires, I let them know that all of those things—culture, tools, processes, segments—are just colors in a color palette. But you have the job of converting that color palette into a painting or the persona you become in the organization. There's a few truisms I always say: if you keep the customer in focus, you keep Oracle as the second in focus, and then you keep your line of business as a third in focus, you can paint where you fit in all of that if you have the right passion. The last thing I always tell my team is use what you have. Oracle's a big company. If you're in a startup, you might have a different set of tools that you work with. Use what you have. So grab every opportunity. I sometimes say I've worked for like four different startup companies, right? Because they all happen to be called Oracle. I was in a startup database business. I was in a startup applications business when Oracle got into that. I was in the startup hardware business when Oracle got into that. Then I was in the startup cloud and AI business when Oracle got into that. So four startup businesses in one company called Oracle. **Bernard Leong:** Amazing. So we are going to get to the main subject of the day. We're going to talk about Oracle's AI and multi-cloud strategy post the AI World 2025\. As a start, I always know Oracle works in the background with all things related to enterprise. Can you provide an overview of Oracle's global vision and mission, and the business footprint across Asia Pacific and Japan? **Chris Chelliah:** Yeah. Listen, one thing that's been very consistent with Oracle over the last 48, almost 50 years that we've been in business is really about helping organizations unlock the full value of data. We've been through different genres. There was the client server genre, there's the internet genre, there's the cloud, and now we're in the AI genre. But what's been consistent for [Oracle](https://www.oracle.com/asean/cloud/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is to be a platform provider that helps organizations unlock full value of their data. Today it is all about AI and unlocking the value of your data in AI, and cloud, is a mandatory enabler. That's the overall mission and vision for Oracle. We want to provide our customers with everything that they need to unlock this potential. We've been in the market, in this market JPAC since 1988, so we're not a new kid on the block. We power critical infrastructure in the region. Pretty much every bank, telco, utility, power grid is powered by Oracle underneath. We're continuously innovating and growing. If you think about it, I think we've got close to 47,000 customers in JPAC. We're still growing 44% year on year consumption growth last year. 12 cloud regions, another 14 dedicated cloud regions. We're here in that mission and vision, continuously growing, and I think we play a big part already today in Japan and Asia Pacific. With AI and the inference opportunity that's there at the edge, I think that's only going to get bigger and we're really looking forward to that. **Bernard Leong:** I want to cut to the chase. What are the key takeaways and major announcements that came up from the recent [Oracle AI World 2025](https://www.oracle.com/ai-world/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? Specifically on agentic AI, the data platform and things related to multi-cloud or even other news that may be of interest to everyone here listening to the podcast. **Chris Chelliah:** Yeah. Well listen, I think let's start with the headline: AI changes everything. We get that. We hear that. That's why Oracle delivers AI everywhere. As you notice, we rebranded Oracle Cloud World to Oracle AI World, just for our commitment across every layer of the stack. I think there's a number of components that we bring together. Let me stack this out for you. First thing is let's start at the bottom of this: the infrastructure. AI is underpinned by infrastructure and AI thrives at the edge, especially when you get to inference. So there's some significant announcements that we made around infrastructure, around what we're doing with networking and making that just hugely scalable and reliable. That is a big part of this platform. The second layer is AI, we know, is fueled by data. You mentioned it earlier, the AI data platform. We'll talk about that. But we've made some significant announcements of how we're able to basically reach into all of your data without disrupting what you have in place today. The third layer on top of this is a rich set of applications that are going to have AI embedded in them. AI doesn't always have to be something you build. You should be able to use something out of the box as well. So there's a rich set of applications and then there's the fourth layer on top of that: the orchestration, which is our agent and agenting marketplace. We made some significant announcements there as well. What we will surface out of the box through our applications, you can identify and we can have partners identify, but you can also build using the other components, the data layer and the infrastructure layer. I think what came out and resonated really loudly is we're very unique in having all of those tiers of the stack, yet not mandating that you need all to start. You could start at any one of those tiers or you could use some or all of those tiers. I think that's unique and that came out loud and clear in AI World last week. **Bernard Leong:** As a former customer, I probably have encountered at least two applications, and definitely one is the Oracle databases for infrastructure when I was a Chief Digital Officer, and then I encountered Equinex in the construction space when I was working as a CIO. So you almost covered every stack now. With the recent launch of the AI data platform, can you break down what it does and how do you help customers move from raw data to production grade AI? **Chris Chelliah:** Yeah, you talked about it earlier about Oracle being in the enterprise space. Enterprise doesn't have to be big enterprise, by the way. It could be small and emerging enterprises as well. So I want to be very clear on that. Oracle's not just for big organizations, it's across the board. When you are engaging in enterprise, I think it is different from engaging a consumer. When you're engaging in enterprise, you're going to say, what problem are you trying to solve? When people talk about data platforms for AI, go and do a search today on any of your favorite AI chat engines. Search for why should I look for a new data platform for AI? You'll find out that it's very common. The pain points are about addressing real time, addressing flexibility, addressing security. Organizations, enterprises have got multiple types of data: structured and unstructured and document, et cetera. They're trying to do different types of analytics. They've got Lakehouse, they want to do some graph, they want to do some streaming. They've got different types of workloads: AI workloads, IOT, blockchain, distributed data. They've got all of these things in place today. What we set out to do is we said, how can we address that? Because you need to address the problem and help our customers. The AI data platform is about that. It's about addressing the direct need that customers have for a platform that brings all of this together. It focuses on the outcome. So it's all about accelerating analytics and AI, not about a particular product. It's all about using as much as you can that you already have in house versus saying bring something to aggregate. Regardless of where your data is—on premises, in Oracle applications, third party SaaS applications, on my cloud, or in a third party cloud—what we offer with the AI data platform is the ability to ingest, to process and serve this data using a single security and a single governance model so you don't have to rip and replace your house, your tooling, your skillset. Seamlessly across applications, across infrastructure. I think that's unique because none of the other hyperscalers provide something that is as wide reaching as that. But it's not just wide reaching in terms of data types. It's in the north-south. It's also reaching to the application stack that we have. I think that takes away a big fear that customers have around why they need a new data platform today and I think we address a lot of those areas. **Bernard Leong:** That also ties in very much into the artificial intelligence when we talk about AI agents. The expansion of Oracle AI Agent Studio, and also the launch of the AI agent marketplace—I think there's a pretty big step in terms of enterprise AI adoption. Maybe the more fundamental question here is what problems is Oracle trying to solve with these new offerings? **Chris Chelliah:** Yeah. Listen, we think AI is so big and it's so pervasive that I think it's going to solve a problem today, which is actually going to open up five more problems to solve tomorrow. Because every time the nature of us as human beings is we're never satisfied. So we solve a problem and you go, oh, cool, but there's five other things I can solve and I want to solve five more things. Then those five are going to give you another five. So, I think it's going to be us being able to then collect and not reinvent the wheel each time. With the AI Agent Studio, it's the ability to give you some endpoints that are already created, some agents that are already created out of the box, and you can then extend naturally. The marketplace—we extend that to our partners as well. So our partners who are implementing solutions, who may have specific domain knowledge, can bring that IP to the platform and add into the agent ecosystem that you have. The more agents you have—think about it in the old days, as my kids would sometimes say, in the dinosaur age when we used to do data integration, point to point integrations. An agentic integration with autonomous agents is just a higher level of abstraction of that. When you used to do point to point integration, what was really important was you needed to have an adapter. You needed an adapter to connect from app A to app B. The more adapters you had, the better the integration platform was. It's the same with agents. The bigger your agent marketplace, the more successful this is. Like I said, I think this is just going to feed a wave of new applications being built with AI. **Bernard Leong:** Just a very clear exposition of how you broke down the agent AI systems from a traditional enterprise automation tooling from the point to point viewpoint. We've seen Oracle AI agents now being deployed across finance and supply chain. Can you walk us through some real world use cases that actually may have some measurable business impact currently, probably at pilot stage or maybe even some of them in production? **Chris Chelliah:** Yeah, the good news is they are working in pilot, they are working in production. I can't mention all of the names because customers want to go through their validation, et cetera. You already mentioned the finance use cases, whether that's looking at sophisticated fraud schemes or making sure you're meeting all of the regulatory scrutiny that you need. We have capability like investigation hub to analyze alerts and matches between customer data, sanction lists, et cetera. So FinTech and financial—massive number of use cases there. Supply chain, you already talked about that as well. Whether it's about maintenance advisor, whether it's about using real time image recognition for quality control or for branching of workloads. We've also seen it being used as diverse as agriculture in optimizing planting and optimizing harvesting decisions, integrating satellite imagery and IOT sensors to make sure that we can best use fertilizer to increase the yield and also reduce costs. You don't want fertilizer going where it doesn't need to go, so precision spraying. In healthcare, we know we've seen reduction in times for documentation. Physicians being able to talk to you without having to take notes or without having to then organize that. Just the ability to not just listen, but also to annotate and also make recommendations in healthcare. Reducing documentation time, annotation, but also in detection—whether that's lung nodules or breast cancer detection. We've seen agents being used, like I said, it is the art of the possible. We've seen it being used in environmental applications to monitor things like micro climate change. I think for every problem we solve, we're going to open five more to solve and the pace at which problems surface and we resolve it is just going to increase. It's going to be a massive flywheel. I think for all of us as human beings, the quality of life can also increase as we solve some of these problems that just make things easier for us. **Bernard Leong:** With the AI data platform now supporting multi-cloud and hybrid orchestration and Oracle database also living within the other hyperscalers, how do you view the role of multi-cloud in accelerating enterprise AI adoption? **Chris Chelliah:** Absolutely. Just like we talked about, the AI data platform removes some of the problems that customers have to adopt AI. Multi-cloud, deploying the AI data platform on multi-cloud, further enhances that. I sometimes say to gaze into the future, it pays to look at the past. Multi-cloud is definitely here to stay. We at Oracle are very proud that we've broken down these walled gardens between the hyperscalers and we've leveled the playing field. But if you go back to the origins, the dinosaur days again, when you were building database or data-driven applications, you had to first pick the hardware platform. Then you picked your programming paradigm, and then you pick the workload, whether it's analytical or OLTP, and then finally you got to pick your database that ran on that platform, that supported that workload, et cetera. That was the way it used to be. We changed that paradigm many years ago. We built the Oracle database. It's the same database that you could do transaction processing as well as analytics. We also made that same database be able to run on 140 different platforms. That's what we did about 30 years ago. So what happened is now you could pick your programming language, you could pick your hardware platform and you'd have a consistent experience regardless. Giving customers choice really makes them accelerate development, so they didn't have to worry about whether it's going to run, whether that hardware platform had longevity or not. They just built applications and they deployed it, and that's what got Oracle to where we are today. Now we saw a massive gap going forward. We saw that what was happening with the hyperscalers in the cloud was they were building these siloed walls of keeping the data in each cloud, and we could see that that's just going to be the barrier to AI adoption because it's a natural barrier. So that's exactly what we sought to solve again, because we figured customers want to have multiple clouds, they want to diversify risk. What about if we could give them the same experience regardless of which cloud, the same commercial model regardless of which cloud it runs on, and the same open standards? Everything that we do is based on open standards that is completely portable on a cloud or onto on premises as well. **Bernard Leong:** From your vantage point in the Asia Pacific and Japan, how are you activating partner ecosystems and what are the roles they play in helping you to scale AI for customers? **Chris Chelliah:** Listen, our partners are definitely a key enabler. We need them to move fast. I already alluded to the fact that we're going to move fast and it's going to solve multiple problems. So we need our partners to be there to help us scale really quickly. As a technology provider, I think partners typically don't take a product, a new product to market per se. They take solutions to market, and they certainly know how to accelerate a market and drive scale and reach. I'm very proud, especially this year. If you look at the last three years, the number of partner logos and sponsoring AI—you know, Cloud World, which became AI World—is just multiplying orders more, which is great. Which tells me that the partners see value in building a practice. They've got to build investment to build a practice around our stack. The fact that they're building a practice tells me that we're heading in the right direction. Partners are definitely there and going to be a big part of taking us and scaling this. Massive reaction in less than 24 hours from when we made that marketplace announcement—less than 24 hours, I think we had about a hundred solutions already that were submitted by partners. Not all of them were built but they were submitting like intent to build in the different specific domains. It's amazing when partners jump on board that quickly. It tells me that we're heading the right direction and it tells me that the ecosystem believes that, which then gives our customers comfort because now they have scale. They have choice. They can pick a partner of their choice and deploy on a cloud of their choice, but get the outcome that they need. That's what enterprises want. They don't want to be painted into a corner. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one thing you know about Oracle's AI platforms that very few people do, but should? **Chris Chelliah:** Well listen, AI is multifaceted. Customers are now looking at this. When I speak to enterprises, they go like, oh, we have—they're either looking at consuming or they're looking at building and somehow they see this as two divergent tracks. You either consume it or you build. From an Oracle perspective, I think you shouldn't see that as divergent. We think that your AI platform should be convergent. What does that mean? You consume as much as you can out of the applications. We're doing that through our rich vertical industry applications, horizontal and AI enabling. Then you just extend. You're not building from scratch and you extend it because we use the same platform to build the agents and the applications as you would to extend. That same platform is available across all the hyperscalers. It means that customers—I can change the perception. Customers think they have to pick the fork in the road. Do I go the build way? Do I go the consumer way? I'm saying to them, actually have both. It's not divergent. It's convergent. We can help you consume very quickly and then extend and build from that. **Bernard Leong:** Now, how important is openness—by openness, I mean open data formats, agent interoperability—to Oracle's strategy? I mean, especially in this region where legacy systems are common. I also would grant the fact that Oracle owns MySQL, which is a pretty well known open source database. **Chris Chelliah:** Yes, we do. I mean, listen, openness is absolutely critical. Our AI and data strategy is completely open, completely ubiquitous. As you said, way back when we acquired Sun and the MySQL, I think there was a lot of conversation in the market that Oracle was actually not going to continue with MySQL because we had the Oracle database. At that point in time, we've always said, that's not our intention. There's a right place for MySQL. There's a right place for the Oracle database, and we've continued that investment for a decade and a half now. Openness is absolutely critical. Everything you see Oracle do will be portable. Like I said, everything that we are doing with the autonomous AI Lakehouse, everything that we're doing with MySQL and HeatWave is based on open strategy. It runs on my cloud, it runs on premises, it runs on my competitors' clouds as well. Our goal is to give customers a ubiquitous experience, and we do that without any lock-in. Whether that's using iceberg formats or using the MCP standards or using the ONNX standards, we're very standard-based. We typically don't fork open source projects and make our version of it. We use them natively as they are so that you don't have a lock in that sense. If you look at it, you won't be 50 years in a business by locking in customers. Our customers have complete choice today on where they want to run, how they want to run, how they want to access their data—structured, unstructured, document, streams, time series. We support all of those things in a completely seamless experience across all of the cloud offerings. **Bernard Leong:** I think how do you now help CIOs to balance the need of what I call vendor choice flexibility, which I think you already pointed out when I asked you the previous question, with the need of now thinking about enterprise-grade governance and reliability? I think this is a question that seems to be on every CIO's mind about data governance, AI governance, et cetera. **Chris Chelliah:** Yeah, listen, I think this is a huge thing. I think this is still a remaining thought barrier, at least for the enterprise customers that we speak with. Just like we think multi-cloud is here to stay, I think we would all agree that multiple models are also here to stay. Not just multiple frontier models—and we know all the big frontier models—but there's going to be lots and lots of smaller models and specific industry and niche models. So there's a huge emphasis around the ability to bring a model of choice onto the platform but not compromise in the governance and security. That's some of the things that we've built as native into the Oracle platform that I think is very differentiated. For example, let's start at the infrastructure layer. The infrastructure layer, we are giving our tenancies a level of isolation that they don't see in the other hyperscalers. It's a very clear level of isolation. Down to where you can declaratively declare your network packet routing, and we will enforce it for you. You cannot bypass those things through what we call the zipper protocol. We're rolling that out. So you've now got an isolation level in the tenancy. Then on top of that, in the data level, regardless of the models that you bring in—and you can pick any of the frontier models or anything from Hugging Face or something you've developed in-house—when you roll that into our Gen AI path service, again, we declaratively define the security and the governance models. That's enforced at that level. Then you can swap models in and out, but the governance and the security and the access mechanism is still maintained. It's still consistent. Then you look at the next level, what we do at the data and in the AI data platform—same thing. Regardless of where your data is or where you shuffle your data, we retain the security and the governance. I think when you have a full stack of a full and consistent stack of security and governance at the infrastructure levels, at the data layer, at the model layer, and at the application layer, then you can have a better trust index as a CIO. We show that to CIOs and say how you can build trust, how you have traceability in this and how it's all declarative. Then what we do is out of the box, the ability to show governance reporting around where things came from and where things went. That level of transparency is important and we're able to do that because we own the four levels of the stack. I don't see that being as pervasive anywhere else. **Bernard Leong:** I thought that was a very interesting point you made about those different four levels and how Oracle is holding all the stack together. I'm just thinking a lot in practice when we think about the marketplace also evolving. What are the challenges now you think about adoption? Is it mainly in talent, localization, or compliance? **Chris Chelliah:** Yeah. I think more and more if you think about it as well, we used to talk about data residency and data sovereignty. I think it used to be—I used to hear in the cloud days, only a decade ago, we used to talk about that my data needs to reside in my country. But I think with AI and then agentic AI, you think about it: an agent is effectively an employee. It's an automated employee. It's a process, it's a workflow. Well, you want your employees to be within your ecosystem, within your firewall. So I think more and more with AI you're going to see there's a need to bring it closer and closer home. Your data residency is no longer going to be the country, but it might just be within the enterprise. So the ability to—and that's why I said in the very opening, I said infrastructure, AI thrives at the edge because that's where inference at the edge is. So the edge is going to get smaller and smaller and closer and closer to within each organization, within each enterprise. I think the ability to bring the power of all of that as close as possible is important. That's what we do with our ability to bring the cloud and shrink that down with all of the inference and all of the four stacks—the four tiers of the stack that I talked about—inside an enterprise. That becomes a big thing. The second thing you talked about as well as talent and skills. I think AI's going to help us with that. I think this is one of those areas where we're going to use AI. It's like priming the pump. You can take, for example, I was talking to a large SI at AI World last week and they were telling me they had a big practice, a consulting practice that was already based on one of my competitor hyperscalers. You know, we've got a whole bunch of skill sets there. We want to grow your skill sets. I said, listen, AI can help you fix that because you take your reference architectures that you already have and your best practices that's for that deployment, and I can actually use AI to flip that and generate infrastructure as code that would meet your best practices in OCI. So I think that whole skills paradigm, we can flip really quickly by using AI to prime the pump. The last thing you talked about was around operational maturity. I think that is also going to be—I think with AI and agents, automation that we can provide out of the box as a cloud provider, and I talked about the lineage and the governance, we need to surface more of that to make the customers, the business users, the CIOs more comfortable that they actually have control over this. Because I think there's always this fear of the unknown. We need to make sure that they can see that they've got control over this. **Bernard Leong:** For large enterprises within the Asia Pacific and Japan, they have heterogeneous legacy estates. One question I really have—and actually it is two questions, but I want to see how you're going to answer that. How do you guide them to get AI-ready data without disrupting operations? So that's the first part. The second part is what metrics do you believe matter most for these companies starting their AI journey? **Chris Chelliah:** Okay. Let me go with the first one. You talk about without disrupting operations. I think that's the first test. The first test would be when I go in and engage with a customer, we talk about AI, we do some design thinking workshops around what do you want to get out of this? Because I think AI is all about the art of the possible. I don't go in there with something in mind. I go in there and say, what do you think we could solve together? Then the second test would be how quickly would it take for me to do that? Now, if I go in and say, listen, I need to build a whole bunch of what I call scaffolding and I need to change the data, I need to change a security policy, I need to move stuff around and build scaffolding, and I'll come back in three months with the answer—that's the wrong answer. I need to say, how about if once we've done this design thinking workshop, within a matter of days, maybe a couple of weeks at top end, without disrupting your data policies, I can show you this working? I think that's important because, and again, that's what we've designed the AI data platform for. The word I use is the AI data platform respects. The word I use is it respects the security and governance models that you already have in-house because the security and governance models you've built over the last number of years in a large enterprise has been there for maybe 10, 20 years. I can't say, you need to break this before I can give you an AI outcome. I need to say, what can I do working and respecting what you have in place? We do that. We've been doing these engagements from design thinking to a vibe-built application and then deploying that and being able to enable endpoint APIs to plug into that. The customers can see a real working system in a matter of a week, two weeks. That really opens up eyes when we do that. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, and I was just in full respect of confidentiality. I heard you telling me that you have done it for a customer and then within like two, three days you could actually show them something that is like a workable, viable product just to see how the scaffolding really looks like. I think that's really the great use of AI in this age. **Chris Chelliah:** Absolutely. The example I shared with you was the energy company. We've done another one with a very large conglomerate that's got retail, agriculture, logistics and the ability to take a whiteboarding design thinking session and generate that into some sort of working model without ripping apart what they have in data. When they asked questions of this environment, it respected the data. So in other words, if I asked a question, I saw data that only I could see. When you asked the question, you saw data that only you could see because we respected the policies in place. The second question you asked was around the metrics that matter. The way I'm being a little bit cheeky sometimes when I talk to the CIOs about this, I sort of say, listen, how do you benchmark this? Well, it's like when you go to the gym and you're running next to somebody on the treadmill next to you. You're not competing with them running on the treadmill next to them. You're competing with yourself. You're trying to better your personal best from yesterday or last week, depending on how good you are and how often you go to the gym. But really it's about going to the gym and bettering yourself. So I think organizations are really looking at—you already know the benchmark. You already know the metric of how you do that job today. So you know how well you ran yesterday and you've got to say, I'm going to try to beat how well I ran yesterday, today. That's how I look at measures for success. When we talk to customers after we've done that design thinking workshop, we sort of said, well, why are we even doing this? Is it worth your time and my time? How much time does it take you to do this? Then we work out, well, what would be a reasonable—listen, now that I've brought the vibe experience down to a week or two, I'm not saying a year or two to test this hypothesis out. If I'm testing the hypothesis out within a week or two, then we can say, listen, okay, it takes me five days to do this task today. Can we make it half to two and a half days? For example, I said, well, is it worth us investing two weeks together? I think it used to be when you had a hypothesis to do transformation in an organization to prove that hypothesis used to take 6, 9, 12 months and a lot of money. We're able to now get that hypothesis spinning really quickly. Then you can see how you want to measure, and they go like, oh, this makes sense. You did make it half the time. Now let's go about what it takes. I think we're looking at a different way of quantifying success and benefits. The time horizon is a lot shorter and so you're happy to invest. Most customers are happy—they have a board mandate typically to go and look at AI projects. So they're happy when we're in here with some tooling and some methodology and some capability and not saying it's going to take you six months, saying it's going to take you a week, maybe two weeks. They're more than happy to work with us. Then together we define whether or not it was successful outcome or not, and how do we scale that effectively. **Bernard Leong:** That's interesting because I think that will also make it faster for enterprises to build some trust, at least on the interconnecting data platform layer. I think that's where a lot of the plumbing—people do not appreciate that a lot of the plumbing actually happens in that part of the stack. If that process is sped up, then it also speeds up the process of adopting all the agent layer. **Chris Chelliah:** That's exactly right. I said my job to the customers, I usually say, my job for you is to try to make the plumbing as transparent as possible and really just give you a power outlet that you plug yourself into. So really that's it. If we can make the plumbing—and again, we have 50 year pedigree, DNA in data management. The problem statement today is data management. That is the problem statement if you think about it, because AI is fueled by data. We have capability and we understand data replication, data synchronization. We understand that. **Bernard Leong:** That goes to the roots of Oracle from the beginning to this day: data management. Very good. What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about Oracle's AI strategy, but they don't? **Chris Chelliah:** I sometimes wish people would—we are in a world where today you can't walk down the street and not talk to somebody or bump into somebody and there's an AI conversation within the second sentence. Whether it's a consumer, enterprise person, you're talking—it's always about AI. I think sometimes it's easy to say that everything's AI. The one question I think I want people to ask me is, why are you different? **Bernard Leong:** Why are you different? **Chris Chelliah:** Why are you different? Why is Oracle different? I think my answer to that is two things. My answer to that is we need to go from the superficial down to the depth. We need to get into the specifics to work out why you're different. Two reasons why we're different. Number one, we're the only player that plays in all four tiers of the stack today. High powered infrastructure that pretty much all the frontier models train on. We have a data pedigree to bring all of the data into the fold of AI. We have a rich set of applications that basically power industries today: banking, telco, utilities, construction, healthcare. We have an agent framework that ties all of these things together seamlessly, whether you want to just consume AI, whether you extend and build on that consuming area. So I think we're fundamentally different in each of those. In each one of those things, it's not a lowest common denominator. Within each layer we're fundamentally differentiated as well. For example, for example, my infrastructure layer, I'm fundamentally differentiated with the way I do network switching and the way I do declarative network security, for example. The data layer, I'm fundamentally differentiated because I'm the only one who can run on any other hyperscaler plus on premises, give you the same experience without disruption. Nobody else can do that. The applications tier, I'm the only one that plays in all of these verticals. Then, the agentic marketplace and the framework will build from the other three. So I think I wish people would sort of say, instead of saying everything's AI and what I call AI washing, as opposed to whitewashing—AI washing everything—get into specifics. Hey, why are you guys different? Show me. If they asked us that, I think we'd have some very productive conversations. **Bernard Leong:** I really want to sit down in one of those design thinking workshops you have, just to be a fly on the wall to see exactly what's going on. **Chris Chelliah:** Well, you know what, it's customer proprietary, so what we should— **Bernard Leong:** Well, I'm willing to sign an NDA. **Chris Chelliah:** Yes, we should find a customer that you already know because I know you've worked in the market and in the industry as well. We'll find a customer that you already know and more than happy to bring you. Obviously it will need their buy-in as well, but happy for you to be a part of that. **Bernard Leong:** Of course, I wouldn't be sufficient to say that—I mean, Oracle is actually responsible for very big, large scale infrastructure. If you think of the likes of OpenAI and TikTok, for example, you guys are running the actual infrastructure behind them. So, my traditional closing question: what does great look like for Oracle in Asia Pacific and Japan as it builds out the next generation of AI platforms and services? **Chris Chelliah:** Yeah. Listen, I think where we're going to be in my view of what looks great—we will become the number one AI platform for enterprises in the market. That's what it is. We are going to be across Japan and Asia Pacific. How do you rate number one? How I rate number one would be we're going to be powering the agents and the inference across the largest and broadest spectrum of enterprises in Asia Pacific. I gave you some examples. We're already working on energy grids, for example. How do we regulate power between renewables and non-renewable using AI and agentic AI for that? We're already working in agriculture. We are working in healthcare, we're working in construction, we're working in FinTech. I think you're going to see a lot of those things. Like we have been for the last 50 years, Oracle tends to be the behind the scenes player. Our customers shine and we tend to be the platform player. Our customers benefit from that. For example, customers who have been using OpenAI and TikTok, as you mentioned, have been using OpenAI and TikTok for the longest time. They may or may not have known that it's powered by Oracle. If you're using the utilities, if you're putting your ATM card in, you may or may not know you're actually being powered by Oracle. It's just the way we've been for the last 50 years. We're the underlying platform provider, and that's where we'll be. We'll be providing the AI infrastructure, the agent processes across all of the industries will be the number one across Asia Pacific. I firmly believe that because we have a value proposition for all of these organizations. **Bernard Leong:** Chris, many thanks for coming on the show and really this is probably one of the most interesting conversations I have on enterprise AI, given Oracle's breadth and depth of services across the entire stack. So, in closing, any recent recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Chris Chelliah:** Well, a book—I think it's called "[First, Break All The Rules](https://www.amazon.sg/First-Break-All-Rules-Differently/dp/1595621113/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?adgrpid=102751727886&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cGSQYNXDbuRPOrw0%5FNmOl6XjxyboLkIB94AmobafMr3d3Mus2MnaZt88-XB6HGRgtXXlF8OqSNTMlceKSYmfnWcRvN-SSN5R7cQ%5FAxaS1%5FnxndbrN5y5vTiiswWBb1JYBxupwkrXm4EpTKG72oaV70U35uaAXDA5vONQsuGfkQy9NhcHRYbSrafHCUcFH5RiPHCM3b3DGssRBEhJeXWLGlYkMq8cL%5F%5F-KLtzZk5fo5Tt2a3ss6cGzIZLTu38nhbgpEkwQuSVvYPofL7%5FwnQavby4fi8qR%5FVL663VyEhUeJ0.tpBMchWjhxysrvNzpEyMOZhG30ti1hRskOsOMtduzA0&dib%5Ftag=se&hvadid=584723706219&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9062519&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8771646773209124123&hvtargid=kwd-307853256424&hydadcr=18574%5F335116&keywords=first+break+all+the+rules+book&mcid=a040282e523f31d697a1e907a0a7908d&qid=1763990799&sr=8-1&ref=analysepodcast.com)". It reminds me of where we are today. We're in an era where it's time to break everything, the norms of what we thought was possible, because I think AI is going to change everything. Almost every problem that we encounter, you want to take a contrarian view to it because let's go back to first principles. Don't worry about why we couldn't solve that or why we do it the way we do it today. First break everything, break the norms and the perception of why we are doing it that way, or why we can't do it this way. Let's see how we can do it completely differently. So I think I could see a lot of applicability of that in what we are doing every day. **Bernard Leong:** So, lastly, how can my audience connect with you and follow Oracle's innovations in the Asia Pacific? **Chris Chelliah:** Well, stay tuned because, firstly, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and I'm relatively active on LinkedIn. Also stay tuned because we're about to launch our developer series. Just like we talked to the enterprises, I think what we also want to do with [Michael Smith](https://www.linkedin.com/in/smittysgp/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Bernard, who you know very well, Michael's going to spearhead that for us and launch a developer series where we are connecting some of these capabilities into the developer community and making sure that there's a huge level of awareness of what we want to do and can do with the audience in this market here. So stay tuned to that. I'll post it on LinkedIn. So will Michael. **Bernard Leong:** Okay. Definitely you can find this podcast everywhere and of course subscribe to us on Spotify or YouTube and as well as our LinkedIn newsletter. So, Chris, many thanks for coming on the show and let's chat again sometime soon. **Chris Chelliah:** Thank you very much for having me here. I really appreciate it. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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The panel reflected on the region's remarkable achievement of reaching $300 billion in GMV—exceeding the original $200 billion goal by 1.5x—alongside revenue growth of 11x over the past decade. The panellists examined pivotal themes including Southeast Asia's position as the world's most AI-curious region with three times more interest than elsewhere, the explosive rise of video commerce and the maturation of digital financial services. The conversation explored the expansion from SEA-6 to 10 ASEAN countries, the ecosystem's resilience through multiple crisis cycles, & the shift from growth-at-all-costs to sustainable profitability. The episode concludes with each panellist sharing their vision for 2030, emphasizing building trust in AI adoption, creating an inclusive AI economy that benefits SMEs alongside large platforms, and navigating the AI transition gracefully to unlock innovation while addressing employment challenges—underscoring Southeast Asia's evolution from digital catch-up player to global innovation leader rewriting the playbook for digital adoption. --- > "We set this audacious goal of 200 billion by 2025\. People told us we were crazy. In 2016 when we put that ambition out there, we've actually reached 1.5x that and we've hit 300 billion. And so it's just reflective of this incredible economy." - **Sapna Chadha** > "Indonesia e-commerce still I think is larger or about the same size as all of India e-commerce. And yet the attention tends to be a little bit veering away from Southeast Asia, but this is actually a real economic powerhouse I think for all of Asia Pacific." - **Florian Hoppe** > "Southeast Asia as a region, as we think about digital economy adoption, we are not playing catch up anymore. In many ways we're leading the digital adoption. We're writing how digital economy, how digital adoption could look like for a population and demographic like us." **\- Cassie Wu** ### Profiles: - Sapna Chadha, Vice President Southeast Asia and South Asia Frontier, Google Asia Pacific ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sapna-chadha-1128671/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Florian Hoppe, Partner at Bain & Company ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-hoppe-09014b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Cassie Wu, Director, Southeast Asia at Temasek ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassieqfwu/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - [e-Conomy SEA Report 2025](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [YouTube Release](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlYi4nC0LqY&ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to the Analyse Podcast, the premium podcast dedicated to dissecting the power of business, technology, and media globally. I'm Bernard. This is the 10th anniversary of the [e-Conomy SEA Report, 2025](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I have the honour to cover this with the speakers for the fourth year, but it's their 10th year. We'll explore Southeast Asia's transition from a digital decade to an AI-powered future in a world shaped by macro shifts, AI innovation, and cross-border collaboration. What is going to happen? With me today are the three voices behind the report: Sapna Chadha, Vice President Southeast Asia and South Asia Frontier, Google Asia Pacific; Florian Hoppe, Partner at Bain & Company - good to see you for the fourth time; and Cassie Wu, Director Southeast Asia at Temasek. Welcome to the show. **Sapna, Florian, Cassie:** Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. **Bernard Leong:** Cassie, we've got to start with you first because you're new to the podcast. Can you briefly introduce your role at Temasek and your coverage of the Southeast Asia ecosystem? **Cassie Wu:** Hello everyone, it's very exciting to be here. I'm Cassie Wu. I'm a Director with the Southeast Asia investing team at Temasek, where I help to lead our investment activities across the region. I've spent most of my career in investing in technology globally, so frankly, very excited to see how innovation and entrepreneurship is shaping the digital economy in this region. **Bernard Leong:** I think for all of you, over this 10-year journey of the e-Conomy SEA report, what has been your most memorable moment or insight? What do you think the project actually represents for the region? I know there are many people behind the scenes who have to put together the report. Every year is as detailed as possible, and coming through this report for the last 10 years is really a pleasure for me. Anyone who wants to start? **Sapna Chadha:** Well, I think we have to start - though Florian will probably tell me I'm stealing the thunder - but the thunder of this report is the fact that none of us expected us to overachieve on our goals. We set this audacious goal of 200 billion by 2025\. People told us we were crazy. In 2016 when we put that ambition out there, we've actually reached 1.5 times that. We've hit 300 billion. It's just reflective of this incredible economy. When you bring a whole ecosystem together, there's been so many things that have worked to allow us to get there. It's kind of nice when people tell you that's too ambitious, and then you can hit the goal. **Bernard Leong:** It's important to think big, I guess. Florian, any reflections? **Florian Hoppe:** Yeah, I mean, the most exciting thing for me about this report is that it's actually still around 10 years later. If you think about the fact that we've had 10 years running now of putting a report out like this, there were years in between where we were thinking, well, is this going to keep going? Do we actually have something to talk about? Turns out the answer was yes, because this is an incredibly diverse and interesting region. We've literally found something interesting every given year to dive deeper on. In fact, we've got a long list of topics for next year, so I'm actually quite excited to continue this to the 20th anniversary. **Bernard Leong:** Cassie, how about you then? **Cassie Wu:** Look, what really is memorable for me is not a single number or a milestone that we have hit - it's really how resilient the ecosystem is. I feel like every couple of years, the world throws a challenge, right? We have capital inflows, then capital tightening. We've had COVID, now we have geopolitical tensions. Every cycle, the ecosystem just comes out to be stronger. A couple of years ago, we experienced a high interest rate environment, capital was tightening. But when we looked into the profitability of the ecosystem as companies pivoted from growth to profitability, it more than doubled in the two-year timeframe that we looked at. I remember when the report was first launched, there were so many obstacles for digital adoption, including cashless payments and so on and so forth. Today, that is actually a landmark signature of how advanced the digital economy really is. So to me, the most remarkable thing is really how resilient and how adaptive the ecosystem is, and how we came out stronger, frankly. **Sapna Chadha:** Can I add one more? The other memorable moment for me - when we knew the report really mattered - was when the ASEAN Secretariat said, "Can you please include all of the markets of ASEAN into the report?" Because this is the report of the economy in the region. It's become one of the most downloaded reports, which is cited more than any of us ever expected as well. But when they asked for that, we said, well, we have to deliver. It's our 10th year, so let's include all of ASEAN. **Bernard Leong:** That is a great segway because I'm going to ask you this question: as the e-Conomy SEA report has now hit the 10-year mark, you've expanded your coverage from the SEA-6 to the 10, right? Any new insights or market dynamics that have emerged now that you include the broader region for the first time? **Sapna Chadha:** I would say probably no in terms of new insights. What I would say is that this is important for us to do because this is a unified digital powerhouse when the region works as one. ASEAN - we actually did a preview of the report at the ASEAN summit recently. When you talk about things like regional trade, QR interoperability, which is now in eight out of the 10 markets, 10 out of the 10 markets have national QR unit interfaces. I think this is what's important: this is all working in tandem. In terms of insights, you'll see similar insights, right? The way that e-commerce is growing, the way that payments has grown, lending being the bulk of financial services. So I would say there wasn't any huge area that's different than the rest of the region, but we're hopeful that the ASEAN-4 will see tremendous growth over the next several years. **Bernard Leong:** Cassie, any thoughts on moving from the SEA-6 to the ASEAN-10? Or maybe Florian, any additional things you want to add? **Florian Hoppe:** I think what Sapna said was right. It wasn't a big delta on total market size - about 2% more on GMV from those countries. What is important is there is a big base of additional consumers here in ASEAN that isn't as developed. ASEAN can only be successful - we spent a lot of time on this in last year's report talking about the digital divide, even within the ASEAN countries - ASEAN can only be successful if, at the end of the day, everybody comes along. That's really the uplift that as a region we need to achieve. So these countries are additional growth potential, additional market potential that we'll have to unlock for our full potential over the next 10, 20 years. **Cassie Wu:** Yeah, importantly, it really just puts a spotlight on those four countries. As we think about it, we have 11 countries now. As we continued to track that progress, we felt like a lot of similar patterns have been observed in those countries, and there's actually a large population for the digital economy to continue to penetrate. **Bernard Leong:** Looking back, are there any surprising or under-appreciated insights that have emerged? **Sapna Chadha:** I would say the thing that everybody underestimated and still underestimates is the AI potential of this region, which is a big part and focus of the report. When I tell people that we see through Google insights and search behavior that there's three times the interest in AI in this part of the world than elsewhere, that is surprising to everyone. This is - we're seeing it in urban areas, we're seeing it in rural areas. We're seeing interest in multimodal AI. We have five out of the top 20 countries where that interest is coming from. That comes from this adoption that happens really quickly here. I think we can talk about 10 different areas where Southeast Asia is leapfrogging. Video commerce is one of them, it's huge, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that. But I think the AI interest - emerging economies can take off when it comes to AI. It's under - we underestimated, I underestimated the opportunity myself. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2025/11/IMG_3782.jpg) The panel: Florian Hoppe, Sapna Chadha, Cassie Wu and our host Bernard Leong **Florian Hoppe:** So I mean, for me, the underappreciated insight here is actually Southeast Asia itself. The whole report is always about Southeast Asia because obviously we want to profile what's happening in this part of the world. But we don't profile how this stacks up to the rest of the world. If you think around simple data points like Indonesia e-commerce is still about the same size as all of India e-commerce, and yet the attention tends to be veering away from Southeast Asia. But this is actually a real economic powerhouse, I think, for all of Asia Pacific. Continuing to profile this, giving it relevance and presence, is critical to make sure that this region continues to attract investments and actually continues to get to the potential it deserves. **Cassie Wu:** For me, I think, similar to what Sapna mentioned, it's the leapfrog effect. Southeast Asia as a region, as we think about digital economy adoption, we are not playing catch up anymore. In many ways we're leading the digital adoption. So Sapna mentioned video commerce, which is already 25% and has grown two and a half times over two years. Also, in terms of developers, the robustness of the creator economy, the developer ecosystem - collectively, Southeast Asia gaming developers have been launching the most downloads globally. In many ways we're not catching up into the digital economy, we're actually writing how digital economy and digital adoption could look like for a population and demographic like us. **Bernard Leong:** So I guess if you look back, what are the most defining inflection points in the digital economy of Southeast Asia over the decade? Is it digital financial services, video commerce, or something else that maybe we have not picked up? Most readers only read the summary, but didn't read through the whole 200 pages of the report, and you wish that they would have read it. Flo, do you have any thoughts on that? **Florian Hoppe:** Yeah, I think the key thing I would call out is just the kind of - if you think around some of the key stage gates of the digital economy - I think it's easy to forget and not appreciate all the pieces that had to come in place for this to take place in the first place. If you think around the big telco infrastructure built out in the early 2010s when we hit the rise of 3G, 4G networks, when all of us for the first time realized what it was to actually surf on the internet without the Blackberry and with more than 2G speeds. On the back of this and the unlock on smartphone penetration, which only went north of 50% around 2010, then actually there was a very fast kind of digital experimentation, adoption mindset of the population here, which I think has been a key driver of success for a lot of these digital business models that emerged over the years. COVID and all that was really just a catalyst to what I think would've happened anyway, and has been a key driver of growth for Southeast Asia. **Sapna Chadha:** I think of two things. We talked about how cash is no longer king a couple of years ago. **Bernard Leong:** That was a very good quote. **Sapna Chadha:** It has completely inverted. When we started this report, 60% of digital payments was cash. Now that is inverted - 60% are digital. The other thing that I think we talk a lot about is the pivot to profitability. I think that has been a huge inflection point. There was a time where investment was much more significant, but the questions around capital allocation - I would just say the pivot to profitability was a major inflection point. Now you have businesses who are looking at objectives very differently. There is a demand on them delivering faster, and I think that's created a much healthier ecosystem for everyone. You're seeing businesses thrive and they're succeeding. When the need for stronger exit pathways are the need of the hour, I think we're in a really good place. We saw that pivot a few years ago focusing on profitability, and we see that in the revenue growth of the report. We added revenue a few years ago to the report in terms of tracking. Before that, we were just tracking top line, which was the GMV. Then we added revenue. The reason for that was we wanted to show the health of Southeast Asia. Revenue has now grown 11 times in this last decade, which is - it's grown faster than GMV, which is what we want to see. **Cassie Wu:** I think there isn't a particular moment as we see in terms of an inflection point, but frankly it is really how collectively the ecosystem has really matured and flourished. Sapna mentioned the ability of the companies to generate very sizable profit pools. As we look into it, candidly, if you look at the large platform companies already listed today, they are growing, they're growing profitably, and they have been beating expectations. So that really is an inflection point from a validation standpoint, almost, in terms of the overall ecosystem. It's growing, it's maturing, and it's becoming more healthy. As we think about it, it really paved the way for the next generation of founders as they build the AI-first companies. **Bernard Leong:** So I'm going to move back to the e-Conomy Southeast Asia report this year, 2025, and we'll talk a bit about ASEAN's AI future. I think I'm going to share some key takeaways from the report in 2025, with thanks to NotebookLM and a couple of Gemini prompts. The digital economy grew about 7.4 times in GMV and 11.2 times in revenue over the past decade. We have discussed the inflection points. So one of the themes I picked up this year is "resilient amid headwinds" - inflation, tariffs, and funding slowdowns. Despite that, this region is still expected to surpass 300 billion in GMV by year end. What's the key factor that's explaining this ongoing growth momentum in the market? **Sapna Chadha:** I mean, this is where the consumer is. The story of the consumer in Southeast Asia and that leapfrogging is incredible. When we started this report to where we are now, we've added 200 million new internet users. To put that into perspective, that's adding 1.6 million internet users every month for the last 10 years. You now have this economy that has grown by users, but they've actually rewired it. You see that three in every five users is shopping online. You also see this incredible jump in video commerce - almost 25% of e-commerce is video, which is nowhere in the world is it this large. This has grown five times in three years. I think last year when we were here, we were like, wow, this is large. Now it's even larger. What we've seen is that there's almost 3 million sellers that are engaging with video. A bulk of them are doing live video. The top thousand sellers are doing - I think 80% of their videos are live. So this is emerging as a new way for businesses to drive value in a way that's driving trust. When you have growth of the consumer online, you have a growth in trust, you have an ecosystem that's using new tools and capabilities faster than ever before - all of these things lead to the growth that we're seeing. **Bernard Leong:** I want to follow up on the e-commerce question, specifically for video. Live commerce with live streaming, which I think is a big phenomenon in China and East Asia now, is percolating into Southeast Asia. How is it redefining how products are being sold? How would you see the shifts playing out in terms of what they mean for platforms, brands, and consumers? I think Google has a very big landscape in the advertising space. How are you thinking about it? **Sapna Chadha:** Yeah, no, I mean, obviously we're spending a lot of time on this. We've seen this started in certain categories first. Beauty, fashion accessories took off. But the research and the report this year talks about the expansion into electronics, into home. I mean, essentially, what is it that you wouldn't want to buy without somebody's recommendation? Recommendations are powerful. We're seeing this expand across, which means we need to be ready for this not to be in niche spaces, but this will be across the board. The good news is that YouTube has content in every category. We're seeing people come to find their creators or to find out how to solve a problem that they're having. Shopping is a problem fundamentally, right? Like, what do I need to buy is a challenge in moments. We're seeing this first that we need to tackle it on the consumer side. We're fueling the ecosystem, we're enabling creators, educating them, using AI to make their lives easier. Face it, making a video is hard, right? Doing all this work that you do, running a podcast is hard. But now AI tools can make this work much easier for them. So we're starting with the creator, enabling them, that's driving the consumer usage, which we're seeing is on the up and up. On the ad side, we're trying to bring brands and creators together. We've been doing this now for some time, and we're perfecting the art. It's hard work is what I would say as an ex-marketer myself. It's really hard work to actually connect creators and brands. It can be time consuming. Again, this is where I do think AI can help creators by making suggestions, auto-tagging. How can we do the work for the creator so that their business is enabled? That's how we're thinking about it. **Bernard Leong:** I want to get the conversation into the region's digital financial services, which are maturing now with pretty wide-scale QR code adoption. You have a lot of embedded lending and digital wealth scaling. What are the next breakthroughs would you see in digital financial services in the next decade? Maybe Florian, I think you always have a point of view on digital financial services. **Florian Hoppe:** Yeah, Sapna was already talking earlier on some of the payments trends we're seeing, and we think that's really quite exciting. We're now at north of 60% digital payments relative to GTV gross transaction value. Our 2030 forecast, if anything at this stage, feels a bit conservative. We're only saying it's in the 70% range. What we're seeing is a rapid acceleration actually of payments increasingly going digital. That will, I think, one, drive efficiency in the ecosystem. With the rise of digital payments, we see MDRs - merchant discount rates - going down year on year, in particular for QR code-based payments. Then also unlock other financial services. You think around the rise of digital banks across the region - they will not only make themselves better, but they will also make the broader banking system better because it drives competition, it drives further uplift in the ecosystem. Wealth management is really exciting. It gives a much wider base of the population - call it wealth management, but really it's kind of access to retail asset management solutions for wider parts of the population. It helps drive wealth building, asset building for longer periods for a wider population. That's a very positive phenomenon for Southeast Asia overall. **Bernard Leong:** Given all your different vantage points - Google as a technology platform, Bain as a research insights engine helping advisory to services, and Temasek as a capital allocator - how are you seeing the digital monetization models that have now evolved across the e-commerce and finance space within the Southeast Asia region? Maybe I'll start with Cassie first. **Cassie Wu:** One common theme that we have observed really is how different monetization streams are coming together, how different monetization streams are converging, and they're working specifically for Southeast Asia. E-commerce - if you take it way back when in more developed economies, e-commerce was based on commission. But that has not been necessarily the signature for Southeast Asia or for a lot of developing economies. So advertising really had kicked in. It really goes hand in hand in terms of how we then upload different versions, different kinds of monetization profiles. In addition to that, e-commerce has also come together with finance. We have mentioned how we think about the uprising of digital financial services, and a lot of digital financial services are actually being embedded in the large internet platforms that we see, even in some of those vertical platforms. In other parts of the world, the monetization might be, again, through commission - taking some of the economics from one side of the marketplace. But here we are thinking about new embedded revenue streams that can really bring more digital inclusion and actually expand TAM \[total addressable market\]. So I would say that from a monetization standpoint, we're seeing that it actually works in a unique way for Southeast Asia, and especially for our economy that is, frankly, young, diverse, and, to Sapna's point, very interested and forward in terms of digital adoption and AI adoption, trying new things. **Sapna Chadha:** I think it's an incredible flywheel. As Cassie said, it started with the consumer. Then when payments was set up, it's ubiquitous now. So then it empowered the users to be able to shop from anywhere. But then the question was, will these businesses be profitable? New streams came out like advertising, which is allowing the e-commerce players also to drive online ads. We work with them - they're our biggest partners. I think that's the thing that has become really unique in this region: the rise of retail media networks. You don't hear everyone around the world talking about retail media networks the way you will hear people in Southeast Asia talking about it. The report shows like 10 times growth in retail media network volume. I only expect that's going to continue because of this opportunity that super apps are having here. The openness to super apps, the demand by consumers for super apps - I think it's just this flywheel. It's been all these things that we've been talking about in the report have come together to lead us to this moment. **Bernard Leong:** So you think it's a compounding effect over the last 10 years of what has gone through? **Sapna Chadha:** Behavior will change really fast as a result. But I think businesses need new models. That's what it's shown. That's why things like online media and advertising have grown so much, and businesses have become healthy on the back of that. **Florian Hoppe:** Yeah, I think not much to add to this. I think it really comes down to where Sapna was starting. It starts with a consumer. The thing, if you think around what these digital platforms did, they captured our spend. If Florian bought a widget for $10, those $10 never went to the manufacturer of the widgets. There's the payment costs in the middle, there's advertising for Florian to be aware of the widget, there's logistics costs in the middle of that chain as well, and a lot of other parts. Now the digital platforms have been very smart at figuring out what other pockets of these $10 can they capture as strengths in their platforms. I think that's going to be a trend that continues over time, overall actually to the benefit of the consumer in the region. **Bernard Leong:** I want to dive into the most important subject that everybody's talking about, and I'm also in the heat of it, which is AI. AI is now positioned as the next frontier. Southeast Asia is now being labeled as the world's most AI-curious region. There's about 680-plus startups, which are one part of one in 680, and then $2.3 billion in investments. So I think we are looking to all the other regions. Is the AI movement now in Southeast Asia real or overhyped? Do you see a path for how fast they'd be able to monetize, specifically on AI? **Sapna Chadha:** It's definitely not overhyped is what I would say. We talked about the AI interest already backed in data. You also have the demand. The demand for compute has been significantly rising, which has led to data center capacity growth growing in this region faster than anyone expected. We've seen 4,600 megawatts is what is planned. We are growing multiple-fold the rest of Asia Pacific in terms of growth rates. As Google, we've invested billions of dollars in data centers here, and there's no signs of stopping anytime soon. **Bernard Leong:** You have the lowest carbon cost per query. **Sapna Chadha:** Yes, thank you as well. The last thing I would say is it comes back to our businesses finding value. I think that's probably the biggest question everyone's asking. We've seen 86% of businesses are seeing some kind of cost savings already. But they're also seeing - 71% are seeing revenue upside. This is - we reported that last year too. There was data last year that gave us optimism. This year, I would say it's even more. It's not just curiosity for curiosity's sake. We are seeing this pay off in terms of business and revenue growth. You see the region leaning into things like AgenticCommerce. That has led to three times ROI for some of the businesses that we talked to in the report. So it's definitely not overhyped. I'm happy you're asking the question. I keep asking it. **Florian Hoppe:** Yeah, I mean, I guess what I would say is that Southeast Asia has been a bit late to the party, and the thing that's just a natural reaction of this part of the world. If you implement a new AI solution and you're dealing with 50,000 employees in your company and you've got the labor cost of $50 an hour, it's a very different story than if you've got what we have in Southeast Asia: fragmented businesses, all a little bit smaller, maybe a thousand employees, and labor costs that are oftentimes just a fraction of what you face in the West. The raw economics of implementing AI didn't fully stack up yet for Southeast Asia, except for early experimenters who really wanted to get their head around it. Now that's changing really, really fast. The cost of these models is coming down really fast. Frankly, other companies are starting to do this at scale. If you're competing with other companies from other markets outside the region or now in the region and you haven't adopted these solutions, you're starting to fall behind. That, we think, is outside of the strong consumer interest, which has always been there. A key catalyst that will drive massive adoption and business activity in this space. To your question of when are people going to make money on this, well, to be clear, I think what's actually exciting here for me - this is the whole next wave of digital economy opportunity for Southeast Asia. If you think around the digital consumer economy, which is what we profile for the largest part for the last decade, that ship has broadly sailed. There's big platforms in play. It's been very successful. There's a lot of trends and dynamics playing out there, which is exciting. But there's incumbents which are at this stage very strong. The AI economy is only just getting started. The application layer, the type of businesses we see being built around unique services to Southeast Asia, the impact this could have for healthcare or education in rural parts of Southeast Asia is just staggering. There's still a shortage of doctors, of teachers. I do think there's a lot of opportunity out there in this space. **Sapna Chadha:** I would say it might be late to the party, but catching up super fast. This is where you see, like Grab, for example - 250,000 of their drivers are using their AI driver companion to optimize their routes to get 10 to 20% more revenues. That pull - you're seeing that lead to skilling needs and then the skilling pull. We've seen a fivefold increase in skilling in Vietnam in the last year. What we're seeing is five out of 10 users are saying AI is essential for them, meaning they're using it. This partnership that they're finding even in their own day to day is what's going to lead to this. I wonder if the consumer's moving faster than the businesses. **Cassie Wu:** One more data point that I would like to add is that when we surveyed - every year we run a survey of all the key investors in Southeast Asia's digital economy - we asked them not only that 70 to 80% of them already realized some sort of revenue uplift as well as cost savings. Actually, 29% of the portfolios are able to charge higher because of AI. Just to be mindful, this is not just 29% of AI companies - 29% of overall investor portfolios across different sectors. That is actually a very powerful signal that people are not only embedding AI into their products, but there are people who are willing to pay for it. We're just being early in invading AI into different applications. Different companies in different vertical scopes are trying what's the best way to realize the ROI, what's the best way to continue to embed that to enhance the product offering. That's very encouraging. **Bernard Leong:** So I have a second question for you. The reports also say that the investors are now coming back. The capital markets globally still feel a little bit shaky. Do you think the optimism is warranted, or do we still need to see what is happening macro-economically globally? **Cassie Wu:** Yeah, I think first of all, I would say that the capital market globally is probably not shaky at this point in time. I think, frankly, there is definitely macroeconomic volatility, and that has tested the capital market. But if anything, I think capital markets globally have been quite robust. Now, coming back to Southeast Asia, we do see there is optimism - cautious optimism, whichever way we call it - in the underlying economy. The reason is that we felt like, as we have been an observant and a participant in the ecosystem the past 10 years, the ecosystem has been healthier than ever. In terms of one, we have achieved our growth target ahead of plan. But not only that, we're able to grow consistently. Ever since we started publishing a revenue figure, it has been growing in line, even now faster than GMV, and the profit pool have been expanding. You can see that through our report, also through the published figures from the public internet platforms. So overall, that part is healthy. What is more important to us is that, I felt like, after 10 years, we are also more aware than ever what is the bottleneck, what could be the bottleneck of the ecosystem. More so than ever, I think the participants in the ecosystem are working together to address it. We talked about establishing exit pathways, and that is something that takes both private capital markets and public capital markets together to solve, which we are seeing signs of - increasing in late-stage funding, and we are also seeing that exchanges are coming together to increase integration. So our optimism really is grounded on the underlying health as well as we are all coming together to solve, to really unbottle the bottlenecks and bring it to the next level. **Bernard Leong:** I just only have this one question before we go with the quickfire round. Regulation, data infrastructure, and talent transformation are cited as key enablers for scaling AI. Which one of these is actually the key bottleneck, and how should governments and private sector respond to this? **Florian Hoppe:** So I mean, for me it's very clearly talent, and talent actually not so much in the traditional way of like we need more data scientists or more data engineers, but unlocking the talent that is already in place for Southeast Asia. As we shared earlier, we see a lot of inherent interest and curiosity about AI. People are using these tools nonstop, all day, every day, for vacation planning and just about any other activity. Unlocking that talent for business, enabling that in businesses to make a difference for the work we're doing and the way we're doing our work - both for established companies doing things better the way they're done today, but also for new businesses, new startups, ideas that could help drive this region to the next level - would be critical. Frankly, regulation - the governments, to their credit, are doing a good job already. Infrastructure - we shared data on just the data center build-up in this region. We're actually in very good shape. So really it comes down to unlocking the inherent talent that's around here. **Sapna Chadha:** Yeah, I mean, I might disagree, which I never do with Florian. I'm more optimistic on the talent because of what we're seeing in terms of the pull - people are upskilling themselves. We even see through talent skilling programs that we're doing - where Google's committed to this - farmers are using AI. I think the talent will get sorted also. Governments are investing, we're investing, we're very committed in this space. But I will say there's still more work to be done on the governance and streamlining. Digital Economic Framework Agreement has - there's progress made, but it's not done yet. I would say we've had most success in the QR interoperability and making it easier. But I would still say we're still fragmented in places. We make it hard for businesses to trade around the region, and therefore there's still more work to be done on the governance. But work is being done, which is good. **Cassie Wu:** I wouldn't say this is the most important obstacle, but I think one thing that I would love to highlight is also that, especially in the era of AI, digital infrastructure - although Southeast Asia has seen the fastest growth in digital infrastructure - digital economy in this day and age is really coming hand in hand with green economy. As we think about building more digital infrastructure, we should also be thinking about building sustainable power to generate and deploy that infrastructure at scale. I think that is important as we think about taking Southeast Asia to the next decade as we think about AI. **Bernard Leong:** So I'm going to go through three very quick questions and then just give me what's the answer on top of your head. The first one: what's the one thing you know about AI in ASEAN from your perspective as a technology platform, research insights engine, and capital allocator, that very few do? Who's going to start first? Cassie? **Cassie Wu:** Yeah, well, that's a very hard question to answer. But I think what I will say from an investor vantage point is that many people think that because Southeast Asia has a lower cost basis from a labor cost standpoint, businesses may not be as incentivised to deploy AI. But in fact, when we as an investor talk to companies in Singapore, which is a developed economy, Indonesia is a developing economy - candidly, businesses are equally eager to adopt AI. The point that is missing is that AI is not just about cost saving, actually more is about product enhancing and how to be able to accelerate revenue growth, increase value proposition. So I think that's also going back to our report, which is in terms of being the world's most AI-curious region. Product enhancing is a key value proposition for Southeast Asia as well. We are seeing businesses are equally eager to adopt. **Bernard Leong:** Florian, how about you? **Florian Hoppe:** Well, I think it's the fact that to really get full value from AI - a lot of people have adopted this both in a private and a business context, but to really get full value really often requires a very complete rewiring of company infrastructure. You can't just go out there and do a bit of research on the next meeting you have. You actually have to rethink your processes, rethink the way you do business. Driving that end to end is going to be critical to be successful for AI companies in the future, and where everybody's going to use this to remain competitive. I think only very few companies in Southeast Asia have truly started on this journey. We're a little bit late to the journey here, as I mentioned earlier, but they're now very rapidly investing behind this. It's critical they get this right to remain competitive out there. **Sapna Chadha:** I think the thing I know, or that I see, is the stories of businesses. I've heard from so many of them, which is maybe why I'm so optimistic. Sometimes people tell me, wow, you're really optimistic. But I'll tell you, I've met small businesses in the Philippines that are using AI tools. There's a woman who has a female-led coffee shop, and she's using AI tools for promotions and for marketing and doing things that she would never have imagined she's doing before. So I would say the thing that people don't know is the stories. I wish - I know this is a report all about facts and data - but I'm happy to share more stories next year because I think we have to convince everyone. I want everyone to be as glass half full as me. **Bernard Leong:** I know, when I was doing a corporate teaching course in Philippines with some of the conglomerate of schools, they're using their Google Chromebooks and the people from the rural schools actually are more enthusiastic about AI than where I've seen this happening. So my next question: what's the one question you wish more people would ask you about the e-Conomy SEA reports, but they don't? Maybe Florian, you can take this one. What's the one question you wish that they would ask you? **Florian Hoppe:** Why is Southeast Asia so underappreciated? I still think that's like a big thing. As a region, this is a super attractive space for investment, for consumer trends and actually seeing what's next. Things should have a much higher visibility on the global stage. **Sapna Chadha:** I wish more people would ask me about video and what we're seeing here. I think it's taken for granted a bit. But I would say this is the most video-engaged region in the world. I have to keep telling people - it's also, I would say, underappreciated. This is where social commerce started and that's why it's evolving here. We're writing the story for video commerce. **Cassie Wu:** Yeah, I wish people would focus less on some of the challenges but also focus more in terms of really how much we have come a long way from the underlying health of the digital economy. From an investor's perspective, it is very heartening to see, and especially as we think about how the entrepreneurship and how we think about the overall business model has been adapting and continuing for the era. **Bernard Leong:** I have to modify my traditional closing question. This time around, I'm going to ask you: if you look ahead five years, 2030, if you could project one consequence or transformation stemming from this year's report today, what would you hope would come true and what would it be? **Sapna Chadha:** I can start. I mean, we talk a lot about the need for building trust in this AI decade that we're entering. People are using AI for the questions and the tasks that they say are not really as consequential. But for us to really make a transformation on the bigger areas, we will need people to trust, which means businesses will need to build the AI, and the technologists will need to build AI in a way that generates that trust. Which means putting the user in the driver's seat, helping them with transparency, helping to outline sources of data, also giving them the decision-making power at the right time and helping them feel in control. Otherwise, we may just scratch the surface on the potential. But here we have the opportunity to really make it a collaborative, intelligent economy that really helps everyone. **Cassie Wu:** I would hope that in 10 years from now, as we think about it, we really have built an inclusive AI economy, and not just for large enterprises, large platforms, but also for the SMEs that we mentioned earlier on. I think, if you think back, in the last 10 years as we were doing the report, Southeast Asia really leapfrogged the PC era and we went directly into the mobile era. We have a very distinctive user behavior that we have generated from that. Can Southeast Asia leapfrog again in the AI era, not only on the consumer space, but also on the enterprise space? Because ROI, as we have already pointed out, is very clear. So this is something that if we can do that, that will be very exciting. **Bernard Leong:** Florian? **Florian Hoppe:** Well, I think I will second the points that my two cool speakers here made. The one piece for me that would be critical is that as a region we navigate the AI transition gracefully. It's a huge opportunity for us. It's also a risk to employment, frankly. I think of areas like autonomous vehicles, which we spent a bit of time talking about. I think it's going to make mobility more accessible, cheaper, and much safer for all of us, both for personal transport but also to move goods and cargo around the region. So it'll be a really greasy wheel of Southeast Asia's digital economy. But in parallel, we need to find employment for potential drivers who get displaced by this. Again, finding a solution here for Southeast Asia that works for this part of the world and helps to unlock that innovation, which will take us to the next level, is going to be really critical and a big task for all of us and policymakers in this part of the world. **Bernard Leong:** I think this is a good place to actually think about 2025, and I look forward to seeing you in 2026\. So Sapna, Florian, and Cassie, many thanks for coming on the show. Just in closing, very quick, two questions. First question: any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Florian Hoppe:** So I can give you one. I love cooking and there's a guy on YouTube - shoutout to good friends from Google - Vito, I think I'm butchering his name, but he does this great next-level pizza dough recipe. Highly recommend for anybody who likes cooking. Wonderful. It's worth every minute you spend on a recipe. **Sapna Chadha:** I also just met a creator recently. Her name is Michelle Khare. She's in the U.S. She does these stunts. She's basically doing the stunts that are in movies and she's doing them herself. But what I find fascinating is she also shared that people are watching her content on TV now because she's investing a lot in making content. What has typically been mobile, now people are watching on TV because of the investment. But yeah, she does these incredible stunts. I need to take more risks sometimes, so it's to help me think about that. **Cassie Wu:** Well, my recommendation is probably a little bit heavier. I think I most recently reread *The Most Important Thing* by Howard Marks. It is an investing classic. The rereading was very refreshing and it's refreshing for me because in this volatile world and there's a lot - we are facing a lot of macroeconomic volatility, and the same time AI era is coming at us, we are in the AI era. One thing that is hard is to see things clearly when timelines are so close. So it's very important for me to go back to the basics, and I think that is very clarifying. **Bernard Leong:** He has a treasure trove of his letters. Now I will just add to that - also a podcast that talks about all the letters in that book. My final question: how do my audience find all of you and the report? It's going to be out soon, right? **Sapna Chadha:** Out tomorrow, 11/11, 11/11 at 11:00 AM. You can find me on LinkedIn and the report will definitely be there. **Florian Hoppe:** LinkedIn and florian.hoppe@bain.com. **Cassie Wu:** Well, I do not have a .com, just LinkedIn. **Bernard Leong:** Okay, got it. So many thanks for this 10th anniversary. Very honored to be here to do it with you all, and of course, I wish you all all the success and I will look forward to the next 10 years with the report again. Thank you. **Sapna, Florian, Cassie:** Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He distinguishes between startups that are merely "AI-onboard" versus true sentient startups where AI operates as part of how the business is run, & introducing the concept of Machine Resources (MR) as a new organizational function alongside Human Resources to manage evolving AI models and maintain knowledge integrity. He emphasizes the co-intelligence model over the sterile human-versus-machine debate, highlighting how the 95% AI project failure rate stems from organizational issues rather than technology problems—a reality perfectly captured by the Banani framework (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible) that explains why companies struggle with AI readiness. Closing the conversation, Arnaud shares what great looks like for *The Sentient Startup*: being part of the essential conversation about AI governance, accessibility across income levels, child safety, and building better regulations. --- > "The entire debate on human versus machine is extremely in a way sterile because it very quickly veers towards the science fiction, the movies, the images we have, and it forgets the point about what can we gain. but what can we gain in the context of having accountability and integrity with it? I think this is where the debate becomes more complex. So for me that's the bigger point is this is not about having less people. It's about having people doing better things and using their talent to really scale what they can do in that model of co-intelligence. " - **Arnaud Frade** **Profile: Arnaud Frade,** author of "[The Sentient Startup](https://thesentientstartup.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnaudfrade/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), which will launch on May 19, 2026 by Penguin Random House. ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to analyse podcast, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. Yes, we are post 500 episode and a new rebrand in a new era. I am [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and today we are diving in the future of entrepreneurship in the age of artificial intelligence. With me today is Arnaud Frade, seasoned global executive and author of an upcoming book, "The Sentient Startup" where he explores the provocative idea of AI as a true co-founder. Arnaud, welcome to the show. **Arnaud Frade:** Thank you so much, Bernard. Thanks a lot for the invitation. **Bernard Leong:** Really appreciate it. Of course we know each other through a common friend and, but we won't talk about that today. But I want to start off because you have a very interesting. Career background. So I want to ask you, what, how did your career journey begin and what led you into the world of technology and data intelligence? **Arnaud Frade:** Well, I really started in the UK. My career began there, where I spent about eight years. Originally, I'm from France—from Paris. I worked in the UK initially for a company called Information Resources, and it was really all about helping brands understand incrementality and better sell and engage with consumers and shoppers. The initial part of my career is all about business intelligence and market insights. I then had a stint at American Express where I ran global accounts and large accounts in France, back in the motherland for a little while. Then I came to Singapore in 2006, so I've been here almost 20 years now. **Bernard Leong:** Wow. Always in senior executive roles? **Arnaud Frade:** Yes. My area of expertise, I would say, is in building or rebuilding professional services firms. So I've worked for WPP, I've worked for Omnicom, I've worked for research companies like Ipsos and Nielsen. I also was a subject matter expert for Accenture, where I led some very large-scale projects on the future of retail. Most recently, I'm the managing partner of Mesh Advisory, which is a boutique strategy advisory firm. We focus on equipping companies with the skills to confront rapid business transformation. So two topics really: scenario-based strategic planning and advanced negotiation. **Bernard Leong:** So you've worked across major markets in Asia and even globally, for sure, in Europe. With senior roles across strategy and marketing, how does that shape your view on innovation or thinking about startup culture? Because I think building a new business across a different geography is also considered a startup of sorts. **Arnaud Frade:** Completely. For me, I've always worked at the intersection of technology, business, and culture—culture from the standpoint of consumer understanding and shopper understanding. I've worked with clients from the largest tech companies to the larger consumer tech companies such as Samsung, for example, where I was the subject matter expert in retail.What I think is the reality on startups: I used to be a mentor for The Hub here in Singapore from roughly 2013 to 2017, so about four years, mentoring a large number of startups. I think that intersection of really rapid development, trying to deploy new ambitious solutions, trying to also match grand missions—sometimes a lot of work on the sustainability side, on circular economies, et cetera—and technology is really where we are today in terms of bringing this together. **Bernard Leong:** So before we get into the main subject which is your new book, I want to ask: from your career journey, what are the lessons you would share if you were to give advice to a younger audience? **Arnaud Frade:** That's a great question. I think the first one is really make sure you stick to your values. I think sometimes in corporate roles you end up in places where you really shouldn't be, with people you shouldn't be with. I think the first thing is really to be true to yourself and to try as early as you can to get to know yourself, get to know what matters to you, what your values are, and to make sure that you can really live that as opposed to trying to make too many compromises. That's one thing.I think the second thing is to volunteer. From a very young age as a business person, when I joined my first company, I volunteered for everything. The value of that is you get to really be in the right room at some stage, and sometimes you're just in the right room, sat on a chair in the corner, not expected to say anything, but that alone is an incredible learning experience. So that's the second thing.I think the third thing is to really understand that intersection of technology and the broader world of business. You can't take a naive view. There are very complex issues on ethics, integrity, privacy. These are real, solid, robust problems, and they're things that we need to understand and tackle. But that's also where the space of innovation, progress, and agility takes place. I think that gets you, again, in the right room with the right kind of people and also with people that hopefully are smarter than you, and you get to learn from them. That to me has been the biggest part of the journey. **Bernard Leong:** I love your depiction of "Be Yourself." I think about Joseph Campbell's quote, "The privilege of a lifetime is to be yourself." I totally agree on that. So I want to come to really the fun part, which is your upcoming new book, The Sentient Startup in the Age of AI Co-Founders. I think let's start with the inspiration story. So what inspired you to write The Sentient Startup, and was there a particular moment or insight that catalyzed the idea? **Arnaud Frade:** Absolutely. So for me, it is my first book, so it's a really big milestone. I started writing on AI in 2016\. In 2016, I started becoming interested by this idea that for a hundred years, brands have marketed to consumers. That's what I was part of for a portion of that time. But with the rise of algorithms directing what products are shown, what products appear—in particular in smart search, in the advanced modules of search, and in a number of solutions that started to appear—then my question was about, okay, what about marketing to algorithms? How does that work? I started to write this book with the premise that brands are going to have to really learn to understand how these algorithms work because they're now marketing first to them, and then afterward to consumers. I started to write this book called "Algo Marketing," and fairly quickly, but by 2017, I kind of ran out of words. I got stuck at about 27,000 words. You know, a business book is maybe 50,000 to 55,000\. I got stuck at 27,000 or thereabouts. More and more books on marketing and algorithms were coming out, and I felt I'd kind of missed the boat. So I decided not to really press with the book itself, but I continued learning. I really got down the rabbit hole of machine learning, artificial intelligence. Obviously, this has been going on for more than 40 years before that time. This is something that has seen gradients of evolution. But it became very clear by early 2020 that there was a bit of a shift from the labs and the research papers—some of which, frankly, are way above my head—into more of the commercial consumer conversation. You could start to sense that some of these applications were now being built not just for the scientific community, not just for the large corporates, but also for some sort of consumer use. In 2023, I heard this at a conference—There Is A Revolution, a JP Morgan conference. Sam Altman was on stage. He was interviewed by Alexis Ohanian, and he had this throwaway comment. He said, "My buddy and I in Silicon Valley were betting on who's going to be the first solopreneur to build a unicorn thanks to ChatGPT." To me, that was really the epiphany. That was the moment where I thought, yeah, this is exactly what I've tried to crystallize for all these years, where I'm thinking about how do you build businesses when you balance the power of the human mind and the power of humans with the right technology. That really crystallized that moment. That's when I started to think about this idea of the sentient startup—AI as your co-founder. A startup that would be, obviously, created by humans, but enhanced, augmented, by co-intelligence through the machine. **Bernard Leong:** I want to start with a baseline. How do you define a sentient startup, and how does it differ from, say, traditional startups from your point of view? **Arnaud Frade:** So my initial idea was, well, there must be plenty of those. There must be plenty. I started to interview startups in Israel, China, the U.S., Europe, the UK—many places. What became very obvious is many of them were AI-onboard. They were not sentient startups, meaning the AI was not really part of that entity of co-founding the business. To me, the distinction is: where is the model, where are the models operating? Are they operating as an addition, as a product, as a solution, as a feature, as a benefit? Or are they part of how the business is run? That's really the big difference. Today we're starting to see examples of that. I'm talking to a startup in the UK called New.me—founder Imad Rashi, who's a veteran of AI—and he's building a model to create autonomous startups, so entirely integrated within different layers of models. I was talking to a digital gallery owner here who is bringing an AI on his board to help as a scout, to help identify other AI-driven digital artists. To me, that's the premise of what the sentient startup is going to become, in my opinion. **Bernard Leong:** There was a book called The Invisible Billionaire. It was about this New York billionaire who was so reclusive, but he was actually one person who worked with various partners in the shipmaking business, and he was able to reach a point where he started from building ships, managing ships, and essentially he would get the contracts for the fulfillment, but he passed them to the ship builders that he knew and the ship transportation companies. Basically, he's quite invisible and he became a billionaire. He's like my version of a pre-internet-world solo billionaire. So in your book, you reference Sam Altman's prediction of one-person, billion-dollar companies, which I think for that person is considered rare, like one in a million. Now it probably is going to be more common. How close do you think we are to that reality? **Arnaud Frade:** So for me, I'm less focused on whether it's one person or several. I don't think it really matters, but I think we are at most two to three years away from it, really at most. There are already very tangible examples that it's now possible to scale companies with a really better mix of better-qualified people. I think that also opens the way for bringing in more senior people that really understand, that have the experience to build on what needs to be done to grow and to grow fast. At the same time, systems and technology are going to facilitate that agility, facilitate that process. So are we very far? I really don't think so. Is it going to be just the one person? Maybe, maybe not. Does it really matter? I don't know. For me, what really matters is I think it opens up a huge opportunity to all of the generations, which is: I can now set up a business in a way where my ambition doesn't have to be to hire a hundred people with my first fund that I raise. It could be that my ambition is to find some really super-skilled people and to combine them with some very effective agentic models and to try to combine that into something that delivers what I want to execute. That really is exciting because it means that the barriers to entry are going to reduce even further. I think for large companies, multinationals, they should really start thinking, okay, what's our version of becoming a sentient startup? **Bernard Leong:** We had this conversation before where I think there's still a transition period, but of course we differ on when the timeline is. But I think it will gradually go towards what you think the world is going to look like. So that's one thing I agree with you on. So you propose AI not as a tool, but as a genuine co-founder. How does that relationship look in practice, and how does it reshape team structure, leadership, and even culture? I told my kids that they can become the sentient startup vision that you anticipate. But because I live in a transition world, what I did is I said, "Okay, for me, building Dorje AI, we are going to be the hundred-person startup enabled by AI agents." But maybe I should think bigger and go towards your point of view as a sentient startup. **Arnaud Frade:** Just to be really clear, I'm really on the human side. So for me, I think today there is a debate, which I think is extremely challenging, which is companies thinking that by switching to AI models, they can get rid of people. I think that's a terrible, terrible way to look at it. **Bernard Leong:** It's more augmentation, right? **Arnaud Frade:** Yeah. It's a terrible, very short-term way. In fact, everything has been proven so far that every single company that has cut hundreds of people claiming AI efficiencies has had to go back and rehire those people. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Arnaud Frade:** Obviously at different conditions, and most likely at a more costly and more expensive way.So I think for me, I'm definitely on the side of the human mind and the human creativity and the human passion, more than on the machine side. Where I think the sentient startup operates is it can do many things. I could build a series of agents, maybe in a form of connected way, and those are going to help me scout new business opportunities. They're going to help me convert faster through the funnel. So instead of having a lot of people having to touch all of these early-stage leads before I convert them to active prospects, before they start to become warmed-up potential customers, I have a system in place where I can really funnel this much more effectively.I think there's a lot of talk about the role of human resources. I think we're going to enter an era where machine resources is also a function. I think the HR function combines with the MR function. The HR function, of course, because it becomes much more of a strategic advisor. It becomes much more of a very senior way to identify rare talent, interesting talent, emerging talent, diverse talent—all of these things that make the richness of a company.And MR, because you're going to need someone that cannot just manage different models but also adapt the platform so that you take advantage of all the new models coming out. I think that's the really big challenge today—the pace of progress in AI models is such that one day you've got Sora, the next day you've got another model. One is like so much better than the other. That complexity is going to require MR. It's going to require a function of machine resources where engineers and AI experts are really able to build a system where models can be switched in because you've got RAGs managing your knowledge base, because you've got other tools that can enable you to keep the integrity of your model, keep the learning and the knowledge files, but switch off the models according to the function and the task you need to achieve. **Bernard Leong:** Allow me to dive deeper into this because one thing that—because I do a lot of corporate advisory for major business enterprises on enterprise AI—one specific thing that I've seen, and you probably heard of that recent MIT report about the 95% of copilots being failures, 90% failure, but actually the real gains are in back office. I have to make sure that I reiterate it correctly. One question that I have from my perspective is that a lot of the current generative AI solutions, as you rightfully pointed out, are point solutions. Like, for example, you build your presentation through using ChatGPT and get it into, let's say, a certain version. You still need to do a cut and paste into Gamma and get Gamma to generate the presentation. In the ideal world, it would have been: you finish the presentation and your chatbot should be asking you, "Do you want to generate this on Gamma?" You press a button and it pushes into the other part of it. How do you see that kind of augmentation shift in terms of the tools that you use changing moving forward? Is it going to be more point solution living true with point solution to point solution, or do you think that you will see more solutions coming out and you'll see it more like a workflow? **Arnaud Frade:** No, I think it's going to be a lot more integrated. I think it's definitely going to be workflow-driven. The way I see it is: if you're really building a sentient startup, the first priority should be to build a structure that allows you to organize the agents and the input sources into your business. I think that's exactly the same thing. If you were to say, "I have a startup and I'm taking on a new board advisor or a new investor," it's not fundamentally different. The difference is that investor, that advisor has biases, maybe misalignments on ethics or integrity. You don't know at this point. You've taken on that person, that entity, whatever that is—a person or a legal entity—and they're there to address and advise you. I think the AI situation, the sentient startup model, is the same. You're going to need to have some sort of an overlay where, as we are moving towards really effective agentic AI, then these tools are going to come into the fore. You don't really need to have one tool and then click a button. You're going to be able to have a conversation and say, "These are the three goals for this presentation. Now, please send me the output," and the output is the deck ready. It doesn't mean that then it's done. It means that it's a really good way for you to have saved the first 60%, 70% of time that you just fiddle around before you start to put your brain into, "*Okay, I'm going to really fine-tune that with my own voice, my own talent, my own capabilities*." So I think we're going to see that workflow structure, and this is my point about MR versus HR. The MR function is all about organizing that. It's the ability to create all the building blocks, some of which are switchable. I have one model today, but tomorrow there is a much better model. I can switch the model, but underlying, I create the consistency because I'm building very structured RAGs. I'm building very structured databases where all of my knowledge and all of the repository of experience gets contained. **Bernard Leong:** How about culture? Because I think in HR, one function they need to think about is company culture. Now you have agents, right? It is an interesting anecdote I'll share with you. I usually give a lot of generative AI classes where I prompt, and I usually say, "Please help me" and "Thank you." Then the participants in the class will ask me, "Bernard, why are you so polite to the AI?" And then I'm telling them what I say is, "Here's what I think about it: because I'm genuinely dealing with people, I do not want to lose my humanity as a result of that. So if it comes across to my AI, even the way I talk to the AI, it becomes more natural for me." So how do you think about that going into the culture? **Arnaud Frade:** No, no, I think you're encapsulating it very well. The first reason why you should be polite to AI is: if the machines take over, you don't want them to be looking for you first. So that's the first thing. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Arnaud Frade:** But more seriously, I think the point here is you have to be yourself irrespective of what you're engaging with. I think the idea that the robots, the Android illustration, for example, of AI is something that you have to mistreat is a completely wrong idea. I think you have to retain the humanity of engagement. Obviously, in AI, you're going to say "Please" and "Thank you." That's adding actually energy consumption to the model. So some things you might want to actually reconsider, but I think from a cultural standpoint, to come back to your question, what we're going to see is simply the need to recognize that you have additional layers of input within the way we operate.It doesn't mean that you're going to necessarily listen to it. Again, you have to be very careful. AI is a probabilistic model, so AI is not a sentient god. The word "sentient" here is a little bit cheekily used in my title, for example. AI is not sentient. AI is a tool, a platform, a system. I'll come to that maybe a bit later because there is another way to look at this, but it's a way that ultimately is probabilistic as a model. So we have to be very careful with how much we believe in what is being said back.But I think it's just about the idea that I'm going to add an additional advisor to the table, and that advisor has many different capacities, like the ability to analyze data in a very efficient way. If I'm getting really good at asking the right question, I get even better answers. As I train myself to better understand how do I engage with this, I start to see that the output becomes better and better and better. That contributes to how much leverage and use I can have for this. **Bernard Leong:** This comes to my mind just from this perspective, right? When you're thinking about culture. When I was young and working in the Human Genome Project doing machine learning, I once said there'll come a day where AI can just remember everything and I can just ask the AI to be able to give me all the answers. So one of my colleagues in the Human Genome Project, a biologist, said, "*Well, but Bernard, you have to understand, forgetting is a very important evolutionary function. The reason why humans forget is because humans can relearn, unlearn, and relearn*," which is what his point was to me.So when now the AI solutions use a lot of reinforcement learning and it keeps learning towards a maximum, how do you think that actually shapes even this whole cultural thinking from the sentient startup point of view? Where maybe there might come a point in time where the company needs a major culture change, maybe because they have to be in what I call the war—are you a wartime CEO or a peacetime CEO? How does that thinking come along? I think you probably alluded to the fact that it's going to be human-driven, but where does the line come? **Arnaud Frade:** But I think it's a little bit the same challenge. If you look at companies, your example—so Ben Horowitz, right? Wartime CEO, peacetime CEO. That's one of, I think, the most really important writings of the modern business era. I think it's really something that is quite fundamental. If you think about his piece, what you realize is not everybody can adjust to that. So many CEOs are struggling. They're great peacetime CEOs, they're terrible wartime CEOs, or vice versa. And many teams are really struggling. Today we do things in a certain way in that peacetime mode, and for them to shift is really difficult. It takes a lot of time. You can see there are many examples today of companies really struggling to adjust to what is a much more, let's say, agile and potentially wartime mindset. In this modern era, I like to talk about the age of chaos. This is where we are, I think. We are in the very midst of the age of chaos. So I think it's not different for the models. The models are controlled by humans. If the humans are able to adapt, they will adapt the models. It might mean that they have to update the knowledge file, they have to transform the way the RAGs are interacting, they have to change the inputs. It might be that their sources of inspiration are also different. Consider these three hostile takeovers—what do we learn from those? As opposed to considering these five great product launches or these wonderful interactions with influencers, et cetera. So I think, again, everything here has nothing to do with the machines. The machines, for me—we talk about AI as a tool. Very often I've heard comparison of AI as the calculator when it came into companies. The calculator—people feared what it would do. For me, AI is about mindset. It's not about a tool or not. The mindset for AI is: I leverage this technology because it enables me to build access to information, inquire about information in a much more effective way, in a faster way, in a more agile way. My mindset, therefore—and the sentient mindset therefore—is I'm going to build the tools, but at the end of the day, I'm still accountable. I think where AI will fail is where the humans that control it will fail. There is no pushing the accountability to the machine. It doesn't work like that. I think what we're going to have to accept is whatever the AI is doing, it was done or not done properly by humans, and therefore the accountability stops there. **Bernard Leong:** I see. **Arnaud Frade:** So this is where it's really going to be extremely important to make sure that we have the right regulatory framework, we have the right oversight on integrity and ethics, because these are decisions made by humans. They're not decisions made by a machine by itself. I think before we get to AGI, before we get to so-called general intelligence, is a long way. Before we can allow it is also a long way, because we need to make sure that these issues of accountability are not forgotten. **Bernard Leong:** Can you give a practical example of other startup functions—maybe think about product development, go-to-market—or where the AI could actually act autonomously today? I see some glimpses of that. **Arnaud Frade:** Oh, there are many. I was talking with a CEO, for example, of a company here and talking about the book, and his reaction was, "Oh, I really need to get my CFO to get involved here because that would be a fantastic complement to helping her get much more efficient at collating everything, at processing it." Really, it becomes a complement to her capabilities. There's a lot of opportunities around product scout. There's a lot of opportunities around innovation. But again, you have to be careful. Innovation in a probabilistic way means repeating a little bit what has been done before. So how do you make sure that you're not excluding the human creativity, the human ingenuity out of the mix? So again, for me, it's really about how these models are leveraged. But I see applications across marketing. There's obviously already AI being very actively done. When you look at programmatic advertising, for example, that's at the heart of it—machine learning and algorithms. So these things are already very much in place in some areas, for sure. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about ai now from writing the book: The Sentient Startup that very few do? **Arnaud Frade**: So I don't see myself as an expert at all. I think I'm a curious inquirer. So I would be hesitant to kind of reveal a big secret, and I don't think there is one. What I would say is something I mentioned earlier: I think a lot of people talk about this as a tool. It is—I don't disagree—but for me it's about a mindset. I think that's really the main outcome of this.If you start to think about what you really want to do here, what you can do, the possibilities, it completely shifts your mindset. I have this resource I can use to further dig down on a topic. I have this resource I can use as a research assistant. The moment you start thinking about, "I have this additional help," it changes your interaction with the complexities you're facing, with the business challenges you're facing. I think that to me is the biggest finding, if you want: that mindset shift is incredibly freeing because you now have, even if you don't have all of the knowledge, an additional resource to help you categorize information, to help you structure it, and sometimes to find new things. **Bernard Leong:** Why I like, since we're talking about the book, is that it also cautions against blind faith in AI. I think what are the most underestimated risks of, say, over-reliance on intelligence systems in startups? Okay, I can give a pretty simple example. A lot of CEOs will walk up to me and say, "What should my now do today?" I don't really want them to outsource all their thinking now to ChatGPT. **Arnaud Frade:** Yeah, I think there are a number of really big risks that we're facing with any type of really new advanced technology. If you think about nuclear fission, that's also something scary, which for years there have been deep concerns and big choices made. I don't think this is fundamentally that different.There are a number of issues around biases. There are a number of issues—obviously the information you enter or the information the models are able to capture directly contains the biases of our society. So that already is one big major risk. There is obviously a risk around blindly trusting answers from a machine.Today we hear about people that are using AI as a psychotherapist. You have people getting married to their AI, people in relationships with their AI. All of these things are obviously deeply disturbing, and I think they're symptomatic of a much broader societal issue, which is the loneliness crisis. So AI is not going to resolve those topics. AI is going to inflame them, augment them, and potentially make things much worse for those that are not strong enough to understand the limitation and the truth of what these technologies really do. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting you mentioned this. I have a friend, a couple recently—they went to the U.S.—who attended a course on AI and parenting, and they are actually very tech-savvy people. They walked back with the understanding that the course is more about parenting and less on the AI. That is the essence of what you are actually saying here. **Arnaud Frade:** I think first, a lot of people tag AI to everything, right? I recently saw an AI fridge. I'm not sure what that does. So I think if you do a course on parenting, okay. But parenting with AI—that must be more exciting or sexier, I don't know. **Bernard Leong:** No, they were looking for—it just genuinely introduced tools. But what I think the person who actually conducts the course was telling them is it's not the AI that you should be worried about—it's actually the parenting. **Arnaud Frade:** For sure. Yeah, for sure. I think again, it's overall reliance on technology. It's not understanding how to set boundaries in this case. So I think all of these things are just a magnifying glass to the challenges we have as a society. It's not going to bring the answers if you're not asking, again, the right questions. That's so fundamental, I think. **Bernard Leong**: How should founders now think about, say, ethics, trust, human oversight as they try to integrate this AI into their business DNA? **Arnaud Frade:** First, I don't think any differently than they would have done if they had just relied on having more advisors around the table, building a board, bringing a new shareholder, or whatever. It's the same thing. I think those that don't really have ethics and integrity at their top of mind are definitely going to have the same problems with AI. Those that want to put integrity at the forefront of their thinking will do so with AI. They will think about, okay, are there any biases in this model? If we start to analyze the data that is coming out, is that data showing a bias? For example, that's a really big topic. Are we suggesting to market to a certain niche consumer group? But why that group? So I think what AI is going to force, and especially for the sentient startups out there, is it's going to force the ability to question more what it is you're doing. So on one hand, you win time, you earn time, you kind of gain speed. On the other, you're going to have to make sure you pause soon enough and frequently enough that you can really question: Why is this? **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, this is a very interesting point you brought up. So I was actually doing a lot of things with AI being my partner or my agents, right? So I had this thinking about: A players with AI hire A players, and B, C, D, and E players get replaced by AI agents. Then I was telling my business mentor how much I can take any task from months to days to minutes to seconds. The first thing my business mentor pointed out to me and really properly made a very good point to me and said, "But Bernard, here's the problem: the people you manage are not thinking at your speed. You need to think about how to empower them such that they can be at that speed, or there will be a big miscommunication going on." I think this is where those AI-first founders can get very, how should I say, overwhelmed by this whole AI. So to the question, maybe I'll come back to you: how do they think about this from that point of view, like making sure that the culture of the AI is actually being spread down to your next in line and then the people down the line as part of the culture building? **Arnaud Frade**: So I think there are two layers. One is overall AI education. I think today, a number of countries, a number of companies also are really trying to push forward. I think that's essential. I think it is simply impossible to enter the workforce in the next five years with no really sustainable understanding of this technology. I think from a founder standpoint, you need to obviously align yourself with people that are going to want the same things. But not everybody is the founder in a company. You're the founder, you have a vision. Other people are employees. They have maybe a little bit of a stake in it, but really the reality is they're employees. I think you've got to accept as a founder that not everybody is as motivated, ambitious, or excited as you are. The key here, from the standpoint of the sentient startup, is to make sure that you've equipped yourself with the people and the models that can really complement where you have resources that you're lacking. Maybe you have more models structuring those. Where you have some talent that is incredible, people that you've identified—these are actually controlling some of the models. So I think it's finding that balance. **Bernard Leong:** What does success then look like for a sentient startup? Is it speed, market dominance, personalization, or something else? **Arnaud Frade:** So I think one, of course, agility, for sure. The second one is kind of the barriers of entry. There are markets today which are extremely complex to enter. There are industries that are extremely complex to enter that actually can give you a really a leg up and a way to really kind of reduce those barriers, get into the market faster because you can deploy more resources—both human and machine, but certainly machine-driven—to help you activate within that market. So I think the agility, for sure. The ability to scale. The ability to scale without necessarily having to hire. In some markets, it's extremely complex to hire. It's extremely risky also to hire. A place like Japan, for example, is a perfect illustration. It's almost impossible to find the right talent, and if you do find it, it's very complex. So the question is, okay, maybe this is where the sentient startup can thrive because the market itself is huge, but finding talent there becomes an impossible challenge. So that's a really good way to try to scale. So speed, scale, and lower barriers. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one question you wish more people would ask you about ai as a co-founder, but they don't? **Arnaud Frade:** About, you mean the, this, about the sanction startup. Well, the first question obviously is where can i buy the bo the book in bulk? Obviously that would be the first question i'm gonna ask you that. I'm joking, i'm joking. No, no. That's not my concern. No, i think the main question is whether. Is where i stand on that human versus ai debate. Where do you stand on that? Well, for me, i've, i've said it already very clearly on the human side. I think the machine is an incredible co intelligence, right? And i think, and this was coined by ethan molik. This is one of the book i recommend to every single person that asked me about ai. Co intelligence by ethan molik. I think it is the best description of what this technology is about. Ah, and so to me, i think the entire, debate on human versus machine is extremely, in a way sterile because it very quickly veers towards the science fiction, the movies, the images we have, and it forgets the point about what can we gain. **Arnaud Frade:** But what can we gain in the context of having accountability and integrity with it? I think this is where the debate becomes more complex. So for me, that's the bigger point: this is not about having fewer people. It's about having people doing better things and using their talent to really scale what they can do in that model of co-intelligence. **Bernard Leong:** So my traditional closing question: what does great look like for you personally with the book when it's launched—The Sentient Startup? How would you define impact or success for the book and the idea behind it? **Arnaud Frade:** So the book is launching on the 19th of May, 2025. **Bernard Leong:** I bet I will get a copy with your signature in there. **Arnaud Frade:** You're getting a copy for sure. It's being published by Penguin Random House. So in a few months, for me, the main topic is to be part of the conversation. So my motivation is not really to be the next Pulitzer Prize winner for sure, or New York Times bestseller list. None of these things. My ambition, my motivation, is to be part of the conversation.I think we need more debate. We need more people to join with their unique takes, their unique perspectives. We don't have to agree. We don't all have to be the same. I think there's got to be more debate, more dialogue, more panels, more conversations, more podcasts just like yours, which is phenomenal. We need more of those conversations where there is debate, there are opinions, there is a focus on how can we build better regulations, there is a focus on how can we make sure that people in lower-income countries can really also access and benefit from this technology. How can we make sure that children can be safely onboarded into that technology? All of these topics matter tremendously to the future of society.Me, I'm just really interested in being part of the discussion from my own standpoint. That's all I'm kind of after. **Bernard Leong:** I totally enjoy all those conversations we have prior to this interview, and I really appreciate the thought leadership and also the thinking that you have. Despite we all have different viewpoints, I think that whole point of being part of the conversation is something you should be applauded for.So many thanks for coming on the show, but I always have two closing questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Arnaud Frade:** Yeah, so for me, there are really three books that I mention. First, the Ethan Mollick one I've mentioned already. There's a fantastic book from Richard Tabba, who's a former Publicis exec, called [Rethinking Work](https://rishadtobaccowala.com/rethinking-work?ref=analysepodcast.com). I think that's at the heart of the conversation here. I think he's done an amazing job at kind of qualifying the challenges and the future where what we do, how we do it, changes dramatically for the better.And the third one is a book that is not yet published. It's coming at the end of October. It's a book by Jamais Cascio called [Navigating the Age of Chaos](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/800209/navigating-the-age-of-chaos-by-jamais-cascio-bob-johansen-and-angela-f-williams/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Jamais Cascio is the creator of the Banani Language Framework. It's a model that I use. Banani is Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible. It's a perfect way to really understand why AI projects fail, for example. You mentioned the MIT study—that's 95% of pilots have failed. Actually, the study really says one thing: they fail because of organizational issues. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Arnaud Frade:** I think that's exactly where Banani comes in. So Navigating the Age of Chaos with Jamais and other co-writers coming soon—I think it's the heart of the discussion today. **Bernard Leong:** Arnaud, many thanks for coming on the show and really sharing your upcoming book. But don't worry, we are going to have you on when the book is launched, right? **Arnaud Frade:** Of course. **Bernard Leong:** So we have a date for that. So you can definitely find us everywhere from YouTube to Spotify as well. But before that, where can my audience find you? Where should they stay updated on the launch of your book **Arnaud Frade:** So the best way is to go to[ thesentientstartup.com](https://thesentientstartup.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is a microsite where you can register to be part of the community. I'm doing a number of activities. I'll be talking to some of the people I've mentioned actually in interviews, in conversations, in the next few months. There's a number of activation events taking place here in Singapore in a number of places, and also in the Middle East. But the easiest way is simply thesentientstartup.com or LinkedIn, of course, where they can find me. **Bernard Leong:** Arnaud, thank you for coming on the show, and let's continue to talk when your book comes out. **Arnaud Frade:** Thank you so much. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast. - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/DsPFOug8GkI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sentient-startup-building-companies-in-the-age/id914868245?i=1000736387066&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Q9Bkztrhc9L9J73bAxb27?si=WXV4b1DYQBO1HURIQG2hCw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-sentient-startup-building-companies-in-the-age-of-ai-with-arnaud-frade?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFt49sRQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://anchor.fm/s/10a88303c/podcast/rss?ref=analyse.asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Microsoft's Global Partner Strategy: 400M Businesses, 1 Platform with Ralph Haupter URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/microsofts-global-partner-strategy-400m-businesses-1-platform-with-ralph-haupter/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:49.000Z --- Fresh out of the studio, Ralph Haupter, President & CRO, Small Medium Enterprises and Channels at Microsoft, joins us to explore how Microsoft is empowering 400 million small and medium businesses globally across 56 counties through a partner-first strategy that combines platform standardization with deep specialization. He shares his career journey spanning over 20 years at Microsoft, from running Europe to leading Greater China, building Asia's geographical operations in Singapore, eventually taking on global SME strategy. Ralph explains that Microsoft's unique advantage lies in being a platform company at its finest, offering a complete technology stack from productivity to infrastructure, security, and applications—all with core AI integration—while relying on a specialized partner ecosystem to deliver local expertise and support. He highlights how partners are creating entirely new business models on agentic AI while emphasizing the four critical partnership moments from transaction to ongoing support that most companies neglect. Closing the conversation, Ralph shares what great looks like for Microsoft globally on the SMEs and Channels front. --- > “The partner program for us is a place where we want to have expertise for our customers. The only way to make that happen is to standardize on portfolio and standardize on offering.If you don’t provide standardized offers — if the experience in Word, for example, is different in one country than in another — you can’t build an ecosystem that helps partners scale with expertise. I call that a platform company at its finest.We have the full assortment — from the productivity world to infrastructure, security, and applications. And if you’re a small or medium enterprise, the last thing you want is to have four meetings with four people, serving four different types of coffee to four different vendors, just to get a full-stack solution for your business.” - **Ralph Haupter** **Profile: Ralph Haupter**, President and CRO, Small Medium Enterprises and Channel (SME&C), [Microsoft](https://microsoft.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphhaupter/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to [Analyse podcast](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media globally. We are [post 500th episode](https://www.analysepodcast.com/500-episodes-later-what-i-learned-from-11-years-of-podcasting-with-bernard-leong/) and in a new brand and in a new era. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). What better way to start off this global times where we think about small and medium business enterprises, how are they enabled digitally and globally across the world. With me is Ralph Haupter, President and CRO, Small Medium Enterprises and Channels at Microsoft. As we explore how Microsoft is actually enabling digital transformation for small and medium enterprises globally through a [partner first strategy](https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/?ref=analysepodcast.com). So Ralph, welcome to the show. **Ralph Haupter:** Thank you so much for having me this morning. **Bernard Leong:** Given that this is a new era and you're my first global guest on the show, I want to always start off with some of the things that do not change, like your origin story. How did your career journey begin and what led you to Microsoft? **Ralph Haupter:** It's more than 20 years. Funny enough, as a German, I started actually in Paris. My first job at Microsoft was running the European distribution network for Microsoft at that point. Then I had chance to do a couple of country leadership roles. I was running the Germany office first. Then I got a call going to Asia, and not knowing a lot about Asia, going to China. Then I was running our greater China business for almost five years. Then I had the pleasure to live in this beautiful country here in Singapore for five years, and at that point I was setting up Asia as a geographical operation for Microsoft. A couple of years I went back to Europe, Middle East, and Africa. In July, formally in general, we start thinking about how to organize our division for small and medium businesses. That's what I started six months ago. **Bernard Leong:** From the start from Germany all the way across the globe, you have lived and led teams across Europe and Asia. How does all these global experiences shape how you think about your leadership philosophy and what perspectives have they helped you in thinking in this now increasingly interconnected world? **Ralph Haupter:** It's a great question. My biggest moment was really when I came to China in a sense of, at that point I was with the company I think seven, eight years. I understood Microsoft. I would say to some extent how to operate in a country. But then you go to China and the game plan is a new game plan because it's different environment, different setup. So going into a mental model where you need to bring, I would say two cultures and two things together. A business model of a global company, Microsoft, with a geographically setup like you have in China. Getting into a space of being, I would say intellectually flexible and having grey as a great color. It's not black or white, it's actually grey, which makes a difference: finding a way, finding space for both. That was my biggest moment. After six months being in China, I said, "*Oh, but there's something I need to do different here.*" **Bernard Leong:** You have spent a significant time in China and then you came to the Asia Pacific. The cultural nuances are very different in the whole of Asia. If you think about Japan, Korea, they have different cultures as compared to Malaysia and Indonesia. How does those cultural changes also make you think about leadership as well as how you think about building business units across these diverse, geographically diverse and yet culturally diverse region as well? **Ralph Haupter:** Look, first, the definition of Asia for us at that point was including greater China. That was India. Then you have Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and then \[rest of\] Asia. So it just has the whole portfolio. I think one of the biggest one is really giving space to leaders in the country to tell us as an organization what is needed for the country to perform. That can be sometimes misleading to people because they try to reinvent Microsoft in their own country, which is not the purpose. But understanding what type of businesses you have in the different places. So you have in India, a very local oriented business. So there are local financial big businesses which need to serve in their circumstances. You have Australia companies who are very organized in a structure looking like the U.S. and the UK. You go to greater China, which was growing fast and the biggest market out there. I would say that the change and learning was that our sweet spot there is serving companies who come as a global company to China. Our sweet spot is helping companies in China who grow global. That understanding and knowledge base, making that one then part on how the portfolio needs to be established for that one, that is key. So being clear on how you listen and understanding, getting these signals, is super important. **Bernard Leong:** From your career, are there key lessons that you can share with a younger audience who's listening to this conversation? If you were to redo this again, for those young audience out there who's thinking about today in today's world where it is AI, you know, in our times we have already gone through three eras: the PC era, then the dot com era, and then the mobile era, and now the AI era. What would your advice be? **Ralph Haupter:** I'm always cautious on giving advice. I would say, what works for me? Then let people have the chance to reflect. So first of all, when you think about global, you need to make sure that you get out of your comfort zone. So to some extent find space to take risk. Where you want to put your energy, where you want to put your professional path and career, but take it intentionally and feel good about it. Then you need to bring curiosity to the place, because what you have learned in one market may not fit to the other market. But with the right level of curiosity and with your knowledge base and experience, if you're able to blend these two, the curiosity of the new and the learning of the old, then I think you bring yourself in a much better position to help people think through. Then the last one I have always appreciated is: you are surrounded by very, very smart people. So the question is how can you basically untap the potential and help them to see through and then jointly do something? So it's not about outsmarting who has the better knowledge. It's always about finding where is the knowledge and help people grow in that task. Because everybody wants to be successful, so let's just help them. **Bernard Leong:** That's very good advice indeed. So, let's get to the main subject of day. We are going to talk about Microsoft's small, medium enterprise and channels and strategy. What does it mean? Because in the realm of digital transformation, we always think about large enterprises, but actually the small medium businesses are formed, I think in most economies, with the exception of Singapore, which is 4% multinationals, but in most countries, it's usually 99% of their economies. So, to help my audience understand this, what does your role as the president of small, medium enterprise and channels actually entail? **Ralph Haupter:** So we run a team globally which is really taking care on the success of small, medium enterprises. There are always big, global financial institutions, manufacturing institutions, but the reality is we have more than 400 million companies globally which are small and medium enterprises. **Bernard Leong:** Are they usually self serve or do they work together with your channels? **Ralph Haupter:** That's the whole belief and conviction we have, that all of these smaller companies need support in their local context. These companies are more than 50% in some countries of the GDP, they have 80 to 90% of our working population consolidated. So what they still need is somewhere in Manila, somebody who has the local expertise; or somewhere in Hong Kong, who has the local expertise in a combination sometimes of real technical knowledge and market expertise where you need to have a regulatory knowledge. How do you do tax report? How do you do accounting in Thailand? I mean, all these things are very unique and very specific, and I think that is where our conviction is first. Our mission that we want to empower every organization we need to live it through. Not only having the big companies, but having the same service, the same capability for all companies, but then having a deep understanding that the roots of these companies are somewhere very, very local and serving them in that local environment. We have conviction that we need an ecosystem to help there, which we call channels. Generally the definition of partners who have expertise or have IP in a very specific environment. That's where we want to double down and foster & help success. **Bernard Leong:** So what makes Microsoft's mission to support small and medium enterprises globally now as a unique opportunity in this period of the AI era? **Ralph Haupter:** Let me start with the AI perspective. Small and medium enterprises face enormous challenges competing globally. Technology is just as critical for them as it is for large corporations, but accessing and leveraging these technologies is often more complicated—they simply don't have the capacity to tap into everything available. That's why our deep conviction is to work with our ecosystem to build solutions that are easy to use, sometimes industry-specific, and accessible in local contexts. At the same time, we believe it's essential to offer companies a portfolio that's as simple and holistic as possible. So we're balancing two priorities: helping SMEs stay on top of AI capabilities right now, while understanding they're not departments with thousands of IT specialists. Serving them with that reality in mind is absolutely critical. **Bernard Leong:** With generative AI tools now available—particularly Microsoft's Copilot—do you find that small and medium business owners have a better means of supercharging their productivity? I see that SMEs have a lot of flexibility, and even running a small business myself, I can see the potential impact. **Ralph Haupter:** We're seeing real-time examples where things are creating genuine step-change opportunities for small businesses. Think about their basic challenges: they need to handle tax reports, find employees, manage travel expenses, and maintain customer engagement tools. In all these areas, AI provides a simple way to access knowledge, information, and competitive insights—which is critical when small businesses want to understand how to enter global markets.But what's even more fascinating is what happened when we announced that Chat Copilot is available for free within the Microsoft stack. The adoption rate has grown massively. Now we're seeing our partners build agents. So it's not just about having the capability to use generative AI with Copilot—we're moving into a space where the ecosystem, ISVs and small consulting companies, are building agents that get specific jobs done for small companies. That's what I find truly fascinating and represents a tremendous opportunity for us to invest and help. **Bernard Leong:** As a Microsoft veteran who's seen different CEOs, the transformation under Satya Nadella has probably been a big influence on your work. How does his leadership come across to you in terms of thinking about the cloud, AI, and enterprise apps like Office 365 for the customers you've served? **Ralph Haupter:** Look, there are a couple of principles where I feel Satya is helping us—and the industry—stay focused and deliver. First, when he started, he was very clear that he wants us as an organization to empower every person and every organization on the planet. You don't do that if you have SMEs out of scope. So you need to understand there's something broader to focus on. That's one.Second, Satya often talks about our responsibility to generate surplus. Technology as a purpose needs to serve small businesses to become better. That's how we get measured and that's how we need to focus on delivering our stack.It's also very clear—and his leadership here is super precise—that we need to have relevance in countries. We respect local regulatory and privacy rules, which is extremely demanding. Many countries have very high and unique standards. But as a global tech player, you need to build a global platform while reflecting local requirements.His vision on AI is also very clear. Our purpose is being a platform company. We're seeing large language models grow and evolve. We don't know which one is the right bet to take, and from that perspective, we want to be the best at servicing all of them so you don't need to worry about which platform or which model to bet on. We take responsibility for having all these models available, and from there you can work with your partners to build applications. **Bernard Leong:** Speaking of applications—in preparing for this interview, I turned on Microsoft Word and used the Copilot prompt to help me. I fed it your background and asked it to suggest the best questions. It's really remarkable how Copilot is now integrated across the entire Office 365 suite.Given your global view of small and medium enterprises and channels, how do you balance global strategy with local execution across different regions? Earlier you highlighted the importance of curiosity—being curious about each region or country you go to. **Ralph Haupter:** The truth is I'm a big fan of standardization and clarity about what we serve and what we offer. I think it benefits us as a company, but it also benefits small businesses. When they get standards and technology at scale, it helps their productivity, pricing, simplicity, and flexibility.One thing we're super clear on: our partner program is where we want expertise for our customers. The only way to make that happen is to standardize the portfolio and standardize the offering. If you don't provide standard offers, if you deviate, the experience becomes different from one country to another. You can't build an ecosystem that helps partners deliver expertise at scale. That's where we're doubling down. **Bernard Leong:** I see. I'm thinking back to when I was at SingPost and we were switching to Dynamics as a point-of-sale system. Dynamics as a product still required customization, and that's where your partners come in. Despite working in different tech companies and talking to various tech companies, Microsoft's partner ecosystem is the envy of the industry.Spanning every continent, what global strategy are you driving and how does it translate into impact for partners and customers? **Ralph Haupter:** Great question. Building a partner ecosystem requires substantial investment. By the numbers, we believe we have the biggest ecosystem of any company right now. But we still put enormous effort into helping partners on two dimensions.First, we give them space to differentiate. Second, we help them specialize. If you look at our Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, we emphasize designations and specializations. You're not just an "Azure partner"—you're an Azure infrastructure expert, or an Azure data expert, or a Dynamics CRM expert, or a Fabric data specialist.When you're a small business customer—and this is what I'd encourage all customers to do—you say, "Here's my problem. I'm looking for an expert who can give me a CRM system for my industry." Then a partner can come forward and say, "I'm certified, and by the way, I have three references in this specific area of CRM." That's where we invest heavily in our ecosystem. **Bernard Leong:** I see. So in doing that, can you share, like, say the partner dynamics, how does it vary across the different regions under your purview? Let's compare, say like North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, for example. **Ralph Haupter:** Maybe the way to look at it is when we really look at the ecosystem. There are most probably two dimensions. One is we try to understand in which functions and capacity do we need more partners? In which function capacity do we want to have partners more trained? So as an example, if you look at our security growth, it is very clear that we need more partners on our security portfolio. When you look at our Azure infrastructure play, it is very clear that the AI business there on the existing partners gives us space to grow, but we just need to help them use AI technology to build these agents, which we think is coming forward, making a difference for our customers. So these are two very different dimensions, really kind of new partners for some product portfolio where we see growth. Then existing partners to help them being very differently skilled and trained. **Bernard Leong:** You've worked with partners across numerous regions. Can you share standout success stories about partner specialization and ecosystem collaboration? **Ralph Haupter:** Security stands out immediately—it's one of the hardest challenges for customers and the industry. The consultative capability of security partners has become incredibly sophisticated. What's fascinating is that most security partners have no interest in license sales. They're hyper-specialized on the product but focused entirely on implementation and optimization—tuning your car, not selling it. That's a unique dynamic in the security space.On Dynamics, our ERP and CRM platform, partners are diving deep into AI integration. This is disrupting standard SaaS applications because we've built what I believe is the most AI-integrated ERP and CRM platform available. Partners are replacing standard processes with AI-based capabilities, and the demand is explosive.In data, we're seeing unprecedented partner adoption in the Americas, with everyone standardizing on Fabric and scaling faster than projected. This is now emerging in Asia and Europe. Most remarkably, we're seeing entirely new business models emerge around AI agents. In Germany alone, over 20 partners launched in the past six months focused exclusively on building agents. A year ago, we couldn't even articulate what that business would look like. Now it's a thriving sector. **Bernard Leong:** That security point resonates. As CIO of a construction conglomerate, Microsoft's security training tools were invaluable—phishing simulations, mandatory training for failures, multi-factor authentication enforcement. These features are critical for any mid-sized to large company. Security is indeed the top priority for every CIO.What's one thing Microsoft does for SMEs and partners that others don't? **Ralph Haupter:** Two things define our philosophical approach.First, relentless focus on specialization. We're demanding partners—we have high expectations and continually raise the bar quarterly on what specialization means. This rigor is essential because customers deserve truly specialized expertise.Second, our complete platform integration—which some competitors frame as a weakness, but I'm convinced is a decisive advantage for SMEs. We're a platform company offering the full stack: productivity, infrastructure, security, and applications.Small and medium enterprises don't want four vendors, four meetings, and four separate relationships to assemble their technology stack. They want one unified experience. That's where Microsoft is truly differentiated—bringing these components together seamlessly. **Bernard Leong:** The completeness is impressive. At different stages of digital maturity and company growth, there's a solution from your stack that meets their needs. **Ralph Haupter:** What I aim to build—without bragging—is customer confidence through demonstrating that every product has core AI integration. When we launched our generative AI initiative, every engineering lead immediately ensured AI experiences were embedded throughout the stack. You experienced this in Word—deep AI integration. The same exists in Excel, our security stack, our CRM applications. It's comprehensive.Customers need to understand how this creates differentiation and why integration matters. This is where we're crystal clear about our identity: we're a platform company that relies on partners to serve small and medium enterprises. We're not pretending otherwise. **Bernard Leong:** Building on your emphasis on specialization—which requires training—do you invest significantly more time training partners on AI, data fabric, and Dynamics? SMEs typically need customized solutions. **Ralph Haupter:** You've identified one of our toughest challenges. Partner ecosystem training is critical, with certification as the moment of truth. Customer training is equally vital.We invest heavily in scale mechanics, sometimes partnering with governments and institutions. It's our most complicated and capital-intensive effort. While we've improved using technology platforms for training, human behavior remains a barrier. Organizations often view training as "losing workforce for a day" rather than gaining improved capabilities the next day. This mindset prevents uptake of available training.We've restructured our approach, particularly for resellers who engage customers directly with local expertise. We leverage our distribution platform extensively to deliver geographically customized training at scale. **Bernard Leong:** The [Cloud Solution Provider program](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/enroll/csp-overview?ref=analysepodcast.com) is central to Microsoft's partner strategy. I'm exploring becoming a partner myself—we can discuss that later—but how is CSP evolving globally, and what regional adaptations have been necessary? **Ralph Haupter:** Great question. The program's fundamental intent is enabling partners to combine our products with their own IP \[intellectual property\] and bundle it for customers. When customers contract with partners, our offerings and IP are part of the bundle. But the critical component is the partner's capability, IP, and knowledge. This approach deliberately primes the partner, not Microsoft. I believe there are four pivotal moments in successful partnership engagements. First is the transaction stage—determining product and consulting needs for a project. This is the traditional pre-sales phase. Second—and I believe undervalued in our industry—is the proof-of-concept moment. Instead of endless PowerPoint presentations about possibilities, a partner can spend two days showing customers what's achievable with their data for AI or analytics. This immediately transforms the conversation and builds conviction. This consultative pre-sales POC is critical. Third is the full project implementation post-sale. This is where execution happens, where we help partners succeed through co-investment methodologies and technology support. Fourth—and we're intensifying focus here—is ongoing support and lifecycle management. Partners must be the go-to resource for customers. This is unique in our industry and largely overlooked. I want Microsoft to be different, to be valued for ensuring partners can provide frontline support. The Cloud Solution Provider program brings partner IP and knowledge to customers through these four stages: transaction, consultative pre-sales, post-sales execution, and support throughout the relationship lifecycle. **Bernard Leong:** You're right. From my experience as a tech vendor, post-sales partner support was often weak, creating mismanaged expectations. Let me explore Microsoft's approach to partner differentiation. Is there a distinction between consulting-focused partners and technology providers—like those working with databases in the Microsoft ecosystem, GitHub, or Copilot with Azure Cloud? How do these different partner types engage customers differently? **Ralph Haupter:** Absolutely. The differentiation goes down to customer type—partners behave differently accordingly. It's somewhat of an art, but we're very deliberate. Global system integrators have specific behaviors, needs, investment profiles, and customer engagement expectations. Large ISV software companies have entirely different requirements regarding platform definition, sizing, and capacity.For small and medium enterprises, I need a scale ecosystem with local presence—almost zip code level. When I was in Canada recently, the reality in Toronto is that you also need a strong partner ecosystem in Calgary. For SMBs, geographical proximity between partners and customers is critical. You must be surgical about this. **Bernard Leong:** How do you maintain alignment, trust, and execution excellence across such a vast, diverse partner network serving different industries? In large markets like India, China, or Europe, you have everything from micro businesses to near-large enterprises. How is consistency maintained? **Ralph Haupter:** Transparency is the key factor—being clear about partner roles and Microsoft's support infrastructure. CSP enables this clarity. We tell partners: "These are the four program steps. You own the IP, engagement, and contracting. We're the platform company."We're explicit about opportunities: "We see growth in security. You need to build security capacity and invest because we jointly see customer demand. Your base is in Shenzhen—invest in certification there because demand exists."This give-and-get model works because of precision: "This is your role. This is my expectation." That clarity is essential. **Bernard Leong:** Clarity is key. This next question is important because I teach digital transformation at NUS Business School. We dedicate an entire session to partner ecosystems because many industry professionals don't distinguish between platforms and partners. When I bring in partner ecosystem experts to explain these dynamics, it's invaluable. What's the one leadership principle you've found crucial when working with partners at both global and local levels? That would be an interesting lesson for my students. **Ralph Haupter:** The most critical principle is absolute clarity on the joint business model—being very precise about sharing opportunities and the business model with partners.What I've learned in the past six months is that data-driven joint discussions about business opportunities and partner performance against peers make the real difference. Partners are businesses that want to understand how they can perform, contribute, and serve their customers best. Where people go wrong is maintaining fluffy programs: "I have a program, I offer you something." The last mile requires helping partners with data and having substantive joint discussions about performance and market opportunities. **Bernard Leong:** So you're saying: identify the target segment upfront, define the business case, perhaps target 20 specific companies. Be very specific about what Microsoft provides and where partners add value. Is that correct? **Ralph Haupter:** Exactly. We analyze portfolio and customer demand. Everything starts with understanding customers—where they are, what markets they serve, their needs, their portfolio gaps. Security is obvious with AI, but many companies also have outdated data infrastructure or 15-year-old CRM systems desperately needing modernization.Being specific about opportunities, enabling partners technologically, and providing clarity on platform usage—that's what makes the difference. **Bernard Leong:** Shifting to your global leadership—what principles guide you in building high-performing, cross-cultural teams? And how do you enforce a growth mindset across distributed teams? **Ralph Haupter:** I'm always open to correction, but the most critical element in running a global business at this scale is achieving scale itself. That requires clarity, simplicity, and standards. Here's the test: Whatever solution you're developing, pause for thirty minutes. Have a coffee, walk around the building. Return and ask: "Can I do this for a thousand customers? A thousand partners?" If yes, proceed. If it's a one-off, it doesn't work. **Bernard Leong:** On scaling—once something works, how do you generate momentum? If someone demonstrates success with a thousand organizations and wants to scale further, what's the process? **Ralph Haupter:** Very clear in my mind. I run a global organization intentionally—examining geography while maintaining global expertise. I focus on positive standard deviation signals. Best-performing markets indicate what drives success. I capture those learnings and share them globally. Sometimes exceptional performance emerges from unexpected markets. Last week, we saw outstanding performance from a specific Asian country—exceeding major European and American markets. Rapidly unpacking that success and sharing insights across markets is how global organizations function effectively. Everyone can contribute to scale. **Bernard Leong:** Regarding resource allocation—should teams experiment before requesting resources, or is that a separate consideration? **Ralph Haupter:** Be thoughtful before defaulting to resource requests. Avoid creating hype cycles where POCs automatically trigger resource demands—that's risky.Focus on signals. Organizational intelligence means capturing performance signals, understanding them, and unpacking them properly. When conviction exists and signals genuinely require resources, act decisively—secure resources and optimize deployment. I'm not resource-constrained, but I need strong, well-understood signals. **Bernard Leong:** What about anomalies—unknown unknowns that appear interesting but lack clear patterns? How do you evaluate those as market signals? **Ralph Haupter:** Leaders must build organizations that filter noise while identifying positive signals for organizational improvement.Apply the scale test: take a coffee break, walk around. If your solution still demonstrates scale potential, execute with clarity. Ensure everyone understands which positive signals deserve amplification.Leaders must say, "I recognize this signal," then test it across markets. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one question you wish more people would ask about Microsoft's partner ecosystems? **Ralph Haupter:** "Where do I find a partner with very specific expertise to get this job done?" **Bernard Leong**: So let me ask that—where do I find a partner for a specific job? Even as someone considering partnership, navigating ecosystems is daunting. The Microsoft ecosystem has countless solutions requiring specialization. How does one navigate effectively? **Ralph Haupter:** I'm less concerned about partner navigation. Specialization requires effort, but that effort connects you authentically to our technology ecosystem and helps you identify the right stack.My point is really about customers. I want customers to ask partners pointed questions: "*Our data assets need help—do you have that expertise?*" "We want to build an AI-powered customer interface—can you do that?" "Our security posture needs improvement—can you help?"When customers articulate specific needs, it creates space for partner specialization and helps everyone focus on delivering real value. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question—what does great look like for Microsoft's SME and channels organization in the next decade? **Ralph Haupter:** Hard to quantify, but emotionally, success means market sentiment saying: "*Microsoft and their partners are where I go for technology advice.*" I've traveled to 56 countries doing business. When governments in markets where we've operated for 20, 30, 40 years acknowledge how we've helped grow their countries—that's incredibly rewarding. Achieving that same sentiment from small businesses—"Y*ou've been around, you've helped us grow, you've enabled us to go global, you've supported us through security challenges*"—that's where we need to break through as a company. That would be awesome. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you, Ralph. I really appreciate this conversation. It's been invaluable for understanding how partner ecosystems actually work. I've drawn many lessons from you—especially the idea of taking a walk and thinking things through before acting. Thank you so much.In closing, any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Ralph Haupter:** I've been in Asia for a couple of weeks now. I've lived here before, and I'm genuinely inspired by the agility in how people think about problems. That attitude of finding solutions in a global context, even when it's incredibly challenging, is very unique. This morning, walking out of my hotel, I saw billboards announcing the Formula One race happening soon in this town. It's really changing the city. The spirit around [Formula One](https://www.formula1.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is fascinating. As a German, you can get immediately drawn into discussions about engine specs, racers, driving dynamics—all of it.But here's the reality when you really think it through: a lot of races aren't won on the course. They're actually won in the pit stop. The pit stop is where many people, many hands, and extensive knowledge need to come together perfectly. That's what makes the huge difference.That's where we try to make a difference from a philosophical perspective. It's not about the individual—it's about having one goal and making people work together. In that moment of execution, being perfect—that's the copilot mentality. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you very much. How can my audience find you and learn more about Microsoft? **Ralph Haupter:** The easiest way is LinkedIn. Just search by name and find me—I'm happy to connect. **Bernard Leong:** You can find us everywhere now—YouTube, Spotify, and all podcast platforms. Ralph, many thanks for the conversation. I look forward to speaking with you again. **Ralph Haupter:** Thank you very much, Bernard. It was wonderful to be here. Thanks for opening the week with such a great discussion. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast. - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/Pxa2A9zjBew?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/microsofts-global-partner-strategy-400m-businesses/id914868245?i=1000735322888&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3lhtNZB5vPiE65thKTOHG3?si=MwmfL36ZSeGwD8rzAuiu3Q&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/microsofts-global-partner-strategy%5F400m-businesses-1-platform-with-ralph-haupter?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFu9XITM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://anchor.fm/s/10a88303c/podcast/rss?ref=analyse.asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### 500 Episodes Later: What I Learned From 11 Years of Podcasting with Bernard Leong URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/500-episodes-later-what-i-learned-from-11-years-of-podcasting-with-bernard-leong/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:48.000Z Fresh out of the studio and we hit our 500th episode milestone, guest host Yana Fry from Yana TV turns the tables on Bernard Leong, CEO of Dorje AI & host of Analyse Asia, in a special ask-me-anything format. We start with Bernard's journey from finding his first guest to navigating 11 years of podcasting, revealing his 12-word life philosophy: "Learn from everyone, follow no one, observe the patterns, work like hell." Following on, Bernard shares how his theoretical physics background provides the tools on everything from digital transformation to building Dorje AI's vision of reimagining ERP systems. The conversation dives deep into Bernard's pragmatic idealist worldview, lessons from managing products to running business teams & the pivotal 2022 decision to pivot from audio to video that nearly ended the podcast. Bernard also reflects on fatherhood with three children, the profound impact of his late father, and announces a major rebrand: Analyse Asia is dropping "Asia" to become the Analyse Podcast as it expands to a global audience, marking a new chapter in the show's evolution. --- > "For Dorje AI, what great looks like is being able to solve the ERP problem for businesses. It could take five years, ten years, or even two decades — because every technology adoption cycle takes time. We’re at the beginning of a massive shift, but many still cling to the old ways of doing things. The one thing I’ve learned about digital transformation is this: everyone loves transformation, but they hate to change. Everything that people say will happen in two years usually takes five. > When I think about *Analyse Asia*, greatness for me is being able to do an interview without looking at a set of questions — to tease out a guest’s story authentically, without prejudice, without being a fanboy. Just getting the story out. If I can do that, that’s great. Of course, hitting a million subscribers would be fantastic — that’s the next milestone I’m chasing. But for me, it’s always: ‘I’ve reached this milestone — what’s next?’ > When you think about frugality at the highest level, it’s not about resources — it’s about time. The real measure is how much time you can spend doing what truly matters. That’s what great looks like for me: asking, what’s the minimum amount of time I can make the maximum impact? Maybe I’ll never fully get there. But if we can say we lived this life without regret — that’s enough." - **Bernard Leong** ### Profile: - [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Host of [Analyse Asia Podcast](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), CEO of [Dorje AI](https://dorje.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Adjunct Associate Professor](https://discovery.nus.edu.sg/23630-chung-wei-bernard-leong?ref=analysepodcast.com) from NUS Business School & Institute of Systems Science. - Guest Host: Yana Fry from [Yana TV](https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsg?ref=analyse.asia) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanafry/?ref=analyse.asia), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsg?ref=analyse.asia)) which we highly recommend and subscribe to. ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Yana Fry:** Welcome to Analyse Asia Podcast, a premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of media, business, and technology in Asia. Today is the 500th episode because it is so special. I am co-hosting the show with Bernard Leong, who is founder of the Analyse Asia podcast. Bernard Leong is also the CEO of Dorje AI and an adjunct associate professor at NUS \[National University of Singapore\] and the voice behind hundreds of conversations that have been on this podcast and have mapped stages of the evolving tech landscape. Bernard, welcome to your own show. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you. Yes, I know. We decided to do this as an ask me anything (AMA). So I'm not prepared for anything because this is the first time you have the questions and I am just going to answer them. **Yana Fry:** Well, I'm glad I'm prepared and I have questions if someone does. So let me just throw you the first question. When you started Analyse Asia, this very first episode, what was the biggest challenge back then? **Bernard Leong:** The biggest challenge was finding the first guest and I had to go to the internet and look for someone specifically understanding Asia tech. I managed to find this analyst. He's now become a venture capitalist with the company called Breadcrumb Capital. His name was Sameer Singh, and I just reached out to him. We had our first conversation, then putting all together the podcast editing tools. At that point in time I was still using GarageBand. Then slowly, when you listen to the first episode again you realize how far you have come and how bad it was putting that thing out there. So those were the challenges. Of course when you do the first episode, the next thing is who's gonna come on the next episode? Who's gonna come on the next episode? So there's always the fear of how many people I'm going to ask and how many people are gonna say no. If you believe this, for every 10 guests I've emailed at that point in time, I usually get one. Yes. Nowadays it's slightly better. I'm getting people sending me requests but I have also continued to source for guests who I am really interested to have on the show. **Yana Fry:** I was gonna say you probably get 20 and you turn down 10. **Bernard Leong:** I try not to turn it down unless I have a clear story in mind. I always try to prepare every interview as if there's a story I want the guest to tell me. I am actually okay if it comes from their perspective. I know that there are a lot of people who feel that sometimes when I interview corporate leaders, I tend to let them speak their own narrative. But I think it's very important in a podcast world to be authentic and to make sure that they speak what they believe. Questioning it in a way where there is a fair balance, and of course, also giving them their own voice to have their point of view. **Yana Fry:** In your life, you have lived through, you could say, various careers. It was physics and studies, law, aerospace, digital transformation, and now AI entrepreneurship. So how does it all come together for you? **Bernard Leong:** So maybe at a very fundamental level, I'm a theoretical physicist. I was trained as a theoretical physicist. So when I think of everything, whether it's digital transformation, whether it's AI, it's from the lens of looking at everything as first principles. It turns out when I was studying theoretical physics, I was specializing in astrophysics and cosmology. When you're working in this topic, you will be using Einstein's General Relativity. To do Einstein's General Relativity, you need to use something called tensors. What is happening in AI specifically now in the large language models, they're all governed by tensors. So the beauty of being a theoretical physicist is that: if you look through the history of all the theoretical physicists across the ages, there has been a lot of what we call cross-disciplinary entering from bio theoretical physicists into another domain and able to do something differently. So if you think about Black-Scholes model, which is known in finance for options trading, that was actually the heat equation. Black was a theoretical physicist. You take Watson and Crick—Francis Crick was a theoretical physicist, and they found the structure of the DNA. So when I look at every problem, whether it's digital transformation, whether it is redesigning a post office, redesigning a parcel locker, how to use the app interaction or do a drone flight, everything is just a set of basic questions: *How do I get this done? Who are the five people I want to talk to? What are the five most pressing problems and what are the five books I must read in order to understand what's going on?* Then through that it also guides me in terms of how I do interviews. There's a very systematic way, but ultimately you and I should know, we talk about this that podcast interviews are not science. It's art. **Yana Fry:** Art and science, I would say. Well, science, you need to have some kind of structure and then leave a lot of space for the flow. **Bernard Leong:** I'm trying to do that. I get feedback. Sometimes people are asking me, "*Hey, you know, those questions seem to be always very similar. You have a very basic structure. You're not very conversational.*" So over time I also have learned to evolve, right, where I'll try to ask a follow-up question or nowadays, thanks to ChatGPT, when I design the interview, I could ask a couple of questions to ChatGPT and say, "Can you criticize how I'm going to make this interview flow? What would be a good follow up question so that I can get the speaker to talk more about this specific topic, be it data streaming platform, be it cyber security, be it AI and also be like maybe interviewing you right about Yana TV? How do you think about what are the things you learned from talking to? You have interviewed diplomats, you interviewed recently a monk, right? **Yana Fry:** Yes, actually Lama Rinpoche, he's a reincarnated master. Yes, very close to Dalai Lama. Yes. He's like a spiritual teacher. That's right. **Bernard Leong:** When I think about different people coming on the show, thinking about how I want to tell their stories is actually surprising that you do not know that after 11 years now probably, where you get to the 500th episode, how do you think about—I'm still thinking about how to interview somebody well. **Yana Fry:** A follow up question, since we're on that. You often describe yourself as a pragmatic idealist. Yes. So how does it come together? Does it mean in practice, particularly in the intersection of academia, business and innovation? **Bernard Leong:** Okay. I like the term pragmatic idealist. This was actually coined by U Thant, one of the Secretary Generals of the United Nations. It was actually based on a compilation of essays written by diplomats, and there was an essay written, I think, if I recall correctly, by Tommy Koh, one of the very well established Singaporean academics. He talks about U Thant's point of view about world affairs. You have to be an idealist because you want to think society is gonna get better, it's gonna progress towards a better society. But the problem is human nature is very complex. There will always be trade offs. So the word pragmatic is very important. While you may be thinking about trying to end a conflict, while you may be trying to solve a very, very difficult problem, you may see the angle inside, but you have to be pragmatic about maybe what you assume will work today may not work. So you have to push in little, little steps towards that change. So I read that when I was 18\. So I tend to take that worldview because I think I'm naturally an optimistic person. So I decided that that would be how my philosophy in life is going to look like. That means I'm idealistic by nature, but when I approach a problem, it does not mean that I'm not pragmatic. I'll think of very practical steps. I'll think about what are the things that really matter that will make me move the needle a bit, a bit, a bit until I can make that change. **Yana Fry:** From Cambridge to AWS, from Singapore Post to Dorje AI, which we're gonna talk about. Then my question is here with actually diverse career, what were the biggest lessons? **Bernard Leong:** Wow. That's a very good question. If you can share with the audience, actually, I always distill advice that I give and all the lessons that I learned into 12 words. So I mentioned this before: Learn from everyone. So you learn from everyone. You take a look at different points of view, even the other extreme point of view, and try to imagine if you were in the other perspective, what it looks like, and then trying to find that middle position. Follow no one. I think something that I learned across in life, you have all these people who you look up to, you idolize them, but you cannot live their lives. Just as much as I would like to admire what Elon Musk is doing, what Sam Altman is doing, these are people that are not without their flaws, right? So when I say follow no one, your life is actually your own. Because this is your own, you have to find your own path. So whatever the path is going to be, I think of myself now at the age of 51, I think of maybe another half a century. Hopefully, with the progress of medical science, I think about what is that end state I want to be. If there's that end state that I want to be, I'll just follow my own path and not think about anyone. Now then there is another three words: observe the patterns. I try to see what is going on. I think very deliberately about things. I tend to think about what is gonna happen, what's the next 12 to 24 months. Then of course the last three words: work like hell. So, you know, I will work extremely crazy. So if you ask me over this, like all these different careers, I think these 12 words are just very nice, right? **Learn from everyone. Follow no one. Observe the patterns. Work like hell.** Then now the Chinese have a very nice term. It's called 996\. But you know, founders like you and I, we are 007, 0:00 AM to 0:00 AM seven days a week. **Yana Fry:** Yes. Let's talk about Dorje AI. What problems are you truly solving beneath just automation and workflow? It's like what is actually the real problem? **Bernard Leong:** The real problem is this: every organization they have financial ledgers. In the world of enterprises, we call them Enterprise Resource Planning systems, or what people call the ERP. What the ERP does is specifically taking whatever your companies receive as revenues, you know, payments to suppliers, doing all kinds of financial transactions, maybe sometimes even doing things like very sophisticated ERPs will include things like treasury management. Now, what has happened in the world of enterprises is that the ERP system is pretty clunky and it's pretty dominant. Ones like SAP and Oracle NetSuite, they are leading the way, except that a lot of the things they're doing is still in the 1990s. If you look at today's world of the internet, actually these systems are very, very ill suited to deal with very, very high e-commerce transactions. So people have come out with different ways of doing it. When I think about Dorje AI, what I'm really trying to solve is, can I bring everyone into an ERP as well? That means what I'm saying is, is there a way that I can design a better ledger together? Because one big problem that also brings all of this ledger is that every time when a business tries to use SAP, they have to write their business logic according to SAP's rules. Because of that, some ERPs fail because the business process just cannot work with the software logic. But thanks to generative AI now, because you can customize anything, that specific problem, I suppose with the help of AI agents, you should be able to solve that. So if I were to look 10 years ahead from now, then the question becomes can I build the ERP based on this new AI framework? I mean, I'm pretty sure there are a thousand people working on this. I may not succeed. But I think the line of thinking is there. Then the question becomes business model. The problem with ERP systems, if you look at the top 10 enterprise software in the world the last 10 years, SAP is still number one, right? Everybody hates SAP. But the question then becomes, can you find a way to break it? But to break it is not about technology to break, it is actually about business. So the counter positioning is how SAP is charging its customers. It's charging its customers by having, if you have a thousand people, I charge you a thousand licenses. But you know, you have a head count. I have a head count. We have to plan. So one way to do this is maybe we shouldn't charge by users. We should just be charging as pay-as-you-go, which is what business owners like you and I like, right? We don't want to be having some hidden fees hitting somewhere. We're actually right at the beginning of this AI cycle where we can actually make changes like that. But that also means challenging the status quo. Everybody is rushing into the agent AI piece at the moment, but they're not thinking about even redesigning the fundamental core of what the ERP system really is—basically a ledger. Everyone has tried to challenge everything outside the ledger, but no one has actually tried challenging the ledger. I like to read history books, and one of the books I was reading was about Kublai Khan. He was a Mongol leader who unified China. Before that, the Mongols conquered north of China and couldn't conquer the south of China because the Chinese were very good at the Navy. Their naval forces were one of the best in the world. Kublai Khan, because the Mongol army is usually cavalry, what he did was he decided to change the fundamental thinking of how Mongol troops work. He built a navy, which is shocking to everyone, which is what they're weakest at. Essentially he conquered the whole of China. So it's actually taking the strongest strength of your opponent and pushing it right through. So reading these history books tells me that no one is not defeatable. There are different ways of reading, thinking about history and thinking about how you want to dislodge it. I think being a founder is always very difficult. It's always like, there will always be another hundred people who's doing the same thing, maybe with slight variations, and they may not have a point of view. So you have to, I've grown old enough now to tell myself, try not to let everyone sidetrack what you are doing. It could be slower than everyone. Just take a step back and let everyone run the course, but just think through what are the correct set of actions you want to take, and then hope that you can get to the finishing line. **Yana Fry:** Just to deepen into this, since you know so much about it. If you were to advise an enterprise leader who is just starting the AI journey, so what do you feel is the biggest misconception they have to unlearn to succeed? **Bernard Leong:** I think if you ask me today, because I have been teaching a lot of business leaders across Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, and Saudi Arabia. One common theme that seems to have come up is the use of tools. One of the biggest problems for a business leader is they cannot agree to what tools they want their staff to use. Is it ChatGPT? Is it Claude? Is it Microsoft Copilot? Then the next part of it is that some business units will prefer to use this solution and some business units are prepared to use another solution. Hence what is happening is there's no standardization because we are at such an early stage. So I think one of the advice now I've given them is try not to be so dramatic to decide what tools to use. Let everyone select the tools and slowly prune them off because some of the tools will go out of fashion and some of the tools will get better. Just basically allow the businesses and the employees to innovate around the edges, but you protect your core. So there is something that I think business leaders need to think about. In fact, before you even wanna do any generative AI applications, I have business leaders come to me, "*Hey Bernard, can you build me this knowledge base system, this chatbot system?*" My first question is, "*Why do you wanna do this? Can you tell me how your staff are using AI today?*" They say, "*Yeah, they use ChatGPT.*" Then my next question is, "*Do they know how to prompt properly? How do you know that they're giving you the output that you want?*" Then nowadays you have something called work slop, which is like they give bad AI generated content and then the senior people have to spend more time cleaning up the mess. So if you start to untangle most of it, the first rule is find out what, why, and how should they use generative AI? What are the reasons? How should I enable them? Once I think you can clear those three hurdles, then you can start talking about implementing AI across the organization. **Yana Fry:** You built products within large organizations, and then you moved into your own company, entrepreneurship. So my question here would be, what do you feel the best lesson that you carried from your experience in the largest companies and then into running your own business that other business owners should know? Besides what you just said. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of people like to classify me as a business or technology person. I think I find myself sitting in between. So one of the aspects of working in large corporations that I really enjoyed is product management—not just a single product. It's when you become the person looking at five different products within the company and try to find a unifying theme around them. The one lesson that I find very interesting is that I have learned to focus only on the boring stuff as the leader. So let me tell you a story. When I was designing the SAM machine—this is a curiosity you'll see in Singapore, and we redesigned the fifth generation from all previous generations. It was using some keyboard and I decided to use the iPad. So in the early stages where we were working on this product, you need to type in some information and it uses a keyboard. So my team were very excited because Apple Pay came out. So they said, "Hey, maybe we should implement this." So I was looking at one of the recent versions. I said, "Can you show me how much you typed?" Then they were like saying, "Why do you want to check that? It's such a boring thing." So as they were typing, the keyboard was actually loading very slowly. So I started to take out my iPhone and tried to put a stopwatch on, and I pressed for the number of seconds. Then essentially I said, "Why do we need half a minute to be able to type this?" Because as you're typing, the words are coming out slowly. So I asked them, "Can you try to bring it down to how many milliseconds?" They were like, "What?" I was like, "Yes." Obviously if you're an engineer who likes to build sexy stuff, right, you're probably like, "But this is not a good use of time." So I said, "Well, what is not a good use of time is there are five people queuing up to use the machine. If each person is being delayed by half a minute, try to count the order. If the queue goes up to 20, what happens?" Then they suddenly did the math and said, "Oh yeah." Then they realized they have to get the keyboard sorted before they wanna do anything with Apple Pay. So when I think now, *the new is easy, but getting it right is very hard*. So when I think about podcasting, when I think about everything I do, I always try to think about is the new really easy or should I try to get it right? So maybe a lot of things that I do in Analyse Asia doesn't change. Sometimes it's just because I'm trying to work out is there a need to make those kind of changes. One of the biggest changes, I think you interviewed my wife, was the move from audio to video. That was actually the hardest pivot that I've actually done because for a very long time I preferred to have my voice and someone's voice in the audio file. I was never ready for like a front screen in this situation. 'Cause even when I was in theater, I was always the producer or the technical director, but never the person on the stage. **Yana Fry:** Well, until now, now you are. I also know that they also say in podcasting that if you don't do video, you're really behind on the podcasting. So credits to you. **Bernard Leong:** I'll credit my wife for pushing me on that. **Yana Fry:** Well, since we are talking now about Analyse Asia, over the 500 episodes, you have talked with a lot of brilliant minds. My question to you would be, which conversation or person has changed you the most and why? **Bernard Leong:** Wow. That is a very, very difficult question. **Yana Fry:** I know. **Bernard Leong:** I would not say that there is—there are a few interviews that changed my perspective on how I think about things. I think, let me give some an example of one interview that I always mention, even in the early days. It was actually an audience member who happens to, his name is Ray Ozzie. He happens to be the former CTO of Microsoft. He messaged me on Facebook to Analyse Asia Facebook page and asked me, "Hey, I listened to your podcast. Can you do something about Foxconn?" Those were the days of the iPhone manufacturing and Foxconn. I think he was very curious about the question of, you know, if I want to engage Foxconn to make my hardware device, how many minimum order quantity units? So I looked around the internet and I found this gentleman by the name Tim Culpan. He's now still living in Taiwan. He's probably the best Bloomberg reporter on Foxconn and TSMC, and he eventually became an opinion writer on Bloomberg. I think now he has gone freelance. I heard from common friends that he's writing currently a book on TSMC. I got him on the show and Tim has this point of view that he doesn't like to do video even now, so I couldn't get him on video anymore. But what was interesting in that conversation, he laid out the things that I was asking and he gave the correct answer. It was quite interesting because a lot of people found my podcast through that episode. As the years go by, the surprising episodes will be with some different business leaders. I can give another one that's pretty interesting. For the first time I did an interview with the person who was heading Google's Asia Pacific. His name is Scott Beaumont. Scott was talking about the next billion initiative of Google across the Asia Pacific. As we were talking about it, he pointed out some insights about leadership, how to manage across different regions, how to localize. Then as the years go by, when I start talking to every Asia Pacific leader, be it maybe recently I had Ling Hai who's actually one of the three executives on the management committee for MasterCard. When you ask them what is the overall view of the region, how do you think about things, they give you very, very interesting perspectives. So then we also have the journalists. Sometimes I interview some journalists. I'm very lucky. I'm probably the only podcast who gets somebody from The Information. The Information is a very well known Silicon Valley tech publication. I had Jessica Lessin, the founder of The Information, but I usually interview Asia bureau chiefs. I first interviewed Shai Oster and then I interviewed Jing Yang, who's now leading the bureau. Usually every conversation about China always gives me a very different perspective. But I do recall Shai mentioned a comment that I now use with my ex-colleagues in Amazon, and I always tell them, "*You know, Amazon is like a Chinese company. It's just that they don't know it yet.*" Then all my ex-colleagues are like, "That is so spot on, Bernard." Then I use it and it becomes part of me. Then some people attribute it to me then, but I said, "No. The person who actually said it to me was Shai because he was the one who mentioned it to me." **Yana Fry:** That's cool. Five hundred episodes is a huge achievement. Any podcast, they say what is statistically, most people don't go beyond 10 or 20 episodes. **Bernard Leong:** Fifteen. I think if you are 4%, if you hit 50. **Yana Fry:** Wow. If you have 500, you're like zero. What percent? I think it's about **Bernard Leong:** 0.2%, according to Harry Stebbings from 20VC. **Yana Fry:** So you're 0.2% in the world of podcasting, which is a huge, huge thing. Now, what kept you going all those years when podcasting wasn't cool or popular like it is right now? **Bernard Leong:** I think when I approach Analyse Asia, I always thought of it like, you know, a Japanese craftsman making you know, that perfect vase, but the perfect vase has cracks and everything. So I always thought of it as a craftsman. So one of the things that I took as an approach to doing this podcast was to be a Shokunin—what the Japanese call a craftsman. So what kept me going was trying to make the show better and better. You and I have this conversation about distribution, right? How do you get the correct audience to watch your show? How do you get them to discover you? How do you make it work? I studied a lot of my other, the other podcasts in the world. To be quite honest, I still haven't figured it out. I'm still trying, but I think the way I've been thinking a lot about what keeps me going is I just want to make it better and better to a point where I can actually just walk into a studio like here now—now we are in Poddster Singapore—and then we can just, you know, have that conversation and then I can go back to my pretty busy day. Because the beauty of generative AI now is that a lot of things that I have to work for two different companies have now reduced from days to weeks to days, days to hours and hours to minutes. So the fractional time of being able to converse with someone and to learn what they are thinking about is something that still keeps me going. Of course, Yana, I'm sure you and I have that feeling, and I'm sure a lot of podcasters also have that feeling—sometimes, you know, you may feel that you want to stop. I think I have gone through that. **Yana Fry:** I did. I stopped Yana's TV three years in when I launched it in 2015—2018—and then relaunched it. So I know what it feels like.That's why I'm so admiring that you actually kept going all these years. **Bernard Leong:** I kept it going. There was actually a point in time, I think around 2022, and that was the decision to go to video. Right. I was thinking that I'm actually reaching a point where I don't think I can continue anymore. It's like the seventh, eighth year kind of situation. Then I decided that, hey, maybe I should just give the video thing a shot and no harm trying, right? Of course, what my wife said, "Go and talk to Jeremy." We are talking about Jeremy Au from Brave SEA podcast. I spoke to Jeremy and I'm trying to understand his workflow, how he's thinking about the video side. I gained quite a lot of understanding that it's a very different medium, and because of my theater background, it utilizes much more from my theater background than before. So ultimately it's a gut feel. So I went with the gut feel. Of course there was a crypto crash and I happened to know one of the founders who crashed and I got him on the show, and that basically upshot the traffic very quickly. I even got a New York Times article. But they didn't mention my name. They just said I'm the "unconvinced \[unnamed\] host of Analyse Asia podcast." So, you know, those things happen, right? But people then realize, I even got like Twitter messages saying, "Why are you giving the guy a platform to talk?" I said, "But I think it's fair to give everyone a platform to talk despite what you say." Then there was some prominent podcaster who later interviewed the same person and got it. We kept conversing over Twitter. Then I was saying, "Now you understand how I felt." **Yana Fry:** Speaking about the podcast, for 500 episodes, you have been having this iconic line that it is an Analyse Asia podcast where you are dissecting the pulse between business, technology, and media in Asia. What your audience doesn't know yet—you and I had a private chat before we started this episode—and you're retiring the tagline. So what's happening, what's happening next? **Bernard Leong:** Okay, so I am just gonna make the announcement here. We are going to rebrand the Analyse Asia podcast. We're gonna drop the Asia off and call it the Analyse Podcast. The tagline probably still says the same. "Welcome to the Analyse podcast, where we dissect the pulse of business, technology, and media globally." Why the change? I think we are at this juncture where thanks to the internet we can be global. I am actually continuously getting more and more global audience. So that is one of the impetus. I have also interviewed guests that are actually beyond Asia, for example. I did with Lionel Barber, who was the former FT editor who wrote an iconic book on Masayoshi Son, "A Gambling Man," Patrick McGee from "Apple in China." Soon I'll be hopefully, fingers crossed, I should be getting Karen Hao, who wrote "Empire of AI," on my show. So when you think about the bigger picture, and I think the world's so interconnected, I'm just starting to realize, actually it doesn't matter where I'm from. There are people like 20VC where you see Harry Stebbings almost every week interviewing somebody from Silicon Valley. The reach of the internet allows me to also reach out to new audiences I have not reached out before. But I think for the ecosystem to grow, we need to be thinking bigger. Maybe the Amazon value of Think Big. So we have to think bigger and how do we take this to the next stage? That is something I'm still thinking about. You'll start to see some website changes. You'll start to see maybe the domain name still stays the same, but the roots were all there. I think making this big step is probably where I want to go. You can analyse anything. You can analyse AI, you can analyse, you know, energy, you could even analyse—I probably have a whole rush of very good interviews coming out where most of the people are all global, from Microsoft. Some of, I have another gentleman, Arnaud Frade formerly from Nielsen, who just wrote a book on AI, who's coming on the show as well. So these new dynamics will change the way how I think about the world. So I decided that, hey, let's just drop the Asia and let's move on and go global. **Yana Fry:** Go global. Beautiful. We talked a lot today about the podcasting journey and your professional journey, and I just wanted to paint a bit more on the personal journey. Because I also find this is what really gets people excited to know who is the person beneath and underneath all of this. So you are father of three children. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Yana Fry:** So your kids, what did they teach you about leadership and life? **Bernard Leong:** Wow. **Yana Fry:** Among many lessons. **Bernard Leong:** I have three children. They are very different people in their own right. So I have three children, Eleanor, Evan, and Estella. So they're now six, eight, and 13\. When you—I think you have interviewed my wife, we are both CEOs of companies and we have to think about what should we do for them. I think a lot of the time is about trying to learn to manage and give them the freedom to look for something. One of the things we try to do is not to give them too much work or too much to allow them to explore. To the point that I think Yuying was saying that my daughter went up to her and said, "I'm bored." The question is: How to let them have the will to explore. I've also learned that for some of my kids, when—for example, I've recently brought my son for a chess competition, couple of chess competitions, and the original intent was that I don't think he will win. Right. But I just tell him, "Just go and experience the game," et cetera. He lost a couple of times, you know, he fell down when he was there. Then you have to be the coach and tell him how to come up again. Then he went for the nationals, Singapore's national school competitions, and then he managed to win 2nd of the North region with a very good team. They were unrated. Unrated means they have no \[FIDE\] rating. That means all the top schools are there. They managed to get the 4th position on par with the 3rd position on points and lost on tie break points, as the only unrated team in the top 10, and they were number four. They even beat probably one of the most well known schools in Singapore. He drew with the top player of his generation, which—when he was meeting the player, I just told him, "You have played that well before. All you just need to do is to draw." I think that is something like trying to coach them, trying to think about how to allow them to expand beyond themselves. I think that's very hard. Sometimes when you manage their emotions, when they throw a tantrum, you need to think about, you know, how do you manage them? My expectations are relatively high. **Yana Fry:** so hello Asian family. Yeah. Come on. Everybody here is like that. **Bernard Leong:** But then it is quite interesting that both my wife and I, we have decided very, very early that all three children will go through Montessori education. So we had a very, very clear view that the future is not about whether it is AI today, quantum computing tomorrow. It's actually about the ability to learn fast. I can see in my eldest daughter, she learns very, very fast. She self-learns and every time I try to teach her something, she says, "No, no, no, I'm just gonna go turn on Coursera, turn on Udemy, turn on Khan Academy," and she'll do it by herself. So when you think about children, they will take very, very contrarian paths. I think the only thing I learned is exactly the same thing I learned from my late father was don't try to decide for them what they should be doing. But sometimes I do that just to, you know, try to give them a purpose. But I think in the back of my mind, it's like eventually they will decide they want to do this, and then they're just going to follow their own passions and do that. I think that's what's gonna end up happening because I think essentially like the same thing I said, right, follow no one. I'm sure my kids would also follow no one and they will have their own path ahead. **Yana Fry:** Speaking about your late father, I know that you have been very close with him and he greatly impacted your life. I would like to ask you, what do you think one thing that the world should really know about him that it doesn't? **Bernard Leong:** I think it's the concept of loyalty. I wrote an article about him. He was—okay, so my dad worked at the age of, I think 13 or 14 and retired at the age of 68 for one company. Wow. He is a working class individual with probably just primary school education. The only thing that he ever told me about himself that he's really proud of was the day where he got the 50-year anniversary with the company and he got this watch. That has impacted a lot of how I think about managing people. It's very hard to have someone today who worked more than average of two years, specifically even in the tech industry. If you can get someone to stay two years, it's already an achievement by itself, right? So a lot of the understated thing about life is about loyalty, right? So I can't do the same thing as my dad did, working for the same organization for 50 years. But I have made a point for my life that when I part with any organization, despite maybe there are some things that I disagree, there may be some conflicts that I don't like. It's not every corporate job is smooth sailing. Some corporate jobs didn't work out. There were, you know, you feel resentment, et cetera. Part in good terms is how I think about it. Just think about the good things that you learn from the organization. I usually do not ask any of the team that was in my previous company to join me unless they leave the company themselves. That means I will never poach anybody back from immediately, et cetera. It's only years later when I find out, "Hey, you just left the company," then yes. Then I will just maybe hang out. Maybe this is a person I want to hire, then yes. So I think about things like that a lot. I know some people think, "You should be bringing a team from X to Y, Y to Z, Z too." But I think loyalty to people is also pretty important. So maybe that is probably the lesson that I think my dad has taught me. We live in a very, very unpredictable and chaotic world. So I think when I think about the future, I always think that everything is, you have to just take it step by step rather than trying to have a very definitive way of saying that all these things are gonna happen. Some things are preventable. Yeah. **Yana Fry:** Since this podcast is still focusing on Asia, so my next question would be, what is one thing you know about Asia that you feel very few people do, but they should? **Bernard Leong:** The one thing that I still find from people who are talking about Asia, they talk about us as if we are one identity. There's 4.4 billion population in this part of the world, and they have different cultures. They have different points of view. They may have points of view that even differ from each other. They have their own practices and what is meaningful to one may not be meaningful to another, and the languages, the nuances—I am beginning to appreciate more about the diversity, but it is also extremely complex for businesses to navigate. I find that gradually I have learned to, when I think about business within the Asia markets, I think about in terms of cities. I don't think of it in terms of countries. Because countries have a very, very different way of organizing. 'Cause it could be, there are some parts of the country may be very advanced and some parts of the countries are still very rural. So you have to think about how do you approach the market. So that's the one thing I think I know, but maybe I still feel that everybody's still like saying Asia is like this big fat continent. **Yana Fry:** What is a fun question that you wish more people would ask you about AI and they rarely do? **Bernard Leong:** Okay. I wish that they would ask me, "*Why should my organization adopt AI?*" You're not gonna ask me the same question, right? Yeah. Okay. The reason why I think they should ask me why their organization should adopt AI is the follow up question to that is, "What are the problems you are currently having and what do you think AI can do for you?" Just give it to me in generic terms and then I'll try to ask you a couple of questions and then I see actually this is not an AI problem. Sometimes it is actually like that. I've spent, you may find this surprising, talking to a lot, teaching the classes to a lot of senior executives and board level. They come in with the perception that these are their issues and then after just asking them a couple of questions, you realize that it was not AI that they need to solve the problem. It's actually something even more basic. You have the AI tools to let your employees use so that they can solve the problem. So you know when they ask me that question, then it becomes very easy for me to work out whether the problems are AI or not. **Yana Fry:** You interviewed so many people over the years, so you ask them many questions. So what is it that one question that is still burning for you, that you are still looking for an answer? **Bernard Leong:** Wow, that is hard. **Yana Fry:** I told you it's gonna be hard today. No preparation. **Bernard Leong:** No preparation is always a good indication. So the question is, what is that one burning question that is unanswered? **Yana Fry:** And you're still searching for it? **Bernard Leong:** I'm still searching for it. I think one question that I always find that most people leave unanswered is what are the real challenges within the Asia region that we are not resolving that if it were ever solved, it would be great? There are some glimpses of that conversation that always get answered. Like sometimes somebody will say, "Well, you know, if in Indonesia you have high speed rail and you have good logistics infrastructure, things will happen faster." Or if you have in India—so one surprising fact people may not know—it is actually cheaper to fly an airplane with a cargo of goods from one city to another than driving a truck from one city to another. In fact, the cost is 10 times more, right? So if you're asking me, it's like, what kind of infrastructure, right? But then when you ask questions like, "Oh yeah, what ASEAN wants to be—a common market, but we need to standardize all our payment infrastructure. We need to standardize our economy, we need to have one flow of the economy." That is a very, very difficult question. I think it's those hidden and real challenges that people are still trying to solve, step by step that people don't wanna talk about. **Yana Fry:** You have met a lot of great minds through the podcasting, through your work, through teaching in general in your life right now. What is it that one trait that you feel connects the greatest leaders you have met personally? **Bernard Leong:** I think it's their ability to listen and to be able to provide some—like they listen to you and then they try to take whatever you have said and articulate in a way that becomes actionable. I think it's actually a very difficult—I see this in most of the Asia Pacific leaders that I've interviewed for the different respective companies. I also have interviewed the CEO of South China Morning Post before twice, and I find that the ability to listen is extremely important. Sometimes I tell everyone my secondary reason on why I really started the podcast was actually to teach myself how to listen better. When I'm interviewing, I have to capture every point of view, and I have to know when do I have to ask the next question and the next question so that this interview follows the conversation that we are having—a meaningful conversation because it's a quality time that's spent between myself and the person that I interview. Maybe that is how I'm thinking about it. **Yana Fry:** Well, and then we are coming with the final question of the show, your iconic question. What does great look like for Bernard, for Analyse, for Dorje AI or anything else in your life? **Bernard Leong:** Okay. I think it's very hard to really know what—let me put it this way. For Dorje AI, what great looks like is that we are able to solve the ERP problem for businesses. It could be five years, it could be 10 years, it could be even two decades because every technology adoption cycle requires time. We are actually at this beginning where everything is changing, but there are still people clinging on to the old ways of doing things. The only thing that I always understand about digital transformation is everyone loves transformation, but they hate to change. So everything that everybody says will be replaced in two years is actually five years. So I think great looks like for Dorje AI is very clear. Analyse Asia, what great looks like would be in the next five years where the audience is global. My next aim is actually to be able to interview great leaders from everywhere. It doesn't need to be in the U.S. or you know, Europe, it could be in Asia, it could be people like yourself, always interviewing, always trying to talk about what is it like to interview other leaders within the area? So when I think about Analyse Asia would be, for me, great looks like when I can do an interview without looking at a set of questions and able to tease out the story that this person is here to tell without prejudice, without being a fanboy, just trying to get the story out. If I can get that done, that's considered great for me. Of course, if I hit a million subscribers, great. Okay, but that is the next milestone I'm looking for. It's always like, for me, it's like I reach this milestone, what's next? There's never been a time where I always say, "I reached this milestone. Oh, what am I supposed to be doing?" So it's always what's next? So that's what's next for myself. What does great look like for myself? Wow, that's a harder question. The harder question is probably, I think I've already avoided a lot of—okay. So I run a corporate teaching business. Okay. I run Dorje AI, I run Analyse Asia. I have a family of three kids, and my wife as well. I find that if I were to aspire for myself, I look to the inspiration of John D. Rockefeller. One of the things that John D. Rockefeller does, which I think is very different from a lot of the entrepreneurs, he's an extremely boring person. He works from home three days a week. **Yana Fry:** Does it make him boring? **Bernard Leong:** If you interview all his descendants, including his immediate children and his grandchildren, one of the things that you will hear very commonly across on him, and that's why he lost the antitrust situation was that he's extremely present with his family. Yeah. That for a person who owns an entire oil empire without internet, you have to communicate. We imagine you have a lot of oil pipelines running across the whole of the U.S., which is a very big continent, and the need to communicate—you have to work. You're working from home. You know, it's impressive in that way. But there are things that Rockefeller doesn't do. Like he avoids meeting all the other rich people at parties, or going to conferences. He doesn't care. I started to do a lot of this, not because I need to do it. It's because the amount of time I have is becoming less and less. If you think about frugality from the highest level, it's not about resources. It's actually time. So the amount of time you can do the things that you really want to do, that's probably what great looks like for me. If you're asking on it, what is the minimum amount of time that I could make enough impact across—I mean, I may never reach there, but at least we can all say that we lived without regret. **Yana Fry:** Wow. Thank you so much Bernard. Thank you for turning the mic around. That was very candid, very deep conversation. I definitely learned a lot about you and I'm sure that the audience also just to look at all kind of aspects of your life. So thank you for today. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you for being such a great interviewer. I can drop the Asia now. **Yana Fry:** Yes, exactly. Dropping the Asia. Here's another 500 episodes. **Bernard Leong:** I wonder whether I will survive to the 1000. **Yana Fry:** Well, let's put an intention here. So I want to be here for the thousand episode so we can have this conversation again and just be curious what's gonna change in Asia and in the world landscape when it comes to media, business and technology. We know for sure with your audience that any change starts with a very good conversation. I believe we had one today. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you so much, Yana, for coming on the show to be my host today. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. 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He shares his career journey from management consulting to retail banking and eventually to Mastercard. Ling Hai shares that Mastercard is a global technology company that creates interoperability & universal acceptance, with technology services like cybersecurity, data insights, and consulting increasingly contributing to revenue beyond traditional payment processing. He highlights compelling innovations from Asia Pacific leading the way, including Singapore's nationwide open loop transit system and Mastercard's approach to stable coins as settlement vehicles alongside traditional currencies, while emphasizing how the company bridges the DeFi universe with the physical merchant world through on-ramp and off-ramp solutions for crypto adoption in markets like Latin America. Closing the conversation, Ling Hai shares what great looks like for MasterCard to become the operating system of commerce and the digital economy. --- > “Mastercard, in the end, is a global technology company. We run a global network, and we’re very much a data company. So, in all of this, when we handle people’s money and when we handle people’s data, trust is the most important thing. If we lose that, we lose our business. For us, that trust factor is absolutely critical — it’s embedded in everything we do.As the world evolves, we’ve gone from handling payments in the physical world, to e-commerce in the digital world. Tomorrow, with AI, it’s going to be agentic — agents will be doing commerce for us. But the common thread across all of this is still safety, security, trust, and also ease of use.Today’s consumer doesn’t want to trade off between convenience and security — they want both. So when we think about our solutions and services, that’s part of our design thinking. We must ensure they are easy, convenient, safe, secure, and trusted by everyone.” - **Ling Hai** **Profile:** Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, [Mastercard](https://www.mastercard.com/global/en.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ling-hai-a7952ab8/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Mastercard Profile](https://www.mastercard.com/news/europe/en/newsroom/our-executives/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong. With stable coins now signed into law in the United States, the impact of digital currencies and the transformation of payment infrastructure globally is accelerating. What are the implications for stable coins in the emerging market from the perspective of a payments network such as Mastercard? With me today is Hai, president of the Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Mastercard. Hai, welcome to the show and thank you for hosting me here in Mastercard, Singapore. **Ling Hai:** It is great to be be here. Thank you for having me. **Bernard Leong:** I always like to find out about the origin story of my guest on my show. So how did your career journey begin and what led you to Mastercard? **Ling Hai:** First of all, I grew up in Shanghai and went to the U.S. when I was a teenager, immigrated to the U.S. of course. So got schooled and educated in the U.S. My first job, my first career started actually in management consulting. So, I did that for almost six years. Then I went into banking, but more on the retail side. So I worked a lot on credit cards for banks. I worked for MBNA, Bank of America and HSBC and so many times, Mastercard was actually my customer and partner sitting on the other side of the table. There were times when I said to myself, *"There are things that I could do better if I was with Mastercard."* Lo and behold, one day I was headhunted. When I heard it was actually Mastercard, I quickly said to myself, "*Please sign me up. Love to join Mastercard and do things maybe a little bit differently.*" **Bernard Leong:** So you led Mastercard across multiple continents. What are the key lessons from navigating such diverse regions? **Ling Hai:** The one great thing about Mastercard is that we are a global company. But we serve in more than 200 markets. So one commonality is that the key ingredient to our success is what I call "**glocal**". You have to be globally consistent as a business model, but in every market we have to figure out a way to localize, to meet the local needs. So it is about finding that balance, the bridge, the need for the local markets and bridge that with our global model. That's when we are successful. Otherwise it is just gonna be a global brand that doesn't resonate. **Bernard Leong:** So before we get to the main subject, reflecting on your career experience, what are the lessons from your career journey that you can share with my audience? **Ling Hai:** There's so many of them. I think one of the key things is in every local market, the key success factor for Mastercard is we are able to use local talents. People who are global, but they're also local in the first instance. That's actually really important. I think the second thing that's really important is our leadership's ability to empower the local teams. Things happen on the ground. We can't be there every day, every minute of the day. To have a strong local team that can win the hearts and minds of our customers is really a very important factor in our success. Which then brings me to my last point. As a leader of the company, one of my key learnings is that leadership is a real privilege, actually. I don't take it for granted. I believe that people follow all of us leaders, not because of the titles we have, but truly because they feel there's something they can learn from us, insights they can gauge from us, and that is the reason they follow us. So for me, every day is still a learning opportunity. Just spoke about stable coins and I guess we'll discuss more. The market is changing, new things are constantly emerging. So how for the whole company as a team, we constantly learn and develop ourselves. I think that's very important. **Bernard Leong:** So that's the concept of servant leadership and always be open to new things, which gets to the main subject of the day. I wanna talk about the future of digital payments and stable coins. To begin, I have two Mastercards on my wallet inside my wallet. Every day I use Mastercard for a lot of my payment transactions. Of course, I would love you to give me a high level overview of Mastercard's vision and mission and how it's evolving in the digital age. **Ling Hai:** I don't wanna screw this up. So I actually want to just tell you what is the stated vision for Mastercard. We talk about how we connect and empower an inclusive digital economy that benefits everyone everywhere. If you look at our mission statement, it's about providing technology and services to make transactions safe, simple, smart, and accessible. So what does that tell you? Mastercard in the end is a global technology company. We run a global network. We're very much a data company. So in all of this, when we handle people's money, when we handle people's data, trust is the most important thing. You lose that, we lose our business. So for us, that trust factor is very critical for our business, and it's embedded in everything we do. So, again, as the world evolves, previously we were handling payments in the physical world. Then it's e-commerce, the digital world. Tomorrow with AI, it's gonna be agentic. Agents will be doing commerce for us. But the commonality in all of this is still safety and security. Trust. Also ease of use. Convenience as well. I think today's consumer doesn't want to make a trade-off between ease and security. They want both. So when we think about our solutions and our services, that's part of the design thinking. We have to make sure it's easy, it's convenient, but it's also safe and secure, and it is trusted by everybody. **Bernard Leong:** So, Hai, as the president of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, or EMEA in short, how do you see your role in driving that vision across these diverse and dynamic markets? Europe is a very different set of markets compared to Asia Pacific and even to the Middle East and Africa. Because the needs are very different. **Ling Hai:** You are correct on the regions. First of all, my role is to foster collaboration. Oftentimes, I sometimes see teams trying to reinvent the wheel when something actually already exists in another market. But of course, it's difficult for the local team to understand what's happening around the world. That's my role because I have that view of everything that's going around the world, and so letting people reach across the aisle, learn from each other and collaborate. That's actually a very important thing for our company's business model. The second thing that's very important is I, myself, sit in front of customers. When I say customers, we're talking about the banks and fintechs and merchants and governments as well. It's a very important part of my job, and I encourage all of our teammates to do the same thing. Because you think about it, we are a B2B model - business to business model. We can't just create our solutions or our products in the ivory tower. We need to talk to our customers to make sure they meet their needs and address their pain points. Oftentimes when I sit in front of customers, that's when my aha moments come. I'll be struggling with the solution. But talking to a company CEO, a bank CEO, all of a sudden I'm like, the answer's right there. So that's another thing. I think that's really important in our business model. **Bernard Leong:** What will be the strategic priorities now that are unique to the region itself, including Asia Pacific, that you will be thinking about doubling down today? **Ling Hai:** I wouldn't say unique, but maybe some of my regions are leading the way, especially like APAC. For example, what's really important right now for us is open loop transit. My world actually leads Mastercard in many markets. Singapore is a great example. It's completely open loop. You can use your card, tap and go into an MRT station. Singapore is one city state, so it's nationwide already. When Singapore, the city state, is open loop, the whole country is open loop. But the Netherlands has many cities, Amsterdam and others. The Netherlands is a nationwide open loop. That's also the collaboration with Mastercard. Australia is very advanced. UK in London is very advanced. We wanna see this everywhere because we believe fundamentally for a payment instrument to be top of wallet, it's really important that people use it for everyday spend, everyday use cases, and transit is a great example of that. But the other thing that makes transit really important is tourism. The world is more connected. People like to go travel around the world and see different places. Maybe with AI, people don't have to work as much. They'll have even more leisurely time. So to travel around the world, the transit oftentimes is the most intimidating thing when you go to a different country. Try to buy a subway ticket in Paris. It's very difficult. So to enable a consumer to use their everyday card to just tap and go into a transit system, that's really important for tourism. I think governments around the world realize that as well. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of us who use Mastercard like myself, when I travel across, even within countries in Asia Pacific, the ease of use like just tapping my Mastercard credit card on that, I think we don't appreciate that ease and simplicity with that interoperability working in the background. But that interoperability just allows us to go through so many things. But can you give us a high level overview now on the current state of payments across Asia Pacific and what are the key trends you are very excited about? **Ling Hai:** In Asia Pacific, I think one thing that's really interesting and exciting is it is really one of the most advanced regions. It's got everything. It's got card payments. It's got digital wallets. It's got account to account real-time payment. It has NFC as a form factor. It's got QR as a form factor. Like you, I live in Singapore as well. You see merchants take all forms of payments. It's multi-form factor as well. So it's really advanced. That's not just Singapore or Australia. It is also true for China. It's true in India now for the UPI. A lot of the Southeast ASEAN countries are also rapidly developing. But the other thing about Asia is with all the development, there's still a lot of cash opportunities. So cash still takes up a huge percentage of retail payments. Go to Japan, you actually cannot survive without cash in your pocket.Something around 40% of retail spend is still with cash. So for us, it's headroom to further digitize. So on the one hand, you have massive development, a lot of new technology, but on the other hand, you still have a lot of secular trend around cash conversion, digitization that makes Asia Pacific really exciting. **Bernard Leong:** So where do you think the key enablers are? Is it in the infrastructure, policy, or ecosystem design? **Ling Hai:** I think it's all of those things that you talked about. They're all important, but I would add another thing that's really important. I think when I look around the world where you start to see rapid development and adoption of new payment technology or digitization, it is consumer experience. **Bernard Leong:** Given there are different countries with different regulatory frameworks in Asia Pacific, how do you feel in terms of whether they're progressing faster or slower than other regions, or maybe they're all equally moving at the same pace, but have very different needs for their regions? **Ling Hai:** I have a slightly different view on this one. I think of regulation of any particular market, not relative to other regions or other markets, but relative to its own maturity, relative to its own innovation. Because this is the balance you need to strike. I think regulation needs to stay slightly behind innovation. If you are too much ahead, you kind of kill that animal spirit sometimes. So I think the balance of how you ensure regulation creates the level playing field, interoperability, or the certainty of a business environment, that's really important. Or safety, security, for example, for a payment method. That's what regulation has a role to play. But on the other hand, you wanna make sure regulation doesn't stifle innovation. It still gives the room for creativity to happen. **Bernard Leong:** So what is the one thing you know about Mastercard or your work in digital payments that very few people do in your regions of interest? **Ling Hai:** In general, in Mastercard, I think one thing most people don't really understand is we don't issue cards. We don't extend credit. We do not charge interest. Mastercard is a network that creates, it's really a switch. It can be a network of many wallets. It can be a network of other networks as well. So Mastercard is the network, the switch in the middle that creates that interoperability and a universal acceptance for payment methods. We are more a technology company, a data company, and a cybersecurity company. I think that's what, because we have the word card in our name, in our brand name, a lot of the times people automatically think of us as a credit card company, but we are not. **Bernard Leong:** If I dial back 10 years ago, I always think of Mastercard as a technology company. Because of all the things that you have to do, the payments, the infrastructure behind it, and even the security, the cybersecurity, doing fraud detection on it. So we are gonna come to a more interesting topic. **Ling Hai:** Can I also maybe add one thing, and most people don't know. In fact, technology services increasingly contribute a much bigger percentage to our total revenue base. So our revenue contribution isn't just from payments, but also from services such as cybersecurity. Data insights, consulting, loyalty. So those are the things that are increasingly important for our revenue base as well. **Bernard Leong:** So let's get into the most interesting topic, which is stablecoins. Now it's regulated in the U.S. It's bringing them closer to what I call mainstream financial systems. What does this development mean, not just for the Asia-Pacific region, but all the regions you've covered from your vantage point at Mastercard? **Ling Hai:** I actually feel in the first instance, stable coins or crypto in general create more use cases for Mastercard. Think about today when we work with stablecoin or crypto exchanges like Coinbase. People need to use their cards to buy crypto. Largely as an asset, a speculative asset. Investment asset. So we enable that. It's something we call on ramp. But we also do a lot of off ramp. So in Latin America, in countries where their domestic currency is a bit unstable, a little bit volatile, or there are currency controls in those countries, people also would love to figure out a way to spend money directly from their crypto wallet. But merchants don't take crypto directly or even stable coin today. So Mastercard creates a bridge and a vehicle: a Mastercard branded prepaid that allows consumers to use the money in their crypto wallet or balance to pay for merchant spend directly. That's another big use case. Now, our network is gonna support stablecoin settlement. So it's no different than adding another currency. So our network can be settled in US dollars, Euro, Japanese Yen, and tomorrow we're gonna add USDC and tether. Those stablecoins will become a settlement vehicle as well. I do feel stable coins, if you ask me, overall hold a lot of potential, especially in B2B payments, wholesale settlement, but there's still a lot of work to do to really unlock the potential. Now in P2M retail spend, is that gonna be a significant solution for a need that is unmet? I have some question marks about this. Because if you look at a country like Singapore, retail payments are already highly digitized. So you ought to ask the question, what is the problem it is solving? But I do see use cases for crypto. **Bernard Leong:** In countries like Pakistan and Turkey, they use it as inflation hedges basically. Where, but the general question now is: how are policy makers and institutions in Asia-Pac or even other regions reacting and how is Mastercard now positioning towards this shift to stable coins? **Ling Hai:** I think the reaction from regulators and governments are also a mixed bag. If you look at the European Union, they're definitely not gonna try to encourage stable coins or crypto per se. They're gonna develop their own digital euro, Central Bank Digitals. In Asia, we have countries who take the same stance as well. I also feel Singapore has come out a long time ago to say in retail payment, I don't know if digital currency solves anything, but maybe in wholesale settlement, in cross-border remittances, for example. So it's all different. I think there are many different attitudes, but I think there's one thing that's really important in the end. If this is about money, consumers need to feel assured this money is gonna be good and it's gonna be secure, and it's gonna be accepted. That role has to be played by government oversight. **Bernard Leong:** Actually, it's a bit ironic thinking in the Euro situation where the largest stable coin is Tether, which is actually, in some ways we can interpret it as a euro money market fund in a different way. We're talking about collaterally backed stablecoins. That means it's a one-to-one, collaterally backed to the dollar itself. Do you see now stable coins and digital wallets as potential solutions, or do they work best alongside traditional banking rails? Mastercard has been doing quite a lot of work on enabling these solutions at scale while also maintaining trust and security. Because I remember like three years back when I'm an angel investor in crypto companies, I remember the ease of firing ten thousand USD across the internet. Sometimes I ask myself, did the money actually transfer? Because then I realized, oh yeah, now I understand why Mastercard exists. Because I need to know whether it lands at the other side. **Ling Hai:** You hit on a very important point. First, let me answer your question. I think my answer is yes. So maybe two, three weeks ago, a diehard crypto activist who's like a 21-year-old, showed me how he lives his life in the blockchain world. DeFi world. Decentralized finance. It's quite fascinating now, but if I look at the use case in that DeFi world today with crypto, with stable coins, it's still mostly investment. It's taking the real world money and investing in crypto. Offering is very difficult. There's a little bit lending, hedging, or some derivatives as well, collateral using crypto as a collateral to cash out into real world money. So it's more investment activities. I think it's still a long way to actual payments. That is where I feel if you ask me, is the future gonna be DeFi only versus today's world. Like there are two universes, today's universe and the DeFi universe. I think the probability of both universes coexisting is much higher than the entire world being replaced by the DeFi universe. **Bernard Leong:** I actually agree with you a hundred percent on that because I can't foresee a world where everybody goes decentralized finance. **Ling Hai:** That's right. **Bernard Leong:** I think there's still a certain respect or maybe even adherence to the fact that there is trust. There's security. Things like banks, things like Mastercard. You got it. The payment networks, whoever it is. There's still some trust within the institutions. **Ling Hai:** You got it. So I think that's why I feel like the two universes will probably live alongside each other, and you're still gonna need some bridge between the two. I was also gonna add to your comment about trust. When maybe one thing people ought to ask me about Mastercard is when I explain the Mastercard business model to them, I often say payments isn't just about moving money from A to B. Oftentimes the ingredient, the secret sauce of the Mastercard business model is we address issues when things go wrong. Like when money doesn't go from A to B, what happens? Or A said, I sent the money, but B said I never got it. Or B said, I gave the goods and services to A, but A never paid me. We have a whole set of franchise rules that talks about how do you resolve disputes if there is fraud. Who bears the liability? How does chargeback actually work? That is actually the real essence of our business model. **Bernard Leong:** That's interesting because now you're also seeing the cryptocurrencies are trying to reinvent those rules that you have already built within your ecosystem. It's as if they have to rebuild it from scratch, which the institutional trust question comes back. **Ling Hai:** That's the point. That's right. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, exactly. So thinking forward, do you see major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or even Solana now or many others to play a major role alongside the stable coins? I think we should look at them as blockchain solutions rather than the token itself. What would be your mental models in now looking at these cryptocurrencies as part of the new financial rails where Mastercard will live side by side with? **Ling Hai:** I always want to assume something, and even if I'm wrong, I'm okay. So something will happen. But if it doesn't happen, then at least I assume it's gonna happen, so I'm prepared for it. So I want to assume that stable coins will become a currency. Whether this is more for B2B or P2M or remittances, we shall see. I think I have views on which use cases are more suited for stable coins. I do feel cross border or wholesale settlement. That's where you have a stronger use case. I don't think Bitcoin is a viable currency because for one thing to be currency, you have to be stable. I mean, who's gonna pay for something today when the value is 10 tomorrow? The value could be, it's not like commodity, like gold, for example. It's an investment vehicle in my mind. You can think about this as digital gold. That's right. Or commodity. I will use it for investment. Will I use it for payment? In some rare occasions, yes. It's just like in time of war, people use gold to buy things when money is not available. But in normal times, I think it doesn't fit my definition of a currency. So stablecoins probably yes. Less so on the other crypto. **Bernard Leong:** Your question is about mental models? How are you gonna think of them as part of the financial rails? **Ling Hai:** The way I think about this is we can embrace stable coins as a settlement currency to bring them onto our rail. I also believe there will be interoperability that's needed. I just explained to you this whole on ramp, off ramp. Off ramp is a great way of saying we can be the bridge between the DeFi world and the real world, especially physical merchants. There will still be many physical merchants. They don't live in the DeFi world. **Bernard Leong:** They want something that just automatically converts whatever comes from crypto into the real world. **Ling Hai:** That's right. I think that's where we can play a huge role. So at the end of the day, if I would cite a mentor of mine who said, you need to be at the table because if you're not at the table, you're gonna be on the table. **Bernard Leong:** Wow, this is the second time. In the same day somebody told me this. Must be the same mentor. You must be on the table if you want to have a conversation. It's very true. I think from a financial inclusion standpoint, I think many emerging markets, I mean, you cover Africa, some parts of Asia Pacific are emerging as well. They do face some challenges with access to banking infrastructure. Do you see stable coins and digital wallets as a solution here, or maybe still, maybe even in a longer term, it's still a complement to the traditional rails? **Ling Hai:** I think it'll be complementary. You're specifically talking about financial inclusion? Yeah. Financial inclusion. Look, Bernard, I actually think that I have a very strong view about this. Financial inclusion isn't just about having access to a digital wallet. It's not just about having access to even a bank account. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Ling Hai:** What is the real essence of financial inclusion? Oftentimes it's about access to working capital, to loans, to lending. Micro businesses require, if I'm a small business, just having a bank account with no money in it doesn't help me. Just because there's crypto, it doesn't automatically create financing. I may have crypto as a capital, but the small business still doesn't have it. So ultimately I think this is where the Mastercard network and data can come in because we know so much about transactions and behaviors we can help banks make much better underwriting decisions. Today, the reason SMEs oftentimes won't be able to get a lot of credit or working capital loans is because banks don't know much about them. Their information is not transparent. They're not visible to the banks. Some players are trying to figure out ways to solve this. A great example in Asia is Alibaba because it's got the commerce platform. I see your behavior, I see your transactions. Now I can also think about giving you a loan. That is where I think Mastercard can really collaborate with our financial institution partners and to say, you have your data, you have your scoring model, I have more data. I have another scoring model that can complement yours. So now together we can lend to more SMEs and therefore include them into the formal economy. That's my way of thinking about financial inclusion. **Bernard Leong:** If I were to read it correctly, and maybe just to clarify, is that what you're thinking is that the stablecoin infrastructure can allow these businesses to be more scalable? Having something that they can actually on ramp, off ramp, mainly off ramp, so that they can have access to capital in order to grow their businesses. There is a way for Mastercard to do that. **Ling Hai:** Sure. It's an enablement, but by itself it doesn't create a capacity for lending. **Bernard Leong:** Right. **Ling Hai:** But yes, it can become an enablement. **Bernard Leong:** I'm pretty curious now, since we are also in the age of agent AI. Can you share any interesting stories about how AI is now being used within Mastercard? Maybe, AI is obviously being used for fraud detection, enabling to enhance consumer trust. **Ling Hai:** Absolutely. So fraud, cybersecurity is a big area because I think we have to stay 2, 3, 4, 5 steps ahead of the fraudsters and the bad actors. So that's very important. But also it can be used for personalization. If you think about today how merchants are marketing to customers, it's usually one size fits all. Think about advertising. That's the greatest example of one size fits all. Everybody sees the same thing. I think in the AI world, merchants and our customers, banks, they all have a unique capability to really personalize or customize their interactions with you and your interactions with them. If you, for example, go into a restaurant, let's say a fast food restaurant, you see these days you're not even served by humans anymore. You have screens. You go order, but if the merchant knows I'm a vegetarian, what's the point of showing me a meat burger? So now you can actually customize the menu even on the screen to a customer. So I think AI holds tremendous promise in that field. It's the same thing in our business as well. Not so much Mastercard directly, but for example, I have already heard a lot of our bank partners are saying they're using AI to do collections for credit card debt. When that's enabled through a human being, the collections are much more effective. It's more, it has a better human interface, and it creates much better results. **Bernard Leong:** So there was, I think, an AI being used as an avatar to collect debt in the Middle East markets. I think it's called Fatima. I think they won the EY award for innovation, and apparently Fatima does a better job than human collectors by 10%. That's actually a lot from their point of view. **Ling Hai:** My belief is it's not just using avatar by itself. I do think you should use a human, but a human equipped with the AI tools. That would make the conversation even more effective. That's my view. **Bernard Leong:** We discussed earlier that now we are living in the world of AI agents, and we're gonna have this situation where AI agents will be going into different commerce sites to make transactions on our behalf. How are you thinking about how to build resilient, trust-based systems for this kind of agent transactions? I've seen like a couple of deployments, but I think usually in order to get the kind of trusted scale, the Mastercard kind of scale, is not so simple. **Ling Hai:** It's a great point. Today, the algorithm of our network says if you detect this transaction is done not by a human being, by a bot, decline. Tomorrow, that algorithm isn't gonna work anymore because agents will be making choices and also making payments. So still very early days for us. We're closely working with all the ecosystem players. We are basically the orchestrator. We're in the middle of the network. That's right. We're working with all the ecosystem players to now set new rules and standards in terms of agent pay. In terms of what the data exchange should look like. How do we close the feedback loop? If there's a dispute, what does the chargeback look like? So there's a whole set of new rules and methods that we have to revisit and redesign. So that's very important. Cybersecurity continues to be important. In the agent world, it's even worse. It's gonna be even more complicated. But there's some no regret moves we can make today that will serve today, but also will serve the agent commerce world. That is things like tokenization. You don't ever want to have your real credentials just flow out there. You want to have a token. Stronger authentication. Like today it's passkey. Probably tomorrow there'll be something else. But how we bind the biometrics with a device to do stronger authentication, that's gonna be relevant for the agent commerce world as well. Click to pay. One click, you consummate a transaction that's both safe and easy. That's another thing. So those are the things we continue to drive with our customers in the ecosystem because we feel those are no regret moves. **Bernard Leong:** I totally agree. Like for example, I think people don't appreciate when you do a click to pay, there's actually multiple things are happening in the background that give you the seamless payment experience. But yet there are a lot of things in the background like making sure all the checks are correct, the payment passes through and it gets to the merchant. All these things, I think people don't appreciate the amount of work that's being done. There's a lot of work. So what is the one question that you wish more people would ask you about Mastercard and everything in your region, but they don't? **Ling Hai:** I think I maybe have already said it. That is the question is, do we issue cards? We're not a card company actually at all. That's not what we do. We are a technology company that processes transactions and payments. This actually speaks to the fact why we are such a versatile and flexible network. We do what we do today, but as the world changes, we are able to adapt and embrace the future. This is about crypto we just talked about. Agent commerce. We can embrace that as well. So the versatility of the Mastercard network is probably something that people don't appreciate. I will give you another great example. Real time payment. In South Africa we launched our real time payment network instance on soil in South Africa, so our network not only tomorrow will not only support card payments. It actually supports real-time payments as well. Today that is realized in South Africa. Tomorrow it's gonna be around the world. So the versatility of the network is probably one thing I would say. **Bernard Leong:** So my traditional closing question, what does great look like for Mastercard across the premier region over the next few years in light of AI and digital currency developments? **Ling Hai:** We continue to be that trusted network that stands in the middle of all transactions. We continue to power economies and drive digital e-commerce. Our CEO actually said this, we want to be the operating system of commerce and the digital economy. I think that probably is a good way to summarize what success looks like. **Bernard Leong:** Oh, that's a very good way to close. So, Hai, many thanks for coming on the show. I always have two very quick closing questions. The first one is, any recommendations you can share which have inspired your life recently? **Ling Hai:** I read this book a while back and I just read it again, a book called [Thinking Fast and Slow by the late Daniel Kahneman](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555?ref=analysepodcast.com). It's a great book. I mean, for me as a leader in the company, it's just really helpful to understand how the cognitive decisioning process works in different people's heads. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. System one and two thinking. **Ling Hai:** What kind of biases we hold. It's a great way to understand behavior and thinking. So I highly recommend it. But also this man was just brilliant. It is a pity to lose such a brilliant person. **Bernard Leong:** So how can my audience find you and follow Mastercard's developments? **Ling Hai:** I think probably my LinkedIn is the best platform. I'll link to you after this. Also, [Mastercard](https://www.mastercard.com/global/en.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) has our own websites. There's a lot of information about us, about me. But LinkedIn is probably the best place. You can definitely find us everywhere from YouTube to Spotify and across LinkedIn as well. **Bernard Leong:** Of course, follow us across all social media platforms. Hai, many thanks for coming on the show and I look forward to speaking to you in the future. **Ling Hai:** No, thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Yuying discusses how the pandemic's sudden shift to remote work in April 2020 revealed critical gaps in IT infrastructure for distributed teams, inspiring her to launch Esevel—a platform now serving companies across 88 countries. Yuying challenges the traditional HQ-centric worldview, advocating that "HQ should be a mindset, not a location," and shares how Esevel deliberately builds leadership opportunities for talented professionals regardless of whether they're based in Manila, Singapore, or São Paulo. Balancing motherhood with three children and entrepreneurship, she offers honest insights on dealing with mother's guilt while teaching independence, and reveals how her husband's support & mutual commitment to each other's success has been essential. Last but not least, Yuying shares what great would look like for Esevel's future: becoming the indispensable tool companies think of first when scaling global teams, while proving that talent and performance matter more than location. --- > "Many companies that say they do distributed and remote work actually still have a very HQ-centric worldview. That means leadership is in HQ, strategy is formed in HQ, and high-impact jobs are in the HQ as well. So when they hire remote and distributed teams. For example, in the Philippines, Brazil, and India they use these more as back-office functions. So you have very talented people who join them there, thinking that they could rise in a global company. But very soon they find that they hit a glass ceiling and are no longer able to advance, and so they move on to another firm. I think that’s a massive waste of talent, especially if you’re talking about here in Asia. This is the world’s fastest-growing region. People are ambitious, people are bright, and they are able to take on leadership positions if they’re given the opportunity to. This is one thing that we have really tried to reverse at Esevel. You do not have to be at HQ in order to rise into a leadership position. As long as you perform your job and perform it well, we look at performance more than location. So I think that is one thing that has to shift: HQ shouldn’t be a location. HQ should actually be a mindset. And I think that’s something that a lot of remote companies or distributed work companies have correct when it comes to that." - **Deng Yuying** ### Profile: - Deng Yuying, CEO and Founder of [Esevel](https://esevel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuyingdeng/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and spouse to our founder, Bernard Leong - Guest Host: Yana Fry from [Yana TV](https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsg?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanafry/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsg?ref=analysepodcast.com)) which we highly recommend and subscribe to. ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Yana Fry:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicating to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Yana Fry, the founder of Yana TV, and today I'm guest hosting for Bernard Leong. Our topic for today is remote workplace management in the Asia Pacific—a very challenging topic that became mission critical as companies embrace hybrid and distributed teams. My guest today is Yuying Deng, who is the co-founder and CEO of [Esevel](https://esevel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), a fast rising sales startup, helping companies scale their remote operations across the region. She also happens to be Bernard's spouse. That's why I'm interviewing her today. Yuying, welcome to the show. You have had such a fascinating journey from law to healthcare to giving birth to three children to starting and now moving overhead with two startups. **Yuying Deng:** Thank you so much. I've been busy, very busy. **Yana Fry:** Let's just go straight to it. What were the key turning points that you feel shaped you as the founder here today? **Yuying Deng:** So I've had a very circuitous path, as you mentioned, going from a lawyer to an operator to being now a founder. The key turning points for me was when I was in law, I actually felt a disconnect between what I was doing, even though I was learning a lot and the actual impact of my work. **Yana Fry:** So why is that? **Yuying Deng:** I felt that I was doing a lot of IPOs, a lot of M&As throughout different countries. So I was based in Hong Kong. I was a registered lawyer there, and then China and London. But I felt that there was a disconnect because I felt I was watching from the sidelines when I actually wanted to be in the field itself playing? I was advising businesses, but I was always constantly thinking, what would it be like if I were to do things the other way around and build a business from the ground up? So I think that was one of the key turning points during the financial crisis that happened. Seeing how the law firms reacted to it made me wonder what would it be like to actually build a business from the ground up with this kind of realities happening around me. **Yana Fry:** That's why you started your two businesses? **Yuying Deng:** Yeah. So it actually took a longer path than that. That was when I decided to do my MBA at INSEAD, and that really gave me a very good grounding in entrepreneurship and also in operations as well. Post MBA I then joined my family's business, so we were running the largest chain of private nursing homes here in Singapore. I helped them to build up a community care division and then get it sold to a private equity firm. Then I founded my first startup, so that was how it happened. **Yana Fry:** So we're talking about the Orange Valley nursing homes? Yes, correct. Your family business. I know that you played the pivotal role when you actually helped it to exit into the private equity. So what were your biggest experiences there and learnings about strategy, negotiation, and just managing stakeholder expectations and also just working in a family office? **Yuying Deng:** Oh, yes. I mean, working in a family business. I think as any second gen entrepreneur would tell you it's difficult. You have to manage family dynamics and that can spill over from work into family life after dinner as well. I think we managed that quite well. In terms of what I actually learned from the exit into PE, I think it was really a lot of negotiations, a lot of attention to detail and also a lot of things about strategy as well, because it wasn't an easy or straightforward kind of exit. There was some complexities behind it. **Yana Fry:** They're always there. **Yuying Deng:** Yes. So it was a process that actually took us one and a half years to complete. That also taught me a lot about managing expectations from people, whether these are other shareholders, minority shareholders, majority shareholders, and so on. Also learning about the interests that different people have as well, some of which may be explicitly stated, but a lot of which you have to understand from the dynamics that's happening. So very lesson and kind of mini MBA, if you would in real-life. **Yana Fry:** Which brings us to Esevel. For those who are unfamiliar with the company, can you just tell us what Esevel is, what are the hidden pains and problems you are solving for companies across Asia? **Yuying Deng:** Sure. So for Esevel, I would describe it as a scalable IT operations platform. So you can think of us as IT as a service for distributed teams. So what we have done is that we have built up an infrastructure on which companies can tap on to manage IT for their distributed teams throughout 88 countries in the world. So our services is put into a platform and it comprises of a few parts, includes things such as IT asset management throughout all these countries, procurement, provisioning, deprovisioning, security, SLA guaranteed kind of help desk as well. We have basically invested heavily in building an infrastructure that spans things such as partners, local sourcing and repair, facilitation, anything that you can think of, right? SLA security for IT that companies can tap into. So it is IT as a service, but you could tap into it as a startup and basically almost have the global might of a Fortune 500 global IT support behind you, but without the overheads of paying for one. **Yana Fry:** An interesting fact about Esevel that people might not know—the company was founded in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic in Singapore, where many companies were actually shutting down. Tell me why. **Yuying Deng:** In April itself. **Yana Fry:** In April itself? Yes. So tell me why. **Yuying Deng:** So I mean, I think Esevel is really one of those things that came about when we became aware of the problems that were happening. I'm sure, as you know as well Yana because you also lived through the pandemic, right? You've seen what things were—offices were shutting down. People required to work from home, and immediately IT departments were white. They were panicking. How do I get laptops to my people when they have to work from home? Everything's on the desktop is tethered to the office desk. How do I make sure my people are productive? So that was when we first became aware of the problems that would originate with distributed teams and remote teams. So when we saw that, we saw the opportunities that was there to solve the problem that was happening, we decided to incorporate the company straight away. **Yana Fry:** How do you feel that the fact that it was incorporated during the time in the pandemic actually shaped the company DNA? **Yuying Deng:** I think that had a lot of impact on the company. I mean, one of the impact is more internal. So we are fully remote company ourselves, right? We employ people throughout eight different countries here in the Asia Pacific. Very soon we'll be hiring people in other regions in the world. So it shaped us internally, made us realize that there will be a very large global talent pool worldwide as we hired these people, and we saw how capable all of them were, and we also understood that then the culture of a company such as a remote company has to be built very deliberately and intentionally from the ground up. But I think the other thing that it taught us as well, coming from the pandemic, was how important it was to be close to the problem, right? Because we were talking to IT people every day, we were understanding their pain points. So that is one of the things that has really differed from how I built Esevel compared to my previous startup. We always want to be very close to the problem so that we understand exactly what it is that our clients need. What is the next step up that they want? What are the pain points that they actually want us to fulfill? **Yana Fry:** You say it's very important to build the culture of the company. So how do you do that? It is not easy, especially given that your company's so diverse. **Yuying Deng:** Yes, it is. I mean, we have people from, I would say six different countries, right? **Yana Fry:** Spending slightly different, but you operate in 88 countries. Would it be correct? We are operating in eight countries. So you employ from about six countries, but you're operating in 88 countries. It means you're dealing with customers in 88 countries. **Yuying Deng:** Yes, we are dealing with end users in 88 different countries, but our customers thankfully, are from countries usually such as the U.S., UK, Europe, Australia, Singapore. So they tend to be more commonalities between them than differences. Our end users are in 88 different countries. But then again, they're usually English speaking professionals in those countries. So again, a lot of commonalities. But where the cultural differences really comes in, is in terms of the partnerships that we form and the infrastructure that we are building up to enable us to service all these countries worldwide. So it is there that we have to learn the language differences, the operational nuances, the different speed at which people move in different countries. **Yana Fry:** Please give me an example. **Yuying Deng:** I would say it's definitely very different in Europe, right? As compared to somewhere in China as compared to someone in Brazil. So people move at very different speeds and they have different expectations and understandings. **Yana Fry:** But it's fascinating. **Yuying Deng:** Clearly, yes. **Yana Fry:** It looks you are doing a great job with this. **Yuying Deng:** I hope so. **Yana Fry:** I know that Esevel supports companies such as Xendit and GetGo. Could you share a story that illustrates to us how your platform helps these companies distribute the work that truly matters? **Yuying Deng:** So I mean, those are not the only companies that we have. We do have a lot of companies that we are not able to mention by name due to NDAs. So how we usually help them is twofold. One is basically to enable device lifecycle management for their team members who are overseas. So you can imagine Yana, one day if you were to set up a company that has about 2000 different employees, you have a HQ in one place, but distributed teams, back office support in maybe five to six other countries worldwide. Very common kind of structure nowadays. You would struggle, your IT team would be struggling to get them devices to make sure that they can properly onboard and offboard people in an expedient kind of manner according to what HR says, right? If you have someone onboarding on Monday, that person needs to receive a laptop on Monday, otherwise they would be not productive. **Yana Fry:** Absolutely. Yeah. **Yuying Deng:** So those are the things that we help to ensure. We also help to ensure the security of data while the laptop is being there used by a person in a different country as well. So that's one aspect of what we do. The other aspect of what we do is that we enable them to also then not just do device lifecycle management, but the security management of those devices while they're overseas. So to make sure that the laptops are properly updated with the latest OS, the patches that you can remote lock and wipe if you have a bad leaver or if someone loses the laptops. Right. So all these are important things for compliance, for ISO standards and so on. **Yana Fry:** Looking at your years of entrepreneurship and all the ups and downs, highs and lows, what do you feel are the hardest earned lessons that you wish you knew before you started? I know, it's one of those tough questions. Yes, I know. **Yuying Deng:** I'm thinking hard when you say that. I think I used to be very affected by failure, right? I think after having gone through one failure with my first startup and now having more success with the second one, what I've come to realize is that in entrepreneurship, failure is not a bug. It's actually a feature of the process. Right. So that was one of the hard earned lessons that I had, to not be so affected by something going wrong in the earlier stages, right? But to know that this kind of obstacle, this kind of challenge actually gives you resilience and clarity that helps you improve, unlike any second iteration of what you're doing. **Yana Fry:** We were mentioning that you were working with your family business, right? The Orange Valley nursing homes. So how do you feel that your experience working in the healthcare and elderly care shaped your resilience and just your values as an entrepreneur and as a founder? What is important to you? **Yuying Deng:** I mean, that's one thing I respect a lot about my parents when they started up the company. That is that they always had the customer at the forefront. Right. So everything that they did, in terms of the buildings that they design, right, the operations that they set up, the people that they hired in, everything was done from the viewpoint of the customer. Is this the best for the customer? Is this what is going to give the customer the best results in terms of healthcare? I think that's something that I really took away from that. So having a client first, customer first attitude is always something that we've had at Esevel. The second thing is just about operational complexity. I think as you can imagine, running a nursing home with a thousand beds, few thousand healthcare workers and all the different kind of medication, the procedures, the dressings that you have to do for different people dealing with client feedback and all that. Very operationally complex and very high stakes. So although what we are doing at Esevel is not high stake in the way of healthcare, but it's high stakes in the way of if you have an employee onboarding, that person needs to get a device by Monday, right? So I've learned not to be afraid of operational complexity, not to be afraid of doing boring work, right? But I think really the best work comes when you are willing to do boring, invisible work, day in, day out, and producing a result for your customer at the end of the day, that is seamless. **Yana Fry:** What is the biggest mistake you have made in business as a businesswoman, and what have you learned from that? **Yuying Deng:** I would say that would hark back to my first startup where we were building an idea that we had in our minds that we thought would be fantastic. When we went out to talk to people about it, they gave us feedback. For example, price point is too high. This thing is over-engineered. I need something simpler. We didn't take that feedback too hard. Right. So I think it was a lot of resistance and a lot of defensiveness and I've learned not to repeat that with my second company. We go where clients want us to go. We go where the market indicates that we should go. Yeah. So that was one of the hardest learned lessons, which I actually find— **Yana Fry:** Requires a lot of humbleness and leadership because sometimes, or very often when leaders go out, entrepreneurs, they have a brilliant idea and they're "I'm gonna change the world. It's what I wanna do." But then to receive feedback and say, it's not what we want. Actually, you need to be very humble and accepted. So kudos to you for being able to do that because it becomes very personal. Exactly. Because it's not, they just, it's not, they just reject me and my company. They reject also my values and my ideas. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Wow. Wow. It took me years to learn that. I think I'm still learning. **Yuying Deng:** I'm still learning as well. Don't get me wrong. **Yana Fry:** So looking ahead, three to five years, what is the biggest shift you expect in how ASEAN companies approach hybrid and remote work? **Yuying Deng:** So I think that hybrid and remote work is here to stay, right? So when companies were doing it post pandemic or during the pandemic itself, it was more "how do we get this done? How do we get this done quickly?" Right. So a lot of things was done in patchwork, but then what has happened is that I've seen a lot more of a deliberate shift towards companies actually thinking about it. Okay. I'm getting a lot of benefits from remote work, right? Say for example, if I'm hiring in the Philippines and Indonesia, I'm getting employees who are a lot more willing to work for me and to stay because I'm saving them three hours a day in terms of transport costs. So it's become a hiring and retention tool. The second thing that we've seen is companies from developed countries—so the U.S., the UK, Singapore—hiring into developing countries because it's a lot more of an efficient cost base, and they get talents over there that would otherwise be very hard for them to hire within their own countries. So there's also that as well. So I think it's definitely here to stay and I think companies are becoming a lot more intentional about how they are structuring their own internal operations and their company culture for remote and hybrid work. So part of it is also the infrastructure that has come up. So employer of record companies, which enables you to hire worldwide. IT infrastructure companies such as ours that enables you to support and equip your people worldwide as well. So that also has a part to play in it. So definitely I think here in Asia, remote, hybrid work is here to stay, but also for the rest of the world. **Yana Fry:** From your experience, when you look at the industry, do you feel that organizations are doubling down on remote models or they're swinging back to the office? What's actually really happening on the ground right now? **Yuying Deng:** So there I feel that there are two aspects of it. One is that some of the companies, I would say the more traditional ones, so the ones such as banks, some of the larger tech companies and so on, they still find it because of structures that have already been built up over time. They find it more expedient to call everyone back into the office and not reform any of the structures that they've had in terms of management incentives and so on. Right. Of course there's a short term gain to that. But I would say the Googles of tomorrow, the Netflixes of tomorrow, the Amazons of tomorrow, a lot of that— **Yana Fry:** But now we wanna know the names, if you know, tell us we're gonna invest in the stocks. **Yuying Deng:** I do. They may not even be listed yet. So all these companies, they have already come up with infrastructures, cultural norms that allows them to recruit and to motivate and to promote people with global talents. So I think that that is the way that most companies are going to go in the future. If you think about it economically, these companies are going to have access to a much more global, diverse talent pools, a lot more cost efficiencies than the older players of the past. So I do think that the world is moving towards this direction. **Yana Fry:** What's one thing you know about managing distributed workplaces and workforces in Asia that few people do, but they should know about it? **Yuying Deng:** Tell us the secret. **Yana Fry:** Tell us the secret. **Yuying Deng:** I do think I've observed one thing. That is many companies that say that they do distributed and remote work, they actually still have a very HQ centric worldview. So that means that leadership is in HQ, strategy is formed in HQ. High impact jobs are in the HQ as well. So when they hire remote and distributed teams, say for example in the Philippines, in Brazil and India, they use this more as back office functions. So you have very talented people who join them there thinking that they could rise in a global company, but very soon they find that they hit a glass ceiling and they're no longer able to advance, and so they move on to another firm. I think that that's a massive waste of talent, right? Especially if you're talking about here in Asia where this is the world's fastest growing region. People are ambitious, people are bright, right? They are able to take on a leadership position if they're given the opportunity to. So this is one thing that we have really tried to reverse at Esevel. You do not have to be at HQ in order to rise into a leadership position. Right. As long as you perform your job and you perform it well, we look at performance more than location. So I think that that is one thing that has to shift. The fact that HQ shouldn't be a location. HQ should actually be a mindset. Right. I think that's something that a lot of remote companies or distributed work companies have it correct when it comes to that. **Yana Fry:** When you look at those talents that are living across all of those countries around the world, how do you actually realize who is the one that needs to be promoted and put in a leadership position? How do you choose those people? What are their qualities? **Yuying Deng:** So I think for someone to thrive in a kind of remote and distributed environment, it is a different set of characteristics from someone who thrives in an in-office kind of environment. I think that is also something that many companies do not realize until they have had some experiences in hiring as well. So someone who would do well in a remote work environment tends to be an independent thinker or a good communicator. They tend to want to express themselves rather than withhold their own opinions. So whenever we identify people such as that, people who meet those characteristics and at the same time are hungry for more, eager to learn. These are the people that we want to promote. **Yana Fry:** So to me this sounds an entrepreneurial mindset. Yes. So how do you actually keep them working within the company then if they have such an entrepreneurial mindset. So what motivates them to stay at Esevel? **Yuying Deng:** So I think it's the opportunity in a company that's growing fast, right? For them to be doing something very differently in one or two years time as compared to what they were doing from before. So there is that whole growth that is happening within the company that motivates them. But I think the second thing is also the expectations that we set that, hey, it doesn't matter if you're based in Manila or you're in Singapore, or you're in San Francisco, or you are in Sao Paulo in Brazil. Doesn't really matter. As long as you're performing, you're hitting your OKRs, you're meeting your KPIs, right, and you're communicating well with your team members. You are someone that we wanna promote into a leadership position. **Yana Fry:** So speaking about team members and managing people, you described sounds very much a very high end, single performance, the type A personalities probably who would go there, communicate, make it happen. So how do you make sure they work harmoniously in teams with each other when they're all superstars? **Yuying Deng:** So I would say that as a start, we don't hire lone wolves, so we do not hire individual performers. So one of the things that we do very rigorously at Esevel is the whole hiring process. The kind of questions that we ask, the reference calls that we do, and the kind of focus questions that we ask them as well. So we look for people who can communicate well because they need to work well within a team. Also one of the things is that we look for people who are part of a team and they should have overlapping time zones, right? So I think that's one of the things that's very often overlooked because if you have someone working in a completely different time zone from you, it's very difficult— **Yana Fry:** To get any work done, even if you're a great communicator. **Yuying Deng:** Yes. So there we go, Yana. **Yana Fry:** I just have to ask right now. So what is your secret question or strategy at hiring since you're so good at it? So now tell us, we're open and all. **Yuying Deng:** I wouldn't say I'm a fantastic hirer. I mean we've definitely had people who didn't quite fit and work out as well, but I think that it is really important to follow a set of structure, in terms of your interview questions in terms of what you're looking for in the people and in terms of the reference calls that you do. So I do have a book that I follow quite religiously. It's called [Who: \[The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street](https://www.amazon.sg/dp/0345504194?ref%5F=mr%5Freferred%5Fus%5Fsg%5Fsg&ref=analysepodcast.com)\]. I can't remember the author's name. We can drop it into the footnotes later. But I find it has basically helped me to find good people even though I was not able to meet those people, to interview them face to face. **Yana Fry:** Very powerful. Little bit, just shifting the gears here. Sure. Focusing on the family. Okay. So I know that you have been often saying that founding a company is raising a child and you have three of those. So could you elaborate a little bit, what do you mean by that? **Yuying Deng:** I think in a couple of ways, first it does take a village to raise a child. When raising my kids, I'm very fortunate that my husband helps out a lot and I, we have a helper, fortunately here in Singapore. Also my mother helps out a lot as well. So I think it's the same thing with founding a company. **Yana Fry:** You need a mother, a husband, and a helper. I got it. This is the secret. **Yuying Deng:** Well, I was gonna say you need people beside you to really help you through it. So whether this is fellow founder friends who can guide you through experiences that they've been through before. Whether it is friends who are financiers or lawyers, people that you can call when you're in a fix and ask them, "how would you sort out something such as that?" I was part of the [Iterative](https://iterative.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) accelerator. That was also something that helped me a lot, just the fact of knowing that there's this community of people that you can go to with questions at any time of the night. There'll always be someone there to reply you because being a founder is a very lonely kind of journey. Right. You need the support network beside you to make it work. **Yana Fry:** For all other women out there who are just trying to balance family career, children perhaps if they wanna have them. So what is your advice? How do you feel the best way to do that? **Yuying Deng:** Well, I have received many questions from fellow female founders before who have always been concerned, right? When is it the best time to get married? When do I have kids? Would having kids interfere with raising money? What would VCs think? Right? Would it interfere with me getting business and traveling for business and so on? I think for me at least personally, it has always just been, just do it because there is, especially for having children, right? There is no perfect time to get these kind of things done. So if you just do it, you would eventually find a way around it. It is about what is important to you. Right, and if this is an important milestone that you wanna hit in life, then just go ahead and do it now, or at least take a step towards getting it done. **Yana Fry:** Can I ask a personal question? Have you ever dealt with mother's guilt? If yes, how did you deal with that? **Yuying Deng:** Alright. Yeah. Mother's guilt. Plenty of it. So I think we all have it. Yes. I do work from home, so I've had my daughter tell me one day she said, "Mommy," this was when she was eight years old. She said, "Mommy, do you know what I want to be one when I grow up?" I said, "No." She said, "I wanna be a housewife." I was a bit surprised because I was working, I thought I was showing my kids this is an example of a mother who's working. She said, "I wanna be a housewife." I said, "Why?" Right? She said, "Well, so that when I have a kid and when my kid comes home from school, I could actually pay attention to my kid." Oh, so that was a big ouch kind of moment because I do lock my door, right? **Yana Fry:** You have to focus on work. How do you focus on work? **Yuying Deng:** Yeah, so there we go, Yana, mother's guilt. But how I comfort myself a bit— **Yana Fry:** Yes, that's I'm more interested. **Yuying Deng:** More than those modern snarky teenagers. So how I comfort myself with it is that I do believe that teaching kids to be independent and to have an independent mindset is a very important part of bringing children up. So whenever my children are there squabbling amongst themselves or being unhappy that I can't pay attention to them or saying "I'm bored, can you do something with me?" I comfort myself by saying that, well, this is all part of growing up. They have to learn how to deal with it. Right? So that is also part of being a parent as well, teaching them all these life lessons. **Yana Fry:** Absolutely. Since we're on the topic of children and parents, I'm just curious. Yes. What is the biggest lesson that you learned from your mom and from your dad? You wanna make sure they listen to the podcast. If you had this moment when you reached out, when you were saying something such as that, now they're "ah, okay. She got it when she grew up." **Yuying Deng:** I would say looking at the kind of people that they are, and looking at how they build up their lives in their businesses. I would say the biggest lesson or the biggest takeaway from them is always to do things that you can sleep with at night. So what that means is you have to do things in a way that's ethical, in a way that you feel is right, and it does right by the people that you're dealing with. So I think that that is what they have always done. I've never seen them do something that's inappropriate or said something that was inappropriate about other people, even behind their backs. So that is something that I've taken away, and it's a principle that I hold with me when I build my business as well. **Yana Fry:** When you think about the next few years, what does great look for yourself personally, for Esevel, and just as a founder and as a mother? Take us on this journey. **Yuying Deng:** Let's do the easier part, the company first. So I would say great for Esevel would be where we become a very indispensable tool for companies that are growing globally. So whenever a company is thinking of hiring someone in the UAE or they're thinking of off-boarding someone in Mexico or onboarding someone in China, immediately who they think of is us. So that's who we want to be. In terms of family, what I would say is independence for my children. I think especially in this age of AI, where I know that a lot of parents are concerned about: How is AI going to affect jobs for my kids? How is it gonna affect how my kids do their schoolwork and so on? For my kids, what success will look for me as a mother is independent thinking, right? Not just blindly accepting what society tells you things should be—independence and independent thinking for them. For me as a founder, I think it would be making Esevel into the reality of what we want the world to be, which is basically, if you're a talented person who joins Esevel from any part of the world, you have a chance to rise up to a leadership position in a fast growing company. It doesn't matter if you're based in Manila, in Shanghai, in Sao Paulo, right? You have a chance at being a leader in a company that appreciates you for who you are and not where you're based. **Yana Fry:** I have to ask about your husband. **Yuying Deng:** I hope this is a question I can answer. **Yana Fry:** Well, it's an appropriate one. Not an inappropriate. They say traditionally they used to say that behind every great man there is a woman that has been supporting him. I find it now with where the world is going, we can reverse this sentence and we can reverse engineer that. We can. Yes. To say that next to each great woman there is a man who is supporting her. Yes. So what do you feel then, the role your husband has been playing in general? Your kind of reflections towards other women. What do we want from our men to help us to succeed? **Yuying Deng:** So the most important thing that my husband has brought to me is that I know that he also wants me to succeed as well, and I think that's very important for any sort of partnership, right? I've seen some relationships where one party may not want the other one to succeed so much because of insecurities that they may have. But it's very different for me and Bernard. We both want each other to succeed. That may mean sacrifices, right? That we have to make in the short term. "Oh, I have to go out for this business meeting. What will you do with the kids?" The kids are dealing with him when he has to test them spelling. He's always willing to do those kind of things, and I'm also willing to do it for him as well. So it is not something that's easy. I would say that we have had to really get to this understanding after the first few years of the relationship. But I think we are at this place now where we know that we are trying to do right by each other. **Yana Fry:** Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Before we wrap up, is there a book, a podcast, or a tool that has been recently inspiring you and really helping you to go to the next level, either in business or life? **Yuying Deng:** So I have actually been listening to a podcast called [Empire](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/empire/id1639561921?ref=analysepodcast.com). It's by two historians. It has been fascinating for me. I mean, first of all, I'm a history buff. I used to do history in high school. But more than that as well, it has shown me about how the world is different and yet always the same. It is always about human nature and how human nature keeps repeating itself, whether this is the Achaemenid Empire, or whether it's the Mughal empire, whether is the Chinese empire. So when you look at all these different personalities, the mistakes and the successes that keeps repeating itself, it shows you that at the end of the day, everything revolves around human nature. So that is something that I really enjoy listening to, would encourage anyone who even has a bit of interest in history to listen to it as well. **Yana Fry:** I just have to ask, so what is your favorite event from the history point of view? In terms of what we can learn from that and how do you feel it can actually help us to build a society we truly wanna have. **Yuying Deng:** So when I look at history, I look at it more from personalities rather than events because that, that is just a captivating subject. So one of the things that I've been listening to recently is the founding fathers of the U.S. How a lot of them actually had to rise through adversities. I think everyone is familiar with the story now of [Hamilton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%5F%28musical%29?ref=analysepodcast.com), right? Because of the musical. **Yana Fry:** We watched the musical. **Yuying Deng:** Exactly, yes. We all watched the musical. Now we read the book. But it wasn't just Hamilton, it was also George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, that actually rose from very adverse kind of situations and brought themselves up to a higher level. So I would say that the lesson I learned from that is that things are not irreversible. Even though you may have been born or subjected to very bad circumstances in life, but with sheer will, you should actually be able to rise up to a high level, with sufficient amount of luck and sufficient amount of determination. **Yana Fry:** The final question before we wrap up for today, please, let's go all the way forward up to you being 300 years old. **Yuying Deng:** 300 years old. You must know about some technology that I haven't heard of yet. **Yana Fry:** Oh, I am sure we'll get to there within our lifetime. So you're looking at your life and what would you to be most proud of and most happy about at the end of your life? **Yuying Deng:** I think that that is something that we ask ourselves a lot about, right? From time to time. For me, a lot of that honestly would be my kids? How they have turned out, because a lot of things you do, it's always asking about why is this thing important to you? Why is this thing important to you? So for me, fundamentally it would be my kids and just by knowing that they have turned out to be independent, happy kind of people would be sufficient for me. They do not have to achieve a certain level of success— **Yana Fry:** Or you're not being Asian now. Come on. **Yuying Deng:** I think even for Asian parents, that is what they want. It's just that they express it in a different form. I do know, I think for my parents at least, that that is what they're happy with. That okay, on my death bed, I can go knowing that my kids, my descendants are well, and they're taken care of and they're happy. That's it. **Yana Fry:** Well with that, I have nothing else to ask. I mean, this is really, it's the final dot. So my only question left—when the audience who wants to connect with you and learn more about Esevel, how they can do that. **Yuying Deng:** Yeah. So if they want to learn more about Esevel, they can come onto our website. It's really easy. So it's Esevel E-S-E-V-E-L.com. If they wanna connect with me, really easy as well. My email address, yuying Y-U-Y-I-N-G at esevel.com. **Yana Fry:** Thank you so much, Yuying. Thank you. It's such a powerful conversation on leadership, resilience, AI, motherhood, and dealing with diversity and remote workplaces. Really, really amazing. To our listener, thank you so much for tuning in today. That was Yana Fry from Yana TV and next week you're gonna see Bernard again in this chair on the show. So make sure you're tuning in to Analyse Asia. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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He shares his career journey from Oracle to Confluent, reflecting on his passion for open source technologies and how the LAMP stack era shaped his understanding of real-time data challenges. Kamal explains Confluent's evolution from the category creator of Kafka to a comprehensive data streaming platform combining Kafka, Flink, and Iceberg, emphasizing how real-time data infrastructure enables businesses to harness both public AI models and proprietary enterprise data while maintaining governance & security. He highlights compelling customer stories from India's National Payments Corporation processing billions of UPI transactions daily to healthcare AI applications serving patient needs, showcasing how data streaming solves fragmentation challenges that plague 89% of enterprises attempting AI adoption. Addressing implementation hurdles, he stresses that data infrastructure is the most critical piece for AI success, advocating for standards-based interoperability through Kafka's protocol and Confluent's extensive connector ecosystem to unlock siloed legacy systems. Closing the conversation, Kamal shares his vision for Asia Pacific becoming Confluent's largest growth region, powered by massive-scale innovations in payments, mobile transformation, and AI on the edge for autonomous vehicles and next-generation interfaces. --- > "In the context of where Confluent can play a critical part, it's also the interoperable integration with all the respective AI ecosystems. If you think about what AI is doing, it's working across microservices, working across data lakehouses, databases - could be a different endpoint service. Bringing all that together in a secure and consistent manner, constantly serving that information, is where I think it plays the most pivotal role." - **Kamal Brar** **Profile:** Kamal Brar, Senior Vice President WW ISV \[Independent Software Vendor\] & Asia Pacific/Middle East, [Confluent](https://www.confluent.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamalbrar/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). The ability to harness data from real life streaming has become a strategic necessity for generative AI. With me today is Kamal Brar, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Independent Software Vendor \[or ISV, in short\] and Asia Pacific and Middle East at Confluent, to help me unpack the emerging role of data streaming platforms in the world of AI and how it's gonna shape the future of Asia Pacific. Kamal, welcome to the show. **Kamal Brar:** Thank you, Bernard. Thank you for having me. **Bernard Leong:** I always want to hear origin stories about our guests. How did you start your career? **Kamal Brar:** It's an interesting one. I'm sure some folks are still thinking through what they want to do in school and deciding what they want to actually end up doing. For me, it was pretty clear. I had a strong interest in electronics and computing at a very young age. I wanted to pursue a career in computing and back then, computing was taking off in the late nineties. We didn't have - a lot of the curriculum in universities was around software development. It wasn't really around mobile and all the other amazing technologies that came later, but it was fundamentally software engineering and databases. Those were the two core areas. I ended up taking a Bachelor of Computing, which turned into a Bachelor of Computing Science when it was rebranded. I was very much focused on learning all about software programming. Back then it was Perl, Apache, MySQL, all that type of good stuff - the LAMP stack, if you recall. I was definitely into that. I did that as my foundational educational studies. I was very fortunate. As I wrapped up my tertiary education, I got an opportunity to work for Oracle. Even prior to Oracle, I was working at Optus, which was a telco in Australia. Then I shifted to Oracle, and Oracle was an amazing company. Back then it still is. But back then it was 25,000 employees. It was a very different company to what it is today. If you're tracking Oracle, it's making a lot of interesting investments in AI. For me it was just a great learning playground. I got to learn a lot about Oracle Technologies core tech, then I evolved from Core Tech to the applications, understood Oracle's applications. From there I decided to take a leap of faith. Having spent six, seven years at Oracle, I wanted to experience something different. Having worked in the Oracle machinery where you learn a lot and you learn about really interesting technologies - it was the number one database company and technology company at that period of time. But there was so much disruption on the onset. I got to learn from working in some of the most exciting open source technology companies. My career has been a mix of data, but also I've worked in four open source companies. **Bernard Leong:** Prior to this conversation, I took a look at your background. You worked for Oracle, Hortonworks and then now Confluent. What drew you to data streaming in your present role and what do you think about all these open source technologies that gives you this common thread in your career? **Kamal Brar:** Remember I referred to the LAMP stack. I actually worked for MySQL for five, five and a half years. That's where I got the bug. Literally, MySQL was a very small company - about 350 employees when we got acquired by Oracle. That was my second stint at Oracle. It was just a phenomenal cult following. Back then when Facebook was coming together, it was all powered by MySQL and the database. You think about it right now, it's a given. But back then, when Facebook was building its architecture for scale, for mobile and web, there was no database of choice. I think that was the era where we were in a very fundamental part of the transition on the web. Mobile hadn't taken off, but web was truly there. Social media was truly taking off. What attracted me to the Confluent story - I always knew Confluent was a great company, a great brand, done tremendously well. It created the category of Kafka and data streaming. For me it was going back to the core. I always wanted to come back to open source. I'd worked in other technology companies, so it was more for me to go back to something I enjoyed. I'd been in MySQL, I'd been in Hortonworks as you talked about. It was just coming back to open source again. **Bernard Leong:** Always open source enterprise tech. Now you reflect on your career journey, what are the kind of lessons you would share with my audience? **Kamal Brar:** I think the fundamental lesson I would say is there are no limits in what you can achieve in any role or in particular, any company you go work for or be part of. Every company has very unique elements of learning. There are different growth stages in the company. There are different technical challenges. There are different go-to market challenges. When you think about all the things that have to go right to make a company so successful, it's amazing. You see very few companies cross the chasm of getting to a billion dollar run rate in open source. MySQL was acquired quite early. Hortonworks - we got acquired as well as part of Cloudera. Most companies don't get to that billion dollar run rate. Obviously Red Hat was one of them and did really well and continues to do well. I think Snowflake, Databricks as well. Snowflake, Databricks - these companies, all these technologies were open source. If you look at what Databricks came from - Spark, very much open source. That's pretty exciting. Open source has become, and definitely the foundational projects in Apache and the community have been really pivotal in defining the tech landscape. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think the community is also part of the core of what makes open source software such an interesting part of your career journey? **Kamal Brar:** Yeah. Hidden secret - I used to be a contributor a long time ago. I don't write code anymore. But I think the community angle is absolutely pivotal. Without the community, it's very difficult to get the adoption. Adoption defines the opportunity for us to do some of these more disruptive technologies. Otherwise, you'll be stuck in the most obvious, safer choice. The community enabled us to do that. **Bernard Leong:** Let's get to the main subject of the day because we are gonna talk about data streaming and AI readiness in Asia Pacific and also Middle East, which we cover in the region as well. Maybe just to baseline, to help my audience understand Confluent better because not everyone knows about all these enterprise tech companies. What's Confluent's mission and how does it fit into enterprise AI and data infrastructure landscape? **Kamal Brar:** Maybe just worthwhile for those of your viewers who may not be familiar with Confluent as a company. It started over 10 years ago, and the project was around Kafka. Kafka today is very much de facto. People refer to Kafka as a pretty standard. But that's when it was defined. Our three founders, Jun and Jay, who's our current CEO and co-founder, kind of out of LinkedIn had this project. Out of this project, they ended up spinning out a company. The challenge of course, if you're familiar with LinkedIn, is I only want to subscribe to information that's relevant to me. To be able to consume that information efficiently - just imagine the total volume of people who are on that platform and then to do that efficiently and to be able to publish that data continuously as a feed that's relevant without having to keep making a call. In the world of databases, it used to be you'd query something and you'd get a response. It's a request-based access, whereas this was continuous feed of information in real time. That's how the company formed. Kafka became one of the most popular Apache projects, and is still today a growing Apache project. The company over the last 10 years has pivoted from becoming the de facto category creator in Kafka and data streaming to becoming the DSP company. For those of you who are thinking about what DSP is, fundamentally you have real time event streaming. We know that's number one with Confluent and Kafka. In addition to that, you need to be able to process these streams and be able to manipulate or transform these streams. That's where Flink became the standard. About three years ago, I believe, Confluent acquired a company called Immerok. That's where we essentially brought the founders of Flink into our ecosystem. Flink and Kafka became one. Until today, that plays a very important role in the context of AI, and I'll explain a bit later. More recently what we've done is introduced Iceberg. Iceberg is becoming the de facto table store format or essentially the interoperability for Lakehouse, where you can hopefully be able to share information between the data stores or data lakehouse and also the platform itself. **Bernard Leong:** I also had a stint when I was heading AI and machine learning at AWS for Southeast Asia, where one of the key things in data streaming, specifically F1 for example, where you need a lot of events - the key part of it, even for basic video analytics, is that a lot of people always talk about Kafka streams and actually using Flink as part of the ingestion engine so that they can get that information. **Kamal Brar:** That's a great use case, by the way. **Bernard Leong:** Can you explain why data streaming is so important to AI now? I can understand it because I use ChatGPT every day. Essentially there's so much conversation streams going on in my chat window, but I think it's only just one stream. But if I start thinking about there are 500 million users suddenly all using the same thing, there's a very different conversation. **Kamal Brar:** That's very true. In the context of data streaming platform and AI, there are multiple facets to it. The most obvious is you want to be able to do inference. When you talk about your querying or asking questions in ChatGPT - the prompts, as you call them, prompt engineering - you'd be able to understand the context of what you're asking for. In that scenario, majority of the technology or majority of the models in some shape or form want to be able to store feedback loops and understand: how did we make a decision? How did we get that data? Where was that data and how frequently was this accessed? Even things such as the metrics associated with that particular question so that they can learn and train and be more efficient at the next particular ask. You may have you and I asking the same question in a different way. It learns and becomes more efficient in how it can provide that data. The inference part is super important. Being able to do that efficiently, being able to do that across multiple data sources, I think is very logical. That's where Flink comes into play. That's a very important part. The other part linked to that is the model feedback loop. To enhance the models, you want to be able to store that data for a long period of time or at least be able to store it to understand how the models can improve. The most obvious is, as these models look at not just web data - if you think of the enterprise context, the models are generative AI, so they understand the web, they understand the machine learning training that's already happened on those models. ChatGPT or any of the models, they'll tell you when it's trained to or when news shoots a little bit behind. But in context of enterprise, they know nothing about your business, and for good reasons. That data is very much specific to your business requirements and it's probably a competitive differentiator. That data cannot be publicly shared. How do you bring the power, harness the power of the public or generative AI models and the enterprise models? That's where, with Confluent, Kafka and Flink, we want to be able to bring the inference so you'd be able to essentially bring together and query these different data sources and endpoints. Could be an endpoint that's external. Then bring that data together very quickly and efficiently and provide that combined knowledge of both your enterprise data and also the generative data and serve that to your user. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of people do not appreciate that data streaming is quite important for production level. We're not talking just the ChatGPT use case. When you think about even a customer service chatbot servicing a million queries, I think that's when the strength of the data streaming provided by Flink or Kafka becomes very essential for the customer. There was a recent [2025 Data Streaming repor](https://engage.confluent.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com)t published by Confluent. I actually got a chance to read it. Can you talk about some of the key takeaways from that report itself? **Kamal Brar:** I encourage everyone to go look at the report, but the three areas - I think the willingness to drive or leverage AI based data technologies is very high. Of course there are fundamental challenges with it. 89-90% of our respondents said they're very eager to use the DSP technologies and leverage this for AI. **Bernard Leong:** But they also cited that fragmented data is one of the big issues. **Kamal Brar:** Correct. That has been just tech debt. A lot of the systems that you have in play today, if you think about the nature of these systems - you look at a bank, you look at anything that's significantly large in terms of complexity and size, you'll realize that it's actually a lot of work. You can't turn those systems off. There are a lot of legacy technologies that are built around it. You still have the challenge of data fragmentation, data silos where departments or certain parts of the business may operate a very specific requirement simply because of high level of governance or compliance. **Bernard Leong:** Regulatory separation of controls, access controls. **Kamal Brar:** Yeah. That makes it very difficult for you to unlock. For example, a new FinTech division or a digital bank may be able to move much faster because whilst they still have the regulatory compliance, they don't have the technology debt and they don't have the legacy systems that they may have to - they would've built something ground up, which would've been more cloud native, would've been leveraging more of these emerging technologies. In that context, it makes it much easier for them to go and accelerate. What tends to happen is the fragmentation exists in large enterprise, and I would say more digital native or digital born companies, it's less of a problem. Just because they have a new digital stack or a new definition. If you look back in the old days of the LAMP stack, that's evolved - Node.js and so forth. The new tech stack defines the pace of innovation. But the data segmentation, the silo nature of that data continues to be a challenge. Fundamentally, that's one area where if you have standards-based interoperability or if you have a standard communication protocol - Kafka becomes one viable option, where if you have the ability to talk Kafka and stream in and out of Kafka, it becomes a much easier way to share data. That's one challenge. The other one is of course, skill shortage. Not everyone's got the skills. **Bernard Leong:** I think you got the point first about the tech debt, then because tech debt also partially because of skill shortage - usually about 91% was cited in the report. Why is real-time visibility becoming such a critical differentiator for today's enterprises? **Kamal Brar:** Look at the engagement of how you interact with your applications today. Everything you and I do probably is through a mobile device. I don't really need to log onto my laptop to actually engage in my mobile banking app. Today, if I want to make a transfer in the good old days, I'd have to log into an internet browser. I'd have to log in, use my HSBC key or whatever bank I'm with, and I'd get a time-based authentication login. I'd do my transfers. Today, everything is based on mobile through a notification that's - all through my notification, will all in real time come to my mobile device and I'll authorize transactions. But the whole interaction has changed to real time. Whilst I think in the past, the nature of the applications were that they were very responsive, they were web-based applications, but they didn't have the same demands in terms of real time capabilities. If you look at the interactions with your bank or interactions with your applications 15 years ago, 10 years ago, we didn't really have ride sharing. Now, being able to track where my Uber is or where my Grab is, is kind of a given. It's a given. We assume that this is normal. It wasn't normal 10 years ago. Or whatever the time when Uber took off and Grab took off. I think in that context, the nature of how we interact with applications, how these applications actually feed data and just the relevance of that data becomes critical. Just imagine if I'm looking for my Uber and that information's delayed by five minutes, it's probably not a very good use of data for us. That doesn't provide me the data I need in real time that I want for the context, which is I want to understand where my Uber is, what's my ETA to my destination and so forth. I think that relevance of context of time and the real time nature - we live in this society where it's right here, right now. Everyone wants things today now. There's no concept of "I'll wait for five minutes or 10 minutes." If you ask ChatGPT a question, you probably want that pretty quickly. You don't want to wait 10 minutes for an answer. **Bernard Leong:** But then with reasoning, you still need one minute and a half or maybe even three minutes to get an answer. **Kamal Brar:** I think with the right models, they talk about fidelity and velocity in terms of the AI models. It's not just important to have the speed, but also the accuracy of response. Many occasions, if you actually learn to use these tools properly, you realize you need to ask the right framing of the questions. In some cases you actually need to go use the right models. When I'm using some of these tools, I'll actually enforce deep search so that I get a better, more accurate response versus getting the faster response. **Bernard Leong:** I think another interesting part of that report was that I think 94% of the people - let me make sure I get the numbers correctly - that AI use in business analytics is set to grow. What are the more promising applications do you see gaining traction from your perspective? **Kamal Brar:** I think if you look at enterprise applications, everyone's shifting towards AI enabled applications. Most of the enterprise guys, or I would say the larger enterprise applications or technology providers, are AI enabling their stack. They're like, "Hey, how can we leverage AI to serve our existing customers better? Can we improve interaction?" They may introduce AI chatbot services, they may introduce better AI through support, so logging tickets or engaging in that. If I'm a customer service agent, can I get that experience better through an automated telephone or an AI agent? That's happening in the enterprise. They're all modernizing, I would say, improving the quality of their interactions, improving the quality of their applications with their existing install base. Then you have this whole new category of disruptors. You have interesting companies who are building voice to text. You have interesting companies building all types of interesting use cases around health science and so forth. If I'm an outpatient of a hospital, can I make that more efficient? Versus a nurse calling me and checking up on my drugs usage and making sure I've taken my medication. How can I automate that process? Even things like counseling, believe it or not, where I want to be able to reach out to elder care patients who may have certain requirements emotionally, mentally, which they need additional support on, and how can I make that an AI led approach. You'd be surprised - so much training has gone into getting these models trained on certain drug types, medication and not just that, even things such as understanding suicidal behavior. They look at all these things as being able to hopefully make a better opportunity for them to serve, in this case, these patients, but to do it through a completely AI model or AI led model has been quite radical. Those companies have gone from being very small to significantly large businesses. I think that's the interesting space. You've got a whole new category that tends to happen in tech every 10, 15 years. We see the next innovation and I think AI definitely, for my lifetime, will become the most important generational change for us. **Bernard Leong:** I think we went through probably three, four technological revolutions over the last three decades - since we talked about software engineering. Then web, mobile, now AI. It's always moving so quickly. What's the one thing you know about Confluent and the role of data streaming in AI that very few do? **Kamal Brar:** I think the Kafka part is a given. Confluent is a category leader in that space. We've defined it and we have probably the most impressive cloud offering on the planet, and being able to scale it. However, to make that a seamless process across, being able to consume that as a service, as a true hybrid offering is something I think our larger audience may not be aware of. Being able to integrate that across DSP, where you have the challenge of scaling Kafka, making Flink a very easy to use consumable service. If you haven't experienced Flink, I'm sure you have in your experience with AWS. But Flink is a very complex engineering deployment. Just the operational overhead of running Flink is challenging. To consume that as a service seamlessly across all of our cloud offerings across GCP, Azure, and AWS is an engineering marvel. It's actually a lot of work. I think that appreciation in some cases - because we just consume services, we don't realize the complexity, but the complexity of how we're running these systems at scale, just our customers - we serve 5,000 customers globally. It's quite amazing. That whole seamless experience, being able to consume it through a cloud and then go back to on-prem and hybrid to address sovereign requirements, I think is pretty unique. **Bernard Leong:** Can you walk me through a real world use case in AsiaPac or Middle East where you actually helped the business to unlock that value through Confluent? **Kamal Brar:** I would say the largest use case that we've seen in probably a long time is around payments. If you think about the world of payments and how payments are being disruptive - in Singapore, we have QR based payment codes. We call it PayNow or PayLah, depending on which bank you're with. But PayNow being the standard. In the world of payments, if you think of some of the larger emerging economies in particular countries like India or Brazil, they have pretty unique standards and they have a very large population to serve. In India, we've been very closely working around some of these areas in particular with the banks around payments through a UPI interface. NPCI, National Payments Corporation in India, leverages a lot of Kafka. If you look at the backbone of their stack, they have a digital India stack of course, which is largely open source. But if you peel the onion on that and you look through what's powering the payment stack, it's a lot of Kafka. Being able to disrupt, but also serve a new generative way of accepting payments for a guy who's serving tea for a couple of rupees and for someone who's doing large transactions, and to be able to settle those transactions across intermediary banks in real time at a scale of 1.3 billion people, I think is something that's been really amazing for that team to achieve. We played our small part, of course, being one of the largest contributors to Kafka, and we work closely with the respective agencies in making sure we build secure, highly scalable governance around that. It becomes mission critical infrastructure when you're serving the entire country's payments. If you're down, the economy doesn't function. Consumers can't transact. **Bernard Leong:** I would just ask this - because you want your data streaming platform now to be essential for AI readiness, and you can simplify things like data access, ensuring data quality, and maybe even enabling governance. Can you elaborate a little more on how these capabilities can actually translate to faster AI deployment? Because I think enterprise usually they have a lot of compliance conversations. They have a lot more governance conversations. How do you actually navigate that? **Kamal Brar:** I think the areas you talked about when it comes to - we have a schema registry. We have a pretty stringent focus on role-based access. We want the data that's streaming to be relevant and have strict security and governance in the context of the applications or the access that you have for the data. If you think of the world of AI, it becomes not only important for you to have that data in real time and to be able to do it in a secure manner, but then you want to be able to - in some cases, a lot of the AI data has sensitivity around it. Maybe when I give the example of the patient outpatient calls - **Bernard Leong:** They're hyper compliant and they need PII \[personal identifiable information\]. **Kamal Brar:** Hyper compliant. They need - there may be certain other areas that you're treating this patient. Just being able to serve that data securely and in the context, I think the most challenging part is in the context where it understands: when I spoke to patient Joe, Joe had the following and the follow ups with this, and now in the current context of the conversation and the relevant drug medications that he's on, or the challenges he's now in real time articulating. He may be saying, "Look, I need additional help on the following areas, or I'd like to speak to a doctor." Being able to serve that in real time and to be able to securely do it in a context of localized sovereignty, and then also in context of scalable systems that could be on public infrastructure, I think is the challenge. **Bernard Leong:** Almost like the magic and also the added complexity of the AI responding in order to pull the correct information across different sources and then streaming back in front of the person trying to receive the information. **Kamal Brar:** Yeah. If you remember, I initially said in the context of where Confluent can play a critical part, it's also the interoperable integration with all the respective AI ecosystem. If you think about what AI is doing, it's working across microservices, working across data lakehouse databases could be different endpoint services to bring all that together and to do it in a secure manner and consistent manner, constantly serving that information. That's where I think it plays the most pivotal role. **Bernard Leong:** What would be your advice to business owners of enterprises now thinking across things like data streaming, thinking about how to enable their AI applications to run across this kind of production workloads? What do you think will be the do's and don'ts that you'd tell them to do? **Kamal Brar:** Look, every application and every use case has very different requirements. Being very clear in articulating what are they trying to actually solve, and has that been done before? In many cases, if you look at the AI capability and what people are trying to do, I think in every context there are very good learning opportunities if you go look at what's happening in the Valley and in context of even the Middle East, which I think is a little bit further ahead in some of the use case adoption. But the learning opportunities are the same. The challenge of sovereignty doesn't change in Singapore and UAE, it's still the same challenge. The context of - we talked about that patient example where you'd have an outpatient service which was AI led. Those requirements would not change in Singapore. What would change potentially is how the data sensitivity and PDPA \[personal data privacy act\] is managed versus HIPAA and so forth in the US. Just the regulatory compliance may change, but fundamentally the use cases will be very similar. I would say the do's and don'ts - really understand the use case, define it really well, and it's okay to have an iterative process on that. You're never gonna nail the use case upfront. You're gonna have the ability to redefine it. Because what may be a very challenging use case today, Bernard, in two months or three months, \[that\] may no longer be the case. That's just the nature of what we're dealing with in AI. Every three to six months there's been innovation that didn't exist. If you look at even the models, the models themselves have dramatically improved. I think NVIDIA talked about some of their - I forgot what the name of the new chip is - Blackwell. But the new ones, they're actually smaller. There's the bigger ones coming up. This is what powered basically ChatGPT-4, I think. It's amazing to see the innovation is not just consistently happening on the chipset side, but the fact that all of this translates to how the models have changed and how the models will perform is pretty remarkable. I would say sometimes we spend a ton of time around defining the use cases, making it perfect, and you want to learn the context of what's happened, how it's being relevant in the US and other places where it may have already been done. But then being able to just iteratively drive it and to do it better, I think is a process of just constantly accepting that things are gonna change and it's not gonna be this way forever. I think that's something that people have to adjust to. We almost think, "Hey, the problem I'm solving now is gonna be the same 12 months, 18 months down the track." It may not be the case. It may actually be the case. The hardest problem you're solving now may actually be easily solved in six months time. **Bernard Leong:** But the fundamentals don't change. One interesting thing I find when talking to CEOs, when they ask me about AI applications or they tell me they want to move fast and try to get the whole team to move with them - the first thing I always ask: can you tell me where your data is? Can you tell me how the different data streams work? Then they suddenly stop. It's like, "Oh." Then you start to probe deeper and they realize that they need to make investments in those areas. Do you see that happening all the time when you talk to customers where they just tell you, "Hey, I would like to do this fast," but then when you start to look at the underlying, you need to really help them to educate why this is important? **Kamal Brar:** I would say fundamentally anything around AI, the data infrastructure is probably the most important piece. If there's a takeaway for your audience today, it should be: without the data infrastructure piece being clearly defined and having standards around that, you really struggle to build a scalable offering. You're spot on. Most of the challenges we see are they want to move really fast, but as we've talked about, there's been technology, there's tech debt, there's skills gaps, and there's just lack of consistency in some cases, which is what the report highlighted very clearly. I think where we're lucky as an organization, as a company, because we're redefining some of those areas, it's a journey. It's a journey that we talk about - our customers going through a five phase process where today they may just be a very small deployment, and then it becomes the central nervous system, where the data streaming platform is core and central to all elements of the business. That could be context of AI, it could be context of just servicing existing applications or modernizing applications. That entire journey takes a period of time. It doesn't happen overnight. That's been our learning - our customers themselves usually start departmental or silos, individual, developer projects that scale to department, department to part of the company to enterprise wide. That's how we also work with it. **Bernard Leong:** When it comes to the modernization part of the enterprise application, let's say they want to change this particular enterprise application - say a chatbot may be running on legacy infrastructure and then decided, "Hey, now I want to transfer to data streaming because of the way how conversational AI is moving" because you're trying to have this high speed, real-time communication with the agent and with the client. How much of that rearchitecting is required? **Kamal Brar:** It's a really good question. What we've done is we've built, within Confluent Cloud, which is our offering, we built predefined connectors or managed connectors. We have about 80 managed connectors out of the box. We make it seamless for you to interact and interoperate with some of these systems out of the box. **Bernard Leong:** Like Salesforce or SAP connections. **Kamal Brar:** Exactly. The CRMs of the world, the database platforms of choice and so forth. Then we've also gone - there's a whole ecosystem around this. That's fully managed. Co-managers, and there are connectors that are built part of the community, which may be self-managed. There are probably 150 to 180 connectors. **Bernard Leong:** Do you also have a marketplace or some kind of third party providers that can actually help to actually customize Confluent to maybe certain specific use cases? **Kamal Brar:** What we find is there's a whole bunch of ecosystem community-based connectors out there as well. Confluent has its own, and we want to make sure our connectors are scalable, enterprise grade and so forth. But there are a ton of community connectors, which have all sorts of use cases. Someone's found a particular connector that they want to build and interoperate. When you talk about these legacy systems, it's about unlocking it. We may not have a native Kafka client, but someone's built a custom connector that talks to that protocol and serves that as Kafka. There are multiple ways around it. I think that's been a really interesting way for our organization, our customers, to benefit. It's like they don't have to necessarily rip and replace, but there's interoperability through a protocol, which is now built by someone in the community. **Bernard Leong:** One of the untold stories of AI applications or generative AI is actually the modernization. You can think about COBOL programmers - now you can use a lot of the generative AI to move them from COBOL to Java. That also comes together with the financial data streams that we're talking about in new banking, transaction banking. That's why the whole concept of thinking about modernization, where data streaming is involved, is actually not an easy task. That's why I thought that question was actually very interesting when you told me, "Actually there are connectors to pull it together." But I have this question for you. What's the one question that you wish more people would ask you about Confluent or DSPs? **Kamal Brar:** The most obvious is around interoperability. **Bernard Leong:** I'm gonna ask you the question: What about interoperability? **Kamal Brar:** How do we better work across - if you think one of the biggest challenges is I have all these disparate systems, I have all this fragmented data. How do I interlock? How do I unlock this data and how do I make it easy and seamless for me to share that data? I think there's probably a lack of awareness around some of the amazing things we're doing around how we provide that interoperability through Kafka as a standard protocol. We have our entire Connect ecosystem, which is - we actually have a program called Connect with Confluent, CwC, where you can come and even build custom connectors, as I mentioned earlier, or you can just leverage our connectors, pre-built connectors. But to do that across the enterprise domain or to do that across your entire infrastructure is pretty impressive. In many cases customers don't realize the power of our connectors. They understand Kafka because they've already built something ground up with Kafka, but you may have other stuff which doesn't work as well. That's where we could really unlock and harness the power of data. **Bernard Leong:** Wow. I didn't realize. What does great look like for Confluent within your region of interest? What does success really mean for the business in the next five years for you? **Kamal Brar:** We've been probably experiencing some of the most aggressive growth in the region. If you look at our business, I've been with the company for just over three and a bit years. Since I've seen the business in Asia Pacific grow, our Southeast Asia business continues to hum along. Our India business has been probably one of our strongest performing businesses. Australia has been obviously a foundational part of our growth journey. If I was to look at the next five years, I think our business will become even larger. The interesting part is the adoption of some of these technologies and just the scale of these technologies - what we're serving in Indonesia and India and in China for that matter. Very large economies, which have tremendous appetite for some of these data systems. We talked about NPCI and we talked about payments. That problem is in billions. When you think about it, it's gonna be in trillions. They're gonna get to a hundred billion transactions a day. How many systems in the world do that? When you think about the context of what we're solving and the scale of the systems, I think there's just so much to be done over the next five years. I think you'll see more and more emergence of that in this region, more than any other region. Europe's heavily regulated, but still doesn't have the same level of scale and sophistication in some cases on the tech. I would argue that some of the innovation that we're seeing in Asia is actually a little bit further ahead now of Europe. That's not because Europe's not capable, it's just heavily regulated industries make it a little bit much more challenging for them to move. But then we also have a very unique problem when we're solving for billions of people. The fact that we can move a little bit quicker makes this a very unique market. Five years down the track, I think Confluent's Asia Pacific business will be probably one of the largest components of growth for the company. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think significantly it's gonna be powered mainly by generative AI applications or AI applications for the enterprise? **Kamal Brar:** On the whole, I have no doubt. I think over the next five years, we'll see a massive transformation across how we interact with applications. Today we are very much mobile led and I think that mobile experience will become more AI, generative led. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe we can go to glasses \[form factor, for example Meta's Rayban glasses or Apple Vision Pro\] or maybe even you wave your hand. It's already happening everywhere \[like in New York\] **Kamal Brar:** Today you have the glasses. Maybe there'll be just more interaction there. Or if we can get these neural chips working correctly, I think that's gonna be a really exciting era. I don't think it's too far. We're talking in the context of robo taxis coming out by 2027 in Dubai where I spend time there as well. They're going to start that next year I think. It's actually not too far away. **Bernard Leong:** Actually almost everything that we just talked about in the last 30 seconds to a minute - data streaming will enter into the lens so they can see the real time information. The self-driving cars need to be able to access all that - it's actually data streaming platform that's very important. **Kamal Brar:** It's what I refer to as AI on the edge. You have to be able to serve the data on the edge, and that's again, where Kafka is so important. Your decisions are made on the edge. You can't wait for something to go back to the cloud. If I'm driving my Tesla and I need to be able to process all that information within my own processor on the car, I'm not gonna send the query back to the cloud and say, "Hey, can you make a decision while I'm driving?" That would be a bad outcome. AI on the edge is a very important part, and that's where a lot of these embedded systems actually leverage Kafka as a protocol. **Bernard Leong:** Kamal, many thanks for coming on the show, and I really appreciate this conversation. You bring a very interesting dimension. My audience may not know the importance of why data streaming platforms, specifically in the data side, is so important to power all the generative AI applications or even all the next few form factors from glasses to self-driving cars. In closing, I always have two quick questions. Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Kamal Brar:** I still work for an amazing guy, and I think you should - I spend a lot of time - he is one of my mentors. Someone called [Bipul Sinha](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bipulsinha/?ref=analysepodcast.com). He is the co-founder of a company called [Rubrik](https://www.rubrik.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). They're in the cyber data, cybersecurity space. He's been - he always inspires me to do amazing things. He moved to America straight out of college. He went to IIT, failed a few times before he got into IIT in India. But then he ended up becoming an American and built this amazing company. I think the way he defines it is that ultimately everyone has a vision or everyone has a dream. How big you make that is really the limitation you enforce on yourself. It's an interesting perspective on it. He really, I think, exemplifies the creative approach of just having no limits and he continues to do amazing things. I learned a lot from him. He has interesting posts. I encourage you guys to go check those posts out. If you want a good read, "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" is great. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have a great book on their journey of building a company and just some of the hard decisions that you have to make when you're building companies. Both, I would say, very aspirational and good reads. **Bernard Leong:** How do my audience find you? Please feel free to tell me, because I'm probably gonna put a link to the data streaming report, but what else do we need to know about you all? **Kamal Brar:** Of course. I'm on LinkedIn, so you can find me on LinkedIn. It's pretty easy. But also check out the Confluent website - [confluent.io](https://www.confluent.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com). You'll learn a lot more about data streaming. We, in fact, just launched the [Data Monster](https://www.confluent.io/data-monster/?ref=analysepodcast.com) as a theme. It's a fun way for us to describe the challenges of data fragmentation and silos and so forth. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find us on any channel from Spotify to YouTube, and of course LinkedIn. Kamal, many thanks for coming on the show, and thank you for sharing. **Kamal Brar:** My pleasure. Thank you so much. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Starting with ByteDance's latest financials, she revealed how the company now exceeds Meta in revenue but still lags significantly in profit margins, with its domestic business—Douyin and Toutiao—continuing to drive the lion's share of profits while TikTok remains unprofitable. Jing Yang explains how founder Zhang Yiming has entered "founder mode," dramatically increasing CapEx spending on AI development while ByteDance mysteriously went quiet on the AI leaderboard despite earlier dominance. Moving to venture capital, she unpacks why HongShan Capital has only deployed a quarter of its $9 billion fund raised in 2022, citing the collapse of exit opportunities, new overseas listing regulations from Chinese regulators, and the disappearance of big-ticket growth deals. She then explores the new wave of Chinese AI startups targeting global markets from day one, explaining how censorship & geopolitics force founders to choose between building for China or building for the world—they cannot do both. Finally, Jing Yang breaks down China's non-obvious advantage in humanoid robotics: not manufacturing prowess, but access to advanced manufacturing test beds where robots can be deployed, iterated, and refined at scale—an advantage The U.S. simply cannot match beyond Tesla. --- > “I think this is a sort of coming-of-age moment. When I say coming of age, I mean collectively for Chinese entrepreneurs. Many of these founders are my age, or even younger, and I’ve spoken with some of them. I can really relate to why they want to build businesses that target the global market instead of just China. In the past, you could build a company in China first and then think about expanding outward. That’s no longer possible. For any consumer-facing software company today, from day one you must decide: Do I build for China, or do I build for Global minus China? The examples of TikTok, Shein, and many others show that you cannot do both. It’s not possible to serve both markets at once.” - **Jing Yang** **Profile:** [Jing Yang](https://www.theinformation.com/u/Jing%20Yang?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analyse.asia), Asia Bureau Chief from TheInformation ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/?ref=analyse.asia), [@jingyanghk](https://twitter.com/jingyanghk?ref=analyse.asia), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/u/Jing%20Yang?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com). The Premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and China is definitely the talk of the town and what better way with me today is Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief for The Information to come back to tell me what is really going on: the pulse of all most important tech developments coming out China and also Asia broadly. In this episode, of course, we want to talk about ByteDance's pivotal moment, the new wave of AI startups funded by the Chinese venture capital, and also talent abroad. So, Jing Yang, it is great to have you back. So what have you been up to? **Jing Yang:** Obviously [ByteDance](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedances-2024-revenue-shows-importance-tiktok?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) has been this really surprising story that in my opinion just made the coverage of China AI more exciting. In addition to that, what we have been busy covering is more like the [Deepseek](https://deepseek.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) effect, right? How Deepseek is changing everything from how you think about the cost of developing AI to how it affects the [U.S-China chip war](https://www.analysepodcast.com/rise-asia-semiconductors-history-pov-chris-miller/), et cetera. On top of that, there's a lot of interesting stories which we can get into in a little bit, such as humanoid robotics, the latest of the China venture capital landscape ByteDance, and also new wave of agentic AI startups funded by Chinese entrepreneurs and programmers by targeting a global minus China consumer base. **Bernard Leong:** So I have been reading [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) since I'm one of your subscribers. I started using your deep research tool as well. To really start, because I'm focusing on a couple of stories. We have always been talking about [ByteDance at the Crossroads now](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedance-exploring-scenarios-for-selling-tiktok-without-algorithm?ref=analysepodcast.com). So maybe just to start with the story of ByteDance. In your recent reporting, [ByteDance 2024 results](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedances-2024-revenue-shows-importance-tiktok?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) has been showing international revenue growth but a slowing profit margin. I think now it exceeds Meta if I didn't get that wrongly. So what are the major takeaways there? **Jing Yang:** ByteDance's revenue on a quarterly basis has been closing in on Meta for quite some time now, and passed that milestone as of the first half of this year. However, it's worth noting that on profit and profit margin basis, ByteDance still lags far behind. Meta has been posting very strong results in the last few quarters. It is true that it's just the natural course of direction of travel when a company becomes big enough, the growth rate will slow down. Actually, if you look at ByteDance, a company that has hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue can grow 20 to 30% quarterly revenue basis is already quite impressive. Many companies of that size of revenue either would have slowed down or grow much less. Basically the last two and a half years as I and my colleague [Juro Osawa](https://www.theinformation.com/u/juroosawa?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) have been reporting ByteDance financials, the overall theme is that the international business, majority of which comes from [TikTok](https://tiktok.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) has been contributing a bigger and bigger share of the overall revenue. However, we understand from talking to our sources that TikTok overall is still not profitable. ByteDance as a whole still generates most of its money, by money I mean profit, from the domestic business. **Bernard Leong:** That is Douyin basically \[generating most of the revenues and profits\]. **Jing Yang:** Actually it is both Douyin and Toutiao. The revenues are mainly from advertising and e-commerce, specifically live commerce related revenue. So these are the biggest drivers. **Bernard Leong:** So it is mainly the revenues and profits mainly driven by the domestic economy of China. **Jing Yang:** Yes, because that is still the lion's share of the company's revenue and profit. For example, three years ago, the China business was, off the top of my head, like more than 80% of the revenue. Now it's like just below 80\. It's a very slow transition. But you see that's where the direction of travel is. Then the other thing that is worth noting is that, as we know and we have reported several times, the ByteDance Founder Zhang Yiming is really focused on and very hands on with [ByteDance AI development](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedances-upcoming-world-model-altmans-thoughts-gpt-5-fiasco-profitability-going-public?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com).To that end, ByteDance actually has increased the CapEx spending, which also has been reflected in this earnings since this year. As a matter of fact, the company told investors that they expect to continue to be on a high CapEx trend as well because the company feels it seems like now is the time to invest. **Bernard Leong:** Seems like Zhang Yiming is like Mark \[Zuckerberg\] in founder mode and just going all in on AI? **Jing Yang:** I don't know about in The U.S. but definitely in China I've seen talks of people comparing Zhang Yiming and Mark Zuckerberg as in China there's Zhang and in The U.S. there's Zuckerberg. Then they compare it for several reasons. First is that ByteDance is quite similar to Meta in terms of business model, is predominantly a social media company now, very all in on AI, but then also because both entrepreneurs are very aggressive in hiring AI talent. We all know what Meta has been doing in the last couple months. **Bernard Leong:** Has Zhang Yiming went out and splashed, let's say, like the same kind of salaries to Deepseek researchers? I mean, just on average, the pay in China cannot be compared to Silicon Valley to begin with. It's about one fifth. **Jing Yang:** Not that we have seen, obviously, because to be honest. But if I were to give you one recent example, we broke a piece of news that ByteDance successfully poached a long term and veteran researcher at Google DeepMind, someone who was in Silicon Valley to go work for ByteDance. That person now is one of the leaders of ByteDance's AI development. So that's where you see the parallel. **Bernard Leong:** The revenues and profit parallel also makes it really interesting because it makes me feel like it's also a bit like the Apple iOS, where Apple iOS is holding most of the profits, but the revenue is smaller than Android, which has the most revenues, but actually their profit share is actually extremely low. It feels that way for me when I look at ByteDance, what you mentioned about ByteDance just now as compared to Meta. **Jing Yang:** But though I would say ByteDance is a privately held company, not public listed. So it does not have to succumb to quarterly earnings and Wall Street pressure. So he probably doesn't really need to squeeze so much out of his revenue dollar. **Bernard Leong:** But how long can they stay private? Right? I mean Stripe can stay private. Well that is literally the trillion dollar question. But we always talk about the much more bigger question I think. TikTok is slowly helping to reduce ByteDance's major revenue share, which actually concentrated in China, so they're actually getting more international revenues. How significant now is TikTok to ByteDance's future, especially considering all the conversations that were supposed to be TikTok U.S. going on? There's a lot of regulatory pushback and the role on how the Chinese government is looking at the deal itself. **Jing Yang:** Let me just try to unpack that a little bit. When we talk about TikTok, I understand a lot of the attention is paid to the U.S. business only. Obviously, because it's a very big user base for TikTok, but it's also probably the most, generates the most revenue for TikTok. As I'm sure we know, TikTok has very big user base in Southeast Asia, but in terms of the revenue you can get, clearly in the U.S. is much higher. So we're actually recording this episode at a very interesting time. As we know, The U.S. and China just started the third round of trade talks in Spain yesterday, September 14th. What happened just before the talks started was that the ministry of Commerce in China on Friday issued a statement, in my memory, for the first time, confirmed that TikTok will be included on the agenda of the talks. Because if you remember a while ago, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was interviewed on CNBC, when he was asked whether TikTok was part of the trade talks. He gave a really ambivalent answer. He said yes and no. So now that is, I find it very interesting that almost unprompted, the Chinese ministry of commerce would issue a statement. Obviously, the statement also says many other things. China wants to ensure TikTok can continue to operate in The U.S. and safeguard the rights of Chinese companies. It doesn't really go beyond what the Chinese government has said before on this subject. But the fact that they issued this statement just before the talk started to me feels like China is probably signaling that it is willing to make a deal. If I was to take a step back, right, we all know what happened in China between 2020 to 2022, there was this brutal crackdown on all the internet platforms. That tells you that Chinese leader Xi Jinping, he personally doesn't, for the lack of a better word, doesn't really care about the internet platforms. He doesn't seem to believe that internet platforms can contribute to China's economic and technological advancement the way that so-called hard tech or deep tech can. So for a long time, people see TikTok as a card that China has on its hands. It is not something that China doesn't want to give up. As a matter of fact, China is, especially after Trump made it so clear how important TikTok is for him and his administration. We saw recently the White House also join TikTok. For China, it feels like it is probably in a slight upper hand in terms of the TikTok situation. China knows that it has something that The U.S. really wants, so it is just waiting to see what can TikTok, what it can exchange from TikTok. So I think anything, it's just basically, in my opinion, impossible to predict TikTok's future in the absence of any kind of resolution of this issue. **Bernard Leong:** We will eventually get to a resolution of the issue because the bigger conversation now in terms of the Chinese government is in the semiconductors. You can already see some of the tech giants who used to be in the e-commerce, like Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud, are now building their own chips. Huawei is now talking about the five nanometers and seven nanometers. Even the Chinese tech companies seem to have also pivoted to hard tech on there. To be onest, while we talk about how great Deepseek is, Qwen is a pretty interesting \[large language\] model because Qwen is the model that Deepseek also distilled from besides Open AI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. Qwen's latest model was actually top of the generative AI leaderboard for open source models. Coming back to the question in terms of how does now ByteDance compare with the global peers? If you think about a Meta and Google in terms of AI innovation, I think Meta, I think more or less they have made a big reset. They're going, they hired a super team, now they're supposed to help them turn around. I think Google has come back quite a lot. I think they're getting stronger and stronger and putting probably the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI on their heels. But where is ByteDance from your point? **Jing Yang:** I mean, ByteDance has gone quiet in the sense that I remember all over 2024, ByteDance was the indisputable leader in China. That was before Qwen gained traction, before Deepseek became a phenomenon. So even till this day, Doubao chatbot still ranks as the number one consumer app in the generative AI space. However, ByteDance just hasn't said anything at all or done anything in the open source camp. It hasn't said or done or released any of its models or open sourced any of its models. It also stopped participating in or the leaderboard ranking. I don't know if you noticed. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I do \[track all the Chinese LLMs\]. That surprises me because they showed a lot of research papers in 2024, but it never was ever close to launching something that is as profound as what Deepseek has managed to do or even some of the other major \[Chinese\] large language models like Kimi or Zhipu, for example. Is it just because maybe they didn't have the team to do it, or maybe they were caught on the back foot, so now they are trying to chase up? **Jing Yang:** I don't know why they don't participate in the leaderboard anymore. It adds to the layer of secrecy and opaqueness. However, I definitely would not write off where they are. My understanding is that a lot of people working on this and then they're doing great work. For whatever reason, they haven't told the world. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe they are working on a closed model. Could be the possibility because I think there is no Chinese closed models yet? **Jing Yang:** They have always been only doing closed models. So even if you have a closed model, but if you don't participate in a leaderboard, there's very little the outside world can know where you are. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe they will be the 2026 surprise. **Jing Yang:** I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop. I think a lot of people are. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, I'm not going to, I agree with you. I'm not writing them off. They have produced one of the best AI applications before ChatGPT, so I'm not going to write them off. They probably have one of the most advanced teams. **Jing Yang:** But your question about the comparison with Meta and Google, I mean, the one thing I would say is we reported this as well earlier this year, so we know that ByteDance in addition to the Chinese language models that they have, which already have been used to power its various applications, they have also been working on English language LLMs, and that they actually have teams in The U.S. and Singapore that have been working on this. However, we just haven't, again, we just haven't seen anything released from that team. Neither have we seen evidence of TikTok using any of ByteDance's English language LLMs. So that adds to another layer of curiosity in my opinion. **Bernard Leong:** So one thing I was surprised by was ByteDance didn't really compete in anything that is text-based. It went straight for the multimodal because their strength is in image and video. They just haven't put something relatively significant that would change the multimodal space. Currently, Google is leading with, of course, recently with NanoBanana on image creation piece or even the Veo 3\. But I haven't really seen a lot that's coming out from ByteDance because I naturally expected them to have a very good multimodal model as well. **Jing Yang:** I mean back when text or image to video generation was still an nascent thing, people were already predicting that ByteDance is going to be the clear leader in this. But then to your point, we just simply haven't seen anything mind blowing yet. **Bernard Leong:** I've got to shift gears a bit because I've got so much interesting stuff that I want to ask you. So let's talk about venture capital. So there is a story that you broke on HongShan. I found it very fascinating. [HongShan](https://www.hsgcap.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (formerly Sequoia China) has 9 billion in capital. It was one of the biggest raises that was three to four years ago when it was announced, right? **Jing Yang:** Yes, in 2022. **Bernard Leong:** They have only deployed a quarter of that 9 billion. So what's the problem? **Jing Yang:** That story was something that I have been working on for a long time. The talk in the China VC world is that they have trouble deploying all that huge war chest raised in the summer of 2022, which was also 12 months before the breakup with Sequoia U.S., China and Southeast Asia (now Peak XV). But obviously, it's very hard to get the actual deployment ratio. Recently, the stars aligned. I was able to [get all these numbers and I did that story](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/neil-shens-hongshan-slow-deploy-9-billion-capital-looks-deals-outside-china?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com). It was out like three weeks ago. So basically, while I was doing that story, I looked into the underlying reasons. It was actually a lot more complicated than I imagined. So what happened is that in 2023, the post-COVID economic rebound in China just never happened. Then that depressed the stock market. I'm talking about the onshore Asia stock market. But in the same time, in the offshore or the global stock market, valuation has also been depressed because of Fed interest rates and trade war and whatever. The U.S. IPO market hasn't really recovered until very recently. So then that basically was the macro reason that made exits very difficult. When exits become difficult, that means there will be very few big ticket growth to late stage deals, deals that in which you can write $300-$400 million checks. Those deals basically just stopped existing. If you think about it, 2018 is the golden year, right? Ant Financial raised its last round, the C round in 2018, that was several billion dollars. That was at the time the single biggest VC fundraising. **Bernard Leong:** That includes a lot of funds in the China domestic market as well. **Jing Yang:** Then the top tier investors in that round, each of them wrote 500 million. Nowadays in China, you couldn't even find that many. **Bernard Leong:** I was at Deal Street Asia conference last week and I was told that there was a 200 million seed plus round in China. I forgot which company it was. I think it was a robotics company. It was an angel round, and the person hasn't even built that product yet. **Jing Yang:** Oh yeah. If it's in robotics, there's a lot of controversy. Correct. **Bernard Leong:** So HongShan has so much money they can deploy some of that, right? **Jing Yang:** Well, it's not like you deploy money for the sake of deployment, right Given that robotics is so hot in China. There are very few, in fact, you can almost say that with almost all the global VCs moving out of China. HongShan is probably best suited to capture most of this wave of AI internet companies. I mean, China's going to most likely dominate in robotics. **Bernard Leong:** So why not deploy it now, for example the 200 million angel funded business. If you do that in The U.S., Mira Murati's "Thinking Machines" was a 2 billion for angel round. **Jing Yang:** Yeah, that's about right, and also Ilya Sutskever, 1 billion for his first round. No, I mean, here's the thing, right? That's just one example. If you look at the entire opportunity set, correct? I think it is undeniable that there are just not that many, growth to late stage deals just became really scarce. Then the reason for that is, as I said, exits became really hard. There are two reasons for that. I just talked about the first reason being the macro public market valuation. But the second reason is more China unique. The Chinese securities regulator CSRC in the beginning of 2023 started implementing the new overseas listing regulation, which made it much, much harder for any Chinese companies to list overseas. **Bernard Leong:** Even Hong Kong? **Jing Yang:** Doesn't matter as long as you do the listing outside of the A-share market. It's not just IPO, it captures follow-on as well, any types of equity fundraising. So that also has made exits very difficult. Then in addition to that, overall, I'm sure we all know that China's economy just hasn't been doing particularly well in the last two years since COVID, right? Since COVID ended, then that basically has another piece of impact on that. Then on top of all of this, the breakup or the divorce with Sequoia U.S. also has had a set of impacts. For example, now that U.S.-China relations have become so tense, it's just impossible now for any China-based venture capital firms to do investments in The U.S. I mean, just five, six years ago, a lot of Chinese VC firms had teams and even funds dedicated to the Bay Area. That just becomes a lot harder. In the HongShan story I did with my colleague Drew, we mentioned this one specific case, which is like a very rare deal that HongShan invested this year, which is a funding round for Eight Sleep, which is like a smart mattress. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, the founder of The Information is a fan of that mattress. She always talks about it on her podcast, More or Less. **Jing Yang:** They say they have the plan to expand to Singapore and China. **Bernard Leong:** I'm dying for that mattress, but my wife disagrees with me. **Jing Yang:** I simply haven't had the opportunity to try. **Bernard Leong:** It's a tech bro thing, I'm sure. But anyway, so in that deal, which is really not a direct investment in AI, right? **Jing Yang:** Exactly. It is like a mattress topper that has some sort of smart sensory stuff, right? **Bernard Leong:** It has this cooling thing that's supposed to make the bed cool. You can control the temperature. **Jing Yang:** But it also collects the user's data, like your temperature, blood pressure, that kind of thing. So anyway, even a deal like that, HongShan had to make sure that its investment is low enough to not warrant a board seat so that it won't trigger a review by CFIUS. **Bernard Leong:** So it just dawned on me, HongShan's 9 billion fund, is it a multi-stage fund or is it something like Andreessen Horowitz? It's a series of funds. **Jing Yang:** Yeah. So it's four funds. Seed, venture, growth and late stage. **Bernard Leong:** So maybe the growth and the late stage, they may not be deploying, but maybe the seed and series A they're still deploying, right? **Jing Yang:** That's exactly what my reporting showed. So they actually, for the seed fund, it's almost 50% deployed now three years after it's been raised. **Bernard Leong:** But can they go back to all the LPs and say, well, maybe it's better to now just deploy in the seed then A round and then they can always revise the investment thesis, right? **Jing Yang:** Exactly. I mean, as my story also suggests, some of the LPs think that if there's just not a good opportunity set to deploy for growth and late stage deals, maybe you can consider returning some of the capital just out of goodwill. Obviously no GP is obligated to do that. Or maybe if they are looking at raising the next seed slash venture fund, they can consider maybe just repurposing the undeployed capital in the growth and late stage fund into the new seed venture. **Bernard Leong:** So I think moving forward, right, just thinking about HongShan, right, then I want to sort of flip to the startups, right? So now I think you've got things like Lobe, they're all targeting global users. You also have [Manus AI ](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinese-startup-behind-manus-ai-agent-seeks-500-million-valuation?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com)who have now moved to Singapore and I know the [FT recently published this article](https://www.ft.com/content/8e8521a7-b232-4fe0-b262-9dafb8ff5bdd?ref=analysepodcast.com) that they seem to incur the wrath of the Chinese users and also incur the wrath of The U.S. venture capital. So I think there's still a shift of most of these companies are really going for global now rather than just the local domestic market. For any observer like myself looking into China, when I look at the startups, the competition within that market actually makes them very resilient. Once they come out of China, they become a very big force. I mean, to be quite honest, even in Southeast Asia, I see Chinese founders moving around. I usually just feel that, you know, it's not the Southeast Asia founders I'm more worried about, it's the 996 Chinese founder that is really on the top of my mind. How do you look at them? **Jing Yang:** This is a sort of a coming of age, really, the naturally, because when I say coming of age, collectively Chinese entrepreneurs. If I think a lot of these founders are either my age or even a few years younger than me. I've talked to some of them. So I really can relate to why they want to build a business that targets the global market instead of just China. So in the good old days, you can build a business and start from China, and then think about expanding beyond. However, that is not possible anymore. As long as it is a software company that is consumer facing, as long as it's a consumer facing software product, immediately from day one, you have to think about: do I build it for China or do I build it for global ex-China? Because the examples of TikTok and Shein and many other smaller companies have already shown them that you cannot do both. It's not possible to serve both. **Bernard Leong:** ByteDance did both, right? I mean, there's Douyin for China and TikTok for the rest of the world. **Jing Yang:** Exactly. So they cannot have one homogeneous product overall because of censorship and data regulation, whereas Shein and Temu, well, Temu had Pinduoduo before and then have a separate product dedicated to The U.S. market. So Shein is probably the only exception that went global quickly. **Bernard Leong:** From day one, right? Because by the time their business figured out their business model, the e-commerce market in China was too competitive. **Jing Yang:** Right. Do you think that the [Manus AI](https://manus.im/?ref=analysepodcast.com) situation was that really the Chinese market is so competitive? **Bernard Leong:** No, I don't think that's the case. So what I was going to say is that if you are consumer facing, so let's maybe take e-commerce out of the picture. Because when you provide software to users to help you build whatever kind of agent tasks that the user wants to do, it definitely involves generating content. Now, once it does that, then you are faced with the censorship problem in China, right? That's just at the very operational level, right? At a higher level, then you also have all these problems with how do you want to be perceived? So basically the mindset of a lot of these founders is that they grew up and were also trained in an era when China was rapidly integrating with the world. So then basically their upbringing, when I say upbringing, it's not just education, but as well as how they were trained in their career. Their entire academic and professional upbringing is very globalized. If you think about the 30 and 40-year-old Chinese, the average 30 and 40-year-old Chinese in their knowledge of America, of the West, is definitely a lot better than America's understanding of China. **Bernard Leong:** Reminds me of a very interesting quote, but I forgot who said it. Is that the Chinese of the 30s and 40s that you mentioned understands America very well. But if you do the reverse, they don't know anything about China or they see it like some black box as well. I think that's where the different versions of both sides, why is there so much difference? Because The U.S. doesn't understand China the same way. **Jing Yang:** Yeah. I mean, in a way, the way I like to look at it is it's a way, in a way it reflects America's superpower, its soft power. It reflects the global order that was set since the end of World War II, right? But those are the fundamental factors. But going back to these founders, I think they harbour this vision. Like, I want to build something. Because if you are a builder, you want the thing you are building to be really successful. How to measure that success? **Bernard Leong:** Is by the whole world. **Jing Yang:** Exactly. Right. Especially after they saw TikTok, even though TikTok got a leg up from the acquisition of Musical.ly. Still, right? I mean, even Musical.ly was built by Chinese programmers, right? So on top of that, as you know, China has a very deep bench of very skilled programmers and engineers through decades of education emphasizing STEM and also through so many Chinese students studying overseas. So naturally, you have the desire to compete at a global level and the ability to do so. Hence we now see this wave of AI agent, agentic AI startups that are trying to do this. **Bernard Leong:** So I think one thing I just want to go before we move into another segment on robotics is, I know we covered Lobe a lot, so it's been uniquely positioning itself in the app creation space, specifically with the concept of vibe coding. So is this going to be how you think Chinese startups going global, similar to what CapCut did in video editing? **Jing Yang:** That's definitely what the founder told me that he wanted to do. He also worked on the CapCut team when he was at ByteDance. But whether that can succeed, it's too soon to tell. The company's still at a very early stage. I don't know. Have you actually tried? **Bernard Leong:** I've tried it to play with their product. I'm still navigating. I find that the Chinese generative AI applications tend to be more holistic. That means they try to put two, three different point solutions and try to give you a flow solution. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work. Because one of the things I think most generative AI solutions to me are, or I call point solutions. That means it does one thing and does one thing really well. But I don't want just one thing. I want this to touch this thing that I do. Gamma is a presentation generator. Now I have to go to ChatGPT, make a few prompts and then cut and paste the information and then do the generation. What I would love to do is one stop finish.The content generation in ChatGPT, corrected everything. Then I say, "can you send this to Gamma and generate me the presentation?" That hasn't happened. I have to still do the cut and paste, which is frustrating. Whereas I see Kimi, when I tried it myself, I realize okay, they're trying to combine these two things. But maybe it's the way how we are so used to in the rest of the world. We're so used to The U.S. internet ecosystem. When we use the Chinese apps, despite I have one single folder in my phone. It is called China. Every day I would just take a look, try every UI to just make sure I understand how the Chinese is thinking about it. I still find it is like this Galápagos island with these apps versus the rest of the apps that I'm using. That's the feeling I'm getting from using Kimi. Now I recently, I'm also starting to try some of the Chinese LLMs as well. It gives me that sense that they're very holistic, but somehow, maybe it's just the usage, it still feels very Chinese to me and not the way how The U.S. apps are done. **Jing Yang:** Yeah. I see what you mean. I think even the user interface, the UI design and a lot of the things can also be a bit different. But I would say this: all the agentic AI startups targeting consumers, not just in China. It is not just those funded by Chinese founders, but all over the world. They're all going to be under a lot of threat by the bigger companies because they all realized that they have to move on to this part as well. Even in vibe coding, Anysphere, which is Cursor, Cursor basically built its AI agents on top of Claude. Then Anthropic is also trying to come up with web coding solutions based on Claude. So it's just getting really cutthroat. **Bernard Leong:** It is because it's like what Sam Altman said: "If you are building an AI company, when you look forward to the next 12 months, if a better large language model comes out and whatever you're building benefits from there, you should be happy. But in another 12 months, whether it is OpenAI and Anthropic clone what you are doing, you'll be feeling shitty." This is precisely what's happening to Cursor right now. I really have people dropping Cursor, even including my own team, has now completely fully converted to Claude Code. So that is telling me quite a lot. **Jing Yang:** It's like once the big companies decide, identify this area, and that this is the area we want to get into, then you'll be crushed very quickly. This is exactly what happened with Windsurf. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe the U.S. companies are learning to behave like Chinese companies. Maybe they don't admit it. But I heard recently, apparently according to some VCs, based on Ramp data, the San Francisco startups are working 996 because a lot of people were expensing on Saturdays for food in their offices. Then there was this new wave about U.S. founders talking about going 996 too. Maybe it's the other way around. The reverse culture shift had started, but we just don't see it. It's the beginning. **Jing Yang:** Well, I don't know Silicon Valley that well to say this, but my impression has been that they would work very hard when needed. **Bernard Leong:** No, they work very hard. But I think there is this new phenomenon. I think it started a couple of years ago where [Mike Moritz](https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-244-why-mike-moritz-got-wrong-about-china-startup-ecosystem-with-benjamin-joffe/) said, "Look, you guys in Bay Area ask for wellness spa, perks for whatever? Go to China, learn from the Chinese, 996." Obviously, when you start having Elon saying, you got to be hardcore when he was doing the layoff at Twitter. Everybody, then suddenly get a shock when Google is throwing off all the perks, now even Meta is also cutting off the perks. It's a shift. Part of it is really induced by the Chinese tech companies. It was like, "Hey, come on, the Chinese guys are kicking our ass. We have to go 996." Even the part where the big companies starting to challenge the small company actually starting to feel like how Chinese tech companies going after the small startups at the same time. I mean, however, though I will say in previous, the pre-recent AI wave. **Jing Yang:** That's always been the way the ecosystem has, I mean, the way capitalism and venture capital, the nature of it has always been structured that way. If you can't out-compete your competitors, you're better off being acquired by the incumbents. **Bernard Leong:** An old friend of mine \[Shai Oster\] who is your predecessor always said *"Amazon is like a Chinese company. It's just that they don't know it yet."* I want to get to the last part which I'm most excited about. I really want to have a robot. So one of the things is about the humanoid robots and the growing U.S.-China competition in Physical AI. The question is why, because a lot of robots are still single functional. Why is this such a big area now? It's becoming like both sides are trying to build their own human robots. **Jing Yang:** Well, when I was talking to people in the space, what they told me is that the arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022 made people in the field researching physical AI and robotics realize that this is now the moment, this is now the magical wand that can really take us forward, just as when deep learning revived the dormant research of artificial intelligence in the sixties. So then what we're seeing now really is a result of people's excitement and then the advancement the researchers have made in the last two years, since two and a half years, right? I just think it just so happens that U.S. and China both have the researchers in physical AI that both have identified this area and then both saw the opportunity that came with generative AI, right? It's definitely, I think, one of the most controversial areas. When I say controversial, I mean, is this thing even real or is it just another giant bubble that is waiting to burst? **Bernard Leong:** Because one thing that I always never understand is they always keep talking about humanoid robots, but maybe for some tasks you don't need, humans are actually not very well formed for the task. Maybe some other particular form factor might be better, but it seems to be trending towards having humanoid bodies, et cetera. Like what they saw in the recent [World AI Conference in Shanghai, the WAIC conference](https://aiii.global/waic-2025/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is now like everyone who went there is like, wow, now there's a boxing robot. **Jing Yang:** Yeah, but in The U.S. too, right? You see some of the startups that demonstrated back flips. But how do you commercialize a robot that does back flips? What is the use case for that? People also question that. So here is in terms of the form factor, I'm just going to tell you what people in the industry tell me. So there are two reasons they tell me why a humanoid has a compelling case. First is that our world, like human beings, we build our world based on our form factor as a human. So that a humanoid robot, if it works, would maximize the environment that we already have built, because then you basically have a robot roaming around in the form factor that is already optimized for humans. So that is the practical reason. Then there is also this romantic or philosophical reason I was told, is that it's just this complex that humans want to play God. What humans want to recreate itself in form factor and intelligence. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. But in the science fiction books such as Frank Herbert's Dune, and even in Asimov's Foundation, the robots eventually got wiped out because of that problem that they became sentient. **Jing Yang:** Yeah, I mean obviously that's why I say this is the philosophical reason. However, going back to what you were saying, actually if you look at some companies I talked to in China, a lot of them are pretty practical. **Bernard Leong:** So for example, if you look at Tesla Optimus, right? It has the dexterous hands. Like five fingers, all the motors and 400 actuators, which [Elon Musk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeZqZBRA-6Q&ref=analysepodcast.com) mentioned in the recent [All-In Summit](https://allin.com/events?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Jing Yang:** I will include the two legs. The legs also have the feet, also have all the toes, right? So that is following the human form factor to the very last minute detail, right? However, you can see some other companies in China that will be like, the technology right now is just not there for a fully motorized, dexterous hands or two legs. But then for the entire humanoid sector to have a future, it needs to have some kind of commercial use case first. Then why don't we build, for example, a gripper. Like it is essentially like this, right? Also a wheel base instead of having legs. **Bernard Leong:** It's for fulfillment packing for e-commerce. **Jing Yang:** So this company says, you know what? We will not stop working on dexterous hands and then two-foot solution. We want to commercialize the technology we know works right now. So that's a more practical approach. Which one's better? We don't know. I think it's too soon to tell. **Bernard Leong:** But let's say like the top three companies, [UBTech](https://www.ubtrobot.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Unitree Robotics](https://www.unitree.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [DJI](https://www.dji.com/sg?ref=analysepodcast.com). Are there any like next wave of robotic companies coming up? Or is it just these big three? **Jing Yang:** There is a lot that are, I mean, I don't want to give any names because first I don't want, I haven't talked to every single one of them. Even if I have, things move so fast, right? All I can tell you is that yes, there is a new wave of companies from China, and there's also a new wave of companies that supply specific parts. **Bernard Leong:** For example, Tesla Optimus has to source parts for the dexterous hands from China. **Jing Yang:** Here's what I really want to talk about in terms of the U.S.-China competition in humanoid robotics. First, in terms of technology, both U.S. and China are on the same starting point. No one now has a clear upper hand in terms of solving the biggest problems and the biggest bottlenecks in this field. So here is where it gets interesting. A lot of people think that China may already have a lead or is going to pull a lead in the space because of the manufacturing prowess that China has amassed. While that is not untrue, that is not the reason why China may eventually pull the lead in the space. Because let's say all the factories in China, the supply chain, if they manage to produce better hands and whatever parts, they will not say no to any American company that comes and says, "I want to order 10,000 hands from you." So that is why the best smartphone still is made in China. It is made in China, but it is an American company, right? So that is not where China's advantage is. Before iPhone, there was no smartphone brands in China. So actually where China, the people in the humanoid industry in China tell me where China's real advantage actually is from all the test beds. **Bernard Leong:** Correct. It's the test beds. Then what happens is that once there's a groundbreaking design from The U.S., they can evolve it to the next level with the manufacturing techniques and taking it to scale. It's just a little bit like Deepseek. **Jing Yang:** I mean, Deepseek is built on the fact that they saw what was happening with The U.S. It's a kind of, I don't know, is it innovation? Yes. It's a different kind of innovation, but it's more continuous innovation. Or did I miss what you're saying? **Jing Yang:** No, yeah. Let me just clarify a little bit. Let's just say there is this group of startups in China and a group of startups in The U.S. Training this physical AI device is extremely hard because you firstly need to gather the data. You need to work on a really complicated model. Then you need to gather the data. I don't, let's not go to the data. We assume that works. But then after that, there's all rounds and rounds of iteration you have to do. So for example, you have this robot and then you need to actually deploy this group of robots into, like say, a factory floor where you see how it works, and then gather on a trial and error basis the things that worked and have not worked, and then fine tune that. But then if you look at it in The U.S., I mean, what kind of advanced manufacturing does The U.S. still have these days beyond Tesla? But in China, right? All these, because the first batch of users of humanoids are actually makers, car makers, right? With China's advanced manufacturing, it does not only give China an edge in the manufacturing, in the supply chain perspective, it gives China a huge advantage in being this giant test bed, this experiment where your robots can be deployed. **Bernard Leong:** Eventually someone would be the one that innovates the iPhone in China. Essentially the robot in China. That's what you're saying? **Jing Yang:** Yeah. So because even if you build, with the exception of Tesla Optimus, right? The other companies, the other robotic companies in The U.S., it'll be very hard for them to find factory floors in The U.S. where they can actually deploy a robot on a trial basis and then gather the data and then fine-tune the results based on that and then do it like a hundred times. **Bernard Leong:** Got it. So we are running a bit out of time, so I'm going to have two quick questions and then you just give me what's on your mind. What's the one thing people ask you about the Chinese startup ecosystem that you wish that they would ask you more? **Jing Yang:** I want people to ask me or have a conversation with me about redefining what is a Chinese startup these days. **Bernard Leong:** What is a Chinese startup today? **Jing Yang:** I think the definition has to be broadened a lot more now. For example, Manus again, right? Is it a Chinese startup or not? **Bernard Leong:** You can say yes or no. Global startup built by Chinese. **Jing Yang:** But they started from China after they became famous, then moved to Singapore. Then you also have [Genspark](https://www.genspark.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which just started, registered, they were incorporated in California, but funded by Chinese entrepreneurs. Is that Chinese or not? I would say yes and no. It's just these days in the Western context, the term Chinese has become somewhat a toxic label. So a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs even want to shed that image themselves. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, their founders even in this region would not dare to take Chinese money because they want to go into The U.S. market. **Jing Yang:** Yeah. That is all driven by geopolitics. But if you look at, I think at least half of the researchers that Meta approached from OpenAI are Chinese. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. Right. **Jing Yang:** We have a saying in China these days now that the AI race is now between the Chinese in China and the Chinese in The U.S. **Bernard Leong:** Yep. Last question. Looking into 2026, what are you going to be watching? **Jing Yang:** Wow. I mean, everything we just talked about, I think it's very interesting. I really feel like we are at a point where so many forces, so many fundamental forces are shifting and maybe working against each other, but obviously the biggest question mark is U.S.-China, right? That will just determine many, many things. **Bernard Leong:** So Jing Yang, we must do this again. Maybe when I'm in Hong Kong we'll find a studio. I'm pretty sure the [Poddster Singapore](https://www.poddster.com/sg/home?ref=analysepodcast.com) guys can find me a studio there. We should do it face to face. So in closing, two quick ones. Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Jing Yang:** Yes, I actually do. So I highly recommend the new book: [Empire of AI](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743569/empire-of-ai-by-karen-hao/?ref=analysepodcast.com), written by my friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Karen Hao. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I'm going to get her on the show. But we are more or less locked down with the date already. **Jing Yang:** Just a quick plug. So I'm actually hosting a book talk with Karen at the Foreign Correspondence Club in Hong Kong. **Bernard Leong:** Please tell her that next week I'm in person to interview. Thank you. **Jing Yang:** But if any of your listeners are in Hong Kong, please, you are welcome to join the event in person. I don't know whether you might be there before that, but I'll try. Then the other book I want to recommend, it's not a super new book, but I only started reading it recently: the autobiography of Fei-Fei Li, [The Worlds I See](https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-See-Curiosity-Exploration-Discovery-ebook/dp/B0BPQSLVL6?ref=analysepodcast.com). It's just such a great book. **Bernard Leong:** How do my audience find you and The Information? **Jing Yang:** So The Information, you can find us at www.theinformation.com. Since you mentioned Deep Research, I really like it, by the way. **Bernard Leong:** I tested it because I haven't gone to your next tier user. I tried it. I actually enjoy, if I want to find very quick clips where I need to verify some information. Like, you know, I do recall was this company invested in it? I find it better than Crunchbase. **Jing Yang:** Because it's based on our own reporting. **Bernard Leong:** Because you curated that information. Maybe that is the difference. Whereas Crunchbase, sometimes the information is not correct because it's self-reported. **Jing Yang:** Yeah. So Deep Research in The Information completely eliminates the AI black box issue because it's all trained on our reporting. Anyway, so I'm on Twitter at [@JingYangHK](https://x.com/jingyanghk?ref=analysepodcast.com). Yes. I still like to call it Twitter, old fashioned that way. Then you are welcome to email me jing@theinformation.com with any thoughts, comments, feedback or criticism. **Bernard Leong:** I'm sure you're going to be in Singapore more often because Manus is here now. **Jing Yang:** Either I or my colleagues will. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely can find us on YouTube, Spotify, and everywhere now and subscribe to us and Jing, we'll talk again soon. **Jing Yang:** Thank you for having me. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Nick Eayrs, Vice President at Databricks, unpacked why governance, security, and lifecycle management are foundational to building trustworthy AI. Drawing parallels to commodity markets and Asia’s rising compute economy, he showed how transparent data catalogs and end-to-end control enable enterprises to safely deploy multi-agent frameworks at scale. Simon Fassot, Head of Data Analytics and AI at Hafnia, shared how one of the world’s largest tanker operators is reinventing itself with Databricks. From breaking data silos via a “data supermarket” to deploying the in-house Gen AI copilot “Marvis AI”. Simon showed how shipping — a traditionally conservative industry — can accelerate ROI, streamline documentation, and empower domain experts to build their own dashboards and AI use cases. Finally, Craig Wiley, Senior Director of Product Management at Databricks, revealed the thinking behind Mosaic AI and Agent Bricks. He explained how Databricks is addressing the toughest problems in LLM operations — evaluation, model flexibility, and enterprise governance — while giving customers the ability to A/B test models, orchestrate agents, and drive accuracy without sacrificing speed. Together, these conversations show that clean, well-governed data plus rigorous evaluation loops are becoming the decisive factors for success. Across industries & regions, enterprise AI is moving from experimentation to production — and the companies that build on solid data foundations and flexible model strategies will define the next wave of innovation in Asia-Pacific. --- **Part 1: Nick Eayrs from Databricks and Simon Fassot from Hafnia** **Part 2: Craig Wiley from Databricks** > "I think the biggest trap to potentially fall into is, "Hey, it's moving so fast, so much is changing. Let's just wait it out." Completely the wrong approach. You just gotta get started." - **Nick Eayrs from Databricks** > > "As tech people within the shipping industry, how do we explain, how do we make it accessible to all our users? So that's where we came up with the idea of a data supermarket, with in mind really the target of enabling self-service for our business. So by giving the analogy of a supermarket, it was much easier at the beginning to explain our business." **\- Simon Fassot from Hafnia** > "85% of AI use cases are being evaluated by the engineer who built it saying, 'yep, seemed to work pretty well.' If you're gonna build a system that's going to be critical to the business, that's going to be important that it gets it right, then you can't do that without evaluations." **\- Craig Wiley** **Part 1: Nick Eayrs from Databricks and Simon Fassot from Hafnia** **Part 2: Craig Wiley from Databricks** ### Profile: **Nick Eayrs,** Vice President of Field Engineering, Asia Pacific & Japan at [Databricks](https://www.databricks.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-eayrs/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) **Simon Fassot,** General Manager and Head of Global Data and Analytics at [Hafnia](https://hafnia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-fassot-68b95135/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) **Craig Wiley,** Senior Director of Product Management at [Databricks](https://www.databricks.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Mosaic AI](https://www.databricks.com/blog/mosaic-ai-build-and-deploy-production-quality-compound-ai-systems?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigwiley/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: ### Part 1: Nick Eayrs **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I'm at the [Data + AI World Tour](https://www.databricks.com/dataaisummit/worldtour?region=apac&ref=analysepodcast.com) by Databricks today in Singapore, and with me today is Nick Eayrs, Vice President of Field Engineering, Asia Pacific and Japan at Databricks. As we are going to dive into the evolving landscape of AI in Asia, from infrastructure to intelligence and why data intelligence may be more important than general intelligence for enterprises. So Nick is going to discuss how companies can build the foundation for responsible and scalable AI in the region. So, Nick, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. Like every other guest on Analyse Asia, we want to hear your origin story. So how did you start your career and what got you into the area of data and AI? **Nick Eayrs:** Well first things first, it's been a journey, a 25-year journey in analytics. To be honest, it's all I've ever done. Not in a bad way. I absolutely love the space. I'm super passionate about the space. I wouldn't be doing anything else. About 25 years ago, I started working in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa. For a management information systems company. I was actually developing an early version of what you would call an intelligence platform. Yes. Specifically for financial services customers in Sub-Saharan Africa. We had great success with our product. I was the developer. I was the engineer from a pre-sales post-sales perspective. I was technical support, I was marketing, I was everything. But it was a wonderful experience building that product, taking that product to market, and getting really good success and traction in financial services. From there, that product, obviously all of the contracts and the work that we had done, got transitioned to a company known as Computer Sciences Corporation. Yes. Now DXC. I established myself in DXC as a data and AI practitioner, and got spotted by a pretty prominent analytics company called SAS Statistical Analysis Software. So I joined SAS based on my experience working in financial services, and actually built out an enterprise architecture division. For SAS in South Africa and eventually grew that to an international scale, running an international function that spanned Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, and Japan, and actually relocated to the UK as a part of that process. From SAS, I saw the wave of open source innovation and I got really passionate about that space. You know, SAS, very much closed source. I was a part of the open source movement and really saw a lot of value and a lot of future success in that model. So I opted to join a company called Hortonworks, one of the original open source creators around data and analytics. I took Hortonworks to the merger with Cloudera. So now today it's known as Cloudera, and, you know, during that merger phase. Obviously I sought other opportunities to take my knowledge and experience to the next level. Databricks, thankfully, was looking for someone with my skills and talents. So, I joined Databricks in EMEA, now I've been with the company for seven years, three years in EMEA, and four years in Asia Pacific and Japan based in Singapore. **Bernard Leong:** Right. So reflecting on your journey, because it's pretty interesting in South Africa, EMEA and now Asia Pacific. What are the lessons that you can share with my audience? Yeah, from navigating, I guess very interesting career transformations across, but still within the same realm of engineering data and AI. **Nick Eayrs:** Yeah, I think number one, it's really being customer obsessed in everything that you do. I don't mean to say that just to pay it lip service. I genuinely believe you've got to immerse yourself into the customer's world. You've really got to deeply appreciate the norms around their industry, their environment, their business context. I think that's something that I've learned throughout my career and it's uniquely different in every single market, and especially in Asia Pacific and Japan. Let's be honest, Asia Pacific and Japan is, you know, I think by last count, 51 discrete countries. You cannot approach a customer in APJ the same way. You've really got to meet them where they are and deeply, deeply understand their industry. The socioeconomic state that they're operating in. So I think having deep appreciation for customers and being customer obsessed and having great empathy for the journey they're on, and the journey they've been on is probably one of the most important lessons learned. I think the other thing is, you know, over the years I've learned to be very good at challenging customers from an intellectually honest but humble sort of perspective. I think sometimes, you know, vendors can come across maybe a little bit arrogant and a little bit stubborn in their opinions. I always try to side on the side of, you know, be humble, be intellectually curious, and challenge customers to think differently, but with real empathy for the position that they're in. I think that's a really good thing that I've learned over the years as well. **Bernard Leong:** That's a great description of what customer obsession means. Also, specifically, sometimes we have to say no to customer as well. So I want to get to the main subject of the day, which is about data intelligence and AI infrastructure in Asia Pacific and Japan. So maybe let's start baselining by defining some terms for the audience. Yeah. How would you define [data intelligence](https://www.databricks.com/blog/what-is-a-data-intelligence-platform?ref=analysepodcast.com) and how is it different from what people typically think of as artificial general intelligence? **Nick Eayrs:** Great question. Let's start with the latter first around describing general intelligence. I think everyone today will be familiar with these ChatGPT type interfaces, right? Yes. Very prevalent, especially in the consumer market. I think everyone at some point has leveraged these and experimented with them, be it to solve your son or daughter's math homework, or to plan a holiday for the family or to just, you know, get some basic quiz or general knowledge questions answered. The reason I bring that up is that's probably the best example to bring to life of general intelligence. So what is it? It's AI that's been applied, models that have been applied and built upon the corpus, the public corpus of knowledge. So everything that's out on the web, effectively the internet. So effectively these models have been trained on a large corpus, a large footprint of knowledge in the public domain. Very good for general questions, general knowledge Q&A, planning your holiday solving general math problems. Not very good for solving your business problems because yeah, it's not trained on your business. It doesn't know your products and services, it doesn't know your policies and procedures, and it doesn't know your operational norms and taxonomy around how you describe your business. So that's really what we're trying to solve is not the general problems, but the domain specific problems, the business specific problems. To do that, you don't want to train the AI on the general corpus of knowledge. You want to bring all of that AI capability and you want to train it and attach it and add it to your data because the competitive differentiator in enterprise is your data. So bring the model, bring the AI to your data and apply it to your world and allow it to learn your business, your business taxonomy, and about your products, services, and policies. That's what we call data intelligence. **Bernard Leong:** So why is data intelligence now more important than general intelligence for enterprises today, especially in Asia? **Nick Eayrs:** Well, again, what's going to uniquely differentiate you with how you engage with a citizen if you're a government agency, a patient, if you're in health and life sciences, or a consumer, if you're in a consumer orientated world, it's going to be your products and services. Really what you want to do is you want to leverage the information that you have. Around your products, your services, what you take to market and your customers. The best way to do that in a differentiated way, again, is to leverage the insights you have internally, not the insights externally. So really that's the secret source, right? The moat for customers that we work with is their data being AI infused and AI enabled so they can uniquely differentiate the products and services that they take into market. The customers that do that, we're seeing massive growth in adoption. **Bernard Leong:** So I remember a study that was done with the Economist and Databricks where they said that probably 15% of companies are actually ready for having the correct infrastructure for AI. What are the kind of unique challenges that companies in Asia Pacific and Japan face when building that infrastructure People don't appreciate that when everybody wants to do AI, but if you don't organize your data, everything is just garbage in, garbage out. **Nick Eayrs:** You're spot on. You're absolutely right. We talk about having really good data and AI foundations. What does that mean? To your point, these models, and when you bring these models and you bring this AI capability to your data, they're only going to be as good as your data. So if the data is garbage, you're feeding garbage into the model, you're feeding garbage into these AI systems, these agents, you will get garbage out. So garbage in, garbage out. So the most foundational thing you can do to ensure that you're getting great insights, great outcomes is to make sure that you collate, store and curate high quality data and as much data as possible. So, yes, the quality matters, but you also want to make sure the data's very rich and that you've got as much data as possible that represents your customers, your products and services. All combined in one place and in a quality form. So the most important thing, again, is good quality data and having lots of data that is good quality altogether. So you can use that to derive insights and build AI agents, applications, and experiences. The other thing that I think is really important is connecting this to the why, because let's be honest, technology alone is never going to be the secret to success. Technology becomes incredibly impactful when it's connected to a higher mission and a higher purpose. So understanding why this matters to the business, why this matters to the enterprise, how is it going to transform the way that we serve our customers? How is it going to transform lives in the way that we are serving patients, perhaps again, in healthcare, that really is really important because when you connect the people in the organization to the why. Then they can really understand, okay, now I know why we need this data. Now I know why we need to build these AI agents and models, and I understand the purpose and the mission, and I can connect to that and I can get behind that. I'm enthused by that. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting thing is I know a lot of high growth companies in Southeast Asia: Grab and Zendit, they are all using Databricks. They're all publicly known references. So. One question I do really think about is how can companies in the region future proof their data and AI strategy to stay competitive in the next 5 to 10 years? Enterprise AI, I think we're really at the beginning because most of the current generative AI solutions tend to be point solutions, but not end to end. For example, like the way how Databricks does even combining with, say, Mosaic AI as well. **Nick Eayrs:** Yes. Well, number one, you've got to start. I think the biggest trap to potentially fall into is, "Hey, it's moving so fast, so much is changing. Let's just wait it out." Completely the wrong approach. You just got to get started. The best way to get started is to leverage all of the best practices and all of the success stories that are already out there. It's okay to pick up, rinse and repeat and reuse the best practices that are out there, but make sure you are doing that with a vendor or a partner of choice. Databricks has a proven track record of success. What we are doing there as Databricks is that: we're bringing together a lot of PhD level research around the space. Let's be honest, the space is changing every single day. Like every single day there's a new model, there's a new technique, there's a new product surface area that's coming out. We are trying to put all of our researchers to work. To make sure that they're picking the best technological improvements around algorithms, models, techniques, packaging that up into really easy to consume, what we call [Agent Bricks](https://www.databricks.com/product/artificial-intelligence/agent-bricks?ref=analysepodcast.com), then allowing our customers to consume and use those to solve domain specific problems. Rather than you figuring out which analytical technique to choose, which model to choose, you focus on the business problem. We've got that tried and tested, proven track record of success, of bringing the best techniques together, and we package it up in a very simple, easy to consume product surface area, all driven by natural language. So literally our customers can interact and start to build AI agents and AI agent systems. Just using natural language. So the most important thing is get started now. Don't wait because it's going to move so fast. Work with a partner or vendor that has a proven track record of success in innovating in this space. Leading and defining the best practices and the technology evolution, which we are doing. That can really help abstract that complexity for you so you can focus on the business problem and not stitching together technology. **Bernard Leong:** Can you share a real world example where Databricks enabled a customer, say, in Asia Pacific in Japan, to derive transformative value from this data intelligence. **Nick Eayrs:** Absolutely, I've got tons that I can talk about probably for hours as much as you can. Maybe I'll start with some of the customers that were here this week up on stage, talking for us in various forms. You know, one of those customers is none other than Standard Chartered Bank. Standard Chartered Bank actually took a very unique horizontal use case around cybersecurity, and more specifically what we call SIEM. So, you know, really looking at security incidents and figuring out how do they triage those and how do they get ahead of cybersecurity threats and power AI driven analysis, threat detection, and prevention. So if you think about this world historically, you would have to go and license a lot of software, what we call SIEM software, to go and pull together logs from all over your enterprise landscape. **Bernard Leong:** Is it like monitoring multiple threads of information for cybersecurity? **Nick Eayrs:** Exactly. You're pulling information from routers, from firewalls, from applications, from, you know, human footfall in and out of the building. You're trying to connect the dots around. Is this activity on the app in the building through these systems and interfaces? Is that good behavior or bad behavior? Is it a bad actor? Is it a good actor? All of that data, if you think about the data there, it's all from different vendors. You might have one firewall vendor. You might have five firewall vendors across the estate that you have. So there's lots of different data formats. This data is typically high volume, high telemetry that's coming in super fast, and security is a problem space. You can't wait a week or two to figure out that someone's hacked your system. Like you need to intervene and react in real time and you need to prevent it before it even happens. So the problem is high volume, high complexity, and real time in nature. We worked obviously with the bank to solve that problem, and as a result, what they've been able to do is they've been able to take all of that telemetry from all of these different systems into Databricks. They've been able to build a world class cybersecurity platform on top of Databricks, and they are driving massive improvements. Like the TCO \[total cost of ownership\] savings were absolutely off the charts. But not only that, it's the time to value that has come down so significantly. So now instead of, you know, waiting weeks, months to kind of figure out a cybersecurity threat, they're down to days and hours. They will get down to minutes. **Bernard Leong:** Do you have other customers stories you want to share too? **Nick Eayrs:** Yeah, a hundred percent. Another one I can talk to is a customer called TechComBank. So one of the largest privately held bank in Vietnam. So we have a wonderful stakeholder and champion, Santhosh Mahendiran, who was up on stage telling the story. But the difference in this one is it's all about customer centricity and effectively what Santosh set out to do with the bank, and we've been very fortunate to partner with Santosh and the bank on this journey is to build a customer brain. So how can you intelligently derive insights about all of your customers and all the attributes about your customer in real time, to really hyper-personalize everything that you're doing with them in the moment? To make sure that you enrich their lives and they have a better experience with a bank, but ultimately they're getting better banking offers. All of that delivered through app experiences, through digital experiences in real time. So there, Databricks is pulling together, obviously all the information around the customer attributes that they have. They have, last time I checked over 12,000 attributes associated with the customer. So everything from demographics all the way to, you know, various other attributes. They use this with Databricks to derive a one-to-one personalized offer in real time, delivered in an experience that the customer knows and loves. So if they love the app. It's in the app. If they prefer email, it's in email. Not only that, it's delivered in the moment that matters to them. So, you know, they might check email in the evening, they'll get it in the evening. They might like their morning run and a coffee. It'll get delivered before they hit the Starbucks store. So really personalized, tailored one-to-one marketing through this customer brain that we've built with Santosh. **Bernard Leong:** I'll keep the third one later, but we'll get into the subject of responsible AI, which has now become a priority for enterprises. How does Databricks ensure, say, AI products are deployed within safety, transparency, and ethical considerations in mind? I do bear in mind that just now for the two use cases, they were all financial services. So it comes with a lot of scrutiny and I probably will appreciate that Databricks must have done a lot of work to deal with all the regulations. Yes. How do you put systems in control as well? **Nick Eayrs:** We have a number of other use cases in highly regulated industry across the board, not just financial services, government, and other areas as well. But I think it comes down to two things. Look, ultimately it is a shared responsibility model. There is a shared responsibility around the trusted relationship that we establish with our customers, because ultimately the customers own the data, right? So the shared responsibility side is making sure that the data has. The correct classification and is used for ethical, responsible, and sustainable purposes. From our side, we work really closely with our customers to do a couple of things. One, making sure they have the right organization model to ensure that AI is successful, sustainable, responsible, and ethical. What does that mean? We help them think through how do you marry the vision, mission, and purpose with real concrete strategies? A very executable plan that can be measured. Then how do we drive the literacy up so the entire organization is aligned behind that why, and everybody can contribute to that journey and understands their impact along the way in measurable terms. So there's a lot that we do around organizing the company, the leadership, and the organizational entities for success. The other part then is everything that we do to work both with government. To work with industry around understanding and appreciating and shaping and informing a position on regulatory and compliance requirements in a market. This is complex, right? Again, as I said, APJ 51 discrete countries, all of these countries are looking at the regs and compliance, some of them in slightly different ways, but we work very closely with government. We work very closely with our customers. To interpret this changing landscape and to figure out what is best practice, what are the emerging best practices, and to ensure that they're thoughtful in their deployment of the technology. In addition to that, there's all the technology aspects, right? Helping our customers make sure that when they stand up the data and AI foundations that the data is secure by default, that the right authorization and authentication mechanisms are in place, that they are looking at things and leveraging best practices, such as red teaming. Red teaming is an approach that you use on models. To check that the models are responding well and are giving great responses and can't be hacked or subject to prompt injection or other techniques. So there's a bunch of stuff that we do around ensuring that the technology is well architected, well implemented and tested and validated and is secure and is robust. **Bernard Leong:** I suppose that it is the same in dealing with things like drift as well. Yes. Data concept drift within the models on that. So, do you help your customers to embed those kind of trust and governance in their AI life cycle right from the beginning? **Nick Eayrs:** The foundation of everything in our data intelligence platform is this concept of governance, security, and control. What’s very unique to the way Databricks approaches this is we’ve always been a data and AI company. So when we think about this, we don’t think about it just from a tabular data perspective or an unstructured data perspective. We think about that entire life cycle — the agent being built, the model being built, the agent being served, and the multi-agent framework being stood up — because you have to traverse that entire life cycle. If you’re only focused on the data, you’re missing everything else that gets derived from the data. Ultimately this impacts consumers or citizens leveraging your products and services. So data governance is fundamental to the data intelligence platform. A key capability there is what we call a catalog. We’ve got this wonderfully rich capability called [Unity Catalog](https://www.databricks.com/product/unity-catalog?ref=analysepodcast.com). We’ve even created an open-source project off the back of that. So our customers have choice, interoperability, and a safer exit strategy should they choose to do so. Defining that catalog, setting up that catalog, and putting all the data under the management of that catalog is a foundational step. Then, once it’s in there, everything around how that data evolves into reports, dashboards, models, and models being served, inference being done, and agents being deployed into apps — all of that lifecycle management, all of that lineage, all of that traceability — comes with that platform capability. **Bernard Leong:** Do you find that now in enterprise, just to dive deeper, is trust and governance a thing? Do you find that customers are now much more cognizant about the AI, the traces of what the AI is doing, and get some kind of an audit trail of how the agents are operating or maybe the AI models? Do you see that kind of deeper dive into the transparency of the models or interpretability or explainability of the models? **Nick Eayrs:** Yes, it’s absolutely an area of concern, and increasingly as the regulations evolve, this is an area for everyone to stay on top of. Traceability, lineage, and auditability are really important — all key platform capabilities that we’re solving for. But the other part of that question is, is the problem the explainability and interpretability, or is the problem the quality of the output? More customers right now are facing problems around the quality of the output. How do you actually know when you build these things that you’re getting a good quality outcome? That’s one of the hardest problems. It goes into a very complex area we call evaluation — model evaluation and agent evaluation. It’s quite a complex domain, and if you’re trying to tackle this yourself, it’s really hard to get set up for success. We’re trying to make that super easy. If you go back to what I referenced earlier around Agent Bricks, the way Agent Bricks works is you define the problem you’re trying to solve — this domain-specific problem — and we will automatically evaluate the quality of it for you. We’ll automatically figure out, for this sort of domain problem, what sort of quality and metrics you probably want to look at. Then, with human-based feedback in the loop, we start to raise the quality bar. The human feedback continues through continuous feedback, continuously improving the quality of the output. Most customers are actually really worried about that. They can get a model built quickly. They can get an agent built quickly. Getting it to be of quality is super hard. **Bernard Leong:** That I think is art by itself. I have three questions that I want to get your thoughts before we go to the close. So my first question is, what's the one thing you know about data intelligence and AI and enterprise AI in Asia that very few do, but should? **Nick Eayrs:** Well, I won't profess to be the only one that knows this. But what I think is super unique and what I love talking about is just the psychology is different in Asia Pacific and Japan. I'm not going to cast aspersions any which way, but when I talk to customers and when I talk to folks in Asia Pacific and Japan, it's always about the future. It's not about the past. It's not about bringing back the past or bringing back things historically, it's about the future, and I love that mentality around the future, future success. Future growth, future opportunity, securing the future for the next generation, securing a better future for all. I just love the fact that, you know, the culture and the psychology in Asia Pacific and Japan is all about the future as opposed to how do we bring back the part? **Bernard Leong**: That's interesting. It means the mindset is really changing in the region. So what is the one question you wish more people would ask you about Databricks or building responsible and scalable AI systems, but they don't? **Nick Eayrs:** I wish more people would ask us, "How do you get started?" **Bernard Leong**: So, I will ask you now: How do you get started? **Nick Eayrs:** Like, it sounds super simple, but I think sometimes we get so bogged down into the technical details and into the weeds of discussions around this model versus that model. This evaluation technique versus that evaluation technique. It goes back to what I said earlier, just get started. Just ask us how to get started. We just want to build with customers. Like we love building with customers. So for us, you know, it's ultimately around, I wish we could just build more with more customers and I would love that opportunity to do so. So all customers out there, all prospects out there, anyone who's interested, just come and ask us, how do you get started? We'd love to build with you. **Bernard Leong:** So when the customers ask you: Do they actually first come to you with a set of problems or you have to try to figure out like which part of the platform can help you to get those quick wins? **Nick Eayrs:** It’s a bit of both. There are a couple of ways you can slice that problem. Some customers come to us with very opinionated perspectives around industry-specific things they’re trying to solve. In that instance, we’ll work back from that specific business challenge and figure out what the pain points are and how that’s inhibiting success for the business. What sort of value can we create for the customer by adopting our technology and then put forward a solution? Other customers are more interested in what we’re seeing with regards to their peers, what we’re seeing in the industry more broadly, and what our perspective is on which use cases are working and which are not. For those customers, typically what we’ll do is more of a blue-sky thinking ideation session and show them the art of the possible. This is what we’re seeing. These are the use cases we think are valuable, high impact, and high feasibility of success if you have the requisite data in place. Then we’ll showcase that to customers so that they can see it, believe it, and select it as a use case to tackle. **Bernard Leong:** So they’re actually able to imagine what is the art of the possible. Then basically you can actually narrow down to those top two or three use cases. That may be able to help them and then start the building blocks moving. Nick Eayrs: That’s right. Because you never want to boil the ocean. Again, some of that “why are we not getting started?” is inertia and fear of change — thinking “this is going to be another 12 to 18 months.” Whereas if we can focus on something and distill it down to something business-critical, high impact, high feasibility, we can quickly get to business value and then build trust, excitement, and energy around tackling the next one. Bernard Leong: I just want to get one little part of the getting started. How about the education for the customer? Nick Eayrs: Huge. Absolutely huge. As I said, technology alone is not going to be the solution. We spoke a little around that AI organization piece — leadership alignment, aligning the vision, mission, and purpose — but you need to Bernard Leong: enable people to use Databricks and how to exactly. Nick Eayrs: use it well. Exactly. So part of that is thinking deeply around the talent you have, the talent you need to acquire, and the talent you need to develop. It’s never one of these things. You’re going to have to do all of those things. You’re going to have to figure out talent acquisition, development, and making sure all the talent in the organization is clear on what performance management looks like, what good looks like when you’re using data and AI. So you’ve got to set objective measures around: we’re going to enable you, we’re going to give you these tools, we’re going to give you this learning and enablement, but we’re also going to measure you this way. If you’re successful with data and AI, this is how you know you’ve achieved success. Bernard Leong: That would be what great looks like for me. Correct. So my traditional closing question: what does great look like for Databricks in Asia Pacific and Japan in a context of enabling data intelligence at scale? Nick Eayrs: Ultimately we want to be the destination of choice. We want to be the first thing customers consider when they’re looking to solve any data and AI business problem. We really want everyone — whether a customer today, a prospect tomorrow, or academia — to consider Databricks as the destination of choice for building and solving your data and AI problems. **Bernard Leong:** Wow. That's a great one. So we have in closing: two very quick questions. What any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Nick Eayrs:** Well, I definitely recommend to the learning and enablement point, you know, get out there and get busy. With Databricks, we've got this wonderful thing called Databricks free edition. So we recently ran a very cool hackathon. We called it the Smart Business Intelligence Insights Challenge. We basically set a bunch of people free on the platform to go and experiment and build crazy cool insights on top of Databricks. That was wonderful. It was absolutely wonderful. I must get the link from you then. Yes, I would like to go and try it out. There's some fantastic, again, customer examples of what they built. So, I would love for people to do that. Right? Get out there, get into Databricks free, start building your own apps, start building your own solutions as a completely free, full cut to Databricks and you can get started today. **Bernard Leong:** So how can my audience find you and or stay relevant with what is going on with Databricks in terms of the field engineering and all the work with customers? **Nick Eayrs:** Always check out the [Databricks blog](https://www.databricks.com/blog?ref=analysepodcast.com) which is the company blog. There is an RSS feed on our documentation as well. If you're a live update nerd like I am, I follow religiously every single update to the documentation. Please connect and find me on LinkedIn, and follow me on LinkedIn as well, and I'd be happy to support our customers out there. **Bernard Leong:** Of course everybody knows there's just one more thing here, so. We have been talking about customers. So one of the interesting thing that I got from Nick today is I'm going to interview a customer. He's Simon Fassot, general manager and Global Head of Data Analytics at Hafnia. **Nick Eayrs:** So wonderful that we'll be introducing Simon. You know, a great example again of an organization that has very clear vision, mission, and purpose around how they're going to use data and AI in shipping. It's just been wonderful partnering with them. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you very much Nick, and let's continue the conversation. ### Part 2: Simon Fassot **Bernard Leong:** As promised with me today, Simon Fassot. General manager and head of global data and analytics at Hafnia and we promised a customer story for Databricks today. Nick was talking very highly about the initiatives that are going on with your company. Can you first share your role and destination within Hafnia? **Simon Fassot:** Of course. Hi everyone. I’m Simon, working in Hafnia for three years. Previously I was working in the corporate investment bank, a French bank. I’m French, I guess you get it. Yes. So my role in Hafnia is I’m leading the data analytics and AI team. We have a team of around 10 engineers. We are doing our best to produce value out of all the data that we have in a highly regulated industry, which is shipping. **Bernard Leong:** Can you introduce Hafnia as a company business? You just said it is in the area of shipping. What does it do in the world of shipping itself? **Simon Fassot:** Alright, so Hafnia is one of the leaders in the tanker industry. We have over 200 vessels. We have mainly two activities. We are ship owners — we own vessels — and we are also running an activity of pool management where we basically take care of the operations of the vessels from other owners. These are the two businesses that Hafnia is leading. **Bernard Leong:** So it operates globally. **Simon Fassot:** It’s a global company. Yes. We have offices in Singapore — we are the HQ. We also have another one in Copenhagen, another one in Houston, and one in Dubai. **Bernard Leong:** Those are all the main ports. I know you have about 200 vessels and a probably fully integrated shipping platform. So where does data sit in to enable you to scale, to be able to know what’s going on across the world? Shipping is a very important business as we learned from the pandemic, especially on the supply chain side. **Simon Fassot:** In terms of IT architecture, we worked hard internally after COVID to be fully cloud enabled, which really helped us to be very agile in what we’re delivering to the business. Most of our data now resides in Databricks. We are fully cloud oriented. We use a lot of applications for the business, for HR, for operations, for the commercial teams. We have dozens of applications, but all the data are getting centralized in Databricks to help make a lot of value out of all the data we’re collecting across those applications that are not always talking together. Thanks to Databricks developments we are deploying to our businesses, we are enabling applications to talk together and businesses to talk together to break silos. **Bernard Leong:** What was the mental model behind choosing Databricks in the end? Is it because it’s easy to use, or was it very easy to deal with the use cases that you have and also to be able to approach with the data itself? **Simon Fassot:** Yeah. Historically we were working on SQL Server with a classic legacy data warehouse. Now the management really wanted to break silos and enable self-service within the company. Of course, we have more than 300 employees onshore and more than 4,000 employees on the vessels. We like to have everyone have easy access to data. How to do it? Basically through enabling self-service. So what tool on the market, two or three years ago, what were the tools that were available? We had a few options. We really assessed Databricks and of course Snowflake, plus the Microsoft solutions. We came up with Databricks really because of all the different layers and all different maturity of our businesses. We have three different kinds of users. We have the users who are not interested in manipulating data — they want to conduct their daily operations. We have those kinds of users who need data to take decisions. So they need to consume dashboards. They need to consume any kind of data. So they need business intelligence very quickly and they want to see. They don’t really want to do a lot of the work in order to put the data into different visualizations. The third one are the, what we call the domain experts. This is what made us choose Databricks. It’s this capacity of having all kinds of users accessing the data. The domain experts are basically experts that we’ve trained within the different business teams on how to use Python, how to use SQL, how to themselves bring value to their colleagues within their business team in order to be basically the extension of the data team. So we needed to choose a tool that was allowing us to do that. Databricks was designated as the best candidate for it. **Bernard Leong:** So they also enabled the team of 10 that is working with you to make sure that everything is in place so that you can build exactly with Databricks as well. So what is it that, how Databricks is transforming how your commercial, financial, even operational teams access and act on the data with the data intelligence platform itself? **Simon Fassot:** Alright, so before focusing on the architecture we had to focus on building a setup with the different businesses and my team by splitting the activities but bringing the activities together without segregating or building silos. So how did we do that? We basically chose to build three different squads. Within my team we have the commercial squad, the financial squad, and the technical squad. By building this setup we have squads dedicated to specific areas of the business and can really focus on each business value. What we are focusing on now is projects with high ROI. We work hard with the business and those domain experts who are embedded within the business on selecting the projects with the highest ROI. Each squad will define a list of projects that will bring real value to our business. We will focus on developing those projects. **Bernard Leong:** I see. **Simon Fassot:** Whereas for the day-to-day activity, we are counting on the skills of our domain experts to develop the BI dashboards and the data team can focus on the more advanced developments. That’s how we’ve enabled and managed to really focus where the data can bring value. **Bernard Leong:** So how do you make the data accessible, say to non-technical stakeholders? I guess, what’s the response from, say, business units when they work with Databricks — invisible to them — but they actually see all the data that they need? **Simon Fassot:** Alright, so we have different levels of access. We can speak about Gen AI actually. Yeah. So you have the classic data engineering where Databricks can work as an IT system and will help applications to speak together. This is invisible for our businesses. We also have the classic BI where the business will consume data through the dashboards. **Bernard Leong:** So you have also implemented retrieval augmented generation. **Simon Fassot:** Yes. So it's the last layer. But before enabling AI, we had to ensure that our data platform and our data were pristine. We've tried in the past two years, right after ChatGPT came out to enable very quick wins. Very nice POCs. But we've noticed that without a solid data foundation, all those POCs were just not strong enough in terms of quality. So the quality was at the center of everything, where we have the nice demonstration for the different vendors for the different marketing campaigns, but in reality, what matters the most, it's good data and thanks to Databricks and all the innovation that we can put in place on this great platform, on the Unity Catalog platform. We were able to control the quality of the data we were providing to our Gen AI or to our AI use cases. I see. **Bernard Leong:** This is the key to enable AI, right? So with the foundation model within the platform itself, so you are able to do questions and answers on that. Just walk me through like, how did the Gen AI enable that and maybe what kind of questions now can it answer? **Simon Fassot:** So Gen AI for me, we have two different phases. The first one, it's how to use Gen AI to ingest data. We could not ingest in the past. I'm talking about unstructured documents mainly. Yeah, that's right. So we have contracts. We can have SOPs or the vessel manuals. Yeah. All those documents are complex and of different shapes. At the beginning we've tried to find the magical solution, the generic solution that will help us to load all those data seamlessly and have a very nice output to enable Q&A and chatbots. But the reality is each kind of document, each kind of input have to have its own way of working on the data. So to make sense out of those data. It's not so simple. It's a lot of work, a lot of trial and error. We need a solid platform that will help us to monitor the performance of what we're developing. So this is the first phase, how to ingest unstructured data to the data platform. Then the second phase is how to basically consume this data. Yes, correct. Then we have the data that is coming from unstructured documents. We have the data coming from our database data lake. Basically we have our data coming from emails. From communications. Yeah. Data coming from the different applications that we're building on top of the Delta Lake platform. So how, how does it work for each scenario? We will choose the right tool on the Databricks platform. Okay. So for instance, for the documents, we will use Vector database from Databricks. For the structured data. We will use Gen workspaces. Now with the enablement of the agentic solutions, yes, all those tools can speak together and I'm extremely excited about the future and how this will look like, where those tools could work one by one, but now that we can see applications that can bring those tools together to make sense out of all those data, it's going to be very, very powerful. **Bernard Leong:** So you are one of those rare customers I know who actually got a retrieval augmented generation to work. I think in this case you achieved it with Databricks. Do you find that, let's say for example, questions and answers are more of art, like trying to figure out the correct data to get the correct answer for the Q&A from maybe different business units than, rather than the science itself. Then you have to do a lot of different evaluations on the questions and answers. **Simon Fassot:** Yes, exactly. So as I said, you have the beautiful POCs that work for demos. Then you have real life where in real life, you just need one bad answer from an LLM to lose the trust and confidence from our users and completely lose them. This is really what we try to avoid. That's why we really take our time before releasing any solution in production. I can give a simple use case where we use Gen AI but not as a chatbot. I think by embedding Gen AI technology within the business process, that's where we will bring huge value compared to only using chatbots. So I can give an example. So we have the SI reports, inspection reports on our vessels. Yes. Those inspectors will give some comments, some observations about things that could be improved onboard the vessels. Then this document is sent back to our superintendents onshore. Yes. The superintendents have to analyze this document and answer to each one of the comments. In our company we have thousands of SOPs, and for each observation, we have a corresponding SOP where we could find the solution. So the objective of this application is basically for one observation. Do we have SOPs? That will be able to answer to the observation or help at least our superintendents to come up with a very good answer or to shorten the time it takes. Here we're not using a chatbot, but we're using RAG within our workflow in the application to really build use cases that have an impact for the business. **Bernard Leong:** So it actually follows the business process rather than being a separate chatbot by itself. **Simon Fassot:** Exactly. This concept of having embedded Gen AI technology as a tool in the workflow, I think is key for process automation, or at least to assist our business users with better performance andhigher quality. **Bernard Leong:** So I’ve done some pre-research before this. I know there are two initiatives. One is Marvis AI. The other one is the data supermarket. Can you talk about what Marvis and Data Supermarket are supposed to do for Hafnia? **Simon Fassot:** Of course. We don’t work in a tech industry. We work in the shipping industry. The shipping industry is different, so our users are focusing on the shipping industry and everything that goes with that. As tech people within the shipping industry, how do we explain and make it accessible to all our users? That’s where we came up with the idea of the data supermarket, with in mind the target of enabling self-service for our business. I see. By giving the analogy of a supermarket, it was much easier at the beginning to explain to our business: if you want to get access to our data, you come to the supermarket, do your shopping, select the right data at the right place, go back home with a tool like Power BI and cook yourself and build your own dashboard. That’s how we’ve enabled self-service by building this data supermarket. At the beginning we were talking about the supermarket to help users understand, but the name stayed since then. So, on top of this data supermarket, we spent two years working hard on building something strong that works very well, built on top of Databricks. Now we have a very well-organized data structure. As I said earlier in this podcast, without this solid structure, general use cases are really not even possible. Now that we’re confident this structure is solid, we wanted to enable generic use cases again. We wanted to find a way to personalize or basically give a persona to this Gen AI within the company and instead of saying, “this is a generic tool,” or “this is a generic process,” we call it Marvis. For our users, when we speak about Gen AI, we speak about Marvis. It really helped us to enable different use cases and for the business to project themselves in some processes: “If I ask Marvis this question, then I could get a nice answer from the Gen system” — so they don’t have to understand the technicalities behind the scene. **Bernard Leong:** So Marvis, what is it? So it’s a Gen AI tool. It’s a GPT kind of tool based on our company data. It’s kind of a copilot from the way you are explaining it to me. **Simon Fassot:** It’s definitely a copilot connected to the company’s data. We have different ways of accessing those data as we spoke. We have the RAG, we have the structured data. We have also, as we did the speech today, a partnership with Neo4j, based on Databricks data loaded to Neo4j. It’s a Gen AI tool connected with our whole data ecosystem, and then we can use it for chatbot and also for our internal processes. **Bernard Leong:** I think people do not appreciate this, but in the maritime industry you have a lot of complex documents, standard operating procedures and you need to manage these documents effectively. I suppose Marvis has been a great help in doing that. **Simon Fassot:** Yes. Basically, as I said, Marvis helped us to integrate all those documents in our knowledge base and to consume those documents and by enabling all those use cases that were not possible two or three years ago. We have access to a huge amount of data compared to the only structured data world. I think the Gen AI use cases are a new chapter for us as a data engineering team, where we now need to really upskill, ensure that the internal team of developers we have within the company are constantly learning and keen to dig even more. That’s really with this kind of tool like Databricks that we can enable that without so much complexity, where the complexity is not in using the tool but more in finding the right use case. **Bernard Leong:** Do you foresee a day where anybody in the shipping industry doesn’t really know the technical aspects but, because of generative AI and prompting in English or any language — French, etc. — they can just prompt and get whatever insights they want from your system? **Simon Fassot:** Exactly. I think with the agentic AI systems that we see more and more, we will be able to build systems that are smart enough to handle any kind of use case. We have to also be careful with the hype. We have to stay focused on what works, and we have to maybe take our time, not push too quickly the features that we are not in control. But yes, definitely the agentic AI, by bringing all kinds of data from the industry and from the different departments together, will basically be a huge change. **Bernard Leong:** What excites you most about where Hafnia is heading with AI and data? **Simon Fassot:** Alright, so now that we've built our data supermarket. Yes. Data supermarket is well, **Bernard Leong:** and you have Marvis as well. **Simon Fassot:** Marvis as well is known within the company. It's used quite a lot. Marvis AI is becoming also a tool that people are using in their day-to-day activities. The next step is how do we break silos? How do we bring data to everyone in the business. How can someone from the commercial team have access to financial data, have access to operational data? How do we bring everyone together using data, using the same data? So this is our next initiative. Now we are building what we call DNA Port. So it's a platform built on top of Databricks, on top of Marvis AI, where we will bring all those data together in one single place. I see. Instead of having scattered dashboards around application A, application B, we will bring everything under the same hood. Really break the silos. Marvis AI will be the links among all those processes where within this application, IMOS data, which is a very famous ERP system in shipping, can speak with our financial system. Instead of having two disconnected systems, this DNA Port will be the platform where applications can finally talk together. **Bernard Leong:** So what excites you with your partnership with Databricks and how are they going to support you for the data on the mission for Hafnia? **Simon Fassot:** Databricks helps us to stay focused on business value, and this is the number one criteria for us. We don’t want to spend time like we used to do in the past on the operational side of IT. We really want to spend on business value. With the constant innovation that Databricks brings to the table, it enables us to develop very nice applications like DNA Port, built on the very new lakehouse-based technology from Databricks. Before we had to consume different systems from different SaaS services. Now with this unified platform, it makes us extremely good with the velocity we can have and the development pace we are achieving. We can bring data, AI, and front end together under one single platform. This is a game changer for us, for velocity but also for the skills within the team where everybody — all data engineers, software engineers, and AI engineers — are talking the same language, which is this unified platform. **Bernard Leong:** So, Simon, many thanks for coming on and really telling me about shipping, what Hafnia is doing with Databricks, and also I think this is the first time I really see something that really works for retrieval augmented generation as well. So thank you for coming on. **Simon Fassot:** Thank you. Thank you very much. ### Interview 3: Craig Wiley **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the powers of business, technology, and media in Asia. I’m Bernard Leong, and today we are diving into the forefront of enterprise AI from model development to deployment at scale. With me today is Craig Wiley, Senior Director of Product Management at Databricks, who leads Mosaic AI, the company’s unified platform for production generative AI. So, Craig, I’m a fan. Welcome to the show. **Craig Wiley:** Thank you very much. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. So very quickly, we always like to talk about origin stories. How did you start your career and what drew you into the world of AI and product leadership? **Craig Wiley:** I was working at Amazon in the consumer business and found that, while the company was data-driven, there was still a lot of opportunity and we started diving deep on questions that were asked or on problems that we had. Very quickly I realized that the business analysts I worked with had questions they couldn’t answer. So we started hiring economists. Then we found there were some questions the economists couldn’t answer. So we started hiring this new, at the time, brand new class, which was data scientists and machine learning engineers. This was back in 2012, 2013\. When those guys got started, they often weren’t moving nearly as quickly as the business needed them to. So it really became a “what on that last project we worked on could have helped you go faster?” As soon as they would tell me, I’d grab a team of engineers, we’d see if we could help solve that problem and then drive the business faster. That’s how I got started. Then when AWS decided they wanted to get into machine learning, they came through to the consumer business to see who was doing this. It sounds very much like AWS and I was there, and they said, “Hey, do you want to come build SageMaker?” and literally at the time SageMaker was one sentence in a document. **Bernard Leong:** One curious part of your career is that you have led AI product teams at both Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. What are some of the pivotal lessons that you have learned building AI platforms at scale across multiple cloud providers? Because I’m a fan of your work because of ML operations — it’s the ability to deploy, build, train, and deploy models at scale. Can you talk about that experience? **Craig Wiley:** I’ve had this amazing opportunity to follow and at times to help influence the industry. When we first started it was hard for people to train models. SageMaker went a long way to help people train models on large amounts of data. Then, when I was at Google, we really focused on model ops and how to help people build and deploy models. What we found there was that customers were having a lot of success getting their cycle time down and going much faster. That’s when I realized that if I really wanted to influence the industry, the next opportunity was to figure out how to take advantage of this connection between the AI layer and the data layer. If we could take advantage of that connection, we could get another order of magnitude acceleration on those development cycles. Once I realized that, I started at Databricks six to eight weeks later. **Bernard Leong:** So that’s the real reason for joining Databricks, because you want to have the intersection of data and AI together. So one thing for sure, Databricks acquired Mosaic AI two years back. Now you’re leading that team. What’s your current role and responsibility there and how has the scope of work changed after the acquisition, especially on the product side? **Craig Wiley:** I joined Databricks back in early 2022, pre-ChatGPT, and I thought I was coming to the most performant tabular machine learning system in the world. I still think Databricks has that, but I was here to work on that problem and then Gen AI hit and everybody went crazy for this technology. All of a sudden I used to joke that I used to have meetings with the head of data science, then I got to have meetings with the C-suite because they needed to understand this technology. We started helping them, built a vector database, and started building out all those components necessary, and then acquired Mosaic as part of that goal of trying to help our customers build and deploy any of these — at the time we didn’t use the word agents — we used the word Gen AI solutions. We acquired Mosaic to go after that problem. I’ve been leading product management both before and after the acquisition. **Bernard Leong:** How is the transition, like before ML ops now to LLM ops? Are the problems similar or different? Because now we are dealing with structured and unstructured data all at the same time. **Craig Wiley:** At some level they’re very similar. I’ve got data, I’ve got some models I need to interact with that data. I need to figure out how to deploy that in production in a stable, successful, and economical way. But in other ways they’re very different. With classical machine learning, we had statistics that would tell us precisely how accurate these systems were. Whereas with Gen AI and agents, the vast majority of folks don’t have the ability to generate a statistically valid way of understanding the accuracy or performance of this system. So helping companies figure out not just the mechanics of deploying this, but also how can you build these systems such that you can trust them, has been one of the primary challenges. To be honest, it’s one of the challenges that I’m most excited about because I think we’re really leading the charge in the industry on that. **Bernard Leong:** I would like to lay the groundwork here, right. What is Mosaic AI and how does it fit into, say, Databricks broader era of now going towards say, an AI platform strategy? **Craig Wiley:** Yeah, so Mosaic AI is the brand name we use to describe all of our machine learning and AI products, right. Just to simplify it for customers. But fundamentally, you know, Databricks is an end-to-end platform and you'll hear from others that kind of, you know, hey, our AI platform is end-to-end. But they often mean, you know, well, we start at training and we end at deployment for Databricks, we start at data ingestion. We go through the data ingestion, to data transformations, the analytics on top of that, the exploratory work that has to be done. Then also the kind of more technical machine learning or AI, you know, capabilities. So Mosaic is really that set of capabilities around model training and vector database and you know, text to SQL and these kinds of things that give us the tools we need to be able to build and deploy the agents that the customers want to have. **Bernard Leong:** So do you think that now, given that you also cover the ETL side — the extract, transform and load side — and then with the data ingestion coming into the data platform to do the model training all the way to model deployment, what does it mean in practice for customers thinking about Mosaic AI? **Craig Wiley:** The best way to think about this is with a simpler kind of classical machine learning. You can imagine the biggest problem we have seen for years in classical machine learning is the fact that often the data someone trains their model on ends up being different. They train their model on a set of data warehouse tables, then they go deploy it on production data, and the data in production ends up looking much different than the data in the data warehouse tables. At Databricks you go to that data warehouse table, click on the lineage tab, and immediately see the DAG that takes you back to production. All of a sudden this concept of training-serving skew is just gone because as a data scientist I can choose — do I want to use that downstream data warehouse table, or do I want to use that upstream table that might look more like production and might behave more like production? Whether that’s classical machine learning or Gen AI, having the ability to understand where that dataset came from and how that dataset was created is critically important in building machine learning and AI that you trust. **Bernard Leong:** And also reduce overfitting, right? **Craig Wiley:** That’s right, because you also want your training data and the production data aligned so that when the model is being trained, there’s no data drifting and then you can deploy as quickly as possible even if the data is from different pipelines. At most companies today, the model gets built by the data scientist and handed to the ML engineer who often has to rebuild the model for production. If we can help eliminate that step and allow the data scientists to ensure they’re using the right data and then just make it a couple of clicks to deploy, then we’re in a much better place with a much faster cycle time for these customers. **Bernard Leong:** So how does Mosaic AI have to simplify that process now for enterprises that want to build and deploy large language models? Is the process slightly different? Because there is also the alignment, fine-tuning piece. That’s actually also making the process a little bit more art than science. **Craig Wiley:** It is. Helping customers transform that from art to science has been one of our objectives. But helping companies figure out how to, not only effectively — for many of these models, they’re very large, it’s very complex to actually run them for model serving. Whether we help companies serve the models themselves or whether they use some of our pre-served models that they can just hit on a per-question or per-prompt basis, we want to make it just as easy as possible for them to do that so they can get those agents to market as quickly as possible. **Bernard Leong:** Because I teach retrieval augmented generation and fine-tuning to all the engineers in Singapore that are working in the government, one of the questions I probably want to ask you is: between both approaches, where is the value and how should enterprises think about choosing one over the other? **Craig Wiley:** In the last year we’ve really seen a change. A year ago it was really a split between whether fine-tuning was the right answer or whether using RAG or something like that was the right answer. In the last year or so, with these newer, much smaller, much more economical models, the need to fine-tune has become much less frequent. We see RAG used a lot more commonly for building agents, chatbots, or what have you. Where we do continue to see fine-tuning is many times folks are building what I think of as industrial use cases or agents. It’s going to do the same task thousands or millions of times. If you’re trying to do that same task millions of times, then fine-tuning the model to do specifically that task can both have the advantage of increasing the accuracy and allow you to fine-tune a much smaller, much more economical model. So now instead of having to hit a big model to do this task millions of times, maybe you can hit a model that costs 10 cents on the dollar to go after that. **Bernard Leong:** Do you see more customers thinking about doing more transfer learning given that you can now shrink the model size even further, and then specifically fine-tuning will actually become much more economical? **Craig Wiley:** Certainly some of our sophisticated customers are doing those kinds of things — whether it’s transfer learning, fine-tuning, or quantization and distillation of models. But we also see that with some of the flash models or the mini models that are out there, a lot of those tasks that were so important for the economics of this in the past are just not always as critical. They’re important when you want to move from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions, but if you’re only in hundreds of thousands, maybe you could just go with the existing model that’s out there. **Bernard Leong:** One question, because we’re talking about enterprise AI — it’s very important that the words security and governance come into play. How does Mosaic AI now help enterprises to deploy AI responsibly? I think it’s the appropriate controls, audit, and even the safety mechanisms that come in place, right? **Craig Wiley:** This is huge. For a lot of our customers, this is one of their primary concerns, particularly in regulated industries. The great thing about Databricks is that Databricks is a unified platform from data ingestion all the way through to Gen AI. There’s a common governance scheme, and we govern not just tables — we govern unstructured data, embeddings, and the vector database. We also govern access to the model. When you’re building an agent on Databricks, at each step you have to explicitly give it permission to this specific piece of data or this specific tool. **Bernard Leong:** Control up to that kind of level. **Craig Wiley:** Absolutely. Because that’s the level of control our banks and our hospitals need in order to do this with confidence and responsibility. **Bernard Leong:** That’s basically most enterprises. I think it’s on the top of their mind as well. Can you talk about, say, currently within the Databricks platform, what are some of the core innovations or unique edges that you think Mosaic AI can actually offer to the customers? **Craig Wiley:** Certainly the thing I’m most excited about is the recent announcement we had earlier this summer around Agent Bricks. Agent Bricks is really designed as a way of helping folks build agents, but it turns this problem on its head. Most of the vendors out there who are giving you these more accessible or easier ways to build agents are really focused on simplicity. We, while we wanted to make it simple, weren’t willing to make it simple at the cost of accuracy. The difference with Agent Bricks is it’s very evaluation-centric. The goal is to lure the customer into an evaluation loop so that they can continue to help drive the performance of the system. You’re not just saying, “Hey, give me a RAG system on this corpus of data.” You’re saying, “Hey, give me a RAG system on this, and then let’s go through some examples and see whether or not those examples are good or up to expectation or not. If they’re not, we’ll learn why not, adjust the system, move forward, and continue to do that until we can get to a level of accuracy that the customer is comfortable with.” **Bernard Leong:** So it’s a reinforcement learning mechanism for the enterprise. **Craig Wiley:** Exactly. Some would say it’s been reinforcement learning all along, since the beginning. But certainly, this idea of using reinforcement learning as part of an evaluation loop is a way of really driving accuracy beyond what anyone is currently able to do. **Bernard Leong:** As a practitioner, I myself look at all the different tools, so I know that Mosaic AI supports both open and proprietary models. I think how important now is model flexibility for enterprise customers from your perspective? **Craig Wiley:** I think it’s critical — the more models you have access to, the better. The reason I say that is we so frequently see in this evaluation platform we’ve got, it’s very easy to swap out the model, build an agent, swap out the model, and see if the other model performs better or not. All too often what we see is we may have an intuition about which model is best, but until you test them, you don’t know which one is going to be best for this. Having access to all of the models you possibly can is really a massive differentiator for both speed to market and accuracy. It’s one of the things I constantly advocate with customers: “I get that you may have a favorite — we all have a favorite model — but make sure you’re working and testing on all of the models.” **Bernard Leong:** So is there a mechanism now in the Databricks AI platform that allows me to A/B test this particular use case, say with different models — maybe it’s a proprietary one, maybe it’s an open-source one — and we just want to know what the evaluation looks like? **Craig Wiley:** Absolutely. If you take an agent and you run it through our evaluation system, you’ll get a score and you’ll see how many of the prompts and responses passed versus failed with the LLM judges we have set up. Then you put a new model into that agent, run it again, and you’ll see a diff: here are the ones that were green before and are red now, and here are the ones that were red before and are green now. It’s funny — when new models get launched, we often hear about it, but if we don’t hear about it, we immediately see it in the usage of our evaluation because customers immediately come and start testing to see if this new model that’s been released is better than the one they’re using. **Bernard Leong:** So, any interesting customer stories or real-world use cases globally where Mosaic AI is actually making a real tangible impact? **Craig Wiley:** Companies like Suncorp use Mosaic AI and the ability to choose which models they want to provide a SunGPT experience to accelerate the productivity of their employees. On the other hand, we see companies like AstraZeneca — the pharmaceutical company — who had 400,000 documents describing all of their clinical trials and challenges. They were able to bring these in, parse them, make sense of them, and make it so they could chat with them and use them systematically, run queries and analysis over them in ways they never had been able to before. This allowed them to derive critical net new insight from unstructured data that had previously been locked away in PDFs and other formats. **Bernard Leong:** Since you are now in town in the Asia Pacific region, what’s your sense of the current state of enterprise AI adoption? **Craig Wiley:** It’s been really exciting to see locally just how both excited and, let’s be honest, aggressive the companies I’ve met with here are — whether it’s building out platforms for their employees to build and deploy more of these systems or building critical, business-critical use cases on top of this. It’s been exciting to see and hear some of those stories. It’s a real breath of fresh air to see that this is happening globally. This is happening in every corner of the world now. **Bernard Leong:** The problems are not the same everywhere you go. **Craig Wiley:** Right, exactly. The solutions also — this idea of, “Do I have the ability to run an evaluation that can really help me gain confidence?” The CFO of your company is never going to let you deploy an agent into a critical workflow unless they know that it’s going to work effectively. Being able to help customers here use those tools so they can start pushing these systems into production has been really exciting. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting question — now a lot of companies are moving from experimentation to production. What kind of advice would you give them, thinking through the foundation model, the architecture for the right use case? It’s always tricky for the business owner to work out all these different choices and constraints. **Craig Wiley:** It’s been a challenge. They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something, and we’ve only had agents for about a year and a half in their current form. So no one has 10,000 hours. Building these things, they have lots of knobs and dials. People think, “RAG — oh, just put some text in a vector database and I’m done.” But no — there are different search strategies you might use, different chunking strategies you might use, different embedding strategies, all of these different things. This is why we’ve built Agent Bricks. The reason for Agent Bricks is so that you can come and describe the problem you’re trying to solve. Instead of having to be an expert in all these different chunking and parsing strategies, you can simply come describe the problem, bring in the data or point the system at the data, and we’ll take care of the rest and optimize it depending on your feedback over time. **Bernard Leong:** In the next couple of questions, it’s going to be fast going, so I’m going to start off with the first question. What’s the one thing you know about building enterprise generative AI platforms that very few people do? **Craig Wiley:** I hate to sound like a broken record here, but it’s eval, right? Eighty-five percent of companies today, or eighty-five percent of AI use cases, are being evaluated by the engineer who built it, saying, “Yep, seemed to work pretty well.” **Bernard Leong:** That’s interesting you mentioned that because I always tell the business owners, if you get your engineers to build this, you better have the correct evaluation test exactly for them. **Craig Wiley:** Right. Realizing the importance, I feel like my job is really educating folks on the importance of: “Hey, if you want to get this beyond…” Listen, if all you’re building is a system for you and your buddies to keep track of the documents you wrote last year, use Databricks, use anybody — we can help you do it, others can help you do it. But if you’re going to build a system that’s going to be critical to the business, that’s going to be important that it gets it right, then you can’t do that without evals. That’s the thing. My hope is that if 2025 was the year of agents, the back half of 2025 and 2026 is the year of evals and evaluation quality. **Bernard Leong:** Surprisingly, I get asked a lot on that question by the engineers that I teach on the course. So what’s the one question you wish more people would ask you about AI infrastructure, Mosaic AI, or anything related to building enterprise-grade AI architecture? **Craig Wiley:** I think you asked it before and it was around models and model usage. The vast majority of enterprises I work with — you walk in and they’ll say, “Oh yeah, we’re a company that uses model A. We use Model A and we only use Model A,” whether that’s OpenAI or Gemini or Claude or Llama or what have you. They’ll tell you until they’re blue in the face why that’s the only model they can use. I wish more of them would say, “Hey, what models should I be using?” because my answer would be easy: whichever models work best for the use case you’re building. **Bernard Leong:** Or maybe have a selection of models so that you can switch it out with a better cost-benefit analysis as well. **Craig Wiley:** That’s right. That’s exactly right. **Bernard Leong:** So what does great look like for Mosaic AI within Databricks for the next three to five years? **Craig Wiley:** We have our work cut out for us. I often joke that in this space right now, we often don’t even know the nouns of next year’s nouns. If you think back to last summer, if we had been having this conversation, we would’ve been talking about RAG, not agents. Now we’re talking about agents. Hopefully we’re talking about agents again next year, but if not, we’re going to be talking about something new and exciting. **Bernard Leong:** But do you think now with what Mosaic is building with Agent Bricks, you can now do a lot of orchestration work that you previously couldn’t do before that? **Craig Wiley:** Absolutely. Not only can you do it — you could do it before, you just had to build it yourself. You had to get out LangChain or the orchestrator of choice that you prefer. We support all the orchestration systems — I think we support 18 different orchestrators or something like this. You had to get out these orchestrators and build it yourself. With Agent Bricks, the goal is really to take that complexity away, simplify it, but continue to keep accuracy as the primary objective. Regardless of whether it’s agents, solutions, or systems, our goal is going to continue to be, “How can we help companies steer these systems to exactly how they want them to behave?” **Bernard Leong:** So, Craig, many thanks for coming on the show and giving me this valuable time with you so that I can ask you a lot about ML ops, everything else, and LLM as well. In closing, I have two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Craig Wiley:** One of the things that’s inspired me recently — and it was a huge surprise — was actually a conversation with a customer who’s using our ability to throttle the number of tokens their employees can use in models as lifecycle management for their Gen AI production. They could say, “Everybody gets this many tokens or this many prompts. If you want to build an agent, come to us and we’ll give you a larger budget. If you want to move that agent to production, show us your evals and we’ll give you even more.” The reason I say that is we didn’t build those governance capabilities for that. We built them for security, tracking, and monitoring. But I’m most inspired by the creativity of our customers when they use what we built to do something really exciting that we didn’t imagine they would use it for. **Bernard Leong:** In building technology it’s always about the people there. **Craig Wiley:** That’s right. That’s absolutely right. **Bernard Leong:** How do my audience find you and how do they keep themselves up to date with Mosaic AI and your work at Databricks? **Craig Wiley:** Certainly find me on LinkedIn — I’d love to connect with folks there. Pay attention to Databricks LinkedIn as well as Databricks on other socials. Certainly follow our CEO Ali Ghodsi — he always has a lot to say on the topic as well. Between those, they’ll have a broad source of great insights into how to build production agents. **Bernard Leong:** So many thanks for coming on the show and I look forward to having another conversation. **Craig Wiley:** I look forward to it as well. Thank you. **Part 1: Nick Eayrs from Databricks and Simon Fassot from Hafnia** **Part 2: Craig Wiley from Databricks** **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast. **Part 1: Nick Eayrs from Databricks and Simon Fassot from Hafnia** **Part 2: Craig Wiley from Databricks** - Youtube: [Part 1](https://youtu.be/pniobPg1EI4?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Part 2](https://youtu.be/6Rf8GzEdkhw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Apple Podcasts: [Part 1](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-truth-about-enterprise-ai-why-data-matters-with/id914868245?i=1000728365973&ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Part 2](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agent-bricks-and-how-data-ai-integration-changes/id914868245?i=1000728495399&ref=analysepodcast.com) - Spotify: [Part 1](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5S69pW1qSg2jZD9yJw6LUG?si=aC%5FhbJrbSVi7IEiUrEgX-w&ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Part 2](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1o7eFdJJX6dklrWctwK6ak?si=4qxz-FiwTrCUcXyZ4Xb9cA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - SoundCloud: [Part 1](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-truth-about-enterprise-ai-why-data-matters-with-nick-eayrs-and-simon-fassot?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Part 2](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/agent-bricks-and-how-data-ai-integration-changes-everything-with-craig-wiley?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Overcast FM: [Part 1](https://overcast.fm/+SMFs0L0xw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Part 2](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtFNbSg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Libsyn: [Part 1](https://traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/495%5FThe%5FTruth%5FAbout%5FEnterprise%5FAI%5F%5FWhy%5FData%5FMatters%5Fwith%5FNick%5FEayrs%5Fand%5FSimon%5FFassot.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Part 2](https://traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/495%5FAgent%5FBricks%5Fand%5FHow%5FData-AI%5FIntegration%5FChanges%5FEverything%5Fwith%5FCraig%5FWiley.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Why True Global Ventures secure the CMS Licence in Singapore & the future of AI & Crypto with Beatrice Lion URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/why-true-global-ventures-secure-the-cms-licence-in-singapore-the-future-of-ai-crypto-with-beatrice-lion/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:45.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Beatrice Lion, the chief executive officer and global partner from True Global Ventures, shares the remarkable story of how she became one of the youngest fund managers and the backstory to secure Singapore's Capital Markets Service license from MAS equivalent to Sequoia & Andreessen Horowitz's RIA licence in the US. Beatrice begins with her unconventional career journey from university straight into venture capital in 2017 and details TGV's investment thesis of backing only tested serial entrepreneurs across AI & blockchain applications. Beatrice offers her perspectives on the convergence of AI and crypto, the evolution of stablecoins as crypto's killer app, corporate treasury strategies such as Michael Saylor's Strategy with Bitcoin and Ethereum Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs), and why TGV maintains their performance-focused philosophy of keeping fund sizes at $100-200 million rather than chasing larger management fees. Last but not least, Beatrice shares what great would look like for TGV in the future. --- > "We took a longer time, there was a bit of roundabout, but the fact that we actually made like two or three times on whatever investment amount we did in the beginning - that for me was a very pivotal moment. Just because we didn't give up. The line between success and failure is so thin. So the impact of being a VC space is that you really can influence the technology founders that you back." - **Beatrice Lion** ### Profile: Beatrice Lion, Chief Executive Officer and General Partner, [True Global Ventures](https://www.tgv4plus.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatricelion/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and we're diving into how [True Global Ventures](https://www.tgv4plus.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) have just taken the major regulatory leap with getting their [Capital Markets Service](https://www.mas.gov.sg/regulation/capital-markets/apply-for-licensing-or-registration-of-capital-market-entities/cms-licence?ref=analysepodcast.com) (CMS) license from the [Monetary Authority of Singapore](https://www.mas.gov.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com). With me today is Beatrice Lion, Chief Executive Officer of True Global Ventures, to explore what this means for the future of investing, whether it is tokenized assets, whether it's AI, blockchain, stablecoins, crypto treasuries, and also continuation funds. But first of all, Beatrice, welcome to the show. **Beatrice Lion:** Thank you Bernard. Glad to be here today and thank you for having me on the show. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, you're probably one of the youngest chief executive officers to run a fund. So I want to first start off: How do you begin your career journey and what led you to the world of venture capital? **Beatrice Lion:** Thanks for asking that. So I actually started in 2017\. I met this initiator of True Global Ventures: Dušan Stojanović. I really believe in his vision and I thought that the venture capital industry in Singapore was just about to start developing and getting hot. So I started on venture capital really out of school. I did a finance and economics degree. All my peers went into banking, consulting, and the VC space was growing. I want to be in the frontier of technology. I want to be the one that brings new tech and be an early adopter as opposed to be like a mass adopter or a laggard. I want to bring that to my friends and I want to be the one that's saying that I backed this amazing company and new technology, so I'm a a techno enthusiast if you call it. I really like exploring new technology. So that's why I jumped into the VC world. So this moment actually with the venture capital license is a full circle moment for me because when we started True Global Ventures with really more investment vehicles as we were investing into companies that were basically in AI and blockchain. So the thesis has always been the same. However, what changed was that we decided at some point in 2018 that Dušan came up and said, "Why don't we start building it with LPs, who are pure financial investors?" So I was like, "Okay, this sounds like an amazing journey. It's the first time that I got an opportunity like that." So I was like, forget about all the opportunities, the banks and consulting companies - I can't let this ship sail. So that's what I did. At the end of 2018 we got the venture capital fund manager license. So it's definitely a much lighter license, but it was suited and fitted for our size at that point in time because we were doing a first time external money fund. So this point with the capital market service license is a full circle for me because I was the one who was driving the entire process getting the venture capital fund manager license in the first place end of 2018\. What we have right now is pretty exciting, I would say. **Bernard Leong:** We're going to get on that topic later. How do you eventually become the Chief Executive Officer? This is a pretty big initiative. When we talk about the capital markets license, people will understand the magnitude of what it means. For you starting from school, going straight into venture capital - because usually most venture capitalists in our Asia region tend to be either former investment bankers or business operators. My wife and I had a philosophy. We told our kids that none of them can become VCs unless you have worked before, and we will never support funding anyone of them who chose to do so. But that's our own preference as I believe that everybody's career journey is different. So how's your career journey like? **Beatrice Lion:** When I started, I was supporting a lot of our portfolio companies, so it's more like business development. Obviously, I didn't jump into the deep end of the pool. We started with focusing on adding value to our portfolio companies. I really like doing that because it's not just working with one portfolio. You have different technologies, different contexts. It always gets exciting because there isn't really a work scope. Every day was like a different experience. It was very trying, I always likened my job in my head to being like a fireman. Basically you're extinguishing fires all the time, supporting our portfolio companies and trying to help them with solving their problems, helping them with strategic thinking. So that's how I started as business development for our portfolio and managing that and helping them to grow. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to be involved in some of the turnarounds. Quite honestly, that was a very exciting time for us as well because a lot of VCs are proud of their unicorns or whatever that word really means right now. They're very proud of their successes. Of course, we are very proud of our successes as well. But I think we are equally proud of our turnarounds where we managed to derive something from the value of the company we've invested into, even when other VCs would've given up and said, this is a write off. One of the ones that I was very involved in. It's actually this platform for developers to solve bugs. Anyone could put like a bounty to solve a bug on this development platform. We actually sold it twice before we exited it. So the first part was when we sold, management basically decided that this is not growing super steep. This is growing super slow and we want to leave. So imagine a company without management, any other VC would've been like, okay, this is a write off. Because the team that I backed is not even there anymore. But obviously the Silicon Valley founders, they were comparing with their peers and they're like, all my peer companies are growing like that. This is so steady. Maybe it was too early at that point in time. So it was not exciting for them. What had happened was that we actually sold it to another company that was in the gig economy as well. They were seeing this opportunity and they were saying that, hey, why can't I actually just envelope that in, expand in the development space? So they did. We did sell it, but we stayed on the cap table. Some people might say, why are you staying on a cap table? Because we found the buyer. So we have to show the conviction that we still believe in this. Quite honestly, it's an amazing idea because even without management, the company could sustain because if there's a bug on the platform, they just put it out on itself. Then the payout goes. It's really the true form of where decentralization really started. You can have no management, but the company's still running. Then fast forward two years, same story repeated. The acquirers didn't take much care of the company. They just focused on the main business and they moved on. So they said, can you help me get rid of this asset again? So deja vu, but we repeated that story. This was roughly in February, 2020\. I remember we were in Paris. We were sharing a lot about portfolio companies. We do a lot of these events as well. During the dinner, we have mentioned that we have this portfolio company, they have an exciting client, IBM who really uses it. They have one of the strongest clients, which is IBM. We asked, "Is anybody interested?" That's where we found the second buyer. It's a Euronext listed company. That was when we actually got our exit, because then we got public shares as a swap on that. Obviously we got a lockup. When we did the deal, the company was valued about 30 Euro cents. Then when we exited because of the lockup period, we did everything between 2.50 to 3.00 Euros. So that's a pretty good multiple. Sure. We took a longer time, there was a bit of a roundabout, but the fact that we actually recovered, we actually made like two or three times on whatever investment amount we did in the beginning. That for me was a very pivotal moment that I saw that just because we didn't give up the line between success and failure is so thin. So the impact of being in the VC space is that you really can influence the technology founders that you back. **Bernard Leong:** But then you still tell me like most VC firms, right? They only have partners and usually they run more like law or consulting firms. Very rarely do you see venture firms formalize a CEO role—Andreessen Horowitz comes to mind, though even there it’s somewhat unofficial. So I was curious: what was the thinking behind establishing a formal Chief Executive Officer position at TGV? **Beatrice Lion:** Well, I got carried away and got too excited to talk about the turnaround story. **Bernard Leong:** It’s exciting talking about the firefighting journeys. Everybody loves a turnaround story, and I’ve always been drawn to them myself. **Beatrice Lion:** Exactly — especially a successful one. Basically, the role of a CEO isn’t about making every investment committee decision. I still have an investment committee for each fund. We have different committees set up, and I’m just one of them. But the good part of that turnaround story is that I earned some carry from it. That’s how I invested into my own fund. I wanted to commit a very significant portion of my own wealth because I wanted to be seen as a partner, not just an employee. That’s how it started. I have a seat at the investment committee table for our regulated Funds Five and Six. In essence, the CEO acts as the glue among our partners. Operationally, I make sure we fulfil governance and compliance requirements so we can run smoothly. It’s not just disparate partners doing their own thing — similar to a law or consulting partnership you mentioned — but rather a group of partners working together. I see myself as the glue, focusing on operational excellence and relationship building. Sure, it was intimidating to step up into this role. But I was empowered by our initiative to fund Dušan, who said, “You can be the glue. You have operational excellence — that’s more the execution piece. Why don’t we just put you up?” At that time, I was very intimidated. I was 28, about two years ago, when I really became CEO. It was a big responsibility, but I’m very glad my partners trusted me. They didn’t diminish my input just because I was younger or female. None of them did that — we’re a very flat organisation. I got the opportunity because my partners respected me as an equal, and that’s been very important for me. I don’t really see myself day-to-day as a “CEO” as much as operationalising and making sure our partners are aligned. We’re essentially one platform, one fund, one investment team — not just running our own separate shops. That’s how my role evolved, and it’s been useful because I was already acting as the glue among partners while helping with portfolio investments. I supported partners across their different investments, and that’s ultimately how I landed on this CEO journey. **Bernard Leong:** It’s interesting—securing the Capital Markets Services licence feels like part of a broader strategic push, one that requires a central coordinator among partners like yourself to drive it forward. But before we dive into today’s main topic, let me ask you this: reflecting on your journey so far, what are the most pivotal lessons you would share with our audience? **Beatrice Lion:** To be honest, I was initially intimidated about whether MAS would even approve me as CEO. As a regulated fund manager, every executive officer position must be approved by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. One of the moments that encouraged me most was how MAS approached the process. Yes, they asked detailed questions—whether I had sufficient experience to be a CEO, how many people I had managed before—it was an exhaustive list, close to sixty questions. The fact that they gave me a chance, rather than rejecting the application outright, signaled an opportunity. They didn’t diminish me because of my age or relative experience. Of course, if I had been an ex-investment banker with 20 years in the industry, approval would likely have been easier. But MAS clearly saw the importance of diversity—something we’ve always embraced at TGV. We have people across generations: some in their 50s, others in their 40s, and then myself—creating a deliberate handover of perspectives. Recognizing this opportunity inspired me to keep striving. When I saw that MAS hadn’t waved us off, I thought, ‘Okay, let’s really go for this.’ To be fair, Singapore’s regulators are often remarkably forward-looking, and this experience reinforced that perception. **Bernard Leong:** “Let’s turn to the main topic of today’s conversation. To begin, could you give me a comprehensive overview of True Global Ventures and restate your investment thesis in the global markets?” **Beatrice Lion:** “Certainly. We currently manage three active funds—Funds Four, Five, and Six. The numbering reflects our shift from earlier, unregulated investment vehicles to fully regulated structures under Innovation Fund Capital. Fund Four is our early-stage vehicle, a US$130 million fund from the 2021 vintage. We began warehousing deals as early as 2019, and although it took time to raise as a first-time fund, we closed its investment period in October last year and are now focused on harvesting returns. Thanks to strong performance, Fund Four is ranked in the top three percentile of its vintage in both DPI (Distributions to Paid-In) and TVPI (Total Value to Paid-In). Building on that success, we launched Fund Five, our growth-stage opportunity fund at US$166 million. Its goal is to double down on our best companies from Fund Four and invest in later-stage opportunities—typically Series B and beyond, defined as at least US$10 million in annual recurring revenue or US$5 million with 50–100% year-on-year growth. We still have more than a year left in the deployment phase and about US$50 million reserved for follow-on investments. We also recently closed the first round of Fund Six, our next early-stage vehicle, targeted at US$100 million as the successor to Fund Four. We deliberately keep fund sizes in the US$100–200 million range to optimise performance rather than management fees, and we invest significant personal capital alongside our LPs. Across these funds, our investment thesis focuses on **artificial intelligence and blockchain applications**. Fund Four leaned heavily into blockchain, Fund Five pivoted toward AI, and Fund Six will continue to develop our expertise at the intersection of AI and blockchain—one of our key differentiators. Geographically, we invest globally rather than regionally. We focus on North America, Europe, and Asia, specifically in eight cities where we have deep networks: San Francisco Bay Area, New York, London, Stockholm, Paris, Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. This global footprint provides proprietary deal flow and enables us to help portfolio companies expand across jurisdictions—another differentiator in our investment strategy. **Bernard Leong:** I recall Kelly once mentioning that TGV focuses primarily on serial entrepreneurs—meaning you typically back founders on their second or third startup rather than first-timers. Does that thesis still hold? **Beatrice Lion:** Yes, it does. We still prefer to fund experienced, tested entrepreneurs. We’ve made perhaps one exception, but our thesis remains consistent: founders who have previously built and exited a company simply operate more efficiently. They’re less likely to repeat early mistakes—such as diluting equity too heavily across multiple co-founders—and they tend to be more disciplined with capital, cost control, and staying lean when cash is tight. Even if their new venture is in a different industry, they bring with them a sharper instinct for pitching, investor relations, and building their own networks. First-time founders often need more time to adapt to these pressures, whereas seasoned entrepreneurs come with a playbook. That experience is a differentiator for us. **Bernard Leong:** That resonates. As a first-time entrepreneur you’re constantly searching for product–market fit, while as a second-time founder you’re more focused on distribution and scaling. Speaking of big milestones, we’ve touched earlier on the CMS licence from MAS in Singapore. Could you explain what that licence now enables you to do that wasn’t possible under the Venture Capital Fund Manager (VCFM) framework? **Beatrice Lion:** Under the VCFM framework we faced a major constraint: a maximum of 20% of the fund could be invested in secondaries or in companies more than ten years old. At first glance this may seem manageable for early-stage investing, but in practice it’s very limiting. Many companies delay fundraising during macro downturns to avoid down rounds or because they’re well capitalised. As follow-on investors, we like to maintain our stake across rounds—sometimes investing two to five times into the same company, even across multiple funds. That’s where the CMS licence becomes critical. It allows us to increase our exposure through secondaries even if the formal investment period has ended, preserving our percentage ownership when a portfolio company raises a new round later. This flexibility also helps us participate in opportunities with more mature companies—those with US$10 million ARR or US$5 million ARR growing 50–100% annually—especially in AI where adoption curves only accelerated post-OpenAI. The licence also positions us to invest in companies that stay private for a long time—think Stripe—and to treat the outdated 80/20 rule as less of a ceiling. The LFMC licence under the Capital Markets Services framework is broad: it covers multiple asset classes and gives us the structural flexibility to back winners longer, participate in continuation funds and secondaries, and manage our portfolio far more strategically than before. **Bernard Leong:** It’s remarkable—many people don’t realise how difficult it is to secure a CMS licence in Singapore. Typically, these licences are held by private banks or very established investment houses. Why is this regulatory upgrade significant for True Global Ventures? Beyond ownership limits above 20%, what does it mean for your LPs, your portfolio companies, and your positioning in Singapore and globally? **Beatrice Lion:** This gives us a huge boost. It’s rare for a VC to apply for such a significant licence because of the regulatory burden and cost involved. Traditionally, private equity or hedge funds seek CMS coverage to manage multiple asset classes. But increasingly we’ve seen top global venture firms—Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, Sequoia—adopt similar structures in the U.S. via Registered Investment Adviser licences to expand their scope beyond classic venture investing. We’re not the first globally, but we’re certainly early in Singapore. **Bernard Leong:** Getting the CMS licence here is quite similar to the U.S. RIA licences held by Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. Their calculus has been to move toward evergreen fund structures. Are you thinking along similar lines? **Beatrice Lion:** We’re looking at four main areas for expansion. The most immediate is a combination of secondaries and continuation funds. As our portfolio matures, we’re seeing winners heading toward IPO, but under the old VCFM framework we didn’t have a vehicle that could continue supporting them post-Fund Five. With the CMS licence, we can invest at a later stage, participate in both primaries and secondaries, and help clean up cap tables by buying out early angel investors—something founders appreciate at the growth stage. In fact, we’re already executing secondary transactions in our existing portfolio to increase our stakes. The second area is crypto funds. Previously, we couldn’t put cash into tokens—only equity—which meant leaving money on the table. The CMS licence removes this restriction. We’re not rushing to buy tokens en masse, but we now have the option to buy, hold, and time our token exposure strategically rather than liquidate automatically. Further down the line, we’re also considering a fund-of-funds model. This would let us back emerging fund managers much like an angel spreads bets across startups, leveraging our experience and network to guide new managers through the same challenges we faced as a first-time fund. Ultimately, the CMS licence doesn’t just give us regulatory flexibility; it’s the infrastructure to scale our strategy, deepen our role with portfolio companies, and open new verticals—from secondaries to tokens to fund-of-funds—while maintaining disciplined governance. **Bernard Leong:** I suppose these fund managers help you see companies much earlier in their lifecycle. Now you’re focusing on Series A, B and upstream rounds. Specifically in Asia there’s a gap in the A and B stages, whereas in the U.S. it’s more about growth investing. **Beatrice Lion:** Exactly. We still look at late seed rounds but we don’t do anything pre-revenue. Much of this deal flow could also come through a fund-of-funds structure if we set it up that way. Typically, we invest when companies have at least US$1 million ARR at the early stage or are just about to reach it. The reason is simple: our greatest strength is replicating traction through our network. If a company already has a clear client profile and product–market fit, we can scale that with introductions and partnerships. But if the model pivots too early—say a company targeting financial institutions suddenly changes direction—then all the introductions go to waste. We learned that post-revenue companies are a better fit for our platform and network, which is why we shifted away from pre-revenue deals. So to your point, yes—fund-of-funds could also be a source of deal flow. And in the medium to long term we’re looking at the opportunity for crossover funds. As companies approach IPO, we want to support them through that transition. For instance, after an IPO lock-up period, a company’s share price may dip and public markets may misread its fundamentals. We’ve seen this first-hand with listed companies like Forge Global, which went public in March 2022\. It’s a secondaries trading platform whose valuation fluctuates with the IPO cycle; when markets close, activity dips and it can trade near cash levels despite its underlying strength. Because we know these businesses so well, we can act on opportunities that public equity investors or analysts might miss. We could even invest directly as a fund and share the commercial upside with our LPs. That’s how we’re thinking about continuation funds, secondaries, and crypto funds in the immediate term, and fund-of-funds plus crossover public equities in the medium to long term. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s talk about secondaries. The 2021 and 2022 vintages were inflated and now we’re seeing down rounds and bridging rounds. I know several secondary investors who’ve been advised to approach LPs in this region. How do you plan to approach secondaries in your portfolio under these conditions, and why do you think it could be a game changer—especially when distressed assets might be at their most attractive? **Beatrice Lion:** The secondary opportunity has to be navigated carefully. In a private company’s capital stack, liquidation preferences create waterfalls. If the next round or IPO is priced below the last round, preferred shareholders get priority and common shareholders can be left with little. So we scrutinise the share class we’re buying and the preference structure. If we’re convinced the valuation is fair and the next round will be an up-round or a pre-IPO uplift, that’s when secondaries become attractive. Lower-preference shares typically carry a bigger discount, which can work in our favour if we’re confident in the company’s trajectory. But people jumping into secondaries without understanding liquidation waterfalls risk real losses because unlike public equities, private secondaries aren’t one clean class of shares. We’re also conscious that companies going public often don’t reach their last private valuation, so we’re disciplined on pricing. For us, secondaries lower our dollar-cost average and strengthen positions we already know well. We don’t run a pure secondary fund; we leverage our primary positions, board seats, and deep governance access to see the company’s true state and strategy. That’s information asymmetry pure secondary buyers can’t replicate. Founders also have little incentive to help pure secondary funds—they’re not injecting new capital—so existing investors like us can close secondary rounds more easily. One strong signal we look for is when a CEO personally takes a large secondary position to increase their own stake. For example, we’re seeing a CEO buying US$20 million of secondaries in his own company—an unmistakable green flag. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s switch gears to blockchain investment trends. Tokenised assets, stablecoins, and crypto treasuries have been hot topics, and TGV has been vocal about the convergence of blockchain and AI. From your vantage point, how is the blockchain landscape evolving today? **Bernard Leong:** I suppose these fund managers give you a window into companies at much earlier stages. Now you’re focusing on Series A, B and upstream rounds. Specifically, Asia is missing depth at the A and B stages, whereas in the U.S. we’re talking about growth investing. **Beatrice Lion:** Exactly. We still look at late seed rounds, but we don’t invest pre-revenue anymore. Much of our deal flow could also come through a fund-of-funds structure if we set it up that way. Typically, we invest when companies have at least US$1 million ARR or are just about to reach it. The reason is that our greatest strength lies in replicating traction through our network. If a company already has a clear client profile and product–market fit, we can scale that with introductions and partnerships. But if the model pivots too early—say a company targeting financial institutions suddenly changes its business model—then all those introductions go to waste. That’s why we shifted to post-revenue companies. So to your point, yes—fund-of-funds could also feed deal flow. And in the medium to long term, we’re looking at the opportunity for crossover funds. As companies approach IPO, we want to support them through that transition. After an IPO lock-up period, a company’s share price can dip and public markets may misread its fundamentals. We’ve seen this with listed companies like Forge Global, which went public in March 2022\. It’s a secondaries trading platform whose valuation fluctuates with the IPO cycle; when markets close, activity dips and it can trade near cash levels despite its underlying strength. Because we know these businesses deeply, we can act on opportunities that public equity investors or analysts might miss. We could even invest directly as a fund and share the commercial upside with our LPs. That’s how we’re thinking about continuation funds, secondaries, and crypto funds in the immediate term, and fund-of-funds plus crossover public equities in the medium to long term. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s talk about secondaries. The 2021 and 2022 vintages were inflated and now we’re seeing down rounds and bridging rounds. I know several secondary investors who’ve been advised to approach LPs in this region. How do you plan to approach secondaries in your portfolio under these conditions, and why do you think it could be a game changer—especially when distressed assets might be at their most attractive? **Beatrice Lion:** The secondary opportunity has to be navigated carefully. In a private company’s capital stack, liquidation preferences create waterfalls. If the next round or IPO is priced below the last round, preferred shareholders get priority and common shareholders can be left with little. We scrutinise the share class we’re buying and the preference structure before committing. If we’re convinced the valuation is fair and the next round will be an up-round or a pre-IPO uplift, that’s when secondaries become attractive. Lower-preference shares typically carry a bigger discount, which can work in our favour if we’re confident in the company’s trajectory. But people jumping into secondaries without understanding liquidation waterfalls risk real losses because unlike public equities, private secondaries aren’t one clean class of shares. We’re also conscious that companies going public often don’t reach their last private valuation, so we’re disciplined on pricing. For us, secondaries lower our dollar-cost average and strengthen positions we already know well. We don’t run a pure secondary fund; we leverage our primary positions, board seats, and deep governance access to see the company’s true state and strategy. That’s information asymmetry pure secondary buyers can’t replicate. Founders also have little incentive to help pure secondary funds—they’re not injecting new capital—so existing investors like us can close secondary rounds more easily. One strong signal we look for is when a CEO personally takes a large secondary position to increase their own stake. For example, we’re seeing a CEO buying US$20 million of secondaries in his own company—an unmistakable green flag. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s switch gears to blockchain investment trends. Tokenised assets, stablecoins, and crypto treasuries have been hot topics, and TGV has been vocal about the convergence of blockchain and AI. From your vantage point, how is the blockchain landscape evolving today? **Beatrice Lion:** It’s evolving rapidly—particularly around the financial layer, moving from ReFi into Web3 finance. We’re closely watching stablecoins and the tokenisation of asset classes. None of this is new; it’s been discussed since at least 2017, but now it’s becoming more tangible. Central banks have also moved into the space with CBDCs—central bank digital currencies—issued under strict governance rather than private players. **Bernard Leong:** China has announced plans to roll out a yuan-based stablecoin soon, right? **Beatrice Lion:** Yes. This is fascinating because most flows today are in USD-denominated stablecoins. At some point, every major country will want its own currency represented on the global stage. For China, a yuan-based stablecoin would extend the currency’s presence outside its borders. **Bernard Leong:** But based on what I’ve read, it’s still limited to China and Hong Kong. There’s no offshore distribution yet—unlike Tether, which behaves almost like a European money market fund, or Circle, which is backed by U.S. Treasuries. **Beatrice Lion:** Exactly. Managing capital controls is extremely difficult, which is why China has historically been cautious about cryptocurrency. Hong Kong has acted as its test bed—allowing experimentation, then feeding lessons back to the mainland. We’ve seen this firsthand with one of our portfolio companies, Animoca Brands, which has launched a joint venture with Standard Chartered and Hong Kong Telecom to build a Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin under the city’s new stablecoin legislation effective from 1 August. HKMA is keeping approvals tight—rumoured to be single-digit applicants—but a Hong Kong dollar-backed coin could serve as a gateway to yuan swaps. **Bernard Leong:** It’s a contrast to StraitsX in Singapore, which is a private-sector stablecoin while Singapore has chosen not to issue its own. Do you think national approaches will diverge further? **Beatrice Lion:** Yes, two schools of thought are emerging. The U.S. and Singapore have signalled they won’t launch their own CBDCs, preferring private-sector solutions. Meanwhile, the EU and others favour central-bank-issued digital currencies to retain tighter control. Private initiatives will always move faster, but government-backed efforts will continue in parallel. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s broaden the discussion to tokenisation beyond stablecoins. Real estate is often called the holy grail, but what asset classes do you see as most ready for tokenisation today? **Beatrice Lion:** I’m more focused on private stock tokenisation. It’s a clear process improvement rather than creating entirely new demand–supply dynamics. Real estate tokenisation has struggled with fragmented regulations, multiple stakeholders per unit, and foreign ownership issues. By contrast, private market stock already trades on secondary platforms. Our portfolio company Forge, for example, is well-positioned to do this and has discussed it publicly in its Q2 earnings call. **Bernard Leong:** Here’s a provocative scenario. Suppose I’m a private investor who creates an SPV to buy a lot of Nvidia stock, tokenise it, and then trade it. Wouldn’t that worry the public company whose stock is effectively being shadow-traded as a tokenised asset? **Beatrice Lion:** Exactly. At that point you’re essentially running a public-company exposure in a private wrapper. That’s why we’re seeing pushback. OpenAI and Anthropic have already criticised such SPVs because they obscure beneficial ownership and jurisdictional reporting. **Bernard Leong:** It’s essentially a shadow liquidity pool for stock that’s hard to control. **Beatrice Lion:** Yes, and that’s why institutional players are moving toward regulated platforms. Forge, for instance, works directly with issuers so transactions respect rights of first refusal and shareholder agreements. The only real difference tokenisation brings is 24/7 settlement and broader investor access. Smart contracts can embed listing rules and restrictions, but they need to be audited and overseen to avoid abuses. We learned this ourselves—Forge evolved from SharesPost and Forge merging, and early on SharesPost faced SEC fines because the regulatory playbook wasn’t established. These are growing pains for any new financial technology or platform. Today Forge operates as an Alternate Trading System under U.S. regulations. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s talk about stablecoins specifically. I’ve always felt they’re the killer app for crypto—even if under-discussed. They’re the foundation of DeFi. How do you assess the evolving stablecoin landscape and the convergence of fintech and crypto rails? **Beatrice Lion:** I’m excited about the intersection of AI and blockchain here. Think about AI agents performing routine tasks but getting stuck when it comes to payments or settlements. No bank will let an AI agent open an account at DBS or OCBC. But stablecoins enable autonomous agents to settle micro-transactions or pay each other without volatility risk. **Bernard Leong:** You could apply that to trade finance too. Imagine an ERP system holding a “penny” stablecoin to settle tiny, perishable payments at 0.02% cost instead of using credit cards or cross-border wires. As a crypto investor, wiring US$30,000 with stablecoins is totally different from remitting via a bank. **Beatrice Lion:** Exactly. Stablecoins fill gaps where Web2 rails can’t reach. We’re already seeing Visa Crypto and Coinbase build this infrastructure. Healthy competition between crypto-native players and traditional fintech will accelerate adoption. **Bernard Leong:** So Coinbase is becoming more like an infrastructure company, while Robinhood is positioning as a super-app? **Beatrice Lion:** That’s how we see it. Coinbase’s crypto-native community gives it a faster growth path, while Robinhood comes from a retail-brokerage angle. Both have resources, but different DNA. Healthy competition prevents monopolies and drives innovation. My bet is on Coinbase in the infrastructure race because of its community and existing rails. **Bernard Leong:** Base app is impressive. Sending Bitcoin is now far easier than ever before. **Beatrice Lion:** A hundred percent. I can easily imagine paying entirely in stablecoins in the near future without needing on-ramps or off-ramps—simply holding value in stablecoins and transacting seamlessly. **Bernard Leong:** Now that more jurisdictions are developing regulations for stablecoins, how do you foresee the impact—specifically in Asia and also globally? **Beatrice Lion:** The pace is uneven. Many still look to the U.S. as the benchmark. With the U.S. signalling it won’t issue its own CBDC and passing the so-called “Genius Act” to regulate stablecoins, the rest of the world is watching. Korea and Japan are already developing their own stablecoin frameworks. In Asia, the question is how each country will position its own currency. Every government wants its own money used domestically rather than defaulting to U.S. dollars. Whether through private or public routes, central banks and policymakers must decide how to compete and stay relevant. **Bernard Leong:** We’re also seeing a wave of “on-chain treasuries” modelled after Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin strategy at Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy—large corporate reserves in crypto. Some firms are now exploring Ethereum as “digital asset treasuries” or DATS (in short) and even Solana. These are often called the three blue-chip crypto assets. How are you seeing this trend evolve, and is it a viable playbook for Web3-native or traditional companies? **Beatrice Lion:** We’re past the point where simply copying a “Bitcoin strategy” stands out. The first-mover advantage is gone and FX plays have been done in multiple jurisdictions. For example, in Japan we saw MetaPlanet adopt a Bitcoin treasury model, while in Europe we backed a firm pioneering a euro-linked blockchain treasury. These strategies allow local investors to gain exposure without incurring FX risk, but they’re no longer novel. Looking ahead, companies moving from Bitcoin to Ethereum or Solana should ensure any treasury strategy directly supports their core business. It can’t be purely speculative or just a way to attract investors. Ideally, it should function as a basket of assets that strengthens the company’s operations, product or customer base. Without an innovative angle, you’re simply the next “Bitcoin strategy company,” and that won’t attract capital. **Bernard Leong:** It’s also not a winner-take-all market. Looking at stock value versus asset value, MicroStrategy trades at a 1.6x multiple, but it’s unclear where Ethereum or Solana treasuries will settle. Perhaps only one or two leaders survive, while others go sideways. **Beatrice Lion:** Exactly. Investors gravitate to market leaders with deep capital pools. New entrants need significant firepower—like 21Shares with SoftBank backing—to gain credibility. Otherwise the middle tier gets squeezed. Any company pursuing this play must ensure the strategy benefits its portfolio and differentiates it strategically. **Bernard Leong:** Critics say a big whale—say Michael Saylor or a major Ethereum holder—could tank a competitor’s token by dumping. Couldn’t that destabilise treasuries? **Beatrice Lion:** That’s precisely what foundations worry about: systemic risk. Without a unified regulator across jurisdictions, governance falls to the foundations themselves. They must create guardrails to prevent large holders from destabilising markets. It’s a structural challenge similar to currency management in the fiat world. **Bernard Leong:** From your viewpoint, what are the nuances of using Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana as treasury assets? There’s volatility, custody, and staking yields. How should founders think about allocation among these blue-chip coins? **Beatrice Lion:** We don’t dictate allocation, but we do impose discipline. Since the ICO boom of 2015–2016, we’ve required portfolio companies to cap crypto holdings at 20% of treasury and rebalance as prices move. The remaining 80% stays in fiat or stable assets. This ensures they can pay employees and operating costs even if the crypto market crashes. Founders often resist—especially in a bull run—but this discipline protects them when prices fall. We’ve learned hard lessons and won’t compromise. As board members we enforce this governance to ensure sustainability. **Bernard Leong:** Crypto cycles also shift dramatically. Many say the traditional four-year cycle may extend to 2025–2026\. Where do you stand on that? **Beatrice Lion:** Regulation may stretch the cycle, but boom-and-bust dynamics will persist. The key isn’t timing the cycle but building companies able to survive crashes. Founders who’ve endured downturns are more resilient and have stronger communities to support them through volatility. That’s a major differentiator we look for. **Bernard Leong:** I find crypto most interesting during downturns. The community is friendlier, and trading opportunities are clearer. During booms I just watch. On TGV’s own treasury—how do you think about balancing fiat, stablecoins and high-conviction assets? **Beatrice Lion:** Right now we hold cash. We’re not yet managing our own investment monies in a crypto split, but the CMS licence gives us room to consider it. An interesting point raised at our last event by Tim Draper was: how long before we see a fully Bitcoin-native ecosystem—funds raised, invested, distributed, and taxed entirely in Bitcoin? Some believe the U.S. dollar’s depreciation versus Bitcoin could accelerate that shift. We’ve even debated holding Swiss francs as a hedge. But whatever the asset mix, the thinking remains the same: align treasury strategy with the business, manage risk, and keep governance discipline. **Bernard Leong:** Traditionally Bitcoin correlates with the S&P 500 and behaves like a tech stock. After recent elections, it’s started decoupling and acting as an inflation hedge. **Beatrice Lion:** Yes, inflationary pressures are shifting the narrative. This isn’t financial advice, but dollar-cost averaging into Bitcoin alongside an S&P 500 index can be more sustainable than timing the market. **Bernard Leong:** I still think of Bitcoin as digital gold. **Beatrice Lion:** As part of a permanent portfolio strategy, Bitcoin functions as digital gold—one component of a diversified allocation. **Bernard Leong:** I have three more questions before we close. First, what’s the one thing you know about TGV and venture capital that very few people do? **Beatrice Lion:** For us at TGV, one key differentiator is how much “skin in the game” we put into our funds. In the U.S., the average GP contribution to a VC fund is around 1%—and often that’s offset against management fees rather than being true cash. We go far beyond that. We invest significant personal capital alongside our LPs, which completely aligns our interests. We make money only when our LPs do, and we devote all our time and capital to growing these investments. It’s not a secret sauce, but it’s a principle we execute relentlessly. **Bernard Leong:** Nothing beats genuine skin in the game. What’s the one question you wish more people would ask you about TGV, blockchain, or AI but they don’t? **Beatrice Lion:** I wish more people would ask about the intersection of blockchain and AI. Too many focus on blockchain purely as finance, or AI purely as applications, but the overlap is rich with opportunity. We began exploring it as early as 2018—although back then the projects were immature. Today we see potential in areas such as stablecoin payments for AI agents, or micro-payments rewarding open-source developers based on usage. This convergence is where some of the most interesting breakthroughs could occur. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, hindsight is always 20/20\. My traditional closing question: what does “great” look like for True Global Ventures in its next chapter now that you’re operating under a CMS licence? **Beatrice Lion:** In the short term, “great” means focusing on our existing portfolio and continuing to deliver strong returns for Fund Four. For Fund Five, it means executing well on secondaries at lower dollar-cost averages. Setting up each portfolio to be primed for harvesting is critical. We’re not deviating from venture investing—that remains our core—but over the medium to long term, “great” would mean successfully exploring new strategies enabled by our CMS licence: a dedicated crypto fund, public equity plays, or a fund-of-funds model. If we can materialise and raise capital for these initiatives, that will validate the thesis behind securing our licence. **Bernard Leong:** Beatrice, many thanks for coming on the show. If my kids ever decide they want to jump straight into venture capital, you’re the one person I’ll point them to before they even try—because their parents won’t support it! In closing, any recommendations or ideas that have inspired you recently? **Beatrice Lion:** Rather than a recommendation, I’ll share a conversation I had with another VC fund manager. He’d scaled his fund from US$100–200 million to US$500 million and then to US$1 billion. His takeaway was that while bigger funds boost management fees, they make it harder to deliver the same returns as smaller, more agile funds. That reinforced our belief in staying with our US$100–200 million sweet spot. For us, it’s not about playing the management fee game; it’s about the performance game. That reflection has been invaluable. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you and learn more about True Global Ventures? **Beatrice Lion:** You can find us on our website, True Global Ventures, or connect with me on LinkedIn. We also host regular events—both online and in-person—where we showcase portfolio companies and thought leadership. Anyone interested can reach out through our channels to explore potential collaboration. **Bernard Leong:** Perfect. We’ll definitely go deeper into AI the next time we talk. You can find this and other episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and our LinkedIn newsletter. Beatrice, many thanks for coming on the show—I look forward to speaking with you again. **Beatrice Lion:** Thank you, Bernard. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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In this raw conversation, Michael offers his unflinching perspective on what he calls the 'broken windows era' of Southeast Asian tech, arguing that recent alleged fraud cases like E-Fishery and Tanihub require serious consequences to restore investor confidence, while questioning whether the region was ever correctly modelled for Silicon Valley-style outcomes. Daniel shares his pivot from startup founder to search fund advocate, explaining his bullish view on acquiring profitable traditional businesses and reflects on whether the region's potential was genuinely unrealized or simply impossible to achieve. Together, they explore the shift from venture-backed unicorn dreams to bootstrap realities, debate work ethic of Southeast Asia founders in comparison with Chinese & Indian founders, and discuss why the future of Southeast Asian tech may lie in smaller, profitable exits rather than the massive IPOs once envisioned. --- > "I think wealth creation here is very SME-focused." - **Daniel Cerventus Lim** > "Basically whether, it's SME or startup, to me now it's just: can you build a profitable business?" - **Bernard Leong** > "I have this philosophy that I think people don't agree with me, but we're in a broken Windows era of Southeast Asia and the only way in my opinion, the windows get fixed is if some of these people are behind bars." - **Michael Smith Jr.** ### Profile: - Michael Smith Jr., Cloud Evangelist, [Oracle](https://www.oracle.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Co-host, [The Generalists Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/@TheGeneralistsPodcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/smittysgp/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Daniel Cerventus Lim, Daniel Cerventus Lim, semi-retired entrepreneur, Community Builder in Malaysia and TEDxKL founder. ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cerventus/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and this reunion is a long time coming. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Hello. Hi, Daniel. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. Hello. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Oh, sorry. Bernard. That's a cool open, right? We're keeping this light, but this started way before Analyse Asia. What I'm trying to say is, I can't remember the exact date, but I remember like we're talking before podcasting was technically a thing. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** It was around there, like early podcasting days. But I'm just saying, can you imagine, have we continued? **Michael Smith Jr.:** 2009 is when we started, like we even own the whole Asia ecosystem but 'cause no one was doing it then, right? **Bernard Leong:** It's a weekly show, man. It was so tiring. We can always restart it back. People these days like retro anyway. **Michael Smith Jr.:** That's good. If you had those years in arrears, as in we had kept going, we have now nice setups here, like in stereo. When did you pick up and do Analyse Asia? **Bernard Leong:** That was 2014\. 2nd September. **Michael Smith Jr.:** So, about a year or two in between when we stopped the podcast. **Bernard Leong:** We stopped somewhere around 2012\. **Michael Smith Jr.:** That's what I'm saying. We were so early. It was crazy. I mean, it's all, it was like manual files. You'd upload the files. Oh my God. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Do you remember? There's no Zoom. There was Skype. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. I want to first introduce both of you. Why don't you introduce yourself. Maybe I start with Daniel first and then go ahead. Michael's now a podcaster. You coming into the game? He's the guest. **Michael Smith Jr.:** He's the guest. I'm the guest. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** I'm the guest. Hi. I am Daniel, from Malaysia. I run a community of entrepreneurs, semi-retired back for a while. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Can you explain the retired thing? I'm confused. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** About six years back, I felt ill. I told my partner to buy me out and, so we had cash. I just decided to focus on my health, focus a lot on my health travel. Then I end up building a community of now 234,000 members now. So, but it's just for fun. Pretty much. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Malaysia community now? **Bernard Leong:** You come to Singapore more often these days, right? **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Yes, I'm in Singapore for personal and business reasons too, good reasons. Smitty. **Bernard Leong:** I'll leave it as that. I'm gonna get this. Come on. Smithy. You should introduce yourself now. Now you are podcaster as well. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Not so much that, so yeah. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Smitty or Michael? **Michael Smith Jr.:** Does not matter. We're here in Singapore, which I'm involved in. So I think this has been pretty amazing for the Singapore ecosystem in general, not just for podcasting. That's a lovely place like creators and the community events and stuff, so yeah, it is cool. So, I work at Oracle. I should disclose that so I don't get in trouble. Then yes, I'm trying to podcast. I've been at it about a year of [Raz Kotler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/razko282?ref=analysepodcast.com) and me. It's hard, you know it. Yes, I know it, it's been harder than I thought actually. It's called [The Generalists Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/2apfGY403NGr1EyTNkJfG4?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** The generalists podcast, yes. **Michael Smith Jr.:** You'll put it in the show notes. But it's fun. We're learning and we do it all ourselves. Yeah, I'm gonna keep at it. Keep kind of evolving 'cause we are 16 years later. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** 16 years later? **Michael Smith Jr.:** I do wish I had just kept going with you guys. But you know, hindsight's 2020\. So maybe nowadays people like retro, maybe we can get This Week in Asia back. Maybe we do this monthly or something. Daniel's in town more often for some reason. Maybe that's something we can do. **Bernard Leong:** So we can cover the topics of the day? **Michael Smith Jr.:** The good news for us is that we have seen the entire evolution \[of Southeast Asia\], should we say, should we say that's kind of what we are used to. This is, 'cause this is different than your show, right? What we used to do, I think it predated Google Docs too. I can't remember. No, we were using Google. Were we? **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Yes we are using Google sheets then. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Yeah, they are with us all the while. Yeah. But we used to just like we did this week, put a bunch of topical items in the sheet. We're not copying all in by the way. 'cause we were around before, all in the, and we just chat about it, right? Take contrarian views and enjoy ourselves for an hour and then somehow figure out how to edit it and upload it and all that crap that we had to them. Yeah. We have five guys, remember? **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. There was also [Mike Foong](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikefoong/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [John Lim](https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-lim-a0a378/?ref=analysepodcast.com) who unfortunately couldn't join us for today, but you know, because we did this just last minute. Where are they now? **Michael Smith Jr.:** Where are these people these days? Oh, Mike, John **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** John is doing a lot of whiskey stuff. This isn't a whiskey ecosystem, basically. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Okay, got it. He's gonna start podcast on whiskey too. I think they do. But I'm not too sure. But we also used to have the folks from the various tech sites all around the region basically. We used to invite people over the different sites: [Rama](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmamuaya/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Jon Russell](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmarussell/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Yes, yes. Quite a number of, random folks. Actually, I keep trying to get John on, but he never leaves Bangkok. So yeah. Hey John, if you're listening, you can go to your butt over to Singapore. We can also get a partner in Thailand. There are studios I believe. Yeah, there's one there I think. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Last I saw Jon was at a wedding. **Bernard Leong:** So let's get in on the topics. So it is not just this area having a problem. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I just heard on one of the shows \[Techbrew podcast\] where I was listening on the car that 18% of the latest rounds for non-AI related stuff have all been down rounds in the States, which is pretty big number. Now you see it happening here. Sorry, we'll name names. It's no offense to people. What happened to [Ninja Van? Cut in half](https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/singapore-ninja-van-said-halve-210114454.html?guccounter=1&guce%5Freferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce%5Freferrer%5Fsig=AQAAALebPLdsoggAcm1fROFlAee9pUsgfOHj4jHunU4xizzd5csBLCV3mkibsXPXAiWmGqgZWHcw4BKwokM1ItoZ4a9wLNALPAWM3Xyuy0nJQcjqrapUqN5cbX0ME1QoUSxyaBkTK3I%5FfYi86jRH3MJjGb2caS-DyjJeVWLRwGYCPKPJ&ref=analysepodcast.com), arguably, probably always overvalued. Now it's just coming into reality. I hear there's more coming along those lines. 'cause there's a cycle. These guys that all need to raise 'cause they haven't in a couple years. There's no way it's gonna be done on normal. A couple of alleged frauds: [Zilingo](https://inc42.com/features/zilingo-house-of-cards-how-founders-burnt-millions-and-the-company/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Efishery](https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/efisherys-vendor-fraud-case-investigation-446411?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Tanihub](https://www.techinasia.com/news/exmdi-ventures-ceo-detained-tanihub-probe?ref=analysepodcast.com). I cannot think it's just Indonesia. But it's getting probably worse there. **Bernard Leong:** There's one in Philippines, right? The first unicorn was [Preformatted Revolution](https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/revolution-precrafted-robbie-antonio-228407?ref=analysepodcast.com). All the stories were reported by Deal Street Asia and a couple of the other outlets as well. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I have a story of meeting that guy. When I was at Seedplus, they wanted to meet. There was something in Singapore 'cause they were here and they wanted to meet exactly this time at this cafe or something. I was like, "Look, here's my schedule. I can't make that time." Then it was basically like: "We don't wanna meet you." I am like, "Okay, fine. Glad it went well." There's always these optics of when people are little too weird and demanding. It tells you something. I think Efishery \[fraud\] is epic. Now you have Tanihub, which is finally what? Yes, they actually grabbed one of the VCs. I'll leave that one alone 'cause I know that person too. But you could imagine where there's smoke, there's fire. There must be many more of them. **Bernard Leong:** The Efishery thing is getting scary because the perpetuated fraud is sophisticated and was round tripping where people didn't see coming. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Tanihub appears to be round tripping as the same thing with a financier being involved in the process. That's the one thing I wonder with Efishery, is whether there's probably a financier involved. There have been a few people and again, I'm not gonna name names. There's a few people have now gone dark on LinkedIn. Yes. In the Indonesian ecosystem that are part of that circle of financiers. You can't communicate with them anymore and they don't post. So one wonders what's going on, but I don't see how you do something at the scale of Efishery where there wasn't the capital stack. Somewhat involved as a guess and they are definitely involved in Tanihub. Right. Where else is this stuff? **Bernard Leong:** It's surprise to me that [Bloomberg painted such a sympathetic picture to the Efishery](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-05-06/big-take-asia-ceo-s-fakery-sparked-300-million-crash-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Michael Smith Jr.:** Comically bad. **Bernard Leong:** I was very surprised. Usually if this would've be in The U.S. the guy would have been skewered to death by now. I'm doing this to help people. There's always the optics about this region. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** There's so much growth, there's so much potential and you don't to like poison the well. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Supposed to be, you know, this is the Bloomberg. I think what, where \[Jon\] Gruber, every time he writes about Bloomberg, [he writes](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/02/12/bloomberg-big-con?ref=analysepodcast.com), "This is the thing that did the thing about the chips that turned out to be fake and they've never recounted it." Right. So yeah, something like that. They're just people too, let's be honest. But yeah, that was a comically bad. Like, let's make this guy like a hometown hero who happened to make a mistake. **Bernard Leong:** I see Jeremy in his [BRAVE Southeast podcast](https://www.bravesea.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) keep talking about this. A lot of the local community are really frustrated about what had just happened. **Michael Smith Jr.:** With that article or just in general, if you talk to anybody, the funds are having a hard time raising money. The startups are having a hard time raising money. I know a few fairly good friends in the Indonesian ecosystem, and they're basically like, "We're screwed." Like even if we're legit, we're having a hard time raising money. I have this philosophy that I think people don't agree with me, but if, if I think it's, I have to look this up. I think it's in the seventies or something. It was Mayor Giuliani, who's kind of a nut job himself. But he had this philosophy that *if you have broken windows, you gotta go fix them up to make the place look better, otherwise people won't.* Personally, I'm definitely repeating this at this point, we're in a broken windows era of Southeast Asia, and the only way in my opinion, the windows get fixed is some of these people are behind bars. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. I agree with you, a 100%. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Until some of the countries go all the way and there's people doing time. I suspect there's not a good bounce back from that because we've basically been painted into this. It's not a very trustworthy, now we can all say, oh, if you have a Singapore top coat, okay, fine. But generally speaking, we're all being painted with a fairly wide brush that's making it hard for funds. It's definitely gonna impact the exit market. I think, you know, the returns have not been great anyway. Yeah. So then the DPIs were very bad. **Bernard Leong:** Is there any who have a better DPI, for example, Vertex Ventures who's behind Grab and Spacemob? **Michael Smith Jr.:** Yeah, they have returns. They return capital on DPI. I, but this is the region and the aggregate return is very bad. I heard from somebody when I was at the E27 conference where someone joked about that. Seriously, they said that in one quarter, the only DPI came out of secondaries. Of course that's the other thing that makes me mad that some people have made money from being able to sell their inflated share. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** That's actually a statistic that one of our partners pull up. I think the paper is not out yet till September. A lot of the exits that where people make money is like doing the seed to Series A round. Basically that's right. Secondaries, anything beyond that is like, you are just like sitting waiting for go to strike. But it's gonna be difficult, right? Because there's some seed funds still available. **Bernard Leong:** But now, there will be no more A or B rounds. I think B rounds are virtually gone. The A round is in danger of disappearing because the VC funds, even they get to the third fund, they cannot proceed because the DPI is so freaking low. I heard that some first funds are in trouble as well. Then where are we going to go? **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** It's about time for them to actually return the fund anyway/ **Michael Smith Jr.:** Der Shing's pretty good at that. He's the founder of Angel Central. He sold his startup with no capital raise. He talks a lot about a reckoning that has to happen, right? He even wrote about Ninjavan which had to be cut in half. His view is that a lot of things that's coming and funds and maybe some people getting in trouble. Then on the other side of this, maybe there's a reset around B2B. 'cause remember this also has this like B2C era that didn't really work. Not enough. B2B thinking Southeast Asia is this autonomous addressable market and it's not. Then also probably not enough B of the world type of startups that, you know, it's all gotta have a reset. I know from. Talking to people like Tiang and Jeremy Tan, of course they're believers and they'll say the most positive things they can 'cause it's the business they're in. But I think generally everybody feels like it needs to get cleaned up, right? **Bernard Leong:** But then you also see bootstrap companies do well, and I want to be very clear here, and I've been saying it. Which category are you in with your startup? I'm currently in the AI space and I have just seedstraped one round. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Do you raise family and friends, right? But they're not VCs. **Bernard Leong:** Well, there is a VC involved but they came in pre-seed for my startup. I have raised from Orvel Ventures. No, I think there's a big move towards that and I'm encouraged by it. They won't create the size of companies though that are venture backed for the ones that can do well. But maybe that's okay. It's the new reality of it basically. But I had Mohan on the show and he was talking about that you don't need that kind of billion dollar outcomes, if you can get to say somewhere between 50 to a hundred million exit ramp, it's still possible. Even if it's a dividend even, it's to, you know, return by maybe 18 to 20 x. **Michael Smith Jr.:** That is actually correct. I think founders can do quite well. Like there's the one listing that's happening at SGX, it's HR Tech. Basically they did not raise any funds. Yes. They own a lot of it. You know, a few hundred million dollars IPO is gonna put more money in their pocket than probably a couple percentage ownership of something that's a hundred. **Bernard Leong:** A HR software. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Yeah. Surprisingly. It's old, right? **Bernard Leong:** You would be surprised to learn that Airbus and Rolls Royce are among the many European companies that use this particular software. It's classic enterprise software with an interface that looks like something from the 1990s, but it works for them and makes money. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** That's what we need. **Michael Smith Jr:** People need to realize that this isn't going to look like Silicon Valley, India, London, or other major markets. Southeast Asia is going to be smaller. The outcomes are going to be smaller. That wasn't what was originally intended or what people thought could happen - otherwise you wouldn't have seen a $40 billion SPAC in our backyard if people were thinking in terms of hundreds of millions of dollars. My hypothesis for many people in the startup world, especially in B2B, is simple: get on a plane and move to America if you want a bigger business. If you want this lifestyle and to live here, you'll need to reset expectations. It's not going to look like the Valley. **Bernard Leong:** Exactly. It's not going to look like the Valley. The way I'm thinking about my business now is actually targeting markets outside of Singapore - the more developed cities of Asia Pacific. I'm not talking about Cambodia or Thailand in Southeast Asia, but rather Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, or the top-tier cities of broader Asia. Even Taiwan is considered a reasonable market. This has changed my perspective significantly. I also want to point out that Malaysia has some of the most interesting crypto companies - successful ones like [CoinGecko](https://coingecko.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Etherscan](https://etherscan.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and others that have been quite successful. Also [Virtuals](https://app.virtuals.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which I am a happy advisor. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Malaysia has always had an interesting relationship with crypto. You have Jupiter there as well. **Bernard Leong:** Jupiter is there for Solana, yes. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** There's a whole series of them clustered together. The triumvirate of CoinGecko, Etherscan, and Jupiter seems to fund a lot of other projects, and there's a strong network and ecosystem there. **Bernard Leong:** They've also funded some breakout companies in Singapore, like [Nansen AI](https://nansen.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which was backed by [Andreessen Horowitz](https://a16z.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). So we do have some good companies in the region. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I wasn't saying there are none - I'm saying there's suspicion about whether there are enough quality companies to support as many funds as we currently see. That's my concern. There was that Indonesian company that just sold to a PE firm, though I'm blanking on the name. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** The key point about these crypto companies is that their market isn't Malaysia, Singapore, or Southeast Asia - it's global from day one. That's the reality. **Bernard Leong:** What I find interesting about Malaysian crypto companies is that they've also become angel investors in some of the most promising crypto companies, both regionally and globally. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** It's become part of their culture. They take bets on new projects and stick with them. This approach keeps snowballing and expanding what they're doing. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting because when I was investing in crypto, I kept encountering the same Malaysian investors - When we were looking at seed deals, even companies I didn't know personally, like one HQ.xyz that was recently acquired by Gnosis, I'd find out through connections like Sharon Paul that these Malaysian crypto investors were already involved. Once there's an interesting crypto company in the region, they're definitely there. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Some of these companies like CoinGecko target particular countries because of regulations and launch strategies. But many just build a product that anyone globally can use, which gives them a much larger addressable market. Most other Southeast Asian startups can't do that - they're stuck with the traditional approach of "I'm going to launch in Thailand, then Vietnam," which limits their scale. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** That's exactly the problem. Companies are always looking at different cities, hiring country managers here and there. I don't think that structure actually works in this region. When you try to scale that way, it becomes very difficult. **Michael Smith Jr.:** It's tough. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the road ahead? With DPIs down, we'll see more bootstrap businesses and fewer VC-backed companies, but perhaps better unit economics. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** I'm a big believer in the solo unicorn concept. **Bernard Leong:** Solo unicorn - we're not there yet. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** We're moving toward that model though. **Michael Smith Jr.:** The solopreneur trend is real, but these won't create monster companies - and that's okay. It's a different ecosystem. With AI and new tools, smaller companies with less capital will be able to build viable businesses. If they choose to base here, we can say there are companies in the region, though I still don't see many AI builders here. **Bernard Leong:** The AI builder ecosystem is relatively small. Most are still in the product-market fit stage, myself included. I have customers who want the product, but before thinking about scaling, most effort goes into making the AI actually work. With AI upgrades every six months, founders tend to focus more on getting revenues. I've spoken to Silicon Valley founders based here who fly back to the Bay Area every six months - they treat this place more like a development center than their primary base. **Michael Smith Jr.:** The only area that seems to be bucking the trend is FinTech and InsureTech - those sectors are performing better than most. You have companies like Aspire, Voltech, and others that are still doing well. There's Koala in Indonesia as well. Many companies in what I consider the "finance stack" have raised decent rounds and continue to perform well. That sector has worked in the region and built some pretty significant companies. Take the Australian payments company AirWallex, for example. While it's a small portion of the overall startup ecosystem, if you look at funding charts, financial services companies get the majority of investment. **Bernard Leong:** I find it strange when people say Australia has a barren tech scene when they have companies like Canva. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I don't understand why people make that claim.Speaking of Australia, have you heard about Maincode? It's founded by David Lepers, who came from AWS and previously worked in crypto. They're building what they call a sovereign, made-in-Australia AI stack - essentially like ChatGPT but entirely Australian-built, with all data and processing done locally. **Michael Smith Jr.:** That's impressive. I do see a lot of innovation in Australia, but their domestic market isn't large enough to support companies like Canva on their own. That's why the global approach works - it's similar to Israel, where no startup thinks about just the Israeli market. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Raz has been here about two and a half years now and he's always baffled by this region. He says we should be more like Israel in our approach. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** That's the funny thing - we've been discussing this same issue for 14 years. We're still talking about the same problems because we were all part of a different narrative back then. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Let's be clear - I don't claim to be perfect or that I predicted we should all focus on B2B. But there was a different narrative. Companies are told they have no local market, so they go to the US quickly and get funded relatively easily. Raz is baffled by the risk aversion of VCs here and the lack of big, concentrated bets. But what would you bet on when many companies aren't even trying to think globally? That's why I've always been impressed by Razer - it's truly a global company. **Bernard Leong:** The Razer story is different because the super angels who backed them included what's called the HP Mafia - HP alumni who are now MDs at various companies. They were part of an angel network that funded Razer and helped get them into Silicon Valley. It was essentially sold to the US but built in Singapore. I think Supabase is another interesting example. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Supabase doesn't get talked about enough. They're actually in the US now, not Singapore. They built here during COVID because they were stuck, but one founder is back in New Zealand, another is in the US, and one remains here. They're completely remote. I don't even know if they're still a Singapore entity - I believe they're now a US company. It's a great example, but there's essentially no Singapore capital in that company until Peak came in during later rounds. Why did local VCs miss out? I suspect they didn't even try. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** It's similar to how Netlify became big, but no Malaysian investors were involved. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Exactly. Supabase isn't really a Singapore success story. Some people are here, some senior executives are here, but the rest are remote, and it's not even a Singapore capital story. This shows the problem - I suspect people look at database infrastructure companies and run for the hills. **Bernard Leong:** I have an anecdote that illustrates how Singapore tech companies struggle to get local traction. You've probably seen the Lion's Bot cleaning robots at Changi Airport. Originally, the company was based here with three founders - one tech person and two from the cleaning business. Singapore didn't want their product. Then one day, the VP of Changi Airport was in Norway and saw these robots at Nordic airports. He asked where they got them, thinking they were Chinese. The answer was: "No, they're from your home country." That's how they finally got recognition locally. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** There's a Cantonese saying that captures this - basically, you need to "soak in salt water and come back." We only appreciate things that come from other places. **Michael Smith Jr.:** The founder told me that's exactly how they became successful - European airports started using their product first, then Singapore took notice. **Bernard Leong:** But there's a broader problem here. The world is heading toward remote-first companies like Supabase that have no physical offices. Even if it were a Singapore entity, there's no real benefit to Singapore beyond the corporate structure. In my vision of the future, this becomes a problem for Singapore because the employees aren't here, the operational revenue isn't generated here - just the financial machinery. But Singapore's incentives are built around having bodies here, employing people locally. In a remote-first world, there's no incentive for companies like Supabase to base everything here. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Even the regional HQ model isn't working anymore. You can see tech companies moving operations to other regions because of cost. It's not that they don't want to be here - they're saying their people can't afford the lifestyle they used to provide, so they're moving to Bangkok, Malaysia, and other lower-cost locations. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** A good friend of ours moved to Johor Bahru. She basically just comes to Singapore when needed, but lives across the border. Many people are doing this now. **Bernard Leong:** To be honest, I got the best health checkup of my life in Johor Bahru - better value than the most expensive hospitals in Singapore. When expat friends ask for recommendations, I give them the contact. They even arrange transport for comprehensive checkups with MRI, blood tests, everything. **Michael Smith Jr.:** You get similar value in Bangkok. But what does the future hold for the startup ecosystem? I want to add another variable: Chinese founders are increasingly setting up here. We don't meet them often, but they're coming. **Bernard Leong:** I've met founders from companies equivalent to major Chinese firms - some doing four times the volume of their US counterparts. One founder has quietly set up here and started building relationships because they don't want to operate in China anymore. That's actually a testament to Singapore's appeal. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I think that's positive. You're getting these 9-9-6 work ethic founders. I'm more concerned about competing with them than worrying about US founders coming to Singapore. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** I'm not worried about US founders. I'm worried about Chinese speed. **Bernard Leong:** They could become your competitors. Don't be surprised - you can see it happening in F&B with Chinese restaurants. I know a well-known Chinese VC who moved here and only invests in Chinese founders in Southeast Asia. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Because of their work ethic. She's seen the best of Alibaba and Baidu, so for her, everyone needs to meet that bar - China speed. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Having spent time in China, it's crazy. The pace is something I won't even attempt to match. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I know some Indian super angels who literally say they won't touch Southeast Asia because they think no one's working hard enough - everyone's too comfortable already. I think that's probably a fair assessment. **Bernard Leong:** I think it's fair. I feel like I'm working hard, but if my surroundings show nobody else is working at that pace, why should I push myself? I'm not saying people should work unsustainably, but this affects the vision of achieving the scale, velocity, and exits that were once anticipated - it's all going to be smaller. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Or perhaps it never reached that level because none of the foundational pieces were in place. That's my general view, and I always tell people: if you really have the talent, go to the US or wherever your market actually is. Do the math - how big is the market here for your product? It's not big enough for most things right now. However, if your ambitions are more reasonable - you don't need massive capital, you can build efficiently, and you can sell for $40-50 million while pocketing $25-30 million with no capital gains tax - that's actually a pretty solid outcome. I don't understand why more people don't see that value and pursue it. **Bernard Leong:** You're starting to see that with search funds. The search fund model is happening in Singapore now. Let me explain the concept since many people aren't familiar with it. **Michael Smith Jr.:** What exactly is it? **Bernard Leong:** It's essentially a mini-PE business. You raise, say, $40 million to acquire an existing business - not sexy businesses, but things like a ball bearing supplier to companies like Bosch. You recapitalize it properly, make it more efficient, and operate it more effectively than a large PE firm might. After typically 6-12 years, you exit. This aligns with the $40-50 million business model you mentioned. However, in search funds, because you raise from LPs like a VC business, management typically gets 10-20% ownership - 20% if you're really lucky, but usually closer to 10%. **Michael Smith Jr.:** There are many alternative models worth exploring. If I didn't have family obligations and school bills, I'd probably be more aggressive about this. I think there are distressed opportunities in Southeast Asia - companies that have been overfunded and overvalued. I've been involved in one such deal personally, where you're essentially telling people: "Do you want zero? Because if this doesn't raise more money and goes out of business, that's what you get. Or would you take a significant haircut - maybe 50% or more - and we'll keep operating?" Many high-paid employees would have to go because that's often why these companies aren't profitable. But you can turn these situations around. This can be done with multiple companies, like roll-ups. With AI and new tools, there are different ways to approach venture studio work or manage multiple solopreneur ventures. Jon Yongfook from Banner Bear is someone I always reference - he's on his third company now, lives in Bali, never raised external funding, and was approaching $500-600K USD in revenue with his first company. This model works. **Bernard Leong:** We do talk about it, but mainstream media doesn't cover it much. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** It's not that it's uninteresting, but these are consistent revenue businesses. There's not as much dramatic narrative to write about. **Michael Smith Jr.:** There probably haven't been enough exits in this space because these owners don't need to sell. The AI revolution has made this approach even more viable. **Bernard Leong:** For me now, I go to PE funds or search funds and say, "I know you're rolling up this target market. I'm doing digital transformation for these companies. These PE guys tell me, 'You can help us improve efficiency - we'll give you access to all our portfolio companies, just build solutions for us.'" That's actually a great business model. I don't see many tech founders thinking this way. They tell me, "Bernard, that's so unglamorous." What's unglamorous about building a profitable business? **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** This represents a lagging indicator for this region. I know people from the startup world who got into the garlic business and are doing $10 million in profit after tax. You might laugh, but that's genuinely impressive performance. Here's the refined version of those paragraphs: **Bernard Leong:** Just like the ball bearings business - I'm not joking. I have a friend who's rolling up mom-and-pop laundry shops. **Michael Smith Jr.:** That seems to be a running joke, but there are other viable paths. I've always said the fundamental problem is the lack of exits. **Bernard Leong:** There's another issue I'm seeing with founders post-2021/2022\. Every founder I meet is obsessed with fundraising for the next stage. I keep telling them they can build a profitable business without constantly raising money. **Michael Smith Jr.:** That's exactly what people like Elad Gil discuss - companies have raised way ahead of what they actually need. **Bernard Leong:** I don't understand why founders are so focused on raising more capital. I sometimes get distress calls from founders, and I try to talk them out of fundraising by asking basic questions like "Who are your customers?" There's a whole cohort of companies that haven't become profitable despite all the money they've raised. They either need to take a significant valuation haircut, go out of business, or finally become profitable - because there are no more checks coming. I don't think VCs are going to fund or fix most of these situations. **Michael Smith Jr:** That's what I told my team when we did our first raise. I said, "This is all the money we're going to have. Good luck. If we die, we die." **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** That's very Singapore Airlines of you. That's exactly SIA's mandate - here's your budget, you won't get any additional funding. **Bernard Leong:** But my team works harder because of that constraint. They focus on getting revenue-positive first, then break-even, then profitability. At least there's a mindset established from day one that we won't get any additional funding. **Michael Smith Jr.:** So you're biased toward search funds because you're involved in them? **Bernard Leong:** I'm semi-involved, yes. Daniel knows one of the search fund operators I work with. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** We started this last year when people began asking us about buying existing businesses. We set up a brokerage operation, and through that, we discovered how profitable these traditional businesses really are. One key insight is that there's an aging population of business operators - Malaysia officially becomes an aging society by 2030\. The question we always ask is: can AI disrupt traditional businesses like garlic distribution? Do we still need human operators in the AI age? This makes me very optimistic about acquisition opportunities. We're raising SPV-focused funds for specific roll-ups and working with partners including GenCap, which Bernard mentioned. **Bernard Leong:** GenCap is run by Eric, a former startup founder who moved to the search fund side. He's focused on acquiring profitable businesses, rolling them up, and scaling them into larger enterprises. I think it's a very sustainable model. **Michael Smith Jr.:** There's nothing "sexy" about it, and that's the appeal. What's sexy about heavily funded, money-losing startups with no exits? Why did we find that attractive? I think it's just the drama factor. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** It's because of how we write about and discuss startups. Show me people with Ferraris in Singapore parking lots who made their wealth from startups - they're expensive cars that should reflect startup success. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I don't understand where the "sexiness" perception comes from. It's modeled after other regions where tech actually creates substantial wealth. We've had all the components here, but not the wealth creation. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Wealth creation here is very SME-focused. **Bernard Leong:** I don't see a distinction between SME and startup anymore. The benchmark is simply: can you build a profitable business? You'll still have outliers like Supabase with phenomenal venture-backed growth, and that's fine - they're legitimate venture-backed businesses. But venture capital shouldn't fund every business. I remember you wrote about how just because you roll the dice and one succeeds, you shouldn't fund the other five that don't make sense. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Exactly. That's the right mindset to share with founders who keep wanting to raise the next round. The next round should be profitability - get profitable, get fit, get lean. Your revenue becomes your funding. Here's the refined version of those paragraphs: **Michael Smith Jr.:** Alex Dweck is the COO of Nas.io - he's based here and was previously at Grab as a growth executive. His view is that we don't have a hero or outspoken person who's run the bootstrap playbook and created wealth across multiple businesses while talking openly about it. These people may exist here, but you don't see them anywhere. In the US, I can think of at least 10 - Alex Hormozi with his storage facilities, people popular on YouTube and podcasts who espouse building multiple businesses without raising funds and becoming very wealthy. Alex Hormozi is ridiculously wealthy from gyms and other ventures. Cody Sanchez is another example. Alex's point is that there's no Cody Sanchez or Alex Hormozi equivalent for Southeast Asia. We've been modeling something that doesn't work in Southeast Asia, but we have no alternative model with a personality attached to it. **Bernard Leong:** Do you really need a personality? **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** I think you do, to inspire the next generation. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I'm not saying you can't succeed without a visible personality, but you won't generate the same excitement, volume, and activity around the movement because there's no one people can point to who's done it successfully. **Bernard Leong:** I was listening to a podcast where Lex Fridman asked a Chinese economist, now a professor at London School of Economics, why there aren't more entrepreneurs like Jack Ma speaking publicly. She said that if you're a Chinese entrepreneur worried that everything could be taken away one day, you shouldn't speak up. But that's a different problem - I don't think that dynamic applies here. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Right, because other achievements are celebrated here. I'm saying there's no training ground for this type of information. When you talk to people, they think the model is: start a company, raise money. That's what they believe is the path. You have so many people following this approach, and we know there are many posers in the ecosystem who had access to plenty of capital. It would be valuable to have a different role model. You see some elements of this with funds talking about B2B and Jeremy Tan's approach, so it's improving. But you still don't have what I think of as the portfolio builder - someone in tech, in Southeast Asia, crushing it across multiple businesses, never raising external capital. You could say these people exist, and I'd love names, but you don't see them publicly. Maybe they don't want to be visible. I'm pretty sure they prefer privacy, especially when you're dealing with family offices. Then you get people who talk about this philosophy on LinkedIn with lots of videos, but they don't actually have the business results behind the philosophy. That's what I like about Cody Sanchez and Alex Hormozi - they're legitimate. They have both the personality and the track record of creating substantial wealth. I wish there was someone like that in Southeast Asia. Here's the refined version of those paragraphs: **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** Take Yen from Zeus Coffee, for example. He had an earlier exit with Hermo, then mostly bootstrapped Zeus until it became profitable. They only started taking investment when they began scaling. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I love that approach, but again, that's one business. I'm talking about portfolio builders - people with multiple successful ventures. He may have other projects, but nothing as significant as Zeus. **Bernard Leong:** Speaking of established companies, Grab just had a strong quarter. **Michael Smith Jr.:** They're coming into their own, though I forget their current market cap. It's still below their SPAC price, which proves they were sized appropriately for what they actually are. They'll do well and generate cash, but they've also been acquiring traditional businesses and will become more expensive to use. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** They're becoming a conglomerate like everyone else - buying supermarkets across the region, including Jaya Grocer and Ever Rich. **Michael Smith Jr.:** That's the DoorDash model - they want to control the entire supply chain. I respect what they've built, but remember when Brad Gerstner went on All In during COVID to discuss the [Grab $40 billion SPAC](https://www.grab.com/sg/press/others/grab-to-trade-on-nasdaq-following-successful-business-combination-with-altimeter/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? I was listening in my car and nearly choked on my coffee when he said there wasn't a day that went by where the average Singaporean wasn't booking rides, buying insurance, getting food, and using their wallet - all through Grab. I thought, "Are you kidding me?" I use all three ride-hailing apps, rarely buy food through them because it's expensive, definitely don't use their wallet, and don't buy insurance through them. If the $40 billion valuation was based on that usage claim, no wonder the numbers were ridiculous. **Bernard Leong:** I do get calls from US hedge funds asking me, "Is Lazada real? Is Grab real?" Those are the questions they're asking. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Isn't Shopee back to record valuations? I had Shopee stock, made some money, then it crashed. **Bernard Leong:** But SEA Limited has done well - they're back to record valuations, I think. But that's with Chinese founders and the 9-9-6 work mentality. Maybe we need more of those Chinese founders, though you literally have just a handful of companies that have achieved this level of success. Half of Bytedance's C-suite lives here in Singapore, but it's still just a handful of examples. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Not enough critical mass. This ecosystem looks very different from what everyone thought it would become 10 years ago. It's looking much different, and I'm not saying that's good or bad - just different. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** So the fundamental question: is this unrealized potential, or potential we could never realistically achieve? **Michael Smith Jr.:** I think it was modelled incorrectly from the start. It was never going to be achieved, especially since no one addressed the lack of good exit markets - no good stock exchanges, no regional exchange. **Bernard Leong:** I'm continually baffled that there still isn't a regional startup exchange. SGX doesn't allow dual-class structures, and listing is expensive. **Michael Smith Jr.:** I've always been puzzled why there isn't a regional startup exchange in ASEAN. It's because everyone's too proud to set egos aside and collaborate. But you could imagine it working - $50-100 million companies that Thais and Malaysians could invest in. You'd think SGX and MAS would lead that charge, but other countries won't humble themselves because they think their exchanges are bigger. In the absence of that solution and given other structural problems, it was never going to work. Only a few companies would reach escape velocity to list in the US, and we have very few examples of that. **Bernard Leong:** I've always been intrigued by the Bangladeshi ecosystem. **Michael Smith Jr.:** The proof isn't in yet, but if ShopUp - which combined with a Dubai entity and got Peter Thiel funding - goes public, it'll be a faster path to value than almost anything from Southeast Asia except Grab. It's completely Bangladesh start-to-finish, without much ASEAN VC involvement, though accelerators participated. You have multiple companies like this - PathGao, plus insurance companies. If you want to see 9-9-6 work ethic, it's that crew. Bangladeshi founders who lived overseas, learned how things work, got help from Singapore, then returned to Bangladesh with very strong work ethics, focusing on profitability and raising funds with an eye toward going public. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** That's going to create competition for Southeast Asia. They're honest about their advantages - it's essentially one island with a huge demographic and mostly the same language. **Michael Smith Jr.:** A few hundred million people with fast internet, but lacking existing infrastructure like digital wallets and insurance systems. It has India's velocity combined with ASEAN's approach to building businesses. **Bernard Leong:** We've talked about what remains the same - the lack of exits and structural issues. But let me ask the reverse question: what's different now compared to when we started 16 years ago? **Michael Smith Jr.:** That's important to me because I've been critical on my show, and I don't want to end on a negative note. I think there's been somewhat of a reset, though it'll probably get harder before it gets better. You have startups taking nine months to raise funds, but you also see more interesting founders emerging - they're building personal brands, leveraging podcasts better, being more careful with cash, talking about profitability, and being razor-sharp about go-to-market strategies. I feel like there's a vibe shift happening. You have VCs now talking this way, focusing on B2B. The AI trend is real, whether people believe it or not. I think we'll see better days, but there are still structural issues to address around exits. That's starting to happen with the new administration's work involving Temasek and SGX - those are green shoots to me. If we continue in that direction, it'll look different from what we originally envisioned, but maybe that's better. I'm not sure exactly what it'll become, but I feel more positive that we're having these conversations openly now instead of staying quiet about these issues. **Bernard Leong:** People have been bruised and are in recovery mode. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** It's a healing period - you have to lick your wounds. I'm honestly more optimistic now than last time, both on the tech side and the traditional business acquisition side. With smaller teams, you can build at lower cost and get distribution through many channels. **Bernard Leong:** I'm always optimistic - I have to be to stay in the game. I appreciate what Michael's saying. Sometimes he articulates things many of us don't want to admit, and he's right about many points. **Michael Smith Jr.:** It's not about being right - I always have to clarify my perspective. I'm not a founder. I wore a VC hat for years and understand how it works, but I'm not a founder. I've helped people raise money but haven't raised my own. I sit on some boards, so I feel like enough of an insider, but I'm not a founder and haven't done what you and others have done. I know you have to be more positive than I am because of your position - you're building, while I'm more of a pundit analyzing from the outside. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** That's exactly what we need. There's no right or wrong perspective. **Bernard Leong:** Reflecting on this conversation after 10-11 years, it's great to have you guys as friends for these private discussions. We should do this more often. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Let's see how this goes and what the response is. There's not enough of this type of content. If you think about the shows you consume - I listen to yours, though I don't know how many listen to mine - honestly, I suspect the majority of your content consumption is US-based, maybe some Chinese content since you speak Chinese. How much of what you listen to and learn from actually comes from Southeast Asian creators? **Bernard Leong:** Very few - maybe three. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Which three? **Bernard Leong:** Jeremy Au's [BRAVESEA podcast](https://www.bravesea.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and there's Kristie Neo's "[The Upside Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/1TW434JlrEbB1k1K7OGpHG?ref=analysepodcast.com)" and yours \[[The Generalists Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/@TheGeneralistsPodcast?ref=analysepodcast.com)\]. So there are three, and it's getting better. **Michael Smith Jr.:** Let's put them in the show notes. Spotify is also helping, but I'd bet 80% of your consumption, like movies, comes from outside this ecosystem. **Bernard Leong:** I'm hoping to see that improve. Give me your recommendations - what's inspired you recently? **Michael Smith Jr.:** I feel strongly that I need to help create meaningful, useful content because there's not enough emanating from this region. I don't talk about this much regarding [The Generalists](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeKjhM0OUJe-yd5rK8kT9Ag?ref=analysepodcast.com), but that's what drives me. When I talk to people like [Alan Soon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RNFo5jNd7w&ref=analysepodcast.com), it feels like a burden - I'm hoping people learn from it and I'm surfacing people they haven't seen before, not just the famous ones. I hope it brings more discourse and dialogue and leaves this place better than we found it. It's not easy and I'm not sure it's working, but that's what I'm trying to do. **Bernard Leong:** Daniel, your recommendation? **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** [The Coffee Break](https://thecoffeebreak.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) \- it's a daily newsletter in Malaysia. Aaron curates it and throws in a lot of startup content. Full disclosure: he's one of my advisors. It seems like someone with ADHD decided to curate all the news they need to read. **Bernard Leong:** How can the audience find you both? **Michael Smith Jr.:** [The Generalists Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/2apfGY403NGr1EyTNkJfG4?ref=analysepodcast.com) \- you'll put the link in show notes. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/smittysgp/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is where I'm most active; I'm not on other social media much. **Daniel Cerventus Lim:** I've been quiet but trying to be more active on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cerventus/?ref=analysepodcast.com). [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/cerventus/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is probably where you'll find me, or through [my community group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/80164351656). **Bernard Leong:** Thanks guys, this was really fun. I'm glad we did this reunion episode. Let's do more of these - I really missed this format. **Bernard Leong:** Awesome. Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Jamus shared his story on how the Asian Financial Crisis sparked his passion for macroeconomics and development. He unpacked the critical yet often overlooked role of geography, history, and institutional frameworks in explaining Asia's immense economic diversity, arguing that abstract economic models fail to capture the real-world complexities driving regional development. Through deep dives into China's demographic transition and export-driven challenges, South Korea's state-led chaebol industrialization model, and Japan's historic shift from deflation to inflation, Jamus demonstrated how colonial legacies and historical persistence continue to shape modern economic structures across the continent. Throughout the conversation, he revealed why China's middle-income trap escape depends on building domestic consumption to absorb its massive manufacturing capacity, explained how institutional solutions that once solved problems can become growth constraints, and argued that understanding Asia's past is essential for navigating its economic future in an increasingly complex global landscape. --- > "The way that institutions emerge and entrench themselves and become a part of the functioning of an economy and society is because they solve some problems. So they're usually a non-market solution toward solving some problem that the economy, that the market system couldn't necessarily solve. Of course the most prominent example of an institution that solves an. Market problem in the non-market way is a firm, as Ronald Coase, of course very early on, taught us that. When a firm realizes that in some cases when transactions costs are high, you want to internalize things within the firm. That the firm is itself an institution. But these other social political institutions, they also exist to resolve some problem. And once they resolve that problem and they're resolving it adequately, then it becomes really hard to bring about change. So the institution solves a problem. So to be clear, it is better than in the absence of the institution, but it also means that without somehow breaking this institution or having some crisis that leads you to substantially reform the institution, you are going to be stuck at a suboptimal equilibrium." - Jamus Lim, author of "Asian Economies: History, Institutions and Structures" **Profile: Jamus Jerome Lim**, Associate Professor, ESSEC Business School and Author of "[Asian Economies: History, Institutions and Structures](https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Asian+Economies%3A+History%2C+Institutions%2C+and+Structures-p-9781119913191?ref=analysepodcast.com)" ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamuslim/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [ESSEC Profile](https://faculty.essec.edu/en/cv/lim-jamus/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Site](http://www.jamus.name/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong. Today we will dive into the economic foundations that shape the ASEAN region's rise through the lens of history. With me today is, Associate Professor Jamus Jerome Lim from ESSEC Business School and author of Asian Economies. First of all, congratulations on your recent win in the Singapore elections as an elected member of Parliament in Singapore with the Workers Party for the Sengkang Group Representation Constituency (GRC). For everyone here today, our discussion will not cover Singapore politics, but I want to dive into Jamus's experience in Asia and academic work on Asian economies. I'm running a global business podcast from Singapore. My opinions and views are my own and do not represent any organizations I may represent. So Jamus, welcome to the show. **Jamus Lim:** Thank you Bernard. It's both a pleasure and an honour to be able to join you and all listeners today. **Bernard Leong:** I'd like to start with the origin story. How did you start your career as an economist? What sparked your interest specifically in development economics and macro finance? **Jamus Lim:** Thanks for the question. In some ways, that origin story is preempted by the career my mother pursued. She was in the back office of a large stockbroker firm in Singapore. Even from a very young age - at that time, the workforce had to work on Saturdays as well for half a day. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I remember those days as well. **Jamus Lim:** My mother, not having resources for childcare - childcare wasn't that common then - ended up bringing me into the office on Saturday mornings. Some weeks she would deposit me at a nearby bookstore, MPH. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I remember. The bookstore was really one of the best libraries. I would always go there. Although I wouldn't buy any books, but I would read there. **Jamus Lim:** I did exactly the same thing. We were not a wealthy family, so I would be reading for most of those few hours where I was dropped off at the bookstore, or she would just bring me into the office. So I got very early exposure to what it's like to be in a financial institution. You would think therefore that would spark my interest in finance and especially the stock market. Certainly when I was relatively young - in my teens, when I was a teenager - I thought that's what I wanted to do as a career. I was inspired, of course, wanting to go to the front office. Ultimately, I got my hands dirty in economics and I realized that the field of economics is much wider than just stocks and finance. It's much deeper. It's about human behaviour, as the book talks about - about the way institutions are designed and how they influence the evolution of economies over long periods of time. That got me really interested in the bigger questions. In economics, I am by training a macro economist rather than a micro economist. So I wasn't as interested in things like the psychological or behavioural or rational foundations of human decision making, but I was much more interested in the big picture things. *Why are there financial crises? Why do countries benefit from integrating into the international trading system?* When I was a teenager, I experienced a major event in my life - like many of us from that generation, we went through the [Asian financial crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997%5FAsian%5Ffinancial%5Fcrisis?ref=analysepodcast.com). The Asian financial crisis really made me realize that getting economics right was important, but getting it wrong could be really disastrous as well. That set me down the path of really exploring much deeper phenomena in international finance. That is a passion that I continue to hold today. **Bernard Leong:** You were across the World Bank, Sovereign Wealth Fund, and even the private sector before you joined your current academia role. What were the defining lessons from these roles that shaped your economic thinking today? **Jamus Lim:** Right after graduate school, like most of us, your primary aspiration - I think we are acculturated into thinking this way - is that you want to be a professor. Your professors were professors. They chose it for a reason. So they make you feel that the ivory tower is the highest calling that you can possibly have. I was infected by that as well. I very much wanted to be a professor. I did one year in a small liberal arts college in central rural Kentucky. That is a story for another day, interesting in and of itself. But not long after, I got a callback from the World Bank to come in for additional interviews. It seemed like an opportunity to pursue the idea of both - at the time I was in my early thirties - working in an international city like Washington, DC, but also interacting with people from all over the world. The World Bank, although it deals with development economics as well as international finance, is very much staffed by what you can think of as international bureaucrats who carry their own country's traditions and ways of doing things. Many of them were trained deeply in their respective fields, not necessarily economics. We have agronomists, environmental specialists, legal experts, as well as economists and finance folks. So you really get immersed in a deeply intellectual environment, even though it's not strictly speaking an academic institution. That was really exciting. DC is a great place to live, so that's what got me started at the World Bank. **Bernard Leong:** After that you taught macroeconomics, and now international economics across Asia. You've also done a postdoc after your PhD. How has teaching in Asia shaped your views on regional economic development as compared to other markets? **Jamus Lim:** Certainly I'm Asian, so I carry that perspective with me no matter what. What that means is growing up in Southeast Asia, you see two perspectives. One is the experience of countries like Singapore as well as the other newly industrialized economies, which grew very rapidly, where transformation is constant in practice. What that means on the ground is construction is happening all the time. You see a kind of buzz or you feel a kind of palpable buzz in the air. People are busy. People are trying to do things. But at the same time, you also have an opportunity if you start wandering around in the other countries of our neighbourhood - you get to see countries that are also trapped in some ways in what economists refer to as a middle income trap, where they reach a certain level of income, usually somewhere in purchasing power terms, something like six or seven thousand dollars. Then they kind of get stuck there for an extended period of time. They grow, but not much faster than their rates of population growth. So per capita incomes remain reasonably stagnant, and it doesn't seem like they will make the important leap from middle or upper middle income status toward that club of elusive high income countries. You see that around you and then you start to wonder what is it that still seems to be missing in that recipe and that formula. At least for me, I arrived at the conclusion that a lot of it has to do with economic history, industrial structures, and other forms of economic mechanisms together with the role of sociopolitical institutions. That's why in that book \[Asian Economies\], the subtitle is "structure and institutions and history," in part because I feel that these matter so much when you look at the world through the lens of developing Asia. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2025/08/asian-economies.jpg) Asian Economies by Jamus Lim **Bernard Leong:** We're going to come to the main subject of the day, which is your work, "Asian Economies: History, Institutions and Structures." It is a very interesting read because I'm an economics and history buff, trying to get a better understanding of all the economies around the region, even specifically for myself as an entrepreneur. That helps me to clarify some of my thinking, even in thinking about how to expand my business. Maybe to start, let us baseline the word Asian economies. Given the region is so diverse and spans more than half the population in the world, can you help me define Asia in the context of economies, be it developed, emerging, or frontier at this instant? **Jamus Lim:** I teach a course from which this book emerged. The French have a term about instructor sovereignty. As an instructor, you have absolute sovereignty over exactly how you want to define how you teach the course. For me, teaching in the business school, I started to realize that what people cared about in the business school is not so much a lot of abstract theoretical models, but how to better understand a part of the world that they had much less familiarity with. The existing textbooks, if you look at them, a lot of them deal with either East Asia - by East Asia, some people would lump in Southeast Asia, but certainly the major economies of East Asia, like Japan, China, and South Korea. But if you think carefully, you realize South Asia is also an integral part, a major part of Asia. For much of history, India was one civilization that included what is today parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh. That entity has to be thought about, and the history and the development of that part of Asia has to be thought about. When you start to wonder westward, you realize that for a long time there was this intersection of different parts of Asia with the West. That occurred through the silk routes, through Central Asia. So then you start realizing Central Asia, which is often flyover territory in Asia that we tend to neglect, is also important in the grand scheme of things. Finally you realize that what we call the Middle East today - the reason why it's called the Middle East is because it's midway to the east of the Occident. This is defined by western authors that have defined that region. But for much of the world's history, that part of the world was in fact West Asia. I felt that at least in the book and even in my course, it was absolutely necessary to weave in West Asia as well in the overall scheme of things. **Bernard Leong:** I usually read the foreword of every book that I read. This is probably a quick question to ask you. What inspired you to write "Asian Economies" and how did your past experience inform the book's scope and structure? **Jamus Lim:** You are making me play all my cards here. Obviously part of it is that I teach the course as I mentioned, but one reason why I was influenced to also include discussions about West Asia is in no small part because when I was at the World Bank, I worked in what's called the Middle East and North African region. A lot of countries that I worked on, including most heavily in Syria and Lebanon. But I also worked a little bit on Egypt and a little bit on the UAE, where eventually I ended up living for a few years. I became very familiar with that part of the world and with the culture and the way that they think and the development process and the story there. I felt it was absolutely imperative for me to bring those experiences I had from having worked in that part of the world, having lived in that part of the world into the book as well when I discussed West Asia. We have at my business school also many students from North Africa. They are naturally more drawn to better understanding the Arab world. So it was a natural appeal for an audience as well. At the same time, I had also worked on many development issues in East and Southeast Asia where I'm from. So it was again very natural to bring those into the discussion in a more prominent way. There is in fact a wonderful textbook on Southeast Asian Economies titled "[Southeast Asia: The Long Road Ahead](https://www.amazon.com/Southeast-Asia-Long-Road-Ahead/dp/9810246072/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.HPKUf9u5BGBL5ULfYlq0eQ.yJphTRiVO97pykFGZ6DiMaJ0hKVntv38MtWOgXloS90&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=9789810246082&linkCode=qs&qid=1756001812&s=books&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Professor Lim \[Chong Yah\], who [passed away](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/prominent-economist-lim-chong-yah-dies-aged-91?ref=analysepodcast.com) a few years ago. I would teach initially from that book, and I realized that I could focus and synthesize the areas that I was more interested in from that book, which was mainly the development experience and the continued heterogeneity between economies in Southeast Asia. That's when I made that decision. Southeast Asia would have to be a part of that story too. **Bernard Leong:** Your book represents Asia's growth story by weaving the geography, institutional frameworks and history. Why do you think these non-market forces are often overlooked when it comes to economic discourse? **Jamus Lim:** At risk of sounding a bit facetious, it's because teaching models is actually easy, right? You abstract from all these details. Learning the models may be difficult, especially if you're not mathematically minded, but teaching them is easy. Once you have learned the models, then you don't have to worry about the continued evolution of recent developments. You don't have to worry about how the models may or may not map with phenomena in the real world. It's an artificial space that you have created. Most economists accept the assumptions. When we participate in seminars, we may challenge assumptions, but once you are presented with the model, you take those assumptions as given with which the model is set up, and you just question the internal coherence and the logic and the implications of the model after you have accepted those assumptions. In some ways, it's handy and not too demanding to teach by abstracting away from some of these finer details. But I think once you start thinking about Asia much more seriously, you realize that it's impossible to explain the immense diversity of the economies without also paying attention to the geography, to the history and how those things factored into the development of the existing structures and institutions, which in turn influence the way that these economies operate on a day-to-day basis today. **Bernard Leong:** With this kind of backdrop setting, I can start to actually zoom down to a couple of countries I'm pretty interested that you have discussed in your book. Without doubt, China is the first country that we are going to talk about. It has rapidly ascended from poverty to becoming the world's second largest economy. In your view, what are the current most critical institutional or structural factors that have driven their transformation? I would say it's still a developing economy because there are certain parts that are very significantly advanced, but I think a majority part of the country is still in development. **Jamus Lim:** Thank you for asking about China. I start with China in my course as well after the overview lecture. It's the only economy with which I spend two whole lectures because of its size, because of its importance. From an outside perspective, it's very common to think of China - if you look at their progress in electric vehicles, if you look at their high speed trains, if you look at downtown Shanghai or downtown Beijing, you realize these have all the hallmarks of an advanced economy and perhaps a little bit more. Payment systems that are far more advanced in some ways than even those we see in many parts of the west. Of course China is large and extremely diverse even within itself. Once you start heading west, once you start heading to certain other less traveled parts of China, you realize that there's a reason why it's only upper middle income. Now it's on the brink. Certainly by the end of this decade, most observers expect China to eventually become a high income country or at least breach into high income status. The question then is, given that China is on the brink of high income status but still has many developing challenges, what are the key impediments for it to not just move from upper middle to high income status, but how can it consolidate that position? I know many countries that have gone into high income status and then they slip back, and then it becomes this kind of dance, which is why I mentioned earlier. **Bernard Leong:** It happens to Japan, Korea, Singapore, in the sense that they become developed and then population decline is part of that. Then the transition from probably manufacturing to service-based economy, now to a knowledge type economy and searching for its next evolution as well. **Jamus Lim:** China has its fair share of problems. Certainly one of the issues that you've just alluded to, which is quite common in advanced economies, is demographic change. The big factor is many people like to attribute China's decline in population to its one child policy. It's tempting to do so, but we really need to put that in context of what happened - the way demographics played out in just about every other East Asian country as well. You see, basically as countries become relatively richer, they go through the natural process of what's known as the demographic transition. The demographic transition is accompanied by a reduction in fertility. In rural China, fertility has not fallen as much as in urban China, but in urban China one could make as credible an argument that even though the one child policy came into place and we saw the concomitant decrease in fertility, it could well have been that way even if China didn't have that one child policy. China was already becoming richer. As economies become richer, what happens is households start to focus on quality over quantity. Many families who used to be in rural areas where more hands to work on the farm would be useful, would no longer need those extra hands as they transition into more urban living. Even to put it in a very morbid way, the risk of child mortality is also falling. So parents no longer feel that they need to have as many to hedge that risk. They focus on the few that they have. All that is just to say that demographic transition in China is playing out. The implications of that demographic transition are playing out now, and I think we'll see the continued headwind that comes from having a slowing population growth. The simple mechanics of it is that just means that your labor force is also shrinking over time. **Bernard Leong:** There are also other factors at work as well, right? If you think about China, they have a very large manufacturing economy. They're not willing to concede - I think they learned the lesson from Germany and from the US outsourcing away the manufacturing. So they're going to keep that, and then they're going to move towards a very heavy export driven economy in the last couple of years doing steel, electric vehicles, and now even AI as well, open source. But what really fascinates me is the low internal consumption and high export - I don't even know whether it is a high savings rate or keeping your money under your mattress, to use the old Chinese grandmother analogy here. How would China now be able to navigate the current headwinds and tailwinds due to the current tensions? **Jamus Lim:** First Bernard, to be clear, China, while it's true that they are not conceding the importance of an industrial base, has passed peak manufacturing. China is indeed in the process of deindustrializing. It has been doing so basically since the 2010s. It's no longer the cheap labor location any longer. This is what economists sometimes call a [Lewis turning point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%5Fturning%5Fpoint?ref=analysepodcast.com), named after Arthur Lewis, a West Indian economist that first developed the model that looked at what happens when there is an exhaustion of workers coming from the countryside into urban areas. All that is happening. Basically what you're seeing is that China is trying to move up that value added chain. So it's not that they have given up manufacturing, but they accept that you need more and more industrial machines. In fact, if you look globally, while it doesn't have the highest intensity in terms of industrial robots that are installed - countries like South Korea and Singapore have greater intensity, intensity meaning in terms of relative to the workforce - in terms of absolute numbers of industrial robots, China has about half of the world's installed base. So it is also a very capital intensive, mechanized economy, unlike what some might think when you think of China as a labor abundant country. With that, it has moved up the value added chain in terms of where it manufactures now. A lot of solar technology, electric vehicles as we mentioned, battery technology and some of these advanced transportation modes and the like. At the same time, it has also grown its services sector. This brings us to one of the other pathologies that China is struggling with. When China was growing very rapidly with a large population, it engaged in a lot of construction. There was a major housing boom. In fact, the housing boom first hit a snag in the 1990s. Then there was what was known as a debt to equity swap. A lot of those companies converted the debt that was accumulated into equities and they were able to work their way out of that difficulty. Many of the ghost cities in western China, they eventually filled up because you still had this population that was coming from the rural parts and filling the urban centers. That is no longer the case. China is now exceedingly urbanized. While it still has a rural hinterland like many big countries do, the flow from the countryside to the urban centers is no longer as rapid. So you are starting to see some of the overbuilding of the housing stock come back to bite. Many Chinese believe in investing. You mentioned this as well - it's a high saving country. Saving rates are in the order of 40% or more. A lot of that saving gets directed toward real estate because what's safer than houses? That's a very typical Chinese mindset. Many households already have purchased their second, or sometimes even their third homes, especially those that were growing up during or who entered the workforce during China's rapid growth phase in the nineties and the two thousands. They are giving these houses to their children. So there is not that much more room for additional demand to soak up a lot of that excess supply of housing. That's why you're starting to see some of these real estate developers really heavily leveraged and starting to face difficulties in terms of selling the excess stock of housing. **Bernard Leong:** Help me understand why is the internal consumption rate so low as compared to other advanced economies for China? **Jamus Lim:** There are probably a few dozen explanations. They're very esoteric. They range from one rather compelling, I think, argument that China doesn't have a rich social protection system. What this means is that while it's true that if you have the [hukou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou?ref=analysepodcast.com) \- this is kind of an internal passport, the right to be in a city to access public services there. You would be able to access education. You'll be able to access healthcare as well as public pensions. All these you have access to if you have that hukou, but for many workers, especially those that migrated to the cities from the countryside but don't have the hukou for those big cities, they don't have any of these social protections. Often, their children get educated back in their countryside towns and villages because that's where education would be accessible for their children. **Bernard Leong:** So the access to services is not actually as digitized. **Jamus Lim:** It's not even universal because you literally have to go to a private sector provider. If, let's say you fall sick, but you don't have the hukou in a, let's say you are working in. **Bernard Leong:** So you have a lot of shadow type economies - the same problem in developing economies as well, where people don't have a bank account which is kind of the equivalent of that. **Jamus Lim:** What do people do? They save as a form of self insurance. This is one reason. Because social protection - mind you, even for those that do have the hukou, even those that do have access to public services, the amount of coverage that you get, the ability to, the quality of that coverage that you get in terms of public pension replacement income for retirees and so on, those are still very modest. You can't blame China. China's still a developing country in that regard. So it's inevitable that households would have to make up for some of that shortfall with their own savings. **Bernard Leong:** Why wouldn't the central government push the states to try, since it's a very centralized economy in some ways, to push this registration of citizens into the hukou? Or is it because it's very state dependent and that's why you can't do that easily? **Jamus Lim:** Well, not necessarily. China is true that it is a central state, and the central government has a tremendous amount of power. But for any large economy, any large complex economy, inevitably you have a lot of devolution of power to the individual provinces as well as the individual county governments and so on. Firstly, the desirable cities like Tianjin or Shanghai or Beijing, the population is starting to reach 20 million. It's hard to imagine it growing that much more. So what the central government has encouraged cities to do is for the second tier cities, those that are known to us, but perhaps not as familiar cities like Wuhan, for instance. **Bernard Leong:** Chongqing, for example, as well. **Jamus Lim:** I would argue Chongqing is already a first tier city. **Bernard Leong:** First tier city. For example, to me, Hangzhou is the first tier city to some people, but it's still considered second. **Jamus Lim:** Now it's one of the largest inland cities if not the largest inland city. But the one that you would think of just close to Chongqing is Chengdu. Chengdu is a second tier city, and these are the cities where arguably there have been more relaxed policies about issuing new hukou to try to attract workers and migrants into those second tier cities. Absolutely there are reforms to the hukou that are encouraging people to move to some of the second and third tier cities. But it doesn't change the fact that in reality China still - a high part of it is cultural and behavioural explanations. Part of it is also a sense of wanting to save enough to bequest to the next generation. There's a strong inheritance motivation that many Chinese households would have for wanting to give gifts to their children. Then even some crazy esoteric ones - remember we talked about how there was a one child policy? Alongside that one child policy, there was a bias, unsurprisingly for East Asian culture, toward boys. In fact, it's not just East Asian. South Asia has what's sometimes known as millions of missing girls because for the same reason there's the bias toward boys. What that means is that at the moment, if you look at China's demographic mix, it is a mix of something in the order of 45 girls to 55 boys. What that means is that if every girl were to pair off with a boy, every male were to pair off with a female, you would still have 10 men that are left without a pairing. So it becomes hyper competitive among the men to be able to try to secure mates. This has led to some unfortunate pathologies as well where we see, for instance, stories of, especially in the Southern Chinese provinces where there's a lot of bride trafficking, but what it also means in terms of the economics is that men feel the need to signal their relative desirability. In many cultures in the world, the way you signal it is with a fancy car. In China, you have to up that one step further and signal it with, "Hey, look babe, I have a house." So it becomes competitive signalling. **Bernard Leong:** It's a status culture, but I just have one remaining point before we close China and really go to the other two economies that really pick my interest. For its export driven economy now, I mean, it flooded the world with cheap goods, electric vehicles, batteries, steel. How long can they do that? Given the current situation with tariffs and bilateral nations are starting to negotiate very bilateral trade agreements between them. **Jamus Lim:** It's fascinating that you should ask this question. One of the research papers I'm currently working on is looking at this phenomenon known as the China shock. The China shock is basically what happened after China entered the WTO in 2001\. After its entry, unlike other economies that entered the WTO, China, of course, is huge. So it made a material difference to the supply of especially low income, low skilled workers into the global economy. What that meant especially for third countries - high income countries like the U.S. where there was an industrial heartland - what it meant was that a lot of things that used to be produced in these areas would start to become potentially uncompetitive because the Chinese were starting to produce it cheaper and over time the quality improved. So they became more and more competitive. "Made in the U.S.A.," "Made in Europe" became a little less of a cachet, and people started to outsource all this to China. This became known due to a number of MIT economists, notably David Autor, as [the China shock](https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906?ref=analysepodcast.com). The China shock is just this idea that while it's true that China's entry into the WTO did bring positive effects on many parts of the world in terms of lowering the price of manufactured goods, of durable good. Unfortunately it also led to hollowing out of some previously industrial areas. **Bernard Leong:** Probably what's happening to the U.S. and Europe as well. **Jamus Lim:** Yes. This was happening in the U.S. and Europe. Arguably it is now at the stage where it's very hard for the world to continue absorbing a lot more of these Chinese exports. Now, to be fair, China, as I mentioned earlier on, has gradually moved up the value added chain. It's no longer the case that China is just manufacturing cheap exports. EVs \[Electric Vehicles\], for instance. Some of the best Chinese EVs from BYD for instance, are priced at the level that is not that much cheaper than a comparable Tesla, for instance. So they are starting to climb up the value added chain just like Japan did before them, just like South Korea did before them. It is true that because of China's enormous manufacturing capacity and its size, it's still producing a lot more for the rest of the world than what some of these other countries did. But I think inevitably what will happen is that there will be a need for Chinese themselves to no longer be selling to the rest of the world, but as you alluded to Bernard, to ultimately absorb a lot of that themselves. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. Because otherwise everyone else is buying from you but unable to sell to you. Then there are no trade flows. Trade flows are essential to world economy, right? In a global economy. I think people don't realize this. **Jamus Lim:** It is essential to the domestic economy too. This fact is not unknown to Chinese policy makers. When I worked at the World Bank this was back, way back in 2015, we were working on a report about rebalancing the Chinese economy. That was 10 years ago. A decade ago, the Chinese policy makers were already realizing the absolute importance of increasing domestic consumption. Now, the Xi administration has rebranded this as what they call dual, a dual circulation model with this internal circulation, basically whatever is being produced in China to be sold to the growing and rising middle class in China. I actually think it's possible. Henry Ford famously said that he wants to pay his workers enough so that they themselves will be able to buy the cars that they were manufacturing. This is what China will ultimately have to build - a domestic consumption economy where people are not saving necessarily, but also consuming and alongside the consumption, they will be generating that necessary internal demand to absorb a lot of the excess supply that China is currently flooding world markets with. **Bernard Leong:** I want to pivot the conversation to two other economies. I'm pretty curious. One is South Korea and the other one is Japan. I'll go with South Korea first because it's been a pretty compelling example of state led industrialization and the [chaebols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol?ref=analysepodcast.com), most notably Samsung. What lessons can we draw from this evolution into an advanced economy? Can the South Korea model actually be applicable elsewhere? Maybe in one of our Southeast Asian economies now? **Jamus Lim:** South Korea is often lumped together with the other dragon economies, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, but South Korea, as you alluded to correctly, is certainly different in one very specific way, and that is that it adopted a lot of that conglomerate model that resulted from its colonial experience with Japan and alongside that conglomerate model is very active industrial policy. That industrial policy where the Korean developmental state, which in turn was influenced by the fact that it was colonized by Japan and Japan transplanted the model of that developmental state. **Bernard Leong:** To the current chaebol model, right? **Jamus Lim:** Before the chaebol, there was this model called the [Zaibatsu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu?ref=analysepodcast.com). The chaebol was essentially what happened in Japan after the Second World War where the Americans told the Japanese, "Look, your zaibatsu model, a conglomerate model was responsible for the war machine that you guys generated and ended up creating a whole mess in Asia. We want you to dismantle that zaibatsu model." The Japanese said "Yes, okay. Hai. Hai." Ultimately they just rebranded it, as we would term it today: [Keiretsu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu?ref=analysepodcast.com). There are some appreciable differences. The zaibatsu model was more shareholder controlled by one family, whereas the Keiretsu model is publicly traded. **Bernard Leong:** It is more decentralized in terms of shareholding. **Jamus Lim:** A little bit, but many aspects of the conglomerate having a financial institution right at the top level, together with the logistics and trading institution, the manufacturing firm, all that is a key part. The horizontal and vertical integration, all that is part of the keiretsu model, which is still present in Japan and was via the zaibatsu transplanted to the chaebol system in Korea. The chaebol is as you alluded to a model where there is a conglomerate, but at the same time has heavy ties to the state. The state having provided subsidies for directing research, for instance, in some of these institutions. Of course, these companies also through retained earnings invest heavily in applied R&D \[research and development\] themselves. But there's this kind of dance between the developmental state and these conglomerates that plays out. **Bernard Leong:** I think a good example would be Samsung, right? They have what is in their business model, what's called the choke point strategy. When they started in Samsung living refrigerators, what they identified as the choke point was the coolant. So they manufactured the coolants for all the European companies, and then subsequently they built their own refrigerators and took over the world. Then they did the same in TVs where they focused on OLED screens. Of course in the smartphone time they did the NAND Flash drive, which is the hard disk in your mobile phone and also the OLED screen. Then they use it to have this probably frenemy relationship with Apple, where "I need your flash drives and I need your screens, but I can't get rid of you because you're creating a competitor against me." **Jamus Lim:** Samsung is very tempting in part because its market cap is basically half the Korean economy. But actually I would argue that a very good example of state intervention that led to an enduring industrial advantage is in Korea's heavy chemical industry. **Bernard Leong:** Ah, okay. I get your point on that one. **Jamus Lim:** In the 1980s, Park Chung-hee who was the president at the time, he made a decision to target the manufacture of certain chemicals, heavy chemicals. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Jamus Lim:** Korea has no natural advantage in these things at the time and even till today, of course, that industry is heavily dominated by German manufacturers. Nevertheless, Korea made a decision through the government that they wanted to target this industry, and they began plowing resources into it. Similar for Korean steel, by the way. Initially, as you can imagine, when you're still learning a process, they were not very efficient. They were not manufacturing the highest quality nor the most price competitive ones. But eventually they consolidated. The Korean engineers managed to gradually up the quality of all the industrial processes with which they manufactured these things, and they're now one of the major players and exporters of heavy chemicals as well as steel in the world. This is a perfect example of how those who argue that there's never any role for the state to get involved - at least in these few examples, Korea certainly disproves that. **Bernard Leong:** Actually very surprised by it. Maybe, This is a western economies construct, that the state is never involved in any form of industry development or economic development. I mean, even for themselves, right? The internet didn't start from commercial, it started from DARPA and then subsequently moved into the commercial world, right? **Jamus Lim:** Mariana Mazzucato, who is an economist, I believe at UCL, has made a strong argument about this, about how a lot of how western economists tend to frame the absence of state involvement in industrial policy as a little bit of a chimera. But the most forcible argument for how the developmental state and industrial policy has made an appreciable difference in Korea has been that of Ha-Joon Chang - I think he's no longer at Cambridge, but [Ha-Joon Chang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon%5FChang?ref=analysepodcast.com) is a Korean economist. **Bernard Leong:** I read his work. Pretty good work. **Jamus Lim:** At Cambridge, he made a very decisive argument. If you haven't read his book: [Bad Samaritans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad%5FSamaritans%5F%28book%29?ref=analysepodcast.com), you can go get it about how Korea disposes of one way of thinking that industrial policy never has any role in the developmental process. **Bernard Leong:** I think I don't have the title in my mind, but I highly recommend that book by Ha-Joon Chang, which I read and helps me to understand the Korean economy. One question. Now I want to go to Japan. I'm going to go straight to the current situation. They have currently reintroduced inflation into their economy, which is actually interesting. What's going to happen to their economy moving from here? **Jamus Lim:** That's really interesting because I was in the earlier iterations of this course, I was literally teaching about Japanese deflation - what happened to cause that and I still teach it - and how Japan basically had one decade, one lost decade, two lost decades, some would argue in part because of this process of low inflation or even outright deflation. In fact the zero interest rate policy way before it was an issue in Europe, just prior to the COVID crisis, it was already on Japanese shores for many years. What has happened is that together with much more aggressive monetary policy through the form of unconventional policies like quantitative easing - the Japanese call it quantitative and qualitative easing because they have to do it even bigger - together with the supply shock that came with COVID, Japan suddenly now has inflation. Of course, what this means is that the economy has to adjust. This is inevitable. It's something actually welcome. Japan has been trying to have some steady state level of inflation. Most central banks in the world target 2%. Japan officially, the Bank of Japan targets 2% as well, but it has undershot this for decades. **Bernard Leong:** I think that this is like the ideal government KPI \[key performance indicator\], right? That you are living in this country where the inflation just never hits 2% for them and now they suddenly have inflation. They have to start to get their businesses to try to raise prices, and then there is a culture of not raising prices and that also permeates across the entire economy as well. **Jamus Lim:** One very palpable outcome that you see now of course, is that businesses are forced to rejigger the way that they price contracts. They must be more willing to adjust worker salaries. Worker salaries are often in the case of Japan very rigid. That itself has problems, especially if you look at the youth and the early graduate employment rates in Japan, they have been disproportionately high. They're always higher everywhere in the world, but they were disproportionately high in Japan because the old were not willing to give up their jobs because they wanted the security of a stable income. Because they weren't getting more and more expensive, at least in nominal terms, over time, companies just continued to keep them on payroll. All that is changing. Contracts will have to be altered in all dimensions of the economy. In fact whenever you have these kind of transitions it's a little bit wrenching and you have entrenched interests that were benefiting from the status quo - we're starting to get into political economy here - entrenched interests that were benefiting from the status quo, then inevitably you'll have frictions. The most obvious casualty, if you will, of this has been the liberal democratic party in Japan. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, they just have problems now because now they're having the same problems that are happening everywhere starting to show up. I want to ask you this question. What's the one thing you know about the institutional and structural foundations of Asian economies that very few do? **Jamus Lim:** Well, I would be lying if I said that I knew some secret sauce. But even if I were to try to pin it down, I would caution against trying to think of one thing, because that's precisely the point. The way that institutions emerge and entrench themselves and become a part of the functioning of an economy and society is because they solve some problem. They're usually a non-market solution toward solving some problem that the economy, that the market system couldn't necessarily solve. Of course the most prominent example of an institution that solves a market problem in a non-market way is a firm. Ronald Coase, of course very early on taught us that when a firm realizes that in some cases when transactions costs are high, you want to internalize things within the firm. The firm is itself an institution. But these other social political institutions, they also exist to resolve some problem. Once they resolve that problem and they're resolving it adequately, then it becomes really hard to bring about change. The institution solves a problem. To be clear, it is better than in the absence of the institution, but it also means that without somehow breaking this institution or having some crisis that leads you to substantially reform the institution, you are going to be stuck at a suboptimal equilibrium. For every economy, those institutions are going to be different. But if there is a commonality in that story, it is that if we want to better understand how to bring about development in some of these countries, what we truly need to understand is how the specific institutions that have emerged in these countries are potentially in some ways holding back the continued growth and expansion of the other actors in the economy. How these institutions may be hampering the entry of new players and in turn these new players would be the source of growth into the economy in the future. That's a common thread, I guess. **Bernard Leong:** My curious question: what's the one question that you wish more people would ask you about any subject within your book, "Asian Economies"? **Jamus Lim:** I think one important thing that people tend to underplay other than institutions, which would be again, a very natural answer, but one thing that people underplay is the role - and this is one of the subtitles of the book - that history plays. We've already alluded to some of this earlier on, how the chaebol structure was in part because of the colonial history that Japan had over Korea. Singapore had a very different colonial experience. Its colonizer was a different country. It was Great Britain at the time. As far as colonial experiences are concerned, it was also relatively more benign. It's not to say that there weren't atrocities that were committed by the British on Singapore shores to the native population, but compared to other colonies that Great Britain had where it was purely extractive - what they tried to do was basically the best they managed was they constructed railways and then they extracted resources and channeled it back to British factories in the Midlands. In contrast, Singapore didn't have any of these natural resources to extract. It was seen as a strategic port. The British brought with them their civil servants and their form of government. They brought with them a certain respect for the rule of law and political organization from which the Westminster system we continue to inherit today. They also brought with them educational institutions. Many of these were religious in orientation, but in turn, these managed to expand education to greater numbers in the population that eventually became the basis for the public schooling system. I think when you start to realize that history isn't easily washed away, and that there is in fact a deep persistence - this is something that over the past decade or so economists such as Melissa Dell at MIT have really talked about - the absolute persistence of elements in history. This, I think really also needs to be taken into account. Sometimes we think what's passed is passed. I wish that they would ask me how that history has continued to influence what we continue to observe today. **Bernard Leong:** It's a very interesting point because I think in the last three, four years I've been spending more time reading history books than any other genre because I think that a lot of what's happening now is just a revisit of things that we have seen in the last couple of decades or centuries, but just not realizing that it's slowly creeping back into where we are. **Jamus Lim:** The French have the saying, that the more things change, the more things stay the same. Those who ignore history are - and this is another quote - those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. It's one of those things where I think the greater sensitivity that we have to the contours of what came before us, the more we might be aware of not just our unique position, but also how to make sure that some of the more common human frailties do not once again get committed by a new generation that is unaware of what happened before. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what will success look like for you as an economist and educator in terms of the success with this book and its broader impact? **Jamus Lim:** The traditional academic research answer, economist answer to what success is - a publication in one of the top five economic journals. **Bernard Leong:** Publish or perish? **Jamus Lim:** There are researchers that would give their firstborn for a publication in American Economic Review. But for me, I think having also transitioned a little bit away from academic - I still really enjoy writing, researching, thinking deeply about issues and publishing. I love that intellectual rigor, bringing the intellectual rigour and pondering deeply about questions on a day-to-day basis. At the same time, I've also become acutely aware of the importance of making sure that what we research, the questions we ask, the results that we find, the implications for policy that we draw are also ultimately taken on board and adopted by policy makers. Because in the end, as academics, we write for a hundred other people in the world. If the hundred other people are interested, your work gets published, but what impact will you ultimately have? That impact must, I think, be also measured in terms of broad policy impact for the day-to-day lives of people. I think as academics, but also academic economists, we set ourselves too modest a goal if the only goal, professional goal is to publish. We should also look to how we might be able to potentially influence the public discourse and the contours and the evolution of public policy in the countries that we live in as well. **Bernard Leong:** Jamus, many thanks for coming on the show. I'll definitely have to get you back because I think we only covered the East Asian economies this time round. **Jamus Lim:** It'll be my pleasure and honor. **Bernard Leong:** I'm pretty sure there are a lot of other parts that I've been thinking quite a lot about and would be great to have you on again to discuss the other parts of Asia. In closing, two questions. Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Jamus Lim:** In terms of books or... **Bernard Leong:** Books, anything. Some people even give very interesting things like research projects as well. **Jamus Lim:** I'll give an example of a book. This is a book that I regret to say I've been working my way through for the better part of a year and a half. That is a book about thought and it's called "[A Theory of Justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%5FTheory%5Fof%5FJustice?ref=analysepodcast.com)" I believe. Essentially what this book does is it's an exposition of a certain way of thinking, Rawlsian philosophy. Economists are very used to Benthamite utilitarian thinking, basically maximizing utility as is given to us, and taking, maximizing social welfare in that particular fashion. I think Rawlsian thought - a quick summary of what Rawls argued is that one of his key principles was that we should judge ourselves by how well as a society we are doing by the least advantaged. So basically how well is the last man doing. **Bernard Leong:** You are talking about the Rawls, the person who wrote "A Theory of Justice" right from the veil of ignorance? It is a great book. **Jamus Lim:** It's a great book. I haven't read the original, but this is a more recent exposition of his thought with contemporary applications. I have been working my way through that book. So that's one recommendation. **Bernard Leong:** Can I add a recommendation on top of yours? I would highly recommend Thomas Sowell's "[A Conflict of Visions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%5FConflict%5Fof%5FVisions?ref=analysepodcast.com)" The reason why the interesting part I like about that book is how he looks at any subject, whether it's economic, sociology, every single subject - the assumptions of two diverse thinking start off with the same premises, but end up very differently and very extreme on both ends. **Jamus Lim:** That is actually a good intellectual construct, right? To realize that your underlying assumptions really could absolutely lead to divergent conclusions that you need to be sensitive to. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Jamus Lim:** I guess I'm trying to think of a food recommendation since I'm Singaporean and it's totally necessary. **Bernard Leong:** Oh, we haven't had that. We haven't had that in the podcast. **Jamus Lim:** I tend to cook a lot at home. One thing that I am actually going to cook this weekend is a kind of French fisherman stew. It's called [bouillabaisse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouillabaisse?ref=analysepodcast.com). My mother is recuperating at home from mild surgery. Fish soup is kind of the thing that you do to help people recover. So I'm actually going to do this fisherman's stew this weekend. If you've never had bouillabaisse you could look it up. Like all fish stews, it involves some effort in chopping the ingredients up. That ultimately you just dump it into a stock and then you let it go. **Bernard Leong:** Okay. So last question. How can my audience find you and follow your work if they want to dive deeper into your book and economic commentary? **Jamus Lim:** If you Google me, Jamus Lim, one hit that I hope comes up is my website. It's jamus.name. I know it's a very unusual URL, that top level domain has kind of faded from prominence. But [jamus.name](https://jamus.name/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is my website, so you can go there. It will link to a lot of my research papers. I don't update it as frequently as I really should, but it's there. A little bit about the way I look at the world, my teaching and research philosophies as well as a bunch of links that I think are interesting that I tend to find. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find the podcast anywhere. Just subscribe to us and give us your feedback. So Jamus, many thanks for coming on the show, and let's have a second conversation again on the other Asian economies for the next round. **Jamus Lim:** Let's do that. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. 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Paul dived deep into how Stripe is revolutionizing commerce through AI and stablecoins, sharing fascinating customer stories in the Asia Pacific and Japan. He delved into Stripe's current innovations specifically on agentic commerce toolkits, virtual card issuing, and adaptive pricing solutions that are transforming how businesses scale across the dynamic Asia Pacific region. Last but not least, Paul shared the key trends in AI-powered payments and stablecoin adoption, defining what great would look like for Stripe's user-first approach to building the financial infrastructure of the internet economy in APAC. --- > "APAC represents 40% of global GDP. So you can see that there's huge opportunity in a very, very diverse region. The needs of Japan are different to the needs of China. India is exploding with SaaS, software, AI. Australia one of our larger markets, again, very different. And so Southeast Asia, the complexities of Asia make it a joy to work in." - **Paul Harapin** Profile: Paul Harapin, Chief Revenue Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan, [Stripe](https://stripe.com/en-sg?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulharapin/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the power of business, technology, and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and today we are going to explore how the internet economy is driving Asia's next wave of innovation. With me today is Paul Harapin, Chief Revenue Officer for Asia Pacific and Japan at [Stripe](https://stripe.com/en-sg?ref=analysepodcast.com). We'll dive into how Stripe is shaping the future of digital e-commerce through AI and stable coins and what this means for businesses and consumers in the region. So, Paul, welcome to the show. **Paul Harapin:** Thank you, Bernard. It's great to be here. **Bernard Leong:** I've done some work to look at your background. I want to start as it is your first time guest on my show. We are interested in your origin story. How do you start your career in technology? **Paul Harapin:** Well, back in Sydney, I finished Sydney University. I did an economics degree. Back then you had all the employers come to campus and I thought I'd probably work in the finance industry. I wasn't a hundred percent sure, but I wanted to make sure I filled my time of interviews so I could practice. So I put all the banks down, the merchant banks and etc. I even did an interview with the Australian Federal police for an undercover role just out of interest. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting. **Paul Harapin:** But I added IBM to the list. Back when I finished high school, there were no computers in high school. Even when I joined IBM, it was only mainframes and no PCs. But the IBM guy did an interview with me. It become a very important thing of discovery for anyone in sales. He didn't tell me all about IBM. He actually asked me about what I wanted to do, and I always wanted to travel. Coming from a family where my father was a refugee from World War II into Australia, we didn't have a lot of money, so we didn't have holidays, we didn't travel though my grandmother gave me this view of the world. I always wanted to travel and potentially be a diplomat. He just said, "If you join IBM, we'll train you. We have offices all around the world and have the opportunity to travel." So I did the second interview followed by the third interview. I ended up joining IBM. After six years, that big company environment wasn't really for me. I joined a startup and I just did startups ever since. I realized building the tech companies and helping Silicon Valley startups expand into Asia. That was where my passion lay. I've done that now for many decades. **Bernard Leong:** Well, you have held leadership roles across major tech companies, VMware, VCE, and Domo before joining Stripe. What inspired you to make the leap from enterprise software to now financial infrastructure? **Paul Harapin:** So, for me, it often comes down to two things. One is the people, and two is the opportunity and what's there, and I'm always wanting to learn. That's a great thing about startups. You're always learning. So I was actually interviewing with another company to run their Asia business, and my good friend, who I also worked with at VMware would've been my boss again. So I was doing the interview all the way up through the global CEO. He said to me as we finished, he said, "Hey, would you be a reference?" I said, "Sure. Who for?" He said, "For me, I'm interviewing for a role, what do you mean I'm coming to join you?" He said, "Well, I'm interviewing to be CRO for Stripe. During the interview with our CEO. Stripe CEO." I said, "Hey, who runs Asia for Stripe?" He said, "Funny you ask. There is nobody at the moment. We need someone." Thus, I talked myself into a role. [Mike Clayville](https://www.analysepodcast.com/stripe-and-the-innovation-of-financial-infrastructure-in-the-asia-pacific-with-mike-clayville/), who's very well known in the tech industry, joined as CRO and I joined three weeks later, and that was almost five years ago now. **Bernard Leong:** That's interesting story. So I know Mike when he was in AWS. When I had that conversation, when he was still the CRO. We were talking a lot about Stripe. But before we get into the main subject of the day, I want to ask you, looking back at your career journey across Stripe and going through startups and big tech. What are the key lessons you can share with my audience about your career journey? **Paul Harapin:** What's important to me is the people. It is everything regardless of what your product is, your service, it's the people you surround yourself with. I've had a very high quality bar across my whole career, and I've been very lucky to work for some amazing companies like Tivoli in the mid nineties to VMware and now Stripe and some others as well. It's the quality of people that resonates more than most. It's really hard to get into Stripe. We hold a really high quality bar which I love. So from the youngest employee to the old people like me, I slip through the gaps, but everyone is high quality. Everyone is passionate, and it's just a joy to come to work. Then it's really about making sure that you put everything in to what you do as a startup, because if you don't, you'll never be as successful as you could do. I was looking back on this with someone the other day in a discussion on a paid CEO versus a founder CEO. I think where I've been able to be successful is, whilst I'm not the founder of this company or VMware or anything, I've come in relatively early and I run with a founder mindset. I treat it like it is my company. Like I did start it. I think that's the difference. I would recommend to people that even in this sort of role. You drive to do the best thing for the company, not the best thing always for yourself. Sometimes there's that bit of conflict, but people and passion really is a summary. **Bernard Leong:** That's a great lesson here because people undervalue loyalty to the organization. Doing for the organization beyond yourself. This is a great lesson. So I get to the main subject of the day where we talk about Stripe, AI and stablecoins. Let me set the stage with Stripe. Stripe is synonymous with seamless, frictionless, and safe payments. Many businesses, including myself, are all using Stripe for payments, but the company has already evolved beyond that. So to baseline my audience, can you provide a high level view of Stripe's mission and its role in enabling the internet economy across Asia? **Paul Harapin:** Thank you for your business. Our goal really is to drive and increase the GDP of the internet by building programmable financial services and financial infrastructure that enables merchants of any size, from the smallest startup to the largest global multi-billion dollar corporation, to be able to do business in any country in the world. To do business, not just simply in taking payments, but being able to engage in all the surrounding capability of that. Money movement across the globe. We have a suite of software SaaS software we call our revenue and financial automation suite, which is becoming really even more relevant with the advent of AI and usage-based billing, SaaS type billing, subscription billing, the invoicing around that. You need to charge, collect and file taxes. We do that in over a hundred countries. Bank reconciliation in store terminals and much more. So we are really payments is the foundation of the company, but that financial infrastructure, we've built a whole surrounding capability of software services and hardware that really delivers really strong outcomes for customers through a very strong API driven platform. **Bernard Leong:** So, I have gone to different restaurants and sometimes I have seen the Stripe POS \[Point of Sale\] systems in action. So Asia is probably one of Stripe's fastest growing regions, very similar to a lot of other tech business. What's driving this growth and are there any unique challenges and opportunities that Asia present as compared to all the other markets out there? **Paul Harapin:** All of the above Bernard. When we say we're trying to grow the GDP of the internet a stat from last year is Stripe processed $1.4 trillion in global revenue that represents 1.3% of global GDP. APAC represents 40% of global GDP. So you can see that there's huge opportunity in a very, very diverse region. The needs of Japan are different to the needs of China. India is exploding with SaaS, software, AI. Australia one of our larger markets, again, very different. So Southeast Asia, the complexities of Asia make it a joy to work in. I think you see in Southeast Asia, one of the opportunities is Southeast Asia. India is a world leader in local payment methods, wallets, real-time payment capability. It's really leading and not just for itself, actually in influencing what happens in the rest of the world. You see, Brazil now has Pix. Like UPI in India is effectively a partnership they've taken. They've worked together to deliver this real time network. Japan is really exciting because it's still very much a cash driven society with very high in-store retail. Coming through with a platform economy, where we are very strong across the rest of Asia and the rest of the world. You mentioned the fact that you go into a restaurant and see a Stripe terminal all of that is driven by a platform partner that is delivering services to that cafe or to that restaurant. Stripe enables all the financial component of their SaaS offering and platform offering into that market. So the opportunity here is tremendous. We're looking at some of our banking as a service products, Stripe capital for lending card issuing. Many of our customers are using that and we're bringing that here to Asia. So I think the challenges are is, it is sort of an inverse of that is, it is a complex region. Every country is different. Every country has their own regulatory framework. Recently you see the Reserve Bank in Australia has spoken about banning surcharging. Well, many other countries don't have surcharging countries like India Thailand, their reserve banks and governments are trying to uplift their community. How do you do that? Via digital payments because that's really changes the world for a lot of people who are less fortunate, they're unbanked or underbanked, they can't get credit, they don't have a bank account. But with a phone-based wallet, they can actually partake in digital transactions. So we're just very proud to be supporting a lot of these communities and merchants who grow their business, not just locally, but globally. You know, a lot of our business, particularly here in APAC, traverses the rest of the world. The ability to start a company in Singapore and within a week be processing with customers in 40 countries around the world, if you wish to simply by, you know, clicking a few buttons in the Stripe dashboard is fantastic. We see customers take advantage of that all the time. **Bernard Leong:** I actually like the experience. I always enjoy looking at my Stripe dashboard, so, great. I want to come to talking about one of the most biggest topic is about AI and agent AI for internet commerce. I think without doubt. AI in the last three years has been the most hot topic, and I think Stripe has actually integrated a lot into its products. Let's talk about what this means for businesses. How is AI actually transforming the way how businesses are managing, say, payments and fraud prevention today? **Paul Harapin:** On the AI topic, we are very early in the cycle. I think it's like we've discovered fire and we're trying to work out, well, this is interesting, but what do we do with it? It's moving so fast that you can have a conversation with someone and three weeks later, things have changed because the AI companies are moving really fast. Whether they're Silicon Valley-based AI companies, China-based AI companies, or AI companies in India, the momentum in those three countries is quite phenomenal, which is where I think the majority of AI companies will come from. The way Stripe has approached this is through our foundation as a self-service company. So a merchant like yourself, Bernard, probably logged on to Stripe, set up your own account, and now you are processing and taking payments without the involvement of anyone else. Because we can do that, an AI agent is really just another self-serve customer, and so we have foundationally built our company without knowing it for the future of AI in agentic commerce. In addition to that, we've built and continued to iterate really fast agentic commerce toolkits. They're being downloaded thousands of times a week from merchants who are starting to build agentic capability into their platform. Now, again, as I said, we're still in early days, but you'll see some capability out there. There are simple things like most checkouts of a website being built for humans, not for AI, so the AI agent can check you out, but it actually has to fill in the fields like you would as a human. Now we're helping change that, but that requires a change on the e-commerce side, not just the Stripe side, so that evolution is happening at scale. On the fraud side, we built our fraud management software using AI and machine learning years ago. So it's built on that framework and we continue to iterate on its capability as AI increases. We're using AI internally at Stripe across a whole range of vectors from managing fraud to making sure that a customer using Stripe can have their customer check out and be presented with the right payment method at the right time. For example, if you're buying a couch, you may be presented with a buy now pay later option automatically, because AI sees that is the biggest converting option for that type of purchase. If you're buying a $30 t-shirt, it could be a credit card that's presented or a Shopify Pay wallet or something like this. For us, there are two aspects. How do we leverage AI and continue to build AI into all of our software and infrastructure so that we are producing better performance, better results, better fraud management, and better conversion experience for our customers? Then, how do we enable agentic commerce for our customers, particularly the AI companies and retail merchants, so that process can happen rapidly without them having to worry about the ins and outs of how all the payment flows work? We just provide the infrastructure that allows them to execute on their business model of AI however they wish, and everyone will do it slightly differently. **Bernard Leong:** You brought up a very interesting example, which I didn't thought about, like say these days people go to ChatGPT, and they look for different products in e-commerce site. Of course, the question is whether ChatGPT is going to put a buy button there and if there's a buy button, the agent needs to interact directly with the payment system. I thought that when you used the example of how the AI agent starts to fill the forms for the fees and then get the credit card and then try do the payment transaction or that. It is interesting because you're giving the agent AI some form of some degree of autonomy now. How would you define agentic AI and its importance for Stripe to facilitate that agent AI flow in the bigger process. Right. I mean, fraud detection is one aspect, but of course there are other aspects where the AI actually helps with all the other parts of Stripe's businesses. **Paul Harapin:**I think it's critical for us. I mean, we have such a deep focus on this, like nothing I've ever seen before, partly because we see the potential as being world changing. I also think that everything is moving really quickly, so this is not a time to be sitting back thinking about what's going on because it's happening as we go. So there's an opportunity for us as a very fast-moving, innovative company to jump into that. The example that we were talking about is how your AI agent or interface will now not only show you the best glassware that you're looking to buy and all the options, but will allow you to purchase. When you give them your credit card, they are then able to use Stripe's issuing virtual card capability to create multiple virtual cards just for the amounts that are being transacted, execute on those, and then they're disposed of. So your card is securely on file with an AI agent tokenized via Stripe, but they issue virtual cards off the back of that. So your card is not going to all of these retailers—it's a virtual card that's going through. We're building that flow with the capability so it all happens seamlessly. In addition to the normal continuing checkout capability where we optimize everything about the conversion ratio so that as any human or agent hits the checkout, the experience is optimal to convert as quickly as possible. We have a wallet called Stripe Link that enables you to check out within six seconds. You can use it to pay for your Uber in America or book your Airbnb. That opportunity now benefits the merchant because when you want to buy and you have the excitement to purchase, nothing gets in your way, because we know 50% of people abandon a cart purchase when it's too friction-filled. You check out, you get a code, you hit the code and you're done. So that's where all the innovation is happening for us, as well as a lot of the internal work on fraud, optimizing our own engineering teams and leveraging products so that we can develop more products faster with even higher quality. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting. I was just reminded of the fact that I was using Stripe Link to actually pay my production team. Fantastic. Thank you. You should be a reference customer for me. Six seconds is pretty good. Yeah, absolutely. So I think one interesting thing that you brought up during this whole flow conversation is that there is also some differentiation in terms of Stripe's approach, right? Because it is no longer just being a traditional automation or just having a direct transaction, or even rule-based. Now, it seems to me that Stripe will be able to do adaptive types of payment flows as compared to the past. Am I right? **Paul Harapin:** You are right in many ways. A good example of that is what we call adaptive pricing, which is the ability for a consumer to check out, maybe in a cross-border transaction. I'll use the example of us being here in Singapore—maybe I want to book a hotel in Thailand. It presents Thai Baht costs, but I don't know what that means in Singapore dollars. Now I have to get a calculator and check the exchange rate and try to work it out, or it gives me an SGD number, but it's not really SGD because I end up paying in Baht. What adaptive pricing does is see where you are and present you with those prices. If I'm here in Singapore, I can check out with a Singapore price on my Singapore credit card and I'm charged Singapore dollars, but the merchant gets the Thai Baht that was originally there. So we manage that process for them. So it's very seamless, and simple things like that, which look simple but are very complex to build, result on average in an 18% increase in execution of a transaction and an 18% increase in business. For anybody, that's a big increase in revenue. So those are the sorts of things we're very proud of, and that's just one example of the many innovations. **Bernard Leong:** So are there any other more exciting AI-powered capabilities that Stripe may be building for businesses that will change how small businesses or even large enterprises operate in the market? **Paul Harapin:** I think there will be. We'll talk to a few of those companies at our Stripe tour event coming up, so maybe you can put those links in your podcast afterwards. I can't talk about them just now, but definitely over the next couple of weeks we'll see some of those be announced. Oh, maybe I can get you on another show to talk about it. I'm happy to. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about the application of AI in commerce that very few people do from Stripe's perspective? **Paul Harapin:** Good question. I think it's really the speed of how organizations are trying to work through the complexities of these transactions, because there are many things that go into financial services. People often think that, hey, I go onto a website and I give them my credit card—that's really simple. Well, there's a world of complexity involving regulations, government controls, money laundering management, credit risks, and all the fraud risks that go on with people trying to do things. I think a lot of people don't understand the underlying complexities. It's sort of akin to the traditional iceberg picture where you see the bit of iceberg sitting out of the water, but underneath there's so much. That's how we founded Stripe—to take away and obfuscate all of that complexity of the global financial system so that merchants, software companies, and platforms can really focus on what's important to them, which is their business, and not have to worry about the complexity of this system. Because if you imagine going back 20 years or even sooner, actually setting up a global organization in multiple countries was highly expensive. You had to have companies and structures and banking relationships and everything in those countries. It's what slowed global commerce. You can see now that with Stripe, our customers last year grew 38% compared to the Fortune 500, which grew about 5%. So the growth leverage of using Stripe and its ability to scale really quickly is truly delivering on our promise, which is to increase the GDP of the internet. Here's the refined paragraph with improved flow while maintaining the same structure: **Bernard Leong:** So I want to talk about stablecoins, which some people say is the ChatGPT moment for crypto. I've been a great user of stablecoins over the years, being a crypto person. So I think one interesting thing that happened last year was the acquisition of Bridge, which I think was probably one of Stripe's most interesting acquisitions. But we are not going to talk about that. We are going to talk about how Stripe has started to integrate stablecoins into its payment stack. I want to unpack that. So maybe to start, why has Stripe now decided to support stablecoin transactions, and what problem are you trying to solve for customers? I think to really appreciate this—probably some of the U.S. audience may not think about how difficult payments are done in our part of the world. Stablecoins seem to be a very emerging markets kind of phenomenon. Maybe you can talk about that. **Paul Harapin:** I think it was an exciting move for us really diving deeply into stablecoins, and we've since brought on another company called Privy, which has more wallet and crypto wallet-based infrastructure. But just to focus on stablecoins as a whole, I think we can simplify a couple of things. Our region, Latin America, and a number of other regions have currencies that can fluctuate. Money movement can be difficult. The old world financial system is inherently hundreds of years old, and we are using systems like Swift to send money. You fill in forms and file that, and the money turns up three days later. I think what stablecoins enable is, as the name suggests, the security and stability of the currency. In an initial case, it's USDC, a US dollar-pegged stablecoin. So a company, for example, that we have like Starlink that may wish to transact in Argentina, where the currencies fluctuate dramatically, can use stablecoins for the transaction and now they know it's stable. Significantly, they can also move that money rapidly using the stablecoin infrastructure. In fact, one of our team was in Bolivia the other day, and the duty-free at the airport in Bolivia only accepted stablecoins, which is amazing. Then there's the ability—now there are companies that have wallets. We've announced a deal with Visa where merchants can also create Visa cards that you can pay with in-store off the back of a stablecoin. I also had a Japanese customer I met a little while ago whose business is sending secondhand cars to Africa, the Caribbean, and many such countries. His biggest business problem was the fact that his customers, say in Zimbabwe, would have to come to the office carrying bags of US dollars cash and pay security guards with machine guns. Then the secondary problem is he's now got bags of cash that he needs to send back to Japan. So stablecoins will, I think, rapidly disrupt the way money moves around the world. The other side of this, interestingly, is we're seeing a lot of interest and have done some business already with large global corporations that have offices around the world and very mature treasury departments within their corporations actually looking to use stablecoins to manage how their treasury floats around the world. So there are two initial use cases that we think really mean that this disruption will flow through. We're still in an early phase, but if you look at Bridge's growth compared to Stripe's early growth, as Patrick talked about at our conference in May, it's growing at a super fast rate, faster than Stripe did. So we're really excited about the interest we're seeing in stablecoins, particularly in our region here in APAC. **Bernard Leong:** So cross border trade is now probably one of the massive pain point for businesses in Asia. I think people do maybe not appreciate this, but how can stable coins make global commerce more efficient and cost effective. I think you brought up a very good point about some countries with very volatile currency exchange rates. That's one use. The other is to fight against inflation. Are there any kind of other ways that stable coins can become very impactful to the commerce. **Paul Harapin:** I think you'll start to see also that it floats down to the consumer level. So we talked about, you know, the volatility area. We talked about large corporations managing treasury and float, and being able to move stable coin. You'll see a growth of stable coin around the world. You'll see that many countries are now exploring what this means for them. I don't think any country can divorce itself from the need of a digital currency. So again, we're early days in this, but I think you'll see also consumers start to adopt stable coin, particularly where they might be traveling around the world. Just want stability. So wallets that are backed by stablecoin with a credit card or debit card at the front end is another area that you'll start to see along with other encompassing other crypto options as well. I think the challenge of crypto with companies is its volatility and the whole idea of stable coin is to say, well, this stable coin is USDC. It's volatility is only matched by the currency itself. So I know if I grab my currency in this country immediately convert to stable coin, I now have a stable float to manage my business with. **Bernard Leong:** So one thing that comes up a lot is that some regulators are still cautious about digital assets. I think it's different across countries, right? So for example, now the US has the Genius Act. I think Singapore, Japan, and some of the more mature Asia-Pacific countries have very clear stablecoin regulation, but maybe some other countries don't. So how does Stripe think about navigating compliance and trust while also innovating and bringing stablecoin technology across the region? **Paul Harapin:** Yeah, we think about it front of mind. We have a real focus on being guardians of the financial ecosystem. We have teams here in Singapore, Europe, and America with people who work very closely with the government. I also meet regularly with MAS \[Monetary Authority of Singapore\] here in Singapore and the Reserve Bank in Australia. Our role is not to tell anyone what to do, but our role is to help educate and show what's happening in the market, provide some guidance and support. We obviously have an opinion on these things, but our role, whether it's stablecoins or anything else, is really to help educate and work with our regulators to get the best results for the country and for the merchants that are processing and building their businesses there. I think with digital currencies, again, when you have something that's disruptive and totally different from the normal way of doing things that we've been used to for hundreds of years, governments and regulators, quite rightly, will take their time and try to understand what's happening. Some will move faster than others. Others will be followers. That's all okay. Stripe will be supportive of all of those countries so that we can help them with the decisions that they're making and provide a global perspective as well. **Bernard Leong:** So, do you see stablecoins as a complement to traditional banking rails, or could it be a complete disruption over the next decade? I mean, not in the perspective of being a replacement, but just looking at it from this current juncture and extrapolating forward. **Paul Harapin:** I think things will operate in tandem for a while, and then based on adoption, the disruption will happen faster or slower than what we think. You can never quite bet on these things, but just the speed, reliability, and technological advancement that stablecoin infrastructure brings to the market—I think you'll see it disrupt a whole range of money movement options. You're seeing it already, even with some traditional providers making some impacts. But stablecoins, I think, will change the way people think about treasury management across the globe. I think for the better. **Bernard Leong:** So I think now we should zoom back out. Coming back to Asia as a dynamic region for both AI and financial technology adoption. So I think now from your perspective today, what makes Asia Pacific now a fertile ground for say, AI driven commerce and digital payments? **Paul Harapin:** I just think it's the pace, energy of the economies here in APAC. As I mentioned earlier, we represent 40% of the global GDP. You go to countries that are moving so fast, be it Indonesia, India, China. Oh my God, I've been in China, and the energy and pace of invention is phenomenal. Whether it's AI or it's self-driving cars or robotics or passenger drones, all of these things are happening so fast. So I think Asia is one, a very fast growing, digitized economy. I think the fastest digitizing economy for payments in the world the speed of adoption is tremendously fast. I believe we did around 10 billion transactions on UPI in India. 10 billion transactions, that's forecast to be a hundred billion by 2030\. Wow. Probably will happen sooner. That's just one example of the adoption here in Singapore. Obviously we have PayNow in Australia real time payments with PayID. It's just so innovative here and so much energy as a region that we can't not, but ride this wave of AI and all the things that it brings to us for our businesses, for our technology, for our lives Asia, there's no better place to be living and working, my view anyway. **Bernard Leong:** So how do you think cultural or even regulatory differences across the region shape how Stripe is going to strategy in terms of rolling out all these things like AI or stable coin technologies to the businesses and maybe to even the individual consumers out there? **Paul Harapin:** Yes, we really follow the regulators. So our goal is to bring innovation to market, obviously doing that in a very compliant way. We're encouraging engagement on these areas. We're working with many of our AI customer partners as well in terms of what they're doing and how they're engaging with government, because obviously you can't turn on the news without people talking about: do we regulate AI? Do we not regulate? How fast should we do it? My view on this is everything should have some guardrails around it. But by the time any government regulates AI today, it will have changed so much that the regulations will be almost irrelevant. So being able to support governments in how they look at these things, make them aware of what's happening, what's possible, and how fast things are moving—I think you start to put guardrails in place. But as I said at the beginning, we've discovered fire. You just can't regulate fire without really knowing what it's doing. But the process and the intellectual discussion and thought around the impacts of AI, I think, are very important for every community to discuss, whether it's commerce-based or it has more social construct impacts that we need to consider. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one question that you wish more people would ask you about Stripe, but they don't? **Paul Harapin:** That's a really good question, Bernard. What would you want them? What would I want them to say? Ask you? I would love them to ask me, how can you help us? Do more with the infrastructure that you've built. **Bernard:** So I'm gonna follow up with that question: "How would you help me as a business? How does Stripe can help me to scale my business?" **Paul Harapin:** Well, the things that we would talk about, Bernard is: What's your community that's purchasing from you? Are they purchasing one-off things? Could you build a subscription model with them where they pay by what they're using? Which countries are you in? Can we help make sure that when someone wishes to buy something from you in another country, that they can buy in their own local currency?" So it's a seamless transaction. They're all of the things that we'd have conversations around. Stripe has built such a comprehensive platform and infrastructure that there's many discussions to have. The one thing that really always drives me crazy, if someone says, Hey, Stripe's a payment gateway. Yes, we are. But that's like, you know, saying Amazon sells books. Yes, they do. They also do a lot more than that. You know, that was the payment gateway component is how we started as our company. But you know, as global financial infrastructure and software for financial services, I think we're on a path of really impacting the communities and merchants around the world. **Bernard Leong:** As I think we have, having this conversation today, I think even for some of my audience in the U.S. would be surprised that there's Stripe POS running around in Asia. In different parts of the world. So my traditional closing question, what does great look like for Stripe in the Asia Pacific and Japan for you? **Paul Harapin:** For me, great looks like my customers coming to me and saying Paul, you've helped me grow our business. We're executing on everything we wish to do because Stripe has been a great partner for us. At the end of the day, for all that Stripe does, a founding principle of the company that's up in lights in every conversation is that we're user first. We build our company, we listen to our customers, we want to support them. The best way are, are we perfect in every aspect of what we do know, but our customers will tell us that, and we're opening to listen. I think you know, our CEOs do a fireside for our whole company every week and every week we open with a customer talking to the whole of the Stripe employee base every single week. One of the key questions is not just what are we doing well, but what could we do more to help you grow your business? I think that is what good looks like when my customers tell me, "Paul, you've delivered on that on that promise and, and we love working with you and your team." **Bernard Leong:** I'll look forward to that. So Paul, many thanks for coming on the show. Of course, we have two very quick questions. First of all. On a personal note, anything that have inspired you recently that you want to recommend to my audience? **Paul Harapin:** Well, I'll go traditional and newish world. Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of Singapore. I'm reading Lee Kuan Yew's biography. I am also listening to a range of podcasts and I listened to a podcast: [UnCapped by Jack Altman with Vinod Khosla](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncapped-15-vinod-khosla-from-khosla-ventures/id1801867202?i=1000715266099&ref=analysepodcast.com) and that was super interesting. **Bernard Leong:** You're talking about Bitcoin book, you're talking about the two books. One is "[The Singapore story](https://www.amazon.sg/Singapore-Story-Memoirs-Lee-Kuan/dp/0130208035?ref=analysepodcast.com)" and the other one's "[From the Third World to the First](https://www.amazon.sg/Third-World-First-Singapore-Economic/dp/B007YTMPL2/?ref=analysepodcast.com)". **Paul:** Yes. **Bernard Leong:** [The Singapore Story](https://www.amazon.sg/Singapore-Story-Memoirs-Lee-Kuan/dp/0130208035?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Lee Kuan Yew. Of course, have a Happy National Day for all the Singaporeans out there. Of course, this podcast will be out after that, but I'm sure we are having that one minor celebration. So last thing. How can my audience find you and making sure that they know what Stripe is doing for them? **Paul Harapin:** They can find us on stripe.com. If there's anything there, we have a contact sales form you can ping. My team will get back to you as soon as possible or ping Bernard, and he'll put you in touch as well. **Bernard Leong:** I now sort of have a new job to help everybody to connect to Stripe. Yeah. So many thanks for everyone. You can definitely find us on YouTube, Spotify and every other channel out there. Subscribe to us on LinkedIn's newsletter or main site. Once again, Paul, many thanks for coming on the show. **Paul Harapin:** Thanks, Bernard. Great to be here. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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She shares her career journey from publishing to tech leadership, reflecting on the evolution from typewritten CVs to AI-powered job searches today. Feon explains LinkedIn's unique approach combining scale, trust, and member-first philosophy, emphasizing how their AI tools enable professionals to find opportunities through natural language while companies streamline hiring processes. She highlights the platform's remarkable growth metrics—47 hires per minute and 36% video engagement growth—showcasing how organizations are re-engineering recruitment and learning through AI coaching and personalized pathways. Addressing the challenges of AI adoption and skills gaps, she emphasizes the importance of three key actions: fluency, agency, and action, while advocating for accessible AI integration into daily workflows. Closing the conversation, Feon shares her vision for creating even greater economic opportunity across Asia Pacific as professionals and businesses navigate the AI transformation together. --- > "AI is in the minds of a lot of people right now and naturally with such big technological shift, you find that there is a big skill gap. You know, there is companies demanding skills in this area, and yet naturally in the marketplace, they might have difficulty finding that skills that is required for companies. So, you know, job seekers need to be a lot more conscious in terms of how they are equipping themselves. One of the things is that LinkedIn courses are there \[to help\]. I always talk about the three affirmative actions that you can do. One is making sure that you are fluent in this area. I think what are the things that you can do to actually get your hands on all these tools so that you become fluent in just playing around with the tool and making sure that you feel comfortable. The second area that I advise people is to make sure that you feel that you have the agency to master your destiny. The third thing will be to take action. If you have learned all these skills, find a way to showcase it and find a way to actually talk about it so that you are, you can actually surface your capabilities in this space." - **Feon Ang** **Profile:** Feon Ang, Managing Director of [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Asia Pacific ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/feonang/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and LinkedIn has been the professional heartbeat in the Asia Pacific. Every minute on LinkedIn, 47 people are hired and over 10,000 people apply for jobs. How is this real-time scale of hiring playing out in the Asia Pacific region and what impact does it have on companies and professionals in the era of generative AI? With me today is Feon Ang, Managing Director for Asia Pacific LinkedIn, to discuss the company's business footprint in the region, the changing world of work in AI, and how LinkedIn is helping professionals navigate this new landscape. Feon, welcome to the show. **Feon Ang:** Thank you, Bernard, for having me. **Bernard Leong:** I have to tell you, I began as the first LinkedIn influencer when LinkedIn Asia Pacific was set up with [Arvind Rajan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arvindrajan/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Today I have you here, and this has been an interview that I really wanted to do. First, I want to hear your origin story—usually for all my guests who come to the podcast, I want to hear how they started their career. How did you start your career? **Feon Ang:** Well, when I first graduated, I started my career at a company called [Dun & Bradstreet](https://www.dnb.com/en-us/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is a US company. I was there for a very short stint because I was young and just exploring different things. Then I stayed much longer at the next company, which was [Marie Claire](https://www.marieclaire.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), a publication company. When I was there, I had a lot of fun. But during that period, everyone was talking about tech. In my mind, I felt like tech was the new industry I needed to get into. Fortunately, I was able to move from a publishing firm to [Ingram Micro](https://www.ingrammicro.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which led me to Gartner, an IT advisory firm. Here I am, from [Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en?ref=analysepodcast.com) to LinkedIn. It was really someone who left Gartner who told me how wonderful LinkedIn was and recommended me for this job. **Bernard Leong:** So what led you to your current role at LinkedIn? **Feon Ang:** When I joined LinkedIn, I was managing Southeast Asia at that time. The time and place in my life was that I had three young kids and I was very happy to be doing that job. As I was able to contribute and see the vision of the company, I was very fortunate that I had the support of Arvind that you mentioned, Hari and Olivier who were my predecessors, who grew me and prepared me for the managing director role. **Bernard Leong:** So looking back on your experience now, leading LinkedIn's business across such a diverse region, what lessons can you share about your career journey with my audience out there? **Feon Ang:** Well, there are many lessons I would say, but from the perspective of LinkedIn, I've learned to realize how important it is to stay true to your calling, to the true north of the company, which is the vision of this organization and how essential it is to keep to the values of this organization, which is members first. If you don't understand the concept of members first, it's very difficult to make all your decisions toward understanding how important it is to have a members first philosophy. I feel like that is so important to really understand and internalize it so that when you make decisions, they are made around that value statement. The second learning would be the understanding of scale. When I first joined LinkedIn, I was told and we hear this all the time, every second, two new members join the platform, but today, every one second, seven new members join the platform. It goes to show that scale matters. At that time I thought, wow, LinkedIn is so big, but today if you look at it, every one second, seven new members are joining. So the power of scale is not to be underestimated in terms of how people connect with each other and learn from each other. The third, I would say, is trust because a platform without that trust is not sustainable. I was just having a conversation the other day with a CEO and he said he loves posting on LinkedIn. He said that what he posts on LinkedIn, he gets a lot of constructive feedback and he says these comments help him to think and allow him to feel that what he wrote on the platform is meaningful because the feedback is constructive. He asked why do you think that's the case? I kind of thought for a minute and I think it's really because the platform has gotten lots of trust among its people, and also the members have that identity. So when people have that identity associated, they tend to be a lot more thoughtful with the comments that they put there. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you for those points of thoughts. I want to come to the main subject of today. I want to talk about LinkedIn's current business footprint in Asia Pacific and the impact of generative AI in the Asia Pacific. But first, maybe we should start for our audience out there. Could you describe LinkedIn's overall mission and how is it specifically playing out in the Asia Pacific region? **Feon Ang:** Well, our vision statement is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. I think it's important that when you look at that statement and understand the platform itself, we have 1.2 billion members on our platform, 70 million companies represented. At any one time we can see what are the jobs that companies are posting, what kind of skills companies are looking for and what kind of applications are happening. For every one minute, 47 hires are made and 10,000 applications happen on our platform. It goes to show that when you have that kind of data, you really can take a bird's eye view of what's happening around the world. Understanding how the skills framework is changing, how people are looking, what kind of jobs are people looking for, and what kind of skills are in demand. Understanding that perspective gives you a generous sense of the workforce transformation that's happening right now. **Bernard Leong:** So Asia Pacific is LinkedIn's largest regional member base, right? Now, with over, I think 343 million, make sure you correct me if the numbers are wrong. **Feon Ang:** Yes, 343 million members. **Bernard Leong:** So what do you think explains the scale and engagement now in the Asia Pacific region? **Feon Ang:** Yeah. Well, three of the five largest economies are in Asia Pacific. You have China, India, Japan, and we think, and I believe that Asia Pacific will continue to be a very important platform for our members to actually find each other, engage and have a trusted knowledge exchange. If you look at the numbers itself, India is one of our fastest growing members, growing by 22% year on year, with 155 million represented on our platform. **Bernard Leong:** That's a large number. **Feon Ang:** So in that sense, you find that there's a young and mobile workforce that is happening in this part of the world that is eager to learn, eager to connect, eager to find our next opportunity on the platform. People connect to find their job opportunities, connect to find businesses, connect to find ways to learn and to upgrade themselves, partly because the ASEAN culture is very much driven by wanting to learn more and just keep growing. You find that a large consumption of our AI skills and learning hours are happening in this part of the world as well. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, I think the LinkedIn learning videos are pretty good. Even I myself also watch them sometimes. So how would you now characterize LinkedIn's business footprint in the Asia Pacific today? From the size and growth of the member base and also the kind of breadth of services that you're actually offering. I know there is, I probably might get this wrong, but there's marketing solutions, there's sales navigator and also I think premium memberships on your site as well, which I'm a proud premium member. **Feon Ang:** That's great. So if you look at our members, when I first joined, it was 25 million. Today it's 343 million members. Every second, like I mentioned, seven new members are added. So from our professionals' perspective, in terms of our platform, it continues to grow quite rapidly. In terms of our business, we just crossed $17 billion globally. It's quite a sizeable business and like you mentioned, the different business lines from talent and learning business. That's actually one of our core vision statements, which is equipping organizations to find the right talent on our platform and for professionals and job seekers to find jobs. So in terms of our talent and learning, we also help organizations to equip them with the learning courses, like you mentioned, LinkedIn learning courses. Actually, a lot of organizations subscribe to our talent and learning solutions. In fact, 60% of the Fortune 100 companies are relying on both our solutions. Meaning they don't just buy our hiring solutions, they buy our learning solutions as well. If you look at the consumption, we have 24,000 learning courses on our platform. The most consumed courses right now, you can imagine, are AI \[artificial intelligence\]. **Bernard Leong:** I hear you. So in 2024, LinkedIn achieved the highest engagement rate across all social platforms. What is driving this engagement now? I mean, specifically from your domain, just looking at this region alone. **Feon Ang:** We see that as we roll out video, it has been one of the biggest consumptions and it's been growing 36% year on year. So video consumption is big. Young professionals like to feel like they can consume video in a way that they feel is short form and easily digestible. From the people that are posting, they also feel like they can represent their voice in an authentic manner. It's easy for them to articulate what's on their mind. In fact, the CFO of Grab actually did his earnings announcement on LinkedIn, and he said that preparing for that selfie podcast or video was much easier compared to composing a post. He was able to drive a lot of engagement with that. **Bernard Leong:** It's probably also the right audience. If you do it, say in other video sharing, like say TikTok, for example, LinkedIn, you have a direct audience of the short-form video that's actually directed to a professional audience. I know that the short-form video is now currently your fastest growing format. I think it's about 36% year on year watch time growth. So how is LinkedIn now adapting its product strategy to serve this unique concentration of consumption patterns within the Asia Pacific because most of the people use their mobile phones? The screens are actually where they get exposed to most of the LinkedIn content. **Feon Ang:** Yes, because video is where our professionals, where our members like to consume. We are also seeing people enjoying posting with video as well. We will continue to double down on that area. Yes. Just make sure that we provide relevant content for the members. You know, it could be anything that is a bit lighthearted corporate jokes or it could be something that is more serious. But on the whole, video and short content video will continue to be one of the most important parts of our strategy. You find that even in our LinkedIn learning courses, short videos are what we are rolling out with like full content courses, but we cut it into various short forms so that it's easy to digest. **Bernard Leong:** So you already mentioned this: every minute on LinkedIn, 47 people are hired, over 10,000 people applied for jobs. How is this now real-time scale in terms of hiring, playing out in the Asia Pacific region? What's the impact now to companies and professionals here? **Feon Ang:** Yeah, we believe that people will continue to find jobs on LinkedIn and companies, not just enterprises, mid-market SMBs, across Asia Pacific. We are seeing hiring up to 18% over 5 years growth. So people continue to find the right candidates on LinkedIn and it's just exciting to see how this growth will continue. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about LinkedIn that very few do in the Asia Pacific market? **Feon Ang:** What is one thing that I know about LinkedIn that you feel like... **Bernard Leong:** People, or maybe something about LinkedIn that maybe the members don't know about? **Feon Ang:** I think most people know how powerful LinkedIn is. I wish more people would understand how transformative it can be. I still remember when I first started work, there's no such thing as LinkedIn. Yeah, I had to look through the newspaper, type my CV on a typewriter. Yes, I remember those days. Those were the days, you know, but if you look at where we are today, I think LinkedIn is a very powerful platform that allows you to kind of keep in touch with what's happening in the world, get expert knowledge from trusted sources, at the same time be able to find jobs that are relevant. In fact, we roll out Gen AI for job seekers. That allows you to use natural language to find jobs, for example. Maybe I want to be a creator in a hospitality world. You know, like you can use your natural language and say the skills that you want to bring and find a job that you will really find delight in. **Bernard Leong:** That's a perfect segway. We already talked about AI and the changing nature of work. I know nowadays if you write a message on LinkedIn, you can actually do a rewrite with AI feature, which is very common. But we are going to talk more about that. Let's talk about the changing of work with AI. How is LinkedIn now helping organizations to think about AI in order for them to stay competitive? **Feon Ang:** I think when we think about the word AI, it feels like everyone is talking about it. Exactly, how is it taking off? You know, as in any kind of big shift in technology, there will always be uneven adoption. So there will be some companies that are very eager to jump on the bandwagon. There will be some that are slow in just kind of picking up that big movement. So there will be uneven adoption, there will be skills gaps naturally. So the way we are thinking about it is: how do we equip organizations so that it becomes a part of how they think about their work? The key is how do you make it simple enough so that it's not scaring people off? We're very happy to roll out our LinkedIn hiring assistance to organizations, LinkedIn hiring assistants for short we call it. It basically allows organizations to actually take the mundane work out of what a sourcing organization, when a TA team, usually they have to source a lot of candidates. That's right. Sometimes they have to look through like 300 to 500 candidates in order to find one ideal candidate. But today, if you're able to describe the type of individuals they are looking for, AI can do the sourcing for you. So it really takes a lot of mundane work. The beauty is now the recruiter can concentrate on that conversation with those candidates that you have found. Those meaningful conversations are what make work a lot more delightful. **Bernard Leong:** If I were to think about the impact of generative AI, I think jobs are currently evolving very rapidly. Some studies suggest about 70% of the skills of today's roles will change within the next five years. How is LinkedIn now preparing businesses and professionals in the Asia Pacific to navigate and anticipate the change brought about by generative AI? **Feon Ang:** Yeah, like I said, you know with all this technology shift, even when we talk about industrialization, tons of industrialization to the different tech, when it first takes off, there will be uneven adoption. So our job is to really work with organizations as well as job seekers to make it—that's why we make Gen AI incorporating some of this into the tools that every member uses every day. They are becoming very familiar with it. With organizations, there are different platforms where we have AI coaching where we actually help organizations with creating learning pathways for each individual that is tailored for individual needs. Say for example, I am currently a managing director of LinkedIn, I have a desire, say I want to become a CEO and what would be the kind of learning pathways that is necessary for me to be a CEO of a company.So that kind of tailored learning pathways is very unique. On top of that, it also has a learning coach. So if I struggle with some difficult communication, you know, giving feedback, say for example, I can have a practice with an AI coach. **Bernard Leong:** So it's highly valuable. So you're thinking about in terms of a coach that is beside you through LinkedIn and helping you to shape and help you to learn more new things? Because it's a trusted social network. **Feon Ang:** It's a soft skill that that individual needs to develop. With an AI Coach, you can actually practice that. So that is highly valuable for a lot of people. Companies are adopting LinkedIn learning, not just for its content, but for its relevancy in terms of rolling out AI coaches for each of their employees. Then when it comes to marketing campaigns, marketers used to spend so many hours trying to put a campaign together. Today with our AI, we are able to actually help marketing managers to pull campaigns together. **Bernard Leong:** Given the rise of generative AI, how is it changing the expectations of the job seekers and recruiters within the Asia Pacific region? **Feon Ang:** Yeah, so we're talking about how AI is in the minds of a lot of people right now. Naturally with such big technological shift, you find that there is a big skill gap. You know, there are companies demanding skills in this area, and yet naturally in the marketplace, they might have difficulty finding those skills that are required for companies. So, you know, job seekers need to be a lot more conscious in terms of how they are equipping themselves. One is of course LinkedIn learning courses are there, and you know, I always talk about the three affirmative actions that you can do. One is making sure that you are fluent in this area. I think what are the things that you can do to actually get your hands on all these tools so that you become fluent in just playing around with the tool and making sure that you feel comfortable. The second area that I advise people is to make sure that you feel that you have the agency to just kind of master your destiny in that sense that you have the agency to develop a specific professional skill that you're supposed to be going towards. **Bernard Leong:** Say, maybe being a lawyer, being an accountant, and having AI enable you. **Feon Ang:** Exactly. You know, you should actually kind of double down on that and feel equipped that you need to kind of pick up these skills. The third thing will be to take actions. You know, if you have learned all these skills, find a way to showcase it and find a way to actually talk about it so that you can actually surface your capabilities in this space. **Bernard Leong:** As an adjunct associate professor now in US Business School, I'm teaching graduates for the workforce. Given there's this recent trend of employers hiring fewer graduates and relying more on AI, I suspect it's not the AI but what is currently happening in the geopolitical world where people need to plan for their business. I have a different question for you. What would be your advice to young graduates entering the workforce? **Feon Ang:** Yeah. I think it's similar to what I said earlier about fluency, agency and action. So, you know, making sure that you are getting your hands into all these tools and making sure that you become fluent in this space. AI is here to stay, you know, it is no ordinary time as my CEO will say. It is a time right now for us to make sure that we are playing with it, understanding it, and doing something about it. **Bernard Leong:** I think you have talked a lot about how LinkedIn with the different tools that were able to help your members specifically things like smart job search, personalized skill recommendations, AI coaching. How are they now being received by the members? In terms of Asia Pacific, do you see them trying to use more of this to upskill themselves? Or are we still at the stage where we need to give, send more awareness to help people to actually know that these tools are actually available to help them? **Feon Ang:** I think once these tools are incorporated into the daily workflow, you find that people are using them. So definitely the adoption has been really high. When a job search is in natural language, why not? It's so simple to use when an assisted message is there for you to use. Usually people find that writing the first message is always the hardest, but when you have an AI assisted message to actually help you, and then the human element, you can't run away from the human element. You still need to make your own edit. You still need to get your eyes over it so that it's actually coming from you in the most authentic manner. **Bernard Leong:** I always tell my students not to get the generative AI thing to write for you. You should write your own message and then get the generative AI to help you to fine tune the message. Yeah, the message is unique, but not the AI tool itself. I think in your position, you probably have spoken to government and many institutions out there in the region who definitely would want to partner with you. Can you tell me how does LinkedIn or maybe in your own personal capacity tough collaboration to support the workforce development and also the upskilling within the Asia Pacific region? I know that's something that you have been doing across the region. **Feon Ang:** I'm very passionate about this because I feel like it is in line with our vision in line with our value statement as well. I think if you look at the various programs that we roll out, one is what we call the LinkedIn coaches. So we work with [Daughters of Tomorrow](https://www.linkedin.com/company/daughtersoftomorrow/?ref=analysepodcast.com). We work with you know, underprivileged groups in terms of how we can equip them and we give them access to LinkedIn learning tools so that they are not left behind. So those are the LinkedIn culture when we actually get our employees involved to be part of the coaching to actually help them to understand how to maximize the use of these tools. We also worked with, recently I worked with [NVPC](https://nvpc.org.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre\] to celebrate SG 60 \[Singapore's 60th National Day\]. **Bernard Leong:** Well, we are going to be celebrating in two weeks' time. **Feon Ang:** Exactly. That can be recorded in good company because we believe that if we kind of tap onto companies, companies can do so much to actually involve their employees to do greater good together. So when we think about companies doing good and doing well is such an important element of why we do what we do. Then the third area would be really understanding some of the challenges that organizations are going through. So we partner with organizations like NTUC Learning Hub, to use them as a third party, collaborate with them and form a partnership to understand how we can reach out to companies that are trying to equip their employees as well. **Bernard Leong:** You're referring to the National Trade Union Congress for those out there is NTUC Singapore. **Feon Ang:** That helps to reach out to more of the employee base as well. **Bernard Leong:** So what is the one question you wish more people would ask you about LinkedIn that very few people don't? **Feon Ang:** Maybe the first thing that comes to mind is that you are like another social media platform. They don't understand the difference, but when they understand it, they will use it without guilt. So I had this very interesting conversation that from someone who said, now that I'm using LinkedIn, I feel like when I use LinkedIn I don't feel guilty. Because they feel like they're gaining greater knowledge and they are understanding what's happening in the world. **Bernard Leong:** So using LinkedIn is not about self-promotion. \[laughs\] **Feon Ang:** Definitely not. **Bernard Leong:** But it's important to get the word out there. For many professionals, LinkedIn is now a professional network that everybody uses to communicate their understanding of their professional life, what they learn in the process, what are the customers they serve and what makes what drives them to work every day with passion. **Feon Ang:** When you're on the platform, you are also understanding the world trend. You are hearing what other CEOs are talking about because we have a lot of CEOs posting short form videos on LinkedIn. They are posting their knowledge on LinkedIn, so you get to learn what's happening as well. **Bernard Leong:** I saw the [famous video by Bill Gates and his daughter](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/williamhgates%5Five-entered-the-startup-world-again-when-activity-7351288702796533761-hEOz?utm%5Fsource=share&utm%5Fmedium=member%5Fdesktop&rcm=ACoAAAAD8Z4BmAMIpxy56%5F-NHggeKacWFmpXdPM). His daughter started a company, and then he says he's doing one day doing the short form video of him doing customer service for his daughter's company on LinkedIn. I was like, wow, we get the access to global messages all out there and we can actually even learn from those global messages out there. **Feon Ang:** Exactly, exactly! **Bernard Leong:** So my traditional closing question, what does great look like for LinkedIn to you in the Asia Pacific? **Feon Ang:** Great looks like, I hope that there will be even more members on LinkedIn so that they get to benefit the goodness of this platform. Finding jobs, finding the economic opportunity, finding businesses that they need to find and helping organizations, helping professionals, helping everyone in the workforce to be successful. **Bernard Leong:** Feon, thanks for coming on the show and I really appreciate having you here to talk about how LinkedIn is helping all the professionals and business owners out there in the Asia Pacific. Of course, in closing, I have two very quick questions. First thing, any recommendations you have that inspired you recently? **Feon Ang:** Well, two. One is I've been reading the book "[SuperAgency](https://www.superagency.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Reid Hoffman. **Bernard Leong:** Reid is the founder of LinkedIn. **Feon Ang:** Yes. The second is actually interesting is the [30 day AI guide](https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/your-ai-guide-7322614464896192512/?ref=analysepodcast.com). [Morten Rand-Hendriksen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mortenrandhendriksen/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is an AI principal instructor in LinkedIn and I've just been following his 30 day guide. All you need to do is do one thing one day at a time and you put that into practice. So that has been super helpful for me. **Bernard Leong:** So how can my audience find you, and you have anything that you want to share with on about LinkedIn to them? **Feon Ang:** Find me on LinkedIn. **Bernard Leong:** Great, we'll do that. For all the audience out there, you can of course send us feedback on Analyse Asia. Of course, subscribe to us on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=pEVLr9c1SKaMStLHP4dlmQ&ref=analysepodcast.com), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com), and of course [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/this-week-in-asia-7149559878934540288/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is a very important channel when we send out short videos. So, many thanks for coming on the show and I look forward to speak to you soon. **Feon Ang:** Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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From there, Doug shares his accidental journey from academia to leading global research operations, reflecting on how Microsoft Research's open collaboration model empowers over thousands of researchers worldwide to tackle humanity's biggest challenges. Following on, he highlights the recent breakthroughs from Microsoft Research for example, the quantum computing breakthrough with topological qubits, the evolution from lines of code to natural language programming, and how AI is accelerating innovation across multiple scaling dimensions beyond traditional data limits. Addressing the intersection of three computing paradigms—logic, probability, and quantum—he emphasizes that geographic diversity in research labs enables Microsoft to build AI that works for everyone, not just one region. Closing the conversation, Doug shares his vision of what great looks like for Microsoft Research with researchers driven by purpose and passion to create breakthroughs that advance both science & society. --- > "If you're going to be running a very elite research institution, you have to have the best people. To have the best people, you have to trust them and empower them. You can't hire a world expert in some area and then tell them what to do. They know more than you do. They're smarter than you are in their area. So you've got to trust your people. One of our really foundational commitments to our people is: we trust you. We're going to work to empower you. Go do the thing that you need to do. If somebody in the labs wants to spend 5, 10, 15 years working on something they think is really important, they're empowered to do that." - **Doug Burger** **Profile: Doug Burger**, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President, [**Microsoft Research**](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/?ref=analysepodcast.com)([Microsoft Research](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/dburger/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcburger/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com). As AI reshapes our digital future, infrastructure becomes the critical differentiator. With me today is Doug Burger, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Research, to dive into how innovations in AI infrastructure from custom hardware to regionally grounded research are redefining what's possible. Doug, welcome to the show, and first congratulations on [the launch of Microsoft Research Asia in Singapore](https://news.microsoft.com/source/asia/2025/07/24/microsoft-research-asia-launches-singapore-lab-to-drive-ai-innovation-industrial-transformation-and-talent-development/?ref=analysepodcast.com#:~:text=Singapore%2C%20July%2024%2C%202025%20%E2%80%93,AI%20talent%20across%20the%20region.). Welcome to Singapore. **Doug Burger:** Thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here. Opening the lab here in Singapore is exciting to me because it's my first trip to the region, and now I'll have an excuse to come back many times. **Bernard Leong:** Great. Before we start, I've done some research on your background, which is actually between academia and bringing them to real-life applications. Maybe we can start with your personal journey. How did you get started in computer architecture and then subsequently AI research? **Doug Burger:** Like many people, I think which field I chose was an accident. I went to graduate school for my PhD in computer science and took a course from [Gurindar Sohi](https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~sohi/includes/publications.html?ref=analysepodcast.com), who was a professor there teaching computer architecture, and I just loved it. That was it. It was one of these happenstance things. I went and got my PhD in that area, then moved to a former research group at the University of Texas at Austin. **Bernard Leong:** How did you end up with Microsoft? **Doug Burger:** I spent with my colleague [Steve Keckler](https://research.nvidia.com/person/stephen-keckler?ref=analysepodcast.com) about seven years building a very crazy new processing chip for academia. It was funded by the U.S. government. It was a ton of work, a really fun project. But after that, you're coming off the sugar rush of the big project and wondering what's next. Microsoft came calling about the time I was wondering what I was going to do next. So it was just good timing, and they recruited me up to the corporate headquarters in Redmond. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting question I have: you went from being an academic professor to now a corporate vice president at Microsoft. What are the key decisions that shaped your trajectory moving from academia to real-world applications research? **Doug Burger:** I think the biggest thing for me was always wanting to feel challenged. Whenever a job feels a little bit too easy, I get restless. This is career advice I give to junior people: if you're not growing, if you're starting to feel like you're turning the crank, move and do something hard. I think that's probably the biggest factor. **Bernard Leong:** That's great life advice. I want to dive into Microsoft Research now in Singapore. It's also going to be a regional R&D research and development frontier. So it is the first lab in Southeast Asia. What motivated this expansion now and why Singapore? **Doug Burger:** If you look at MSR, it has been around for over three decades. By industrial standards, we're a very old lab. But we've actually grown quite a bit in the number of regional labs we have over the last five years. Part of the reason is that with this AI transition, it's really important that we tap into local pools of talent, local culture, different ways of operating because we really want AI to work for everyone.Some of the unique characteristics of Singapore, certainly the great local universities and the talent, make it a very good place to put a lab to really innovate in AI in a way that is appropriate to Singapore. We will learn from all of this. We have labs in Africa, we have labs in Europe, we have labs in North America, of course, and other places in Asia. But that geographical diversity is allowing us to build better AI that works for everyone, not just the companies that trained it in one location. **Bernard Leong:** What would be the lab's strategic direction, and how would you tie it into Microsoft's broader research objectives? **Doug Burger:** Initially, the lab is going to be looking at foundational AI, embodied or physical AI, and health and AI. There'll be a few initial focus areas in part because of the local interests and the local collaborations, and in part just because of the talent that we hire and the expertise that we have right now. As we grow, of course we'll move into different areas. One of the things that I'm really excited about is when we start a new lab, and then those researchers who we hire more talent, they get plugged into the global Microsoft Research Network and they start learning from all of these incredible people we have across many areas around the globe. **Bernard Leong:** I'm actually a beneficiary of the Microsoft Research Center in Cambridge when I was working first in cosmology and then went into the Human Genome Project. [Chris Bishop from Microsoft Research Cambridge](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/cmbishop/?ref=analysepodcast.com) was one of the academics that I learned a lot from. I looked at a lot of his work on Bayesian networks that helped me with unsupervised learning. I know that there is actually an ecosystem that's been built from the lab to the external environment around them. **Doug Burger:** Right. When we have interns come here or PhD fellows and collaborations with the local universities, plus full-time employees, they're part of that global network and they can tap into people like Chris. Chris, by the way, is just such an amazing person. I count myself very lucky to be working with him in MSR. **Bernard Leong:** I'm probably going to catch him when I visit Cambridge this coming winter. One of the interesting things that really excites me is the lab's healthcare initiatives that stood out to me, using AI to detect seizures or epilepsy in children, and also applying computer vision to assess motor function in Parkinson's patients. How is Microsoft Research advancing these technologies and what does this signal about the potential for AI to support early diagnosis or personalized treatment in healthcare? **Doug Burger:** I think, as you know as well as I do, that AI is really good at finding patterns in large amounts of data that we don't see. The MSRA teams have already found some of those patterns that will help people. You mentioned some of them: Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cleft palate. We have other initiatives in Africa looking for premature retinopathy in babies and preventing blindness. I think there's just so much opportunity as our AI advance technologies advance to find more and more of these patterns and help people with preventative diagnostics. The partnerships here in Singapore in particular with SingHealth and the government and the pools of data will provide a way to do that and really help people. When we do that here, another really important factor is when we come up with something here, we can span it across the globe. So discoveries that help the people in Singapore through these collaborations eventually go global. **Bernard Leong:** Specific to the cleft palate case, because my eldest daughter is actually a cleft patient. IShe was blessed because Singapore has one of the best cleft centers. There was a well-known Berkeley genomics specialist who I knew was actually getting genomics data here through them. There is Operation Smile where they need to go to all these surrounding countries. One in 700 Asians has a chance of getting cleft palate. Being able to help with that kind of detection, what you're doing at Microsoft Research will be pretty good not just for here, but also for the rest of the world. **Doug Burger:** When these stories become personal, they become very moving. I'm really happy to hear that this is important to you. **Bernard Leong:** There is also now a strong emphasis on thinking about regionally relevant issues because Southeast Asia has a diverse set of languages, diverse set of cultures. Because we are talking about foundational AI from what your teams are going to be working on and also responsible AI, how are you embedding Southeast Asia's societal norms and values into the research center? **Doug Burger:** If you look globally at MSR, we actually are doing this in many places now. We have initiatives in Africa, we have initiatives in India that are looking at building models that work well with uncommon languages to make them accessible to everybody. We have work looking at adhering to cultural norms and when images are generated, making sure that they're representative of the local cultures and not just the data sets that they were trained on. As I was saying before, those technologies that we're developing will be able to be applied here, but now we can also use them with the local culture, the local languages. I think this is part of our goal to really make AI accessible to everybody in a way that's equitable and not coming in from the outside with something that doesn't work for the culture. **Bernard Leong:** It also aligns with Microsoft's responsible AI. I know [Brad](https://news.microsoft.com/source/exec/brad-smith/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[Smith\] wrote a book on this subject talking about how to embed responsible AI into the realm of all the technologies that you are building out. **Doug Burger:** That's right. When I read through the summary of [Singapore's National AI Strategy 2.0](https://file.go.gov.sg/nais2023.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com), there was a big focus on responsible AI and privacy and safety and accountability. Those for us are also very important elements. In MSR across the globe, we actually have many teams working on all of those problems to really make this safe for everybody. **Bernard Leong:** One key thing before we get into much more interesting subjects: Microsoft is actually partnering with institutions like SingHealth, the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University. Can you elaborate on some of these collaborations and their early impact? **Doug Burger:** Maybe I'll start at the very high level. Many of your listeners may not know that much about MSR before this. But we are fundamentally an open research organization. About 80% of the papers that we publish are actually done jointly with academics around the world. We are very open and we are very collaborative. We publish most of the work that we do. We open source much of the work that we produce, and our researchers are also given huge amounts of autonomy to go and do the fundamental research that they think is most important. So one of the great and hard things about my job is I can't tell anyone what to do. For Peter, my boss, it's the same thing. I can have an opinion and I can share it, but I can't tell a researcher, you have to go do this. That's part of our contract. Everyone is really asked to do the most important things that they can do, whether it's some fundamental research or some curiosity driven thing, or taking a technology that we've developed or a breakthrough and then applying it to Microsoft's products or to advance society. Now a lot of our collaborations with the local universities will be of that flavor: joint investigations and really fundamental research. Our collaborations with SingHealth will be looking at taking some of, in some cases, the things we've developed and using it to help them and help their patients. In other cases, partnering with them on the really important problems that they're facing. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of people don't appreciate that with the innovations of deep learning that came out in 2010, a lot of the work before that was mainly done in Microsoft Research. Things like Bayesian optimization when we think about hyperparameters tuning and how to work with neural networks. That came about because the speech processing algorithms that were pioneered out of the \[Microsoft Research\] lab. **Doug Burger:** Well, I'm very proud of the early work that MSR did in AI. But I also have to acknowledge decades of work in academia and the giants in the field, and of course Jeff Hinton, who persevered through multiple AI winters to get us to where we are. **Bernard Leong:** Now the pace of generative AI is moving so fast. Practically every week something comes up. How do you see this affecting academic researchers and maybe even infrastructure providers, be it any of the tech companies like Microsoft? **Doug Burger:** It's such a great question because one of the things that's happening now is that the tools that we're building accelerate the tools that we're building. Now you can build a solution or investigate some new optimization that will help AI, but you can use AI to build those tools faster. What we're seeing is an acceleration of the turning of the technological and innovation crank. The other thing that I think is really striking is how general these models are. I mean, they pull structure out of unstructured data, and so it doesn't matter what field you're in, if there's structure in there, the models, and you have the data, the models can go and find it and then you can use it. It's not just impacting or affecting the field of AI research, it's affecting most fields. One example that I love that's near and dear to my heart is computer architecture: if you look at the historical stack, and you know this as well as I do, you have the CPUs and they have an instruction set, and then there's a compiler and an assembler and a linker and a loader, and then a programming language. There are all these layers that we've built to be human interpretable. Then we use tools to translate from one layer down to the other. But all those are kind of ad hoc things that we've built by hand over many decades. I think AI is going to be able to define just completely new interfaces and just bust through them and completely change that whole hierarchy that I got trained on and I spent 30 years trying to master. **Bernard Leong:** The first time I started using Cursor and then trying to use prompt engineering to code, but it actually upends all the things I've done in the past. I went through normal COBOL programming to object-oriented programming, and then after that we have containers and all the different workflows and practices, and then we have GitHub actions and everything. I knew how to program properly, and then now we got upended again. **Doug Burger:** I have a great example of that. This past weekend, my wife was on a trip with a few of my kids. One of my sons and I sat down and decided to build a software project together for a project we were doing. It was pretty complex. We spent about four hours building it. He doesn't code, but he's 13, but we were just having good family bonding. But the crazy thing was I was using GitHub Copilot, I was using Sonnet 4, I was using the agent mode and it was the first time I've ever built a complex software solution where I did not look at a single line of code. It hit me then, and of course, vibe coding is now getting big, but lines of code are the new assembly language instructions. After the seventies, no one looked at assembly unless you were a specialist. We had compilers for that. Now lines of code are becoming like assembly. It's just a whole different world. **Bernard Leong:** We are going to be coding in English. That's going to be another layer of complexity. **Doug Burger:** Natural language intent. That's right. **Bernard Leong:** There's the other part of it: within the foundation models there are the open source models alongside the commercial closed ones. How do you view the open versus closed debate now in the generative AI landscape? **Doug Burger:** It's a big debate in the community, but one of the nice things about being at Microsoft is we're very open source friendly. I mean, MSR publishes tons of open source stuff. From a product perspective, we just want to be the platform that empowers all of our customers and users the most. We're going to deploy the best open source models, we'll deploy the best closed source models that we have access to. From a product perspective, we just want our customers to be happy. We partner with other companies on closed source models. We ingest open source models and make them available. I think the one advantage in the closed source models is that it's easier to guarantee safety because these models are getting very powerful and you can monitor or at least restrict how they're being used. But Microsoft in general, like we bought GitHub. We really believe in open source. So we're just like everyone else. We're just trying to navigate that. But I don't think we're one or the other. We're not. It has to work for our customers. **Bernard Leong:** Given this open versus closed, what about when we think about multimodal models and now reasoning and reasoning agents, for example? What are the trends that you're closely watching? This year, everybody says is the year of the AI agent. We're starting to see different variations of how agents can go into systems. **Doug Burger:** I think reasoning has got a lot of momentum. It seems really important. I think it's actually more important than even the momentum would suggest. I think these reasoning models are going to be incredibly foundational, and the reason, no pun intended, is that they can take steps and look at what they've done and backtrack and go forward now. Maybe this is me with my researcher hat on. I think where that gets incredibly powerful is when you start to have formal structures that you can reason over and make correctness guarantees. Obviously now the models are doing that with code. They catch themselves making a mistake and fix it. But there are so many other areas where we should be able to project those other areas into formal spaces and then reason over those formal spaces and provide a strong guarantee of correctness. Then execute it. I think that the combination of formal logic structures and formal verification and reasoning models will allow us to do many more domains safely in a way that we really can't today with sort of the one shot probabilistic models. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think that there's always talk about scaling laws and the more data you put in, are we actually hitting the wall or actually there are so many dimensions, like for example, test time compute, for example? All the different new metrics that are being drawn out in multimodal that really we are barely scratching the surface rather than hitting a wall? **Doug Burger:** As you know, I used to work in quantization and we thought very hard about scaling laws and what is the scaling law for quantization and how does it affect the economic scaling laws. What I'm seeing in research now is that it's not just one scaling law. It's like there are 10 dimensions of scaling and we're scratching the surface in all of them. I think I don't know that there are hard limits until you run out of some resource, like whether you run out of data, then you're not going to be able to scale. But these models seem so general that as long as you have more of that resource, you'll be able to keep scaling. **Bernard Leong:** In fact, they're now hiring PhD students to help them look at complex academic problems. So the reinforcement learning is actually becoming more and more intense. **Doug Burger:** That's right. We're now getting better able to steer these models in interesting directions, which, by the way, I'm also excited about because in the labs we're starting to ask the question, how should we steer these models in a way that's good for human health and society as opposed to just making the model more capable? I think that's going to be a really promising direction. **Bernard Leong:** I want to ask this question. You led Project Catapult and Brainwave. What are the key design choices that drove their success? **Doug Burger:** Maybe I'll answer at a high level and then a more specific level. For me as a researcher, it's always been about getting out into a new space and struggling and then waiting until you have clarity. Once you have clarity, then you just go and you're kind of relentless. **Bernard Leong:** I totally agree with you. That's how I felt when I was doing my PhD. **Doug Burger:** That's right. It's hard to be out because very often when you're doing something that is going to be important and new, by definition, it shouldn't make sense to everyone else. So everyone kind of looks at you and scratches their head and says, why are you doing what you're doing? When we started on the Catapult journey, what I was really setting out to do, we were looking at CPU trends and saw that per core per CPU performance was levelling off. We convinced ourselves that specialized hardware for different applications was going to be the future. We started building customized hardware, trying to make a general platform for Microsoft's cloud that you could program different applications onto. When we decided to take a bet on FPGAs because you could program them. It was a first step towards a whole fleet of specialized ASICs. Once the applications were big enough, but we kept getting the design wrong. Like we started off with a board that had six on it. Then if your application only needed one, then five were stranded. If it needed seven, then you were screwed. So we networked them into a configurable fabric that hung off the back of a rack. 48 of them. That was great. But then the company wanted us to converge the infrastructure for Bing and Azure and it was designed just for Bing. I see. Then the third generation, we came up with this idea of putting the chip as a bump in the wire on the network path. Then it could go out and talk to other chips. So what we kind of built was a configurable plane of hardware acceleration. That's how Bing was using it. Azure ended up using that just to accelerate their networking stack, which they're still doing today. **Bernard Leong:** That explains how your Azure computing platform is so ubiquitous among the large companies because you have the kind of acceleration of the networks talking to each other at a very low latency situation. **Doug Burger:** I would love to think that's the reason. But the real reason is that the Azure team worked really hard, the sales teams worked really hard and everyone was just working really hard. **Bernard Leong:** I want to get to quantum computing. Recently you introduced the Majorana 1 quantum chip, actually using topological qubits. Something that I've been monitoring for a very long time because I'm a theoretical physicist by training. From your vantage point now leading global research, how is this shaping towards the future of quantum computing and what are the milestones that we need to cross in order for us to reach maybe practical fault tolerant quantum systems? Are we a few years away, or maybe are we a decade or maybe three decades away? **Doug Burger:** Well, I certainly don't think we're three decades away. The team has made great progress. One thing I want to really call out with that team, and they were in MSR and then they graduated out into the business groups and into the Azure team and they've been pushing on that since then, is the courage they had to go after this crazy topological thing. I mean, they've been at it for 17 years. People are taking lots of slings and arrows because after 10 years, your peers will just say, are you still doing that thing? Why haven't you given up yet? But the reason that they stuck with it so long and now they've finally showing that it works and there's lots of work left to do, but I'm just so proud of them, is because the topological qubits are just inherently much more stable because of the separation of the Cooper pairs. Decoherence, that's right. If you're trying to do a more traditional qubit and do lots of error correction as it decoheres, you need exponential numbers of error correction bits. It doesn't scale or you're making them very big and they have to be very cold and that doesn't scale. Really what they've done is pushed down a path for so many years towards what I think could ultimately be the quantum transistor. I mean the field effect transistor, because there was point junction transistors and vacuum tubes before that. **Bernard Leong:** You're going to have a quantum chip as well for that. **Doug Burger:** That's right. The chip they have that they've built, in theory, it can hold millions of logical qubits. Now they have to scale it. There's still a lot of work to be done, but in theory, that paradigm is so stable that if they get it to work at scale, it'll solve all these other problems that all the other quantum approaches also have to solve. They're going to have to solve it a different way. **Bernard Leong:** I'm pretty impressed because it solves the decoherence problem that I usually ask a lot of people working in quantum computing. How are you going to solve that? But I think that 17 year journey is the much more interesting part of the story that I wanted to ask. How does Microsoft Research balance this kind of blue sky foundational research against more application driven initiatives, like how did this team actually have the morale to persist to get to this stage? **Doug Burger:** Well, there are three answers with a caveat. The first answer is that if you're going to be running a very elite research institution, you have to have the best people. To have the best people, you have to trust the people and empower them. You can't hire a world expert in some area and then tell them what to do. They know more than you do. They're smarter than you are in their area. So you've got to trust your people. One of our really foundational commitments, as I said before to our people, is we trust you. We're going to work to empower you. Go do the thing that you need to do. If somebody in the labs wants to spend 5, 10, 15 years working on something they think is really important, they're empowered to do that. Now, of course, Peter who runs MSR globally, and I, and my peers, we review things, we give feedback. You don't want to, but if they think, no, you're wrong, I'm going to keep going. That's what they're supposed to be doing. Now on the quantum thing, of course, if you're spending a lot of money doing that personal vision of yours, the company's going to ask you, all right, what are we getting for the money? But one great thing about Microsoft that I really love about the company is how deeply intellectual it is. This really comes from Bill and the founding. Bill is still involved. We do reviews with him in MSR regularly. He gives great feedback. Satya is very curious. You go to those leaders and you ask them about our topological qubit program and they understand the strategy. They understand why we're doing what we're doing. Bill will dive deep. But that team would show the progress and say, this is why we're doing what we're doing. We're going to address the decoherence problem. If we can get there, it's going to be really stable. It's a lot of money, but this would be a real boon for humanity. So the company gave them the support to keep going. **Bernard Leong:** Because this year at Davos, a lot of people are talking about quantum computing. I'm getting calls from venture capital firms that I advise about, can you give me a one hour rundown on quantum computing? This is getting big. But I think given that's the case, we are approaching the limits of Moore's Law and what would a post-Moore's Law computing world look like? We live in the logic gates. All these binary things have already been invented in the 1920s, 1930s at Bell Labs. Now we are in the next phase of that. **Doug Burger:** Maybe this higher level framing might be helpful. I think we're sitting on three fundamental modes or paradigms or pillars of computing. We have logic. You do an operation on a zero or one, like an AND gate. You have probability, and that's what the AI really is now. I'm going to predict from some distribution: am I going to get a zero or a one? Then you have quantum where you have superimposed probabilities. Superimposed, it's still probabilities, but they're superimposed and they have very important differences. There are really these three modes and they're very complementary and synergistic. I think the really interesting thing is going to be some of the intersections between those fields, those three modes. Like if we get the big enough quantum computer working, or I should say, when we'll be able to generate all sorts of very accurate molecular data to train probabilistic models to produce new materials even better than they can today. Then you can synthesize those new materials in factories being driven by the logic stack. **Bernard Leong:** I think they also have a lot of profound implications to cryptography. Specifically quantum resistant codes we are talking about. Companies now are talking about these quantum resistant codes that need to be introduced into our password encryption. A lot of things are going to be another major change wave is coming. **Doug Burger:** That's right. To come back to your question, I think on the probabilistic pillar, which is AI, LLMs, all of that, I think it's just accelerating so fast. I mean, model costs are dropping 10x per year. We're just seeing continued algorithmic silicon co-innovation. We've got decades of acceleration there. Then logic is slowing down. There's the popular version of [Moore's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s%5Flaw?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is technological progress. There's the formal version, which was Gordon Moore's 1964 paper, which talked about the rate at which transistors on a chip double. **Bernard Leong:** I think Moore's Law also would undergo a reformulation. **Doug Burger:** Yes, it has, but remember, I'm a computer architect and I read his paper in grad school. When people ask me about Moore's law, it's like driving dragon catnip in front of a cat. I have to answer the precise definition. **Bernard Leong:** Because you have to appreciate what comes before, and then you have to build on top of that. Then you have to take it to the next stage. I want to just switch gears and talk about the concept of global research leadership from where you are as the global head of Microsoft Research. How do you balance long term exploration with practical near term impact? **Doug Burger:** Okay, well, I have to offer one correction: Peter Lee is the global head, so I don't want to be claiming that's me. But MSR has been around since the early nineties. We've had lots of crazy adventures. But one thing we figured out is that you have to be in exploration mode with people you trust doing risky things that may not look like they make sense to discover new stuff. It's always surprising and unpredictable. Then once you have that breakthrough, you then think about how to apply it, how to exploit it, how to use it. We've actually gotten very good over the past three decades in taking those discoveries and getting them to scale. We have lots of motions. We will take a research team and graduate them into the product groups. We will work with NGOs to solve some problem. We will have the product groups fund a center. We'll create an open consortium for some standard. We will create V teams where people work together. We'll create a mission lab to go chase after some important problem. We've just learned all these different patterns and playbooks. Over the years, we're now pretty good at saying, okay, we've had this breakthrough, what do we do with it? **Bernard Leong:** Given that it's distributed and also you also give autonomy to people to work on problems that matter most to them, and these are all very smart people, how do you get the innovation to synthesize across such a large and distributed network of labs that have all different expertise? There must be something that maybe some high level principles within the lab say, hey, maybe if we take this piece and this piece, we put it together, maybe this is something valuable. **Doug Burger:** That's right. The framing that I think we like to use with our teams is we want everyone to do the most important work that they can. Sometimes that's powering into some new space or something you're really curious about and desperately want to understand. But sometimes it's taking something that you've invented or one of your colleagues has invented and taking it to solve a real problem or help people. Like we want to advance science and that's the exploration. We want to help our customers and we want to help society. For any researcher at different times, the most important thing will be in those different buckets. Another thing that Peter and I and the rest of the MSR leadership do: we spend a lot of time going around to the labs, making connections, creating a culture where people can share things and work together and find those pieces. Sometimes we see something and stitch them together. Sometimes we just help create the environment and then people do that naturally. A lot of the management and leadership's job is making connections and helping people see some of the ways they might go and take stuff to scale. Because really at the end of the day, researchers care about deep science and deep understanding, and then also about having a lot of those things become real. I've always found that our people are highly incentivized to make stuff real and matter to people and help people like the cleft palate work, the Parkinson's work. If you can help millions of people with something that you're doing, you'll probably do that for a while rather than just going on to the next discovery. **Bernard Leong:** Tell me, what's the one thing you know about building advanced AI infrastructure or maybe leading global research that very few people do? **Doug Burger:** What a great question. I think for leading research, it's the more curious you are and the more you know about different fields, the more connections you can make. Peter's very good at this, and so just that curiosity helps you to see this and this, where there are two people working in different domains and say, oh, there's a connection here. This is something, by the way, that Bill Gates is just phenomenal at just because of the amount he's seen over the course of his career. I don't think it's anything unique. I think it's something that research leaders learn. It's that, oh, this and this makes something surprising. **Bernard Leong:** That reminds me of the Santa Fe Institute: multidisciplinary research, consilience is the word. To draw different fields together and put it together. **Doug Burger:** I like to say the tallest oaks grow from cracks in between the fields. **Bernard Leong:** That's a better one. What is the one question that you wish more people would ask you about AI research? But they don't. **Doug Burger:** I don't know how to answer that. I think for me, the one thing I really want to know, maybe it's a slightly different take on it: I just have this feeling in my gut that there is some mathematical theory underlying the compression of data that you need to make a prediction that's analogous to what Shannon did for digital codes and communication channels. **Bernard Leong:** You're talking about the unstructured data, the ability for the foundation AI. I think a lot of people haven't really done a lot of deeper architectural work into the transformer model. What we are seeing is representations of that model in the forms of BERT, GPT and BART. **Doug Burger:** There's a deeper underlying mathematical theory there. I think, and again, this is just my gut as a researcher, and I'm probably totally wrong, that biology and evolution have figured out how to extract it and encode it in something that can run in 10 watts like our neocortex. When we finally understand this, we'll find out that all the hyperparameters in our brains have been set to be near that optimal theory. **Bernard Leong:** Our, like the way how our neurons are connected because it's the connectivity of the neurons that actually allow us to process thinking. **Doug Burger:** But they make connections and then the connections get pruned. The number of connections getting pruned every day is massive. So you're constantly sampling the information coming in. Then locking connections when there's something consistent that you need to make a successful prediction. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting. That's a very good one because I haven't thought about that. We don't really understand the Transformers architecture. I teach it as a course, but sometimes I'm also wondering some parts of it. In my mind there are some non-linear properties that maybe give rise to this kind of thing. What you're alluding to is a deeper mathematical language based within them, but you're not sure how to extract it out into a set of general rules, basically. **Doug Burger:** The transformers, I mean, we understand why back propagation works. We understand that they're compressors. We understand the pieces. But I don't think we understand how we put it all together. There's a deeper theory of the underlying representation that they're learning that's not tied to thousand dimensional continuous spaces that the transformers are learning. **Bernard Leong:** Because the math is quite reminiscent of what I used to do in theoretical physics, like string theory. There's a lot of embedded structures that's really hidden in theoretical physics with those models. **Doug Burger:** Except the transformers have more dimensions than string theory. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, but that's linear algebra, linear, yes. I haven't had a chance to tell someone so deep into the transformer architecture, but I have a traditional closing question. What does great look like for Microsoft Research, especially in Asia over the next five years? **Doug Burger:** Great to me from a management perspective: it says that great to me looks like we have amazing people who feel empowered and energized to do work that affects their societies and makes a real difference for people. I mean, of course, Microsoft's business, but the larger society, like I really want this AI revolution to be a big jump and a boon for humanity. Great for me is that our labs are filled with people that have a sense of purpose and passion and pride and that are helping to do that. I have another secret fantasy, which is, I think maybe more of an ego thing, but I would love my secret dream, which is now not so secret, is 50 or a hundred years from now, people look back at MSR today, like the early days of Bell Labs, but for AI. **Bernard Leong:** I actually thought that you have done one step beyond the Bell Labs by taking research global. Because Bell Labs used to be only in one part of the region of the U.S. **Doug Burger:** Right. But I think we have to, because this is so important for all of humanity. We can't let one region decide. Given the power of this AI stuff, what it means for everybody else, we have to do this together. **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks, Doug, for coming on the show and I think this is probably one of the most geeky conversations I have. In closing up, two quick questions. **Doug Burger:** It was a lot of fun. Thank you. **Bernard Leong:** Anything that's inspired you recently, you can share? Book, movie, anything else? **Doug Burger:** I'm thinking of lots of research projects, so that's where my head is. Not too long ago, and this is maybe topical, I read [The Idea Factory](https://www.amazon.sg/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[by Jon Gertner\], which is about Bell Labs. **Bernard Leong:** I read that book too. Pretty good. **Doug Burger:** I found that book incredibly inspiring. But that was a little while ago. Let me talk about one piece of work that I found inspiring. We have a team in MSR that's looking at using reinforcement learning to steer models, having a multi-term conversation so that the conversation can be more successful. What happened in that review is we started talking about all the ways we could steer models to have conversations that helped people's mental health or were engaging without tipping over into addiction, or could challenge them so they would do more critical thinking. I came away from that meeting with my head spinning, saying, we have to steer these things for good in ways that are good for people. It's not a book or a movie, but that was something that inspired me. **Bernard Leong:** That's where the responsible AI piece comes from. It's very important instead of trying to get you into addiction, into challenging you to rethink your life and do something more positive. **Doug Burger:** That's right. Steering for good, maybe. **Bernard Leong:** How would my audience be able to follow the work of Microsoft Research's latest developments? **Doug Burger:** Well, we have a website, research.microsoft.com. You can go there. Of course, all our people are there and we have podcasts. Peter just did a podcast series. We have blogs. We publish papers. It's a pretty active feed. We have well over a thousand really smart people working really hard, so it's a lot. But just go to the website and you can find everything there. **Bernard Leong:** I'll definitely point all the resources there in the transcript. You can definitely find the podcast anywhere, everywhere. So subscribe to us and of course we will be happy to take any feedback. Many thanks for having this quality time with me, and I look forward to speaking with you again soon. **Doug Burger:** It was a real pleasure. Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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She began the story of her career journey and started with the conversation reflecting on how the DeepSeek moment revitalized China's internet sector after years of regulatory challenges and geopolitical tensions. Grace unpacks the pragmatic Chinese approach to AI development, explaining how companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent are leveraging their unique ecosystems and data advantages while startups embrace open-weight models to prove innovation over imitation. She discusses why the "China versus US AI arms race" narrative misses the point, the strategic reasons behind companies relocating to avoid geopolitical sensitivities, and how distribution challenges are separating winners from losers in the consumer AI space. Addressing the broader implications, Grace explores the real opportunities in robotics, vertical AI applications, and why collaboration rather than competition should define the industry's future. Closing the conversation, she shares her vision for bridging cultural understanding between East and West and what success looks like for the next generation of AI development. --- > "China's approach is very pragmatic. People have been saying DeepSeek did it out of necessity. There's obviously a GPU constraint and hardware constraint in China, something they're working around. In many ways, the engineering genius and engineering innovation is what set DeepSeek apart. It challenged a global narrative around needing more GPUs and more money to get better AI. It was about throwing capital at the problem. It was a different approach because the capital ecosystem in China itself is very different. People talk about proof of concept - you have to prove your concept first in China to get funding. For many startups, they weren't getting much funding before the DeepSeek moment. To your point, no one really knew it would have a strong ROI, so only the BATs that had money and understood the technology were backing it." - **Grace Shao, Founder of AI Proem Newsletter** **Profile:** [Grace Shao](https://www.proemcommunications.com/aboutgraceshao?ref=analysepodcast.com), Founder of [AI Proem Newsletter](https://aiproem.substack.com/) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gmzshao/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), today we're diving into the rise of generative AI in China. With me is [Grace Shao](https://www.proemcommunications.com/aboutgraceshao?ref=analysepodcast.com), founder of the [AI Proem Newsletter](https://aiproem.substack.com/), a sharp observer of China's tech scene. She's a former technology reporter with [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/world/?region=world&ref=analysepodcast.com) and [CGTN](https://www.cgtn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), with experience in crisis communications for major tech companies. Today we'll explore deep insights on the interplay of innovation and geopolitics in the China AI ecosystem. Grace, welcome to the show. **Grace Shao:** Hi Bernard. Thank you for having me today. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting because you've been covering China's tech scene and the rise of generative AI companies. This dates back three years after ChatGPT's rise when everyone asked, "Where's China's ChatGPT? Why did they miss that?" Before we get there, I want to start with your origin story. How did your career begin? What led you to journalism and eventually to AI analysis and commentary on tech scenes? **Grace Shao:** I don't usually advertise this, but I studied finance in undergrad, so I started my career in finance. It brings everything together now as a business analyst. I don't position myself as a journalist anymore - I provide analysis, insights on the happenings of big tech and startup AI ecosystem in China, how they're commercialized and monetizing. I studied finance, but when I joined a hedge fund as a TMT analyst intern, I realized I wasn't good with numbers. I was a people person who loved storytelling. I'd always been extroverted and loved talking to all walks of life. I studied financial journalism and moved to Beijing. My parents are from Beijing, I wanted to understand their background, history, and culture. I got my first role there. I worked for CGTN in Beijing, which is the biggest broadcaster in China, and it allowed me to travel across China, see the country from a completely different lens. I traveled to third and fourth-tier cities, rural areas. It made me fall in love with this part of the world, so I stayed. After that, I joined CNBC in Singapore, mainly focusing on the APAC business and tech sector with a China focus, given how relevant it is for this part of the world. A couple years ago I started working for Alibaba in their strategic communications department, managing corporate PR and crisis management during the most tumultuous years. I joined a consultancy and advised tech firms like PayPal, Lenovo, and others. Those experiences shaped my interest in where I'm at now. I bring everything from working in-house in corporate to journalism to analyzing companies from an investment perspective to my newsletter. **Bernard Leong:** You have a very diverse background - the ins and outs of being on the CNBC side, the Alibaba side, and now your current setup. What are the biggest takeaways from observing the tech sector specifically in China? **Grace Shao:** Everything moves so fast. It's ever evolving. A personal anecdote: during COVID, I was mostly in Hong Kong. I didn't go to mainland for a couple years. When I got there for the first time in three years, I was trying to order food and asked the waitress, "Excuse me, could I order food?" She looked at me like I was a bizarre human. Why was I speaking to her? At that point, everything was digital. You're supposed to scan the QR code on your table, order everything. The only thing they were supposed to do was bring the food to you. This was when robot waitresses weren't even implemented yet. Things are moving so fast. Digital payments are omnipresent. Every time I go up, which is every couple of months, I'm shocked by new technology or evolution in the digital ecosystem. **Bernard Leong:** My friend Patrick McGee, author of "Apple in China," says [China's speed is incredible](https://www.analysepodcast.com/how-apple-accidentally-built-chinas-tech-superpower-and-cant-escape-with-patrick-mcgee/). **Grace Shao:** Yes. **Bernard Leong:** What inspired you to start [AI Proem](https://aiproem.substack.com/)? How does your work help bridge understanding of AI in China with the rest of the world? **Grace Shao:** I've been on different sides and worked in these tech companies for so long. I felt there was so much being overlooked. Since 2018 when the trade war broke out, many stories were hijacked by high-level geopolitical narratives. For someone passionate about telling stories of businesses and innovation, someone who personally straddles two worlds of the West and East, China and the US, I felt there was more I could do to bridge that knowledge gap. That's why I started AI Proem, writing about what interested me and people around me - mostly academics and investors. It took off on its own. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-28-at-11.20.26.png)](https://aiproem.substack.com/) **Bernard Leong:** I relate to that. Even though I'm Singaporean, culturally I'm Chinese, trying to bridge understanding. Let's put aside politics and focus on technology and what's happening in China. What key lessons from your career journey can you share with my audience? **Grace Shao:** I'm still humbly at the beginning of starting AI Proem. I just hit my one-year mark, so there's much for me to learn. What's been pleasantly surprising on this journey compared to working for big platforms or companies is that when you keep an open mind and have thick skin, say yes to opportunities, surprises come to you. My advice would be: **don't be scared to try new things**. Say yes to coffee chats, conversations. You never know what you can learn or where it'll lead. Our conversation now happened because you dropped a message on LinkedIn. I didn't know much about your podcast at first, but I found this world of interesting interviews with extremely high-caliber people. I've learned so much from your interviews. **I'd say be open-minded and say yes**. **Bernard Leong:** That's a great lesson. Let's get to the main subject - the rise of generative AI in China. Can you paint a picture of what the generative AI landscape in China looks like right now? **Grace Shao:** That's a big question. **Bernard Leong:** We can start with foundation models. Everyone hears about [DeepSeek](https://www.deepseek.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), but let's dive into that picture with foundation models, not just DeepSeek alone. **Grace Shao:** We can talk about different players in the LLM \[Large Language Models\] space. First, there are startups like DeepSeek and [Moonshot](https://www.moonshot.cn/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which came out with [Kimi](https://www.kimi.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) two weeks ago that shook the world again. There are other LLM startup players, especially the [original four tigers](https://aiproem.substack.com/p/four-tigers-split-paths-big-tech): ByteDance, [Zhipu](https://www.zhipuai.cn/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Minimax](https://www.minimax.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and Moonshot. Then we have big tech players similar to how the US is set up. We have the BATs - in this case, referring to ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent. **Bernard Leong:** Baidu's not involved now? **Grace Shao:** It's evolving. At this point it's not as frontier compared to others in terms of models and applications. We see the ecosystem like that. Then we have smaller research labs still in incognito mode, many spinning out of universities. You meet them here and there, but they're not on the global map yet. In many ways it's similar to the US - you have startups and big tech. A big difference is that out of the startups, aside from DeepSeek, almost all have some financial tie or partnership with one of the BATs. Many have been financially backed by Alibaba or Tencent, who are more aggressive investors and incubators in the internet and AI space since 2023. If you look at the practicality of how people see it differently from the US, Chinese people are fundamentally pragmatic. When you talk about LLM research labs, there seems to be a bigger push to commercialize or go to market quicker. The idea of AGI is the holy grail for everyone in this space, but when I speak to people practicing in Silicon Valley versus China, the philosophical approach to AGI \[Artificial General Intelligence\] in the US is a much bigger driver. In China it's: "*How do we come up with the best model? How do we make it most efficient? How do we make it cost-efficient and effective? Then how do we commercialize?*" There's definitely that pragmatic approach. Another thing we can touch on is the open source and open weight approach. **Bernard Leong:** I'm curious - the objectives look different. It's not like the US where they talk about winning the AI race, not wanting China to reach them. There wasn't that race mentality. In China, it's specifically about getting AI out to the market and little mentions about getting to AGI, but how do we commercialize? How do we get it into common people's hands? How do we make different applications? Since we talked about foundation models, how about applications? In the US you think of code development platforms like Cursor, Windsurf, or others like Lovable for creating websites, Gamma for presentations. How is the applications layer for generative AI in China? **Grace Shao:** I think the US versus China narrative is unproductive. In terms of applications, in some cases it's similar and some cases it's not. Let's look at the players. On the BAT level, Alibaba is taking a Microsoft-like approach where cloud infrastructure is the core. That's what they're trying to sell. Alibaba Cloud has seen double-digit growth over the last few quarters. They're selling to enterprise - cloud services and enterprise software with AI add-ons that enhance efficiency for vendors, stores, and merchants. That's an enterprise-focused approach. Their consumer side isn't doing as much - they're not putting many resources there. They have the Qwen series, the open source model that's been in the limelight and ranking high on Hugging Face. ByteDance is taking a different approach. They've been diligently trying to compete on the frontier model end. They were low-key for a while. Pre-DeepSeek, they actually had the best chatbot or pre-Kimi, they were the best chatbot. They have an app called [Doubao](https://www.doubao.com/chat/?ref=analysepodcast.com) that hit over 400 million MAU after aggressive marketing. The issue is there's a lack of functional adjacency to their core product. If you're swiping on [Douyin](https://www.douyin.com/?recommend=1&ref=analysepodcast.com), which is equivalent to TikTok, you're not interacting saying "Hey chatbot, tell me this, do this." It's more passive consumption. **Bernard Leong:** Because Douyin is a video service that doesn't rely on social interactions. **Grace Shao:** Exactly. It's more consuming, not interacting. They pushed out various AI enhancement products within Douyin to help with algorithms and e-commerce, but in terms of Doubao the chatbot itself, there was aggressive pushing. Tencent took a completely different approach, which was interesting and a pivotal moment for China's consumer application end. They had their own LLM, but Tencent is known to work in silos. Anyone who knows the Chinese ecosystem knows they're competitive internally - each team works on their own things. The WeChat team decided to integrate DeepSeek into their chatbot and skipped over [Yuanbao](https://yuanbao.tencent.com/chat/naQivTmsDa?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is their LLM. It's crazy because it worked in their favour due to functional adjacency and their walled garden mode. When you're chatting with a friend on WhatsApp, it's essentially a chat box, so it's natural to open up a chat box with your ChatGPT-like bot to ask questions, use search functions. People in the West often don't understand that WeChat isn't just a social media app. It's literally a content platform. People run blogs, post videos - it's like YouTube plus Medium plus everything altogether. You have all this content and data available to Tencent that others can't access. When you search stuff on WeChat, it doesn't come out elsewhere. You have to search within WeChat. They have this huge dataset, so immediately they could tap into 1.2 billion users. It was game over on the consumer end. They've done well in terms of consumer applications, but they're not leading in frontier model development compared to Alibaba or ByteDance. ByteDance recently came out with another series: [Seed LLMs](https://seed.bytedance.com/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) focused on text-to-image and text-to-video. Who has better video and image data than ByteDance? **Bernard Leong:** Can I ask if I'm interpreting this correctly - ByteDance's strength is in video and audio, not just Douyin but also [CapCut](https://www.capcut.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Many underestimate how much content creators use CapCut for taking long-form content, cutting it into reels for TikTok and other platforms. It seems ByteDance is specializing toward multimodal large language models where they're better in audio or video. Am I getting that specialization correct? They're not as good at text compared to DeepSeek or Qwen. There seems to be little understanding from the rest of the world about Qwen models. DeepSeek heavily distilled not just from Claude or OpenAI, but also from Qwen models, which is why the accuracy is so high. **Grace Shao:** ByteDance seems like they made a pivot recently with their April launch, but before that they were still trying to compete with Doubao on the text side. [Kuaishou](https://www.kuaishou.com/new-reco?ref=analysepodcast.com) is another major short video player in China - not as prevalent in North America but big in LatAm and EMEA markets. They came out with amazing products called [Kling](https://app.klingai.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) that were supposedly comparable to Midjourney. That was a triggering moment for ByteDance. You saw them go low-key for a few months then push out this amazing series of image and video multimodal models. There's definitely companies playing into their strengths with different leverages and unique walled garden databases. At the end of the day, it's a data competition. They also have unique distribution. If we step back to talk about startups versus big tech, what you're seeing is startups in China struggling with distribution and reach because you have to onboard new users on the consumer end versus big tech that has captured massive ecosystems. To give context, I read that for average Chinese consumers, you open less than 10 applications a month because you can use literally WeChat or Alipay to do everything in your life - chat, pay bills, get transportation, order food, whatever. In the West, most people in North America or Europe use upwards of 30 apps to finish day-to-day tasks. Your utility bill is one app, credit card bill is one app. In China, your ecosystem is completely owned by one of these BATs, so you have to capture value within that. **Bernard Leong:** That comes to the point I always explain to Western counterparts when they ask about super apps. I tell them there's no chance for a super app in the West because your company culture is focused on building one thing very well and perfectly. Your Google search is perfect, Facebook is social networking. When you start encroaching on everyone's territory, it's an uphill battle because everything is state-of-the-art. In China, you don't have that situation. Some things they innovated on top of, leapfrogged, and it's hard to copy. They integrated the full stack. That's why they can have super apps, why Southeast Asia has super apps, why Europe has super apps, but you'll never see that in the US. Coming back to consumer behavior and enterprise needs - when ChatGPT first launched, many questioned why China didn't launch it first. The transformer algorithm was available. DeepSeek emerged and basically put all counterparts in this new AI race. What lessons can we observe from this DeepSeek moment change in the China AI ecosystem? **Grace Shao:** I don't know why Liang Wenfeng didn't want to release this model before OpenAI. I wish I knew, but maybe it legitimately wasn't ready yet. In terms of this moment, an interesting observation and feedback I've heard from people in the tech industry in China is that it helped China's internet revitalize because we know 2022-2024, China's internet hit a rough patch. The darlings were all hit - ADRs dropped. It was caused by domestic regulatory reasons: anti-monopoly probes, data security concerns. Didi had to face delisting. All these crises accumulated, meaning the global capital world was concerned about China. Chinese tech companies went into panic mode. Everyone went back into their shells. No one said much from a PR perspective. People stopped talking - it's better to not stick your head out than stick it out and get hit. There was blocking energy. Domestically after COVID, there were cuts like in the West - headcount cuts, talent retention issues, salary caps. All these issues added up and didn't feed into positive energy for the Chinese AI and tech sector. DeepSeek completely changed that narrative. Whether from media or companies themselves, it allowed the world to shift focus from "China bad" or "China internet bad" to finally: "Oh, innovation, business cost efficiency." Things that were overlooked for two-three years were brought front and center again. Companies could openly talk about what they'd been developing. For example, [Damo Academy at Alibaba](https://damo.alibaba.com/research-areas?language=en&ref=analysepodcast.com) handles machine learning and LLM research. They've been doing this for a while - it's not like DeepSeek came out and Qwen suddenly appeared. The team's been around, but riding off DeepSeek's positive PR vibe, they could say "Hey look, we've been doing this too. Look at Qwen." It was a pivotal moment. When I speak to senior executives at these tech companies, they say they were relieved because suddenly the media - Wall Street Journal, FT - could talk about them as real businesses again versus just viewing them as a weather vane for China's geopolitical issues or lackluster consumer consumption. That was the pivotal moment. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting to examine because I'm technically trained as an AI practitioner with friends working with known technology companies in Europe, China, and the US. We're all in technical forums. When the DeepSeek paper first came out in late November, people were talking about it. I can share an anecdote: somebody had proposed things like certain methods DeepSeek was using, "Maybe we should try this at scale." Usually, American counterparts would say, "Well, you don't really need to try these methods because we just need NVIDIA chips. Just throw money at the problem." That irritates everybody. Now everybody got a shot in the face saying "What do you mean you can't do that? People told you so". It's amazing that one thing DeepSeek has done is showing you can make this cheaper. It doesn't belong to any one country - there's a real horse race now. After DeepSeek, you start seeing Kimi and Manus AI. Yesterday Alibaba put out a new Qwen model at the top of the Hugging Face leaderboard, gathering attention. What sets them apart in China's AI ecosystem? Are there similar players? I heard of a company called Zhipu. What are the ones gathering attention that are one step ahead of rivals within China? **Grace Shao:** First, addressing your commentary about what DeepSeek really meant: China's approach is very pragmatic. People have been saying DeepSeek did it out of necessity due to GPU and hardware constraints in China. In many ways, the engineering genius and innovation is what set DeepSeek apart. It challenged a global narrative around needing more GPUs and money - just chucking capital at it. It was a different approach because the capital ecosystem in China is different. People talk about proof of concept - you have to prove your concept first in China to get funding. For many startups, they weren't getting much funding before the DeepSeek moment. No one really knew it would have strong ROI, so only the BATs that had money and understood the technology were backing them. That's why BATs were the first round of investors and incubators in this space. I would separate this discussion. Let's talk about DeepSeek and Kimi first, then Manus separately - they're very different. The DeepSeek-Moonshot situation is interesting because they're not anomalies. You realize it's not a one-off high-flyer group of geniuses who found a way to make more cost-efficient frontier LLMs. Other research labs are catching up. One big difference comparing these to leading US startups or companies like OpenAI and Anthropic is that they fully embrace open weight. People call them open source, but technologically they're essentially open weight models. There's been discussion around this. There's a pragmatic reason and philosophical component. Liang Wenfeng has come out - he's media-shy but has said he wants to attract the best talent. It's the best way to retain top talent, put the most frontier technology available in China in the hands of other innovators. He wants it massively adopted. He wants to put Chinese innovators at the front of global innovation leadership. There's a strong patriotic component. There's also a philosophical choice where he believes - this is long debated in open source versus closed source communities, even in technology beyond AI - is it better to share technology for more people to innovate on top of it, be scrutinized and adopted? Or is it better to have your proprietary information and data closed up? For him it's a personal, philosophical choice to be open source. Another interesting thing is that many founders in the AI space are young, born in the eighties or nineties. They grew up when China was rising economically with strong soft power. There are cultural and social aspects. People were like, "If I put this out there, I can prove we're not copying. We're actually innovating." That "copy-cat" mentality - there's a chip on their shoulder. The generation before them were called copy-cats. They wanted to prove themselves as innovators. There's a psychological, cultural aspect. Last, the pragmatic reason goes back to distribution. For them, foundation models are becoming commodities. How they view it: value will be accrued in products and services built on top of them. Open sourcing is a strategic decision. You open source, utilize and leverage other people's distribution, create moats. You can have a great model, but everyone will use your model eventually if you continue to lead in frontier models. There are different reasons why they came out the way they did. It's been different from how American research labs approach frontier models. For [Manus](https://manus.im/?ref=analysepodcast.com), I feel quite differently. I was lucky to get access early and tried it out. It was cool - everything was moving super fast, screens going crazy. Clearly impressive from a non-technical person's perspective. End of the day, the product itself from my personal usage and friends around me for research and simple tasks wasn't that different from OpenAI's O1 or any leading agentic products. What they did interestingly was the PR. They had a founder who wasn't media-shy, was eloquent in English, and did a strong PR push. This was different from majority of other startup founders who are nerdy researchers, media-shy, not coming out to talk about their products. They didn't go founder-direct. People don't know about them as much. First, they did strong consumer marketing and PR. Second, they played into the scarcity strategy. For people who know, they weren't giving out access codes even to leading top-tier media globally. People were begging for them, thought it was exclusive, but really it was a genius marketing strategy. They rode that hype in the beginning. I'm not saying their product isn't good - I don't think it was significantly better than other players. Another big thing they've done differently is they've moved out to Singapore. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I know they're in town. I'd like to meet and interview them. **Grace Shao:** Yes. **Bernard Leong:** Hey, if you ever talk to them, please let them know about the podcaster in Singapore who covers Asia. I'm joking, but I want to understand - I know Manus also runs on Claude 4.0 now because of how it executes agent workflows. I look into all the computer lines they're running. When I teach classes, when I showcase Manus to business leaders, I put my phone with the Manus app on with a task running. I tell the class, "Let's wait for a while." I have my phone on just to see what the app was doing. By the end, "Here are the results," and everybody has this prestige moment. How did they decide to move out of China? It's probably very competitive within China, but they're quite in the lead in terms of agent AI. **Grace Shao:** There are a few reasons. One is the huge pullout of US capital in China. Prior to 2022, many US private equity and venture capital firms had large presence in China. Sequoias and General Atlantic were all there. Unfortunately, due to geopolitical pressure and sentiment back then, many firms decided to pull out. Manus definitely decided to take on US capital. They took on Benchmark - I believe they were Benchmark's first China investment, which was quite a big story. Beyond that, there are American government restrictions that don't allow US investment institutions to invest in AI, robotics, and sensitive industries like semiconductors. There was definitely some discussion in the backend that made them have to leave. On a company level, they took the Singapore strategy. We've seen many companies over the last couple years that are Chinese-founded or majority backed by Chinese capital, researchers, talent, or have Chinese heritage that moved their headquarters to Singapore, set up shop in Singapore, and their predominant market isn't China but the West. They did that first to go under the radar of sensitivity checks. Another thing is pure PR and fundraising - it's easier to say you're Singaporean versus Chinese if you're raising capital from the US. For PR approach, it's easier to tell consumers and stakeholders that you're actually Singaporean. Many are doing this. PR professionals have called it the "**China Shedding Strategy**" They try to lean away from China, and Singapore is the perfect place. You know it better than me, but I lived in Singapore briefly. It's the APAC hub for almost all big tech companies in the world - everything from ByteDance and Alibaba to Meta, Netflix, and Google. It has all the talent in the world available - domestic talent, expat talent. It has a strong advantage that people in the West sometimes overlook: much talent is bilingual in Mandarin and English as native languages. It makes it easier for Singapore employees to talk to product managers sitting in Shanghai or Beijing in their mother tongue and vice versa. You can have someone who speaks fluent English talk to BD partners or stakeholders in the West in English. There are many reasons for that. On top of that, the Singaporean government has been extremely welcoming, trying to attract better talent and more companies. There are many reasons why Singapore has benefited from this and become a vital hub in Asia for tech and AI talent. **Bernard Leong:** I remember Bill Gurley, former Benchmark partner now LP, came out in his BG2 podcast with Brad Gerstner saying [Manus is not in China](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qG%5Ff2DY%5F3M&ref=analysepodcast.com). All servers are outside China from Singapore, Dubai. He was justifying why they're not considered Chinese and Benchmark shouldn't be drawn into those conversations. That whole rationalization is interesting. There are rumors of some ByteDance founders living in Singapore. I probably know where they live, but that's a question for another day. Are there any lesser-known but promising companies or innovations within the generative AI space we should be paying attention to that are very locally Chinese? I'll give one example from the hardware space - [Unitree Robotics](https://shop.unitree.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). When I talk to Western counterparts, they barely know what company this is, yet it's one of the most talked about companies in China. **Grace Shao:** Unitree is a perfect example. They're selling more than 50% of global humanoid robots right now. They're an "if you know, you know" kind of company. On this topic, we're noticing Western media picking up on the humanoid robot story, but China's always had a strong lead in this. There are a few reasons - obviously having the manufacturing supply chain here for the last 30-40 years. In China right now, for many humanoid robots, if you break it down, it's rechargeable batteries, lighter sensors, motors - all the little pieces you basically had in your home appliances, DJI drones, and EVs. All of a sudden because of the hype of humanoid robots globally, many startups are trying to lean into this, trying to pull together all these moving parts. I was talking to someone in supply chain yesterday - I want to get deeper into understanding the supply chain of robotics, but right now there's no major player talking about it because they're so fragmented. For sure, like your point, Unitree Robotics - they're coming out with humanoid robots, quadruped robots, these dog-like ones with wheels. Many are being sold for one-third or one-fourth the price of Boston Dynamics or Figure AI. What I think right now is much of it is still very early stage. This is from talking to people in the industry. [UBTech](https://www.ubtrobot.com/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is a big one implementing into factories. They have a partnership with [Zeekr](https://www.zeekrlife.com/global/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the car maker. Then we have [Galbot](https://www.galbot.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) that's big. There are a few other players. I was at Beyond conference in Macau a couple months ago, which is a big AI robotics conference. There were at least 20-30 different companies doing this, exhibiting their robots. They're somewhat the same. The reason I say they're early stage is the UBTech executive was saying the reality right now is we still don't have enough 3D data. For these robots, five years ago, many movements were pre-trained and pre-programmed. They could only do single tasks like lift up, put down, lift up, put down. They had single tasks or maybe max three tasks they could do. To really implement the software into hardware, integrate that - right now it's challenging because LLM data isn't the same kind of software or model we need for robots. To create this kind of 3D or 4D data is extremely difficult. You need scenario training and real-world collection. Naturally, we haven't been in a stage where there's so much 4D data collected. What they can do right now in terms of software-hardware integration at a sophisticated level, the UBTech guy was saying, is they can become companion bots or tutors. That's the best use case for consumers right now. If you connect a model into a robot and have them sit beside a child helping with history class or math tutoring, they can pull on the knowledge in their brains. But if you want them to go into your homes, fold bedsheets, go upstairs and mop floors - this requires way too much data they don't have right now to make them sophisticated and seamless for a series of actions. There's that, but it's definitely a space we can continue watching. China definitely has an advantage given how the whole supply chain is in China. Even Jensen Huang, when he came to Hong Kong last November doing a fireside chat at HKUST, said some of the best talent in hardware-software integration engineering are all in the GBA - the Greater Bay Area connecting Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. It's because DJI is here, Tencent is here, Huawei is here. Some of the best hardware companies are in this area. On top of that, much manufacturing and factories are here. You have sophisticated and leading academic institutions. We can anticipate more there. In terms of other verticals, it's still quite fragmented given we're in a very early stage of gen AI adoption. To the point of China being pragmatic, what you're seeing is many startups saying, "I'm not going to compete on LLMs. I'm going to compete in vertical integration." You have healthcare startups, education startups. One company I spoke to recently was interesting. They do something like Midjourney but for creatives. They charge very high subscription fees but are extremely sophisticated in video production - you can completely cut companies' ad costs. They sell to businesses. There are these kinds of companies, companion bots that are extremely popular in Asia right now - fake boyfriends, fake girlfriends, which borderline need regulatory control, especially with kids. You have legal apps, et cetera. There's definitely much to see and anticipate, but the robotics hardware side is something China will potentially come out on top. **Bernard Leong:** What's one thing you know more about China AI than very few people do? **Grace Shao:** I don't know. I think everyone knows what I know. **Bernard Leong:** I'm sure you know something. From your observation, like robotics is one - any other interesting ones? **Grace Shao:** It's two things. One is the small things on verticals - healthcare AI and AgTech is extremely advanced. It's something the country as a whole top-down is encouraging. People adopting AI into agricultural uses - the technologies advance data analysis and implement into agriculture to make your blueberries more plump, make your peaches sweeter, whatever. It's not the sexy one consumers know about, but it's very advanced. There are definitely many companies operating in that space. At a high level narrative - I wouldn't say people don't know, I think it's something not talked about enough in the West - this is not an arms race end of the day. That's something I want to emphasize. **Bernard Leong:** Totally agree. Spot on. **Grace Shao:** At the end of the day, we've gone through globalization. Technology, knowledge, and talent at this point is so transferable. The development of the digital ecosystem cannot be stopped by physical boundaries and borders anymore. It's not a conducive or productive narrative for academics, innovators, and business people. I understand there are political reasons behind this narrative given the geopolitical backdrop, but it's not really productive because after you talk about it, everything is still moving around. There's still globalization. The framing of China's AI development in a head-to-head context to the US really misses the point. End of the day, China's current deployment-led productivity approach is consumer-facing. The US is doing the same thing. For business people and tech leaders end of the day, sometimes it's just advancing society and creating profitable businesses. On the bigger humanity level, are we not supposed to be collaborating and thinking about how this technology is potentially very dangerous for our next generation, for humanity as a whole? Regulating it, understanding the safety around it better, putting in restrictions - sure, it hinders development in some ways, but it's a very short-term approach. This whole narrative around China versus the US seems very unproductive for future generations. **Bernard Leong:** What's one question you wish more people would ask you about AI in China? **Grace Shao:** Just approaching it as a normal market. I don't think China, as a government, has some crazy sci-fi dream that's different from the West. Some people ask me, "What's the Chinese government's vision of it?" I don't think it's that different from whatever the American, European, or whatever. It's obviously a technology that's still extremely early stage but will be vital for economic development, societal prosperity, potentially forming cultural norms in the future. Of course, national security and military, but it's just as the internet was. You can't just say, "Let's close off the internet to everyone." It seems a bit... anyway. People should see it more as another competitive market and treat the businesses coming out of China as normal businesses. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: what would success mean to you and AI Proem in terms of covering and interpreting China and Asia's technology landscape? I shall not limit that to AI alone. **Grace Shao:** It goes back to what I talked about earlier, how I started AI Proem. On a professional level, I hope to grow more insights. It's a flywheel at this point. The better coverage I write, the better access I have. I truly believe this - there have been amazing people reaching out, whether investors or people in these companies, other startups or big tech. They've provided so much insight, I've learned so much and opened my eyes. I hope to continue providing better write-ups for my readers. That means really nuanced understandings of these technology developments and business developments. From a personal level, I hope to bridge that gap in terms of culture and social understanding. I don't think it's productive to create these narratives or conflate country versus ethnicity versus technology versus history, everything. As a Chinese Canadian, I don't want to see the rise of xenophobia. It's not a nice thing personally. I hope there's more mutual understanding on both ends. That would be what I'd consider success. **Bernard Leong:** That would be a good place to stop, but definitely won't be our last. We'll probably talk more about China's landscape, not just in AI but in technology as a whole. Grace, many thanks for coming on the show. Any recommendations that inspire you recently? **Grace Shao:** I have this book my good friend Karen Hao wrote that I highly recommend. It's called "[Empire of AI](https://www.amazon.com/Empire-AI-Dreams-Nightmares-Altmans/dp/0593657500?ref=analysepodcast.com)." As much as AI Proem and myself and my team focus on the business strategy of these AI companies, it's sometimes important to be reminded of the social consequences and environmental consequences of what this means, even these figureheads in AI right now. Karen's book definitely addresses this. It's a valuable read for anyone. You mentioned BG2 Podcast with Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner. I really like their stuff. In the investment space in the West, it's very nuanced. They talk about how the Chinese-US AI arms race narrative doesn't make any sense. **Bernard Leong:** They're the only ones I've seen talking about it. I think they understand how the Chinese landscape works and are trying to tell everyone else not to go overboard with this whole China versus US thing. **Grace Shao:** They're much more nuanced beyond having great analyses of business direction. They're nuanced on the geopolitical take and don't want people carried away by that. They have a great podcast. I love Professor Kyle Bass's work. It's more academic than my writing. He's a professor at Princeton. He writes about China-US industrial components, economic setup. He compares sometimes the two economies and why they've evolved the way they are. I sometimes have to pause in the middle and break them in half because they're very long, but I recommend them. Those are probably top of mind - a few things I've been enjoying reading and consuming. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you? Please tell where to subscribe to AI Proem. **Grace Shao:** On Substack, it's AI Proem. Please check it out. You can follow me personally on LinkedIn. My name is Grace Shao, last name S-H-A-O. If you ever need to reach out, I'd love to connect online or offline. If you're in Hong Kong for coffee, whether you're an investor, industry practitioner, academic, AI enthusiast, or student, I find it fascinating talking to different people. Reach out via email: [grace (at) proemcommunications.com](mailto:grace@proemcommuncations.com). That's P-R-O-E-M communications.com. **Bernard Leong:** One more last thing. Are you going to the Shanghai AI Conference next week for the [World AI Conference](https://online2025.worldaic.com.cn/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? **Grace Shao:** I won't be able to make it this time, but I went last year. It should be pretty exciting. I was looking forward to it, but I'm about to have my second baby very soon. **Bernard Leong:** Congratulations! **Grace Shao:** So I'm not allowed to fly anymore. My doctor isn't letting me fly, so I was quite bummed about that. I do have quite a few sources on the ground and people who will be sharing insights. I'll be doing write-ups. **Bernard Leong:** Surprisingly, many of my business associates, people not even into AI, are bringing their families out on normal school days to go to the AI conference to inspire their kids. That's something new to me. For sure, next year I have to get tickets and fly to Shanghai myself. **Grace Shao:** It's actually very vibrant. I went last year pre-DeepSeek and it was absolutely packed. This year post-DeepSeek, I've heard more people from around the world flying in for it. It's a good opportunity because all the AI companies and tech companies from the region and country are coming to WAIC. I'm very jealous of people who can actually go there. I'm FOMO-ing so hard, but I will do a Substack write-up and send it over to you. **Bernard Leong:** We'll catch up again soon. For everyone, you can find us anywhere. Thank you Grace, and we'll continue to chat. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He shares his unique journey from academia to government to global banking, reflecting on his fascination with human behavior that originally drew him to artificial intelligence. David explains how his time at Singapore's Monetary Authority shaped the groundbreaking FAIR principles, emphasizing how proper AI governance actually accelerates rather than inhibits innovation. He highlights real-world implementations from autonomous cash reconciliation agents to transaction monitoring systems, showcasing how banks are transforming operations while maintaining strict regulatory compliance. Addressing the biggest misconceptions about AI governance, he emphasizes the importance of integrating AI frameworks into existing structures rather than creating entirely new bureaucracies, while advocating for use-case-based approaches that build essential trust. Closing the conversation, David shares his philosophy that AI success ultimately depends on understanding human behavior and asks the fundamental question every organization should consider: "Why are we doing this?" --- > **"\[Question:** **So what was the biggest misconception for most business leaders usually when it comes to operationalizing AI governance?\]** > Based on my interactions and conversations, now suddenly they think they have to erect a whole set of new committees, that they have to have these new programs. You almost hear a sigh from the room. Like, oh, we have now this whole additional compliance cost because we have to do all these new things. The reason I see that as a bit of a misconception, because building on everything that was just said earlier, you already have compliance, you already have committees, you already have governance. It's an integration of that because otherwise guess what's gonna happen? We all know that this is the next thing around the corner that's gonna pop up, whatever it's gonna be called. Are you gonna have to set up a whole new committee just because of that? Then the next thing, another one." - David Hardoon **Profile:** **David Hardoon,** Global Head of AI Enablement, [Standard Chartered Bank](https://www.sc.com/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Personal Site](https://davidroihardoon.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrh/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and today we are diving into the critical question of how financial institutions can adopt AI responsibly at scale. With me today is David Hardoon, global head of AI Enablement at Standard Chartered Bank, a distinguished leader with over two decades of experience spanning financial institutions, academia, startups, and regulators. David played a pioneering role in shaping Singapore's national AI strategy for the financial sector. During his time at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, he was instrumental in developing the FAIR principles for ethical AI use in finance. He combines technical expertise with strategic insight, making him one of the most influential voices in advocating responsible AI adoption globally. So David, welcome to the show. **David Hardoon:** Thank you very much, Bernard. You're being far too kind. I simply have had opportunities and privilege to support this space that I love, so I'm very privileged in that particular aspect. **Bernard Leong:** So David, you had a career spanning academia, startups, regulatory bodies, and now global banking. What drew you first to data and AI? **David Hardoon:** What drew me first to data and AI? My usual response goes back to a story when I was 16 in detention, which is true because that's actually what ultimately drew me to the world of programming and Pascal. But on a broader sense, what drew me is actually trying to understand better human behavior. This may sound a bit weird because like, what do you mean? But if you go back to the origin of artificial intelligence, its roots are psychology, its roots are neuroscience, its roots are really unlocking, unraveling the mystery of us. That's what drove me. To combine the two things together of the behavioural psychology, the human nature aspect of things and programming - some realization that wait, we can actually program a computer to do this interesting task like a baby or young child where you present to them pictures of a car and a motorbike. Even without fully understanding the context of what that thing is, they can learn to distinguish it. Honestly, I was hooked. That was the beginning of the journey. **Bernard Leong:** So what are the formative experiences that actually shape how you now approach AI and analytics given the importance of data? **David Hardoon:** I would bucket it into three different pillars. They continuously are evolving because as we all know, data is continuously evolving. As I mentioned, the very starting point was I was just genuinely and morbidly curious about this. Wait, we can learn, we can actually program. I wanted to go into it. That resulted in going to the more theoretical side where I was interested with the fundamental question of "*How do you learn? What is the thing that drives it?*" For the audience and for the people listening in who are familiar with the different types and the variety of the methodologies, what interested me - not that I'm promoting or recommending my thesis, it's pretty antiquated by now - I was fascinated about the world of semantic models. So the premise behind semantic models is capturing information and knowledge. My idea that I got fascinated about was if you can capture knowledge, then the learning mechanism becomes secondary. So that was one pillar that then took me to that next dimension. Some may argue my first step into the "dark side": "*How do you make this real? How do you actually start implementing it and result in applications, in programs beyond just a piece of paper?*" You find that there is a delta, there is a difference. I used to have interesting debates with my supervisor who was a theoretical mathematician. You had a theory but it didn't quite work in practice. I was like, "What do you mean it didn't work in practice?" Well, there are other factors that we need to consider. Then finally the last stretch of the period is not just theory but application and operationalization. You can say, "David, okay, you're splitting hairs." I would push back and say, "No, there is a delta. Because what takes theory to be an application has considerations, but what takes an application to be operationalised also has very specific considerations." An example from many years ago - I won't name the person or the bank - I was asked to go talk about optimization. Of course, I'm happy to go talk about optimization. Let's just say I got a good scolding. That was my starting point when I realized actually, it's not about optimization. It's not about the algorithm. It's not about the application. It was about how do I use it? How does it make a difference, how it gets integrated in my day to day. So in a rough sense, those are the three buckets I see it as. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting thing is, even for me, because we were around in the UK at the same time when I was working on machine learning and doing the algorithms, I was sitting right next to the human genome project. The development of algorithms may be important, but what we were tasked to do is to further the data analysis and the annotation on the human genome. So a lot of that focus actually forced us to be on the production level. That transition is interesting. But maybe just help me understand, when you transition from academia to regulatory roles, which I never had that experience, how does it influence your thinking about responsible AI? **David Hardoon:** Oh, absolutely. I can say without a shadow of a doubt, to give them full credit, I learned and have absolutely appreciated to this day, the world of governance and regulation. If you had asked David prior to working for the regulator, candidly, I wouldn't even have thought about it. It wouldn't even be there as a concept other than like, yeah, there's guidelines. Going into it, I've realized two things because I used to get asked this question: "*Oh, David, don't you think that governance, compliance, regulation, whichever form you want to call it, is a brake or an inhibitor for innovation and adoption of new technologies*." That really got me thinking because as you rightfully put, I'm not a regulator. I've come into the world of regulations. What I've realized is that we need governance. Not because like, oh, it's the right thing to do. No, we need governance in order to accelerate our adoption and usage of technology. Let me give you perhaps a silly driving analogy. If you know the road, if you know the rules of the road, if you know the different speed limits at every single point, if you know where the traffic lights are, if you know where the speed cameras are, well guess what? You can drive fast and you can enjoy it. It's when you don't know where things are, you have the people who stop, stop, stop, stop. Slow down, and you start under your breath yelling like, why are you going 30 when you're supposed to be going 50? You know why? That's exactly the point. What you find is a lot of times, ironically, because there's this aversion to the word governance and people trying to not get involved with it, that's resulting in things slowing down, that's resulting in having all of these start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. By having the proper governance, having the transparency of it and having the conversation like I had the privilege of having, you mentioned FAIR as one of the examples, okay. What is it that we're trying to achieve? What is the control or the bad thing that we're trying to prevent? Okay. Coming from technology, coming from the research, this is how we can go about achieving it. So you see now it becomes a constructive conversation rather than Bernard, this is what you need to do. You go like, hey, doesn't make any sense. **Bernard Leong:** So given that you have talked about FAIR, let's start with the AI governance and implementation piece first. You were instrumental in developing the FAIR principles at MAS. Paul Cobban, who's been my mentor formerly from DBS, was also part of that committee as well. Can you share the origin story of the framework? **David Hardoon:** I'm giggling because it's a bit of an unusual origin. As part of the mandates that I was given in MAS was actually supporting and developing the industry with respect to its adoption of AI. I like going into what I believe in first principles and root cause. When you looked at the industry and you spoke with people individually, everyone said, we do AI, but then when you really open up the box, it's like, is it in production? Is it being used? Maybe, maybe not. So I said, you know what? Rather than sitting in an ivory tower, presuming that I know, or we know something, let's have a conversation. It was an interesting conversation because I took the compliance officers from the various banks locally to lunch. They were very shaken. They're like, wait, why is MAS taking us to lunch? It was because I really wanted to have an open conversation as to what are the challenges that they're facing, what is holding them back or not, or it could be an interpretation of what they think is the intention. Then I had a separate lunch and conversation with a variety of titles from CIO, CDO, heads of AI. Same conversation of what's stopping, what's that inhibition. What I mentioned earlier, that realization that having good governance is in fact an accelerant to adoption. That's exactly when the penny dropped, when it was, you are telling me that compliance is stopping you. Let me take it face value. I speak to compliance and like, well, this is our understanding. You realize that every hand was trying to do the right thing, but no one was properly clapping. Actually what was needed was a set of, well, let's put this out in the market, in the audience, in the industry of this is our expectations. This is what we believe should be done. Notice though, for the frustration of some at the beginning, we didn't say how in the FAIR principles, it's not prescriptive. It's providing the objective that is trying to be met. Let me give you one specific example of this whole debate of: "*Oh, can we use sensitive attributes?*" You have different restrictions coming with different stuff. We didn't say you can or you can't. What we said is you need to justify it. Why do you need to justify it? Because there needs to be an underlying intent behind it, to make sure there's the right reason and it's aligned with the organizational objectives you're seeing.So it was a focus on what is your intention, what is it that you're trying to achieve? Then saying, well, now it's up to you. That resulted in the ability of having internal clarity. These are the things we're trying to achieve and this is why we're trying to achieve them. It could be a debate. Then the people downstream in terms of implementation go like, ah, we have clarity with respect to the speed limit. It's not about you saying to me, no, but David, why is it 50 kilometers an hour, not 70? Sorry. It is. This is what we decided. Okay, fine. Then I will drive 50 and I can get to my point, rather than trying to fight the law and going 70 and then getting arrested or going 30\. You see my point? It's creating that clarity. So the outcome was the realization that clarity on governance was needed, and that's effectively what FAIR is. **Bernard Leong:** So you've articulated the lessons learned from applying these governance frameworks across organizations from the government to corporate. The question then is, how do the FAIR principles actually help financial institutions balance innovation and ethical considerations of AI? I remember when I was talking to one of the prominent banks when I was still in AWS, one of the things that we did was a very detailed pilot program where we literally had to do all the data masking, privacy protection and making sure that everything works and even deploying it from on-premises into cloud with everything encrypted. So how do those lessons translate into the real world? **David Hardoon:** Let me try and give you a few examples, a few analogies. But let me start off by saying, remember what I said in the very beginning, it's first principles. Why do I keep going back to that? I keep emphasizing it because we have an understandable tendency, especially when it comes to new technology to go like, oh everything is new. It's invented. We need to basically, it's a blank canvas. We have to start from the ground up. Whereas I personally take a slightly different approach by saying, well, no, especially when it comes to governance, when it comes to responsibility, when it comes to intent. That shouldn't change the objective. What may change is the approach in achieving it. Now by saying this, don't get me wrong, of course there'll be an introduction of new concerns, new risks, a hundred percent. But fundamentally, is the intent the same? Let me give you an example. Prior to AI, there'll be these massive deliberations on, oh discrimination by AI. Discrimination by AI. Can you use it in a loan algorithm or can we use it in HR? Can we use it in this? What effectively is it decomposed? The problem decomposed by saying, number one is AI aside, how do you deal with these concerns today? If the answer to that is, ah, we don't, well, there you go. You need to have an approach, a mechanism, whether it's part of a committee, whether it's part of a principle, a conduct, culture. Not for me to say, to have that. That's number one. Number two, if you do have it, then now it's the question of, okay, how do we incorporate the world of AI? You see how that aligns, because they say, okay, yeah, no, we acknowledge, we have, let's say, a principle with respect to fair - this will sound like an oxymoron, but a fair discrimination approach. But now in order, because we acknowledge that AI may amplify the potential risk that's coming from it, we need to have a more resilient manner in terms of identifying it. Well, guess what? I need to know. Let me use as an example, let's say the risk is in terms of gender discrimination. I need to know your gender in order to assure that I am having a fair-based approach with respect to that. So you see it now creates a mechanism in order providing that unification rather than taking the approach of like, oh, no, no, no, no, we can't do it. We can't use it. Let me give you the famous reference of what happened with the Apple card, Goldman Sachs, where they actually, there was a big hoo-ha and they actually said, but we're from a regulatory point of view, we're not allowed to use gender information. So what you find is that when you start using the more sophisticated type of techniques, actually using explicitly within a model doesn't mean it's not there. So you need to use it potentially in order to identify the risks that are occurring. That's one particular example. The other one is an ability of representing the application within an organization. I still remember this. I had a conversation with two, because we had this little triparty debate where one reviewed the potential application of AI within their HR practices and decided it wasn't a question of can we or can we not do it? Obviously you can. They decided we don't want to because of our approach, our conduct, whatever it may be. We are actively choosing not to leverage on these capabilities for right or for wrong. Not an issue because it's aligned with a certain manifesto that they have. Another organization said, well, we have chosen to use AI and we are cognizant of that potential discrimination, but actually it's okay because we're specifically looking at, let's say, a program which is designated for women, so it's not relevant for men, et cetera. So you see, it forced us to think about the intent. That's what I meant by we get distracted by technology. Like for example, now what happened with Gen AI? Oh, we need to worry about Gen AI governance, Gen AI governance. I coily came up by saying, well, it's not that it's not introducing new risks, let us take the beautiful world of hallucinations, which we had that conversation about that hallucination may be a bug for some and a feature for others, as you said. But actually again, first principles. What happens when you have an intern that does something weird? Something wrong. You see my point? How do you handle that? I remember a very good lawyer friend of mine, he was slightly up in arms on the fact like, oh, Gen AI is competing. He said, but all Gen AI is doing is putting words together in a way that seems reasonable and logical. I, in a slightly characteristic fashion, cheekily looked at him and said, well, isn't that what you as a lawyer do as well? He said, "*Touche, David, touche*." But you see my point. It's effectively forcing people to go back to first principles. Don't reinvent the wheel. These are things which we must address and understand first, and then apply methodologies in order in terms of either addressing them or preventing in certain cases. **Bernard Leong:** So what was the biggest misconception for most business leaders usually when it comes to operationalizing AI governance then? **David Hardoon:** Oh wow. I think to me, based on my interactions and conversation, is that now suddenly they have to erect a whole set of new committees that they have to have these new programs. It's almost like you almost hear a sigh from the room. Like, oh, we have now this whole additional compliance cost because we have to do all these new things. The reason I see that as a bit of a misconception, because building on everything that was just said earlier, you already have compliance, you already have committees, you already have governance. It's an integration of that because otherwise guess what's gonna happen? We all know that this is the next thing around the corner that's gonna pop up, whatever it's gonna be called. Are you gonna have to set up a whole new committee just because of that? Then the next thing, another one. We have to be pragmatic. **Bernard Leong:** I just want to switch the conversation and get into the AI within financial institutions or the corporate setting. Given your corporate experience, what is currently the mental model on AI adoption within financial institutions, given the field is changing almost practically every week? Just for interest sake, we sit in a couple WhatsApp groups with all the AI builders and the amount of speed that's coming across, everybody is like, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen next week? **David Hardoon:** You're absolutely right. I think this is where, if I may be, well, I think everyone's struggling. I'm happy to get pushback and say, 'no, no', David, we've cracked the code. It's solved for us. But I think if you look at it from an enterprise point of view, across the industry, I think it's fair to say everyone is struggling exactly to your point because it is just moving so damn fast. There's still a mental mindset or a shift that needs to be taken from the SDLC, the software lifetime development cycle to, okay, how do we now set up an environment and a platform that allow us for this kind of elasticity? Candidly, that's still, obviously not in the tech world, which had the luxury of setting the foundations. Right. If I may be fair, it's a bit tricky. It's a bit tricky when you already have a monolith when you already have a lot of legacy systems, when you have a lot of technical debt. But on that same vein, I think that is exactly where the shift has moved. It's not just about the use cases and application because let's just be transparent. I think there are many out there, but how you create this operationalization environment. By environment, by the way, I'm referring to the full stack of not just infrastructure, not just platform, not just API gateway capabilities, not just people, but it allows us to go, okay, we want to do this use case, we want to do this use case, we want to do this use case. Oh, hold on a second. It's been an advancement now it's GPT version 4.5\. Okay. How do we plug in? So it gives you this modularity within a governed and safe mechanism of review. I would say that's the mindset, that's the goal. But as with everything, the devil's in the detail and it's not always that easy to do. **Bernard Leong:** But now for banking environments because of the way how financial institutions are regulated, one big trouble issue is data leakage. I see it with companies that I advise. I just want to hear your more practitioner point of view. How do you think about, say you want to operationalize an AI model within an environment that's so highly secure, robust, resilient? The requirements are extremely strict. What's the thinking from your perspective when you try to make that kind of engagement with the bank itself? **David Hardoon:** So that's actually a very interesting point. I'll be candid, I think it's also an evolution in my thinking as well. I don't want to sound like a parrot, but actually going back to the first principles. Specifically a financial institution. Obviously regulated entity risk is nothing new because that's finance. You estimate risk, you price risk and you engage. If you think about if, okay, let's focus on the top line. Let's focus on the services side for a second, I'll get back to the core of your question. But I just want to set the premise right. Banks do very risky things. We're buying debts. We're buying potential futures. We're making bets, we're doing pretty damn risky stuff that can go wrong. But, this is a very important but, we know how to estimate it. We know how to review it. We know how to create frameworks within it. We know how to go, yes, I know what is the risk I'm exposed to and I know how to mitigate it, and I know what to do when it does happen, if it does happen. That's why regulators go, yeah, go ahead, please do your work. I don't think, I don't want to be unkind, but this is an evolving thought process. I don't think we apply that same type of discipline and maturity on the back side of the house. I notice exactly like you said, it's like, oh no a hundred percent security. I remember I was in a conference once and we were talking about data leakage in terms of de-anonymization of data. I said, if you legally require the inability to de-anonymize data, don't do it because 0.00001 is still a risk. So we take this extreme view. Which as a side point is ironic because I actually think that increases the risk. But that's a different conversation. So my recent thinking is, no, no, no. We need to take the same mindset that we have on the front office to the back office. So it's not about zero risk. Step one is understanding the risk. Do we understand it? Then you suddenly realize not all risks are the same. Number two is, well, what is it we're trying to really mitigate? Number three, what is our risk appetite? I'm sure you've heard the term risk-based approach, but it said risk-based approach. But then when you look at it, it's like, yeah, but you're trying to achieve zero risk that's not risk-based. So you get my point. So then it's ultimately, obviously we want to eliminate, we want to mitigate leak of data. There needs to be a pragmatic approach towards it. Ironically, I actually think that will make it more resilient and safer. Doesn't mean that bad things don't happen because we live in the real world, but it means it actually will be safer because we're cognizant about it and when things go wrong, we know calmly. What do they always tell you when there's a fire happening, whether there's an earthquake? What they always tell you, stay calm. It's when you overreact. Same thing. We can calmly know how to deal with it and how to mitigate it. That's the lens that I'm applying. **Bernard Leong:** I'm quite curious, right? Like, for example, if you think about the large language models, even within the AI space today, a lot of the large language models, one of the questions is the open source and closed source models, right? Enterprises need certainty, right? So one of the things that if you look at, like Anthropic does, is that they provide it through a cloud provider, whether it could be Azure, GCP, or AWS. Then there is a policy saying that whatever you do with this here, it doesn't get, there's no data leakage into those environments, right? So there's one layer of complexity that you need to deal with. Then there is a second layer where the CEO has gotten productivity gains to using ChatGPT and decided that, hey, you know what, everybody should turn on their co-pilots only didn't realize that they forgot to turn on the security switch. Everybody gets to read the calendar of the CEO and the emails of the CEO. How would you apply a first principle approach into risk based on each one of these situations or is it something even much more tighter and say, okay, this is a specific enablement use case. This is a development environment use case, and this is something else. Maybe a customer service use case at some point. **David Hardoon:** So I think the honest answer is, because look, I'm very happy to learn from others, but I think we're still in the evolving process. One thing I forgot to mention earlier is, people should not underestimate, is trust. I'll give you an example. It's like when you go to a doctor, do doctors always get it right? No. Sometimes they get it wrong and sometimes pretty dramatically wrong. But we fundamentally have a mechanism of trust. The problem that we have, I'm segueing this into your question here, that we lack with all the excitement of the world of AI is trust. We just simply did not have the time to build it. That's the thing is we, there's certain things that we can't skip in that process. I know this sounds very emotional, but we're human. **Bernard Leong:** You are absolutely correct on that because Payne who came on the show in a previous episode made exactly the same argument on there is about trust. Whether AI application takeoff is not a question of, because the technology is so commoditized, the question is whether, how much trust you can build with the user. **David Hardoon:** So in that vein, the approach that I still prefer to take is a use case-based approach. Because what it allows you is to start having that elasticity. So for example, you may say to me, Hey David, you know what? This productivity game, let's say let's take the money minute co-pilot. It is awesome. I'm an activist. It's like, okay, fantastic. How about we do it for your team? See my point, the because then if something goes wrong, okay, at least it was in your team. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, you remind me when I was doing digital transformation, right, I have an agreement with the CIO. Say, hey, you know what? We are gonna start with Slack. The CIO said, well, your team can try it first and then let me know when we can bring it over to everyone. **David Hardoon:** Going back to the point of framework is when you have, so I almost see the whole process of AI in a way which results ultimately in an assembly line. The reason I do that is because it allows for some extent of consistency and replicability. So both in terms of development of AI, but then also more from a strategic point of view. Basically the strategy of AI as part of that assembly. Exactly. Just because we're doing it for, let's say your department or we're doing it for your particular use case, let's say banking. So let's say treasury, liquidity management, or a particular bank assurance engagement, whatever. It doesn't mean that I can't scale it up rapidly, but at least creates these deliberate conscious checkpoints to see, okay, are we going in the right track? Then to backtrack, because let's say, I'll give you a perfect example, as we're doing it, we may find that just like with the case of HR on that particular institution, I'm sorry Bernard, we're not going to switch on copilot. I'm sorry MAS, we're not gonna switch on copilot for you or we're not gonna do this use case for you. The reason we're not doing it for you, but we're doing it for them is because A, B, C, D. Going about setting the boundaries. I was having this wonderful conversation with someone, full credit to them, and we were talking again about speed limits and they said like, oh, you know, the speed limit is let's say 70 kilometers per hour, but we are only going at 40\. I said, but hold on a second, just because the national speed limit is 70 kilometers per hour. Fast or slow, maybe as an organization, not right or wrong, we're saying we don't want to go 70, we want to go 40\. Or there's certain parts of the organization because they're driving these massive semi-trailers, it's like, no, if even if you go at 70, it's really gonna be so risky. Whereas a small little MG, you know what? Go for it. You can go at 70, even 71\. You see my point? It's about contextualization, and this goes back to the premise and mindset from SDLC in how we used to do tech, and how we build and we roll out. AI has fundamentally, I'm trying to think of the right anecdote, but just fundamentally changed the mindset that it's now contextual to the level of application. It is contextual. It depends. So going in by thinking, oh, we're just gonna have this one ring to rule them all, I'm sorry, but my personal point of view is it will fail. That's going back to FAIR. It's one ring in terms of spirit, in terms of Bernard, I want to make sure you do not cause harm. How you take the approach to not do harm, I'm sorry, but that's up to you because it depends and it's contextual to you. Now you also see that internationally, no right or wrong, what China's doing is not right or wrong, what US is doing is not right or wrong. What Europe is doing is not wrong. It's contextual to them because they all want to achieve the same goal of do no harm. **Bernard Leong:** So if you think about practical examples of AI implementations, maybe why don't you talk about very good, interesting examples you have seen outside or implementation that even illustrates some form of value? I always get this question from a lot of CEOs and sometimes some of them, they're really doing it. I'm also quite embarrassed to say, hey, I actually, your AI implementation is pretty interesting. I would like to learn more. **David Hardoon:** This is what I meant that, to really be candidly fair. Some really exciting stuff that's been out there. I've recently been learning a bit more in terms of also on the operational side of the house, for example, you have this in production use case where you have literally fully autonomous agents in terms of cash reconciliation. Almost think of it as self-healing. So when errors occur, usually you would have a person who will come in to do some reconciliation or correction. Now you literally have agents which have a bank ID, they have a bank email that are able to do these micro tasks as part of a large reconciliation. So that is absolutely mind blowing, seeing it in operation all the way to your front-end line. Finance is about identifying products, it's about hyper-personalization. It's just doing it. So the ones which actually got me excited, ironically was bank assurance. Why did it get me excited? It's because no one likes to talk about mortality, and it's a very heavy product. Yet they used AI to really be able to identify the cohorts and people who need it, because you're planning a family, you're going to your next stage of journey. So just like food apps saying like, oh, you want to get from this and have a discount? Same thing. Bringing it to life and seeing the actual impact too. The area, which I do carry from my ex-life in the regulator of financial crime. I have seen some applications, which candidly blow things out of the water. Let me give you two concrete examples. Transaction monitoring. Today, our solutions, I'm not throwing mud because it is what it is, 97% false positive. So for every transaction alert that is flagged, actually it's okay. That's a lot of noise. Imagine you're dealing with a system that has 97% noise ratio to actually correctness. I've seen overlay of AI that has been able to drastically reduce that by up to 50%. Now that. Don't just think of it from a banking, operational efficiency point of view. Think of it from a customer service and enjoyment level, where now when you're overseas and you're trying to buy a friend dinner or your wife and your card gets declined because it incorrectly got flagged. Now suddenly it's a lot more fluid all the way to preemptively mitigating the risk like. Not to jump to the world of cybersecurity, but as those who deal the world of cybersecurity know zero day attacks. So when they've already infiltrated the system usually happens on average about 130 to 180 days before the actual attack. It just sits there. So using these agents to identify these vulnerabilities before the incident occurs. So you see it's shifting this mindset and the ability of operations from a reactive mode to things are running. We're correcting, we're adjusting, we're seeing satisfaction. Then finally, really going down to the level of providing the level of service at the level of service that is needed. Then a final point that I'll mention on this is we're currently in a very interesting situation whereby we have no choice because we as consumers, individuals to corporate, we are using these tools. I'm like you just mentioned, you got GPT on your phone. So you literally go to your bank and branch. It's like. Okay. How can you not do that? Here, let me help you. It's a level of expectation that has gone up. I can tell you candidly, it's now a competitive advantage because the provider that can do it, will just naturally get the audience because like, yeah, that's the level of service, that's the level of engagement that I expect as I can do it at home. **Bernard Leong:** I have a question, like if that's the case, then what about like, if you're definitely building a team to in order to help other teams to be able to be AI enabled, what kind of skills or roles have actually become critical? I get a question all the time. Somebody sends all their C-Suite people come in and then talk, and then after being blown away by the AI, then the first question asked me, how do I get that downstream? I say, I think there's some things that do not change management, your company culture, how it gets people to adopt technology that doesn't change, and that has to be adopted the same way as you've done it before. **David Hardoon:** You see my nodding a hundred percent. Let me break my responses to two parts. Let me talk about the people. Let me then talk about something you just said right now, which I want to really emphasize because I feel sometimes because this world is seen very technology, we actually forget about it. I don't think deliberately, but just we forget about it. So the first one is back to my point that I try and see everything as a supply chain. Same thing. AI is not one thing. It's a supply chain, so you do have to have all the way from your infrastructure. People, whether or not you're a cloud advocate or you have your own, you do need to have the people that understand the underlying architecture of this stuff, because at the end of the day, everything writes on top of it. Two World of Gen AI, which in fact, the word AI can be a bit misleading. It's a lot of full stack software development that is necessary because also from an integration point of view. Of course as you go up the supply chain, look, I've seen various ways of calling them from AI translators to business. I've recently defaulted back to the term just product owner, AI product owner, just to make it simple. But what it simply is, is a profile that knows enough about the technology to be dangerous, but understands and can communicate with the business and vice versa. Because also you don't. Look, I used to joke and say that if you can find a data scientist, like I used to say this in the past, that can understand and do the world of data science, code, implement, and do that and at the same time stand in front of the business and coherently, explain that simply in their terms, that is a unicorn. Lock them up in the room and don't let them leave because that is very rare. Usually you'll find that the people are very good at different stages on that horizontal. So that's necessary. Then to your second part which you were touching on actually, I know that I come from this world, so it's easy for me to say, the tech is easy, it's the people, it's the process. It's like, for example, remember we just spoke about the agents or reconciliation, et cetera. How do you not just change today's process? How do you fundamentally reimagine it? How do you reward existing, sorry new managers from the existing manager. What's their KPIs? If you go all the way to the extreme, let's say we have organizations whereby the way you get promoted, Bernard, is when you've gone from managing one person to managing a hundred people. Okay? I get promoted because I'm managing, but now suddenly I'm still managing one person, but I'm also managing 90 bots. So there's this massive. 90 agents. Exactly. When you have this massive, it's almost like an organizational talent necessity of how do I do that? I'll give you one final example. I was, remember I was in front of an audience not too long ago, I think maybe a month, two months ago. We were talking about the culture of innovation and I said, okay, let's talk about the culture innovation. I looked at them and I said, do you reward your staff today for failure? They just stared at me and said, well, David, what do you mean? Do we reward them for failure? I said, no, literally, I'm being as literal as possible. Do you reward them for failure? Now, obviously I'm saying it slightly provocatively. I said, okay, let me double click. Now, when I say failure, I'm not obviously talking about that you're maliciously or in a negligent manner resulting in issues. Obviously not. I mean, that's a fireable offense. But let's say I come to you and let's just say for, let's role play for a second. You report to me and I say, Bernard, I'm gonna give you a mandate. I want you to roll this, use cases of AI across the business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You go ahead and do it. Well, guess what? Remember what I just said? It's contextual. Just because all the pieces of the puzzle doesn't mean it will work, right? Because maybe they contradict in a certain manner, maybe the level of gain is not as we envisaged. Life happens. Do I then still reward you? Do I give you a healthy bonus? Because you've done a damn good job in trying to do that, yet it did not succeed. I will err on the side of saying, probably not. **Bernard Leong:** I see. **David Hardoon:** That's something that has to change. If the intention is from an innovation, this is a personal point of view. It's about the intent in which we're trying to move. We can never neglect or forget about the human element. The irony for me and remember my starting point? What drove me into the world of AI is understanding human, it's understanding us. If there's one thing I've discovered over the years of doing more and more about AI, it is about us, and yet we sometimes forget it. **Bernard Leong:** I once asked my class, because I teach generative AI in the university. I asked everyone because I did this study about hallucination. They know which part of the neural networks is actually turned on when the hallucination showed up and then I asked everyone, should we turn it off? If we know where it really is and everybody's like 50-50 on it. Then I said, well, there is actually study in psychology and other disciplines, right, that shows that actually experts have the highest tendency to hallucinate because a medical, you can think of it very simple, right? A medical specialist specializing in cancer doesn't encounter something that is not in the textbook. **David Hardoon:** Well, Bernard, I'm willing to go on a limb and bet lunch, which I'm happy to have anyway, that almost all. If not, most leaders, innovators, at the point of inception, were challenged by people around them by saying, you're hallucinating. One that just pops into my mind by saying, electric vehicles will be a common commodity, going to outer space, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. At the point of inception of the idea, people look and go like, you're hallucinating. It's like, that's not gonna happen. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. That is the whole point. Right? Then now you have to impose such a strong standards onto the AI that you're implementing. Don't you find it very ironic? **David Hardoon:** This is why hallucination for some is a feature and not a bug. Therefore, it's really important to be self-aware as to what is it that you're trying to achieve? I know it sounds, complete tangent, but talking about talent, I was in a university round table and we were talking about the necessity to train more about AI governance for students to help promote a culture of innovation and AI. I thought about it for a second. I said, actually, you know something, obviously conceptually, one cannot disagree. What we need to teach is philosophy. What I need to encourage you is to read more about Greek mythology because if anything, we need to have more thinkers. If anything, we need to ask more questions because if anything, AI now facilitates that. When my best friend from literally pre-kindergarten called me up in a frenzy and said, ah, you see, I told you you're gonna be the reason for the end of the world. She's a teacher, and it's like, these Gen AI and these just posts are gonna basically get me fired. I said, no, if anything. It's challenging you to teach more is to when we keep on saying that, oh, it's critical thinking that is important for the future. Well, guess what? That's exactly what you have time to focus on because the model answers and the easy stuff. **Bernard Leong:** It doesn't work anymore. **David Hardoon:** Let the agent handle it. **Bernard Leong:** I have one more question that's quite important, and I think this is a business conversation that a lot of business owners like to ask me, how do you measure your ROI or value from AI initiatives beyond cost savings? **David Hardoon:** Oh, crikey. That's a fun chestnut. That one. Okay, let's start with. It's very important to understand the team's reason d'être. The reason for being, why do I say that? Because if the team's purpose is innovation, there is no such measurement. In fact, anything I would say you're deluding yourself because innovation, your revenue, your potential quantifiable benefit is a downstream impact. Look at the world of AI. This is stuff that's been happening since 1940s, 1950s. Hello. So the way of KPI, the way of measurement needs to be coded. However, the rest, which is really about adoption, which is about implementation, it's about operationalization. I do believe in, I don't know, this may sound a bit unfriendly, but I do believe in enforcing a quantitative and for simplicity, financial monitoring. Now even, let's say so I build a solution that helps a frontline in terms of selling more to customers. Obviously they're the P&L holders, I'm just in the background, but I will still spend time initially too to compare, to look. Okay. What was your baseline, let's say for the last three months and now what is your baseline vis-a-vis using these capabilities to basically be able to report that delta, but then of course it gets normalized. Similarly, on the cost saving side, I'll look. So I would look at it on both fronts and I'll create a mixed bag of the revenue, the impact from cost savings, but as well as also the revenue impact from your top line. Then also risk, by the way, so we talked about, let's say reducing the number of false positives. I would also measure that, or mules detection in a financial gains because in terms of how much money have I helped protect. So, the reason is because it's easier to interpret it and then to be fair to the organization, it becomes easier to identify like, actually, you know something, that area just doesn't make sense. Yes, we can do this, but candidly just no, it helps prioritize. I just want to say just a last point about cost saves. Yes, we do it. I do it. I've always done it. But AI in the end of the day, is really about knowledge. It's about insight. I remember I had a, not debate because it was more my boss at the time giving me a scolding. So it was a one-sided debate where I said, well David, you've rolled out this initiative for operations and we claim that so in this particular case it was we were able to reduce the number of times you needed to call a customer in order to result in a collection. So let's say if I previously had to make five calls before to collect $1, now I only have to do two calls to collect that $1\. So yeah, cost saving, but it'd be like, but David, you still have the same number of people. You see this is where sometimes it gets hairy. I'm saying, well, look, number one is I can't control the usage of people because I'm ultimately a provider of a capability and it cannot detract the outcome of the capability that it results in that less need. But number two is the reality of today is that this will probably result in more insight about how the consumers are behaving. You find that you're assigning the people to do that to work on that additional insight, ways in creating more processes, whether it's be creating more services. My point is that we shouldn't undermine the value add created by knowledge. If you see where I'm going with this. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. No, I get that point. So the point of it is not in the cost savings, it's the way how you're going to use that knowledge to create the value. **David Hardoon:** Exactly, exactly. It's not like a net net zero kind of scenario that you shave here, but you gain here, so it comes together. **Bernard Leong:** So this comes to the final question, right? How do you see the role of AI now evolving for the next few years within financial services? Is it going to be a pretty gradual, or is it going to be very fast track similar to a lot of other industries who are trying to work out what they want to do with AI. **David Hardoon:** Well, I can tell you what my hope is. My hope is it'll be fast tracked because look, everyone's investing. I think you need to be living underneath a rock that's underneath another rock to discredit the tangible value that has been provided. This is actually a fun time to live because before it was more difficult to explain, to visualize, to demonstrate the value of using these knowledge based systems. Now it's just so easy. It's like the way we operate, the way we do things on a private basis. So I would love to see that accelerating. Now, realistically, of course, there'll be your shakers and movers and your followers, and that's how it always will be, because candidly, it goes back to the very earlier points that we discuss about existing environments. Your technical debt, legacy, it's an, some of them will be existential questions because you may look at your house and go like, wow, I can renovate it, but it's gonna cost me 10 times more than just tearing it down and building a new one. But I can't really tear it down because I have people living inside, you see? So it's questions that go beyond technology and AI and empowering skillsets. **Bernard Leong:** So David, many thanks for coming on the show. Before that, I have two closing questions. The first one, I call the Azure question on a personal level, how do you use AI tools or platforms to enhance your leadership decision making or productivity? **David Hardoon:** Okay, number one, I so, was it last year something I got a tick on X. So I got access to Grok. I use Grok extensively. My preferred approach of using it is I don't have Grok write for me, but I write, but I have Grok essentially help me in terms of grammar, in terms of recommendation, because what's also nice is that he actually looks at my historical style. I'm not just about these types of things. He goes like, well, David, this has been your style and some changes. So it's actually helping me as part of my evolution. Secondly, I'm not ashamed to say it, is I like to test ideas. So one prompt, which by the way I recommend to everyone is literally end with ask me questions as part of this conversation. So it's not just - No, no. Seriously, because a lot of people, understandably like, oh what's this? Or how's about that? I literally said, so I remember I had conversation about foreign currency exchange, geopolitical, Taiwan wines. It's fascinating because it goes back to my underlying premise, my first principle, it's about knowledge. It's about how do I use it to improve me? Back to your point about teams, also, how to engage, how to... **Bernard Leong:** I'm really surprised you are not using Claude and Anthropic's Claude because they is a default for them. **David Hardoon:** It goes back to ease of access. It goes back to ease of access. It's like when, let's, one of the reasons there was antitrust lawsuits and all that, but not going down the path of like, when you get an Android phone, it already comes with a Google browser. It's just there. It's not that I wouldn't use Claude if I had it, if it's not, I would, it just happens to be that I'm using it. **Bernard Leong:** I decided to be a professional user because enterprise wise I'm using it to help companies to do their financial automation. But of all the of all the three is my most preferred when it comes to deep thinking. I agree with you. Grok is really good. You could solve theoretical physics problems. **David Hardoon:** But there's some stuff. It's not really... **Bernard Leong:** But the math part for some reason is better between between Sonnet 3.5 and ChatGPT o3. **David Hardoon:** So maybe as we're tailing off, just to add, which is actually gonna be quite interesting. I really mean it from a behavioural perspective, how it evolves is we're now faced with, so once upon a time is like, you have what, Disney plus, Hulu, Netflix, and it's just different content. You basically have, let's say, multiple subscription or say like, no, no, I'm just gonna stick with Netflix. But now it's not just, you just have different, let's just simplify it and call it agents. Their capacity is different. Their knowledge is sometimes even a bit different. The way they interact with you is slightly different. So I'm wondering whether you'll find that you'll get this, whether people subscribe to one rather the other, whether they almost, I'm stretching here, the reality, but evolve slightly differently in the way they're thinking and the way they're doing things. Or on the contrary, you'll find aggregators by saying, you know what? I am now giving you the ability to pose your question or have your dialogue or search for information as a super note that basically gets it from... **Bernard Leong:** Yes, there is an app for that. **David Hardoon:** There you go. Because think about this, like why do companies, why do people arrange panel discussions? Why do you have a survey? Why do you speak to multiple experts? Because you're like, okay. Let's get a few views and let's challenge one another. Let's do that. So that's gonna be really interesting. I think that's gonna be a very interesting development moving forward. **Bernard Leong:** My final short question, what's the one question that you wish more people would ask you about AI? **David Hardoon:** Why? Literally just why like in everything to go to the why, why are we doing it? Why in terms of, it's like literally why? That to me is the biggest one. **Bernard Leong:** Do you have an answer to that? **David Hardoon:** I do. It depends. **Bernard Leong:** David, many thanks for coming on the show and how do my audience find you? **David Hardoon:** Oh LinkedIn. I got a website. Was it [davidroihardoon.com](https://davidroihardoon.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? But please, I've succumbed to the visibility of the worldwide web. **Bernard Leong:** \[Laughs\] You can definitely find this podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and LinkedIn. Of course we are going to continue talking. So David, many thanks for coming on the show and I shall also say thank you and we'll talk soon. Okay. **David Hardoon:** Very good. Cheers. Bye-bye. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He shares his journey from being a high-tech corporate lawyer and trusted advisor to leading AI governance at a company whose number one value is trust, reflecting on the evolution from automation to agentic AI that can reason, plan, and execute tasks alongside humans. Sabastian explains how Agentforce 3.0 enables agent-to-agent interactions and human-AI collaboration through command centers and robust guardrails. He highlights how organizations are leveraging trusted AI for personalized customer experiences, while Salesforce's Office of Ethical and Humane Use operationalizes trust through transparency, explainability, and auditability. Addressing the black box problem in AI, he emphasizes that guardrails provide confidence to move faster rather than creating barriers. Closing the conversation, Sabastian shares his vision on what great looks like for trusted agentic AI at scale. --- > "You can try to develop self-awareness and take a beginner's mind in all things. This includes being open to feedback and truly listening, even when it might be hard to receive. I think that's been something I've really tried to practice. The other area is recognizing that just like a company or country, as humans we have many stakeholders. You may wear many hats in different ways. So as we think of the totality of your life over time, what's your portfolio of passions? How do you choose—as individuals, as society, as organizations, as humans and families with our loved ones and friends—to not just spend your time and resources, but really invest your time, resources, and spirit into areas, people, and contexts that bring you meaning and where you can build a legacy? So it's not so much advice, but more like a north star." - **Sabastian V. Niles** **Profile:** **Sabastian V. Niles**, President & Chief Legal Officer, [**Salesforce**](https://www.salesforce.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabastian-v-niles-b0175b2/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: [**Bernard Leong**](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong. How does trust and responsibility be incorporated into enterprise AI? With me today, Sabastian Niles, president and chief legal officer for Salesforce Global to tell me about how AI governance can actually be placed with digital transformation together. With AI today with Salesforce. So, first of all welcome to the show, Sabastian, and congratulations on the launch of [Agentforce 3.0](https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2025/06/23/agentforce-3-announcement/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I just got the announcement, thank you for hosting me in the Singapore Salesforce office. **Sabastian Niles:** Delighted to be here and happy to join you today. **Bernard Leong:** So, prior to this I did a lot of research on you, so to make sure that I get a good origin story from my guests. How do you start your career? **Sabastian Niles:** Remember the origin story? Well, I had always had a passion for connections between topics and areas and potential areas of impact. One in particular was around the intersection of law, business, and technology. Actually when I had graduated high school, my mother had actually found an old article, like high school paper, and it's like, oh, what are the people going to do? What's their plans? Plans can change, but the reason she should have pulled this up, and it was after I had joined Salesforce in this capacity as president, chief legal Officer, is there was a line in this article where it says what do you want to do when you grow up? It's in high school. There's a very specific phrase. It says that I want to be one day a high tech corporate lawyer. She was chuckling about that, but I do think just that intersection of how do I think about law, how to think of policy, how to think of impact but then particularly in the context of the role of business as well, and what is the role of the private sector, whether it's in helping to solve some of our most complex problems, and ultimately solve some of the problems of, could be of other businesses, could be problems of people, could be problems of planet, problems of communities, and how can businesses work together, but then with the public sector, and with the civil society. I think I do very much believe, and Salesforce, it's been a key part of our ethos and our founders that business can also be one of the greatest platforms for change and positive impact. **Bernard Leong:** You have a long and illustrious career as a partner from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz. Since graduating from Harvard Law School and then you've been staying there for pretty long time, I really admire the kind of tenacity and loyalty to the firm. How did you end up in your current role with Salesforce? **Sabastian Niles:** I had one career for almost 20 years or so, and when I had transitioned to this role at Salesforce, a close friend of mine who is a CEO of another company, he sent me a text message. He goes, oh, Sabastian, you finally have a real job. I said, what? What do you mean I have a real job. But, it is a transition. But I think what's been fascinating though for me around it is as a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz and leading various practice groups, I had very much developed and had the privilege of serving as a trusted advisor at scale to companies, governments, different contexts around the world, either on top of mind critical opportunities they were seeking to achieve or challenges that they were seeking to navigate. So in joining Salesforce though, going from being a trusted advisor in that one context to joining a global company whose number one value is trust. At a very meaningful and genuine throughput there, because what I'd also share with you what I continue to find at Salesforce is in so many ways, we are serving as trusted advisors to so many different companies, industries, governments, nonprofits, as each of these organizations and institutions seek to, whether it's transforming themselves or reimagining themselves with AI or trying to achieve their mission, or purpose. But they're really partnering with Salesforce. So that's just been an interesting element. Then how to bring to bear, particularly for customers and partners and a broader ecosystem to have the kind of change that they're trying to achieve with our solutions. So much of it does revolve around, okay, how do you bring trust to it? How do you think about responsibility? How do you think of impact? So that's been just kind of a little more surprising than I was expecting, that there actually is that type of a throughput, if that makes sense. **Bernard Leong:** Before we get to the intersection of trust and responsibility with enterprise AI today. I want to just ask you, from your career journey, what are the valuable lessons you can share with my audience? **Sabastian Niles:** Well, I always try to be cautious in giving advice. Definitely like one size doesn't fit all and everyone has their own context and situation. I suppose not so much advice but perspective is, as much as you can try to develop self-awareness and try to take a beginner's mind really in all things, which also includes. Are you open to feedback? Are you able to really listen even when it might be hard to receive that feedback. But I think that has been something I've really at least tried. I think that's an important area. As we think of one's life as a company where our country can have so many different stakeholders as humans, I'm sure this, you find this, you have many stakeholders. You may wear many hats in different ways. So as we think of the totality of your life over time what's your portfolio of passions? How do you, how do we, how do as society, as organizations, but as humans and families, our loved ones and friends, how are you choosing to not just spend your time and resources, but really invest your time, your resources, your spirit, hopefully into areas and people and context that bring you meaning and where you can build a legacy. So not so much advice, but it's like a north star that I think is important. **Bernard Leong:** That's very good advice and leads into the topic that we're gonna talk about, which are main subject of today. We're gonna talk about Salesforce Agentic AI trust and responsibility. I think to always baseline my audience, can you briefly introduce Salesforce and its global mission. How is it currently evolving in the AI-first world? **Sabastian Niles:** Sure. At Salesforce we have for about 26 years now, have really focused on how do we deliver on five core values. I start with values because it actually really informs how we think about supporting our customers and organizations and reimagining themselves with AI. In our five core values, number one value is trust. Then we have customer success or customer stakeholder success. Then innovation. Then equality and sustainability. When we think of that kind of portfolio, those values of trust of customer success, innovation, equality, and sustainability, each of those have guided how we approach, whether it's helping our customers connect with their customers in a whole new way. We've been pioneer particularly around initially predictive AI and then now around generative and agent AI. But, CRM the number one AI CRM people would say about us, but also more broadly when we sort of saw our customers we're very led by, what are our customer's priorities? What's the feedback? What's the feedback that our customers are giving to us about what they need, what their challenges are? So some of that may be they're dealing with siloed data, they're siloed themselves, fragmented data. So we need solutions for that data cloud solution. But I highlight that because all of our different set of solutions across our deeply unified platform are designed to enable our customers to really connect more effectively with their own customers or achieve their own objectives, in various sets of ways. You mentioned Agentforce earlier, which we can talk about as well, if you'd like. **Bernard Leong:** I think this is so interesting, so one of the other things that we probably also come to, and also to help my audience to understand is the concept of Agentic AI. How do you currently define Agentic AI and how is it different from traditional automation or AI tools? I think you have a pretty unique definition towards that. **Sabastian Niles:** So as noted Salesforce comes at this we really only specialize in that kind of enterprise grade, enterprise ready type of solutions in partnership. When we think of artificial intelligence particularly the current era of Agentic AI, which people have said Salesforce we're really the ones who had defined it or are leading it through Agent Force. But the idea is that, we will have no doubt live in a future of humans with AI advancing wherever the priorities may be. Humans with agents driving stakeholder success together and so these AI agents, under supervision, control direction of the organization, of the teams of the humans able to act to reason, to plan to execute, tasks to achieve the objectives that are set. As you can imagine, when we think of artificial intelligence evolving in that way. So you really have this robust partnership between humans with AI agents. It raises the stakes around the need for responsible AI, we know when we listen to our customers, they all like, they're telling us they really want, they want safe, trusted, responsible AI services that will deliver at scale, with speed, and trust. So it's just kind of that's how, and we think, again, it'll apply really across all sorts of very practical use cases. Singapore Airlines are actually one of a kind of a really incredible customer that's been using a number of our different set of solutions to really reimagine how do they really take their customer experience to the next level of personalization of impact as well as all their other sets of goals. The reason I mentioned Singapore Airlines as well, which it goes to your AI governance point. Singapore Airlines is partnering with us. Others, it's actually around what's the thought leadership around? How can we think of AI trust, AI responsibility, AI impact to create really kind of in that industry, but can be in any set of industry, just new motions, new operating models, so that they are really kind of defining the future in a world of humans with AI, and agents. **Bernard Leong:** So, coming from that point of view, what could be your mental models to think about the concept of trust and responsibility in the era of agent AI? I think you brought up a very good example of the Singapore Airlines, the intersection of governance and ethics across the organization on AI itself? **Sabastian Niles:** Well, when it comes to kind of mental models or operating models I've probably come at it, in as follows. I think sometimes people in organizations different contexts, can, I think wrongly view trust and innovation as somehow at odds. **Bernard Leong:** They're not mutually exclusive. **Sabastian Niles:** I think that's really just fundamental. I think that's kind of one of the key kind of mental, sort of operating models is actually rather than trust, innovation, sort of being at odds, particularly for the types of impact and change and transformation that's possible now. Trusted approaches and bringing trust into the product design development, deployment, adoption at the outset and not as an afterthought actually becomes an accelerant. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. **Sabastian Niles:** It's more like trust is almost a propulsion to give people, not just faith but actually enable you to go faster around these set of topics. I think that's just a critical kind of piece around this, across whatever the sort of use cases may be. **Bernard Leong:** How does do you have any thoughts about the use cases that allow the shift from automation to agency where the trust and responsibility is clearly visible today? **Sabastian Niles:** I think it's an important point. So I think ultimately what we find with our customers and look even ourselves, because at Salesforce we actually say, hey, we need to there's a couple of cliches, let's say eat, eating our own cooking. But we said we need to be customer zero. If we want all of our customers, our customers tell us they want to be agent force companies, they want to be agent first. They want to be AI first. Then we say, okay, well we need to show that model and be in the arena with them. So how we've been deploying agents, deploying Agent Force, whether it's help dot, Salesforce dot com actually external facing as well as a whole slew of internal agents in terms of the human teams being able to rely on this set of technology. Sometimes, look, sometimes it is just providing 24/7 type of engagement and support. Sometimes it's actually really unlocking capacity to tackle projects that maybe we otherwise wouldn't have the capacity to tackle. You've heard the concept that Salesforce we've been talking about is when you think of humans with AI driving success, well, what it means is you're gonna have this mix of human labor with digital labor. That's right. Dealing with a lot of shortfalls and the healthcare system. We see that so much. There's real shortfalls of folks. You also have experts and people who are working around the clock. Who, how could you unlock their capacity? So it could be automating certain tasks or taking on routine sort of type of administrative work. That's a critical part of all this. But then there's also, what does augmentation look like? How do you improve the decision making using AI around these sets of issues or have consumer open table. Open tables using agent force. Can you imagine kind of around the world, to kind of help people who want to have kind find connection, community, good food reservations. They're doing that at scale to actually execute on these sometimes different sets actually, complex logistics. Just like we may have governments. Working on these things very large enterprise financial institutions manufacturing companies, kind of a whole sort of slew of folks. I think that ends up one piece, you'd asked me earlier, and I, apologies I didn't really get to it, is, so if we think of humans with AI agents working together, our vision around that for what is trusted agency mean, it's going to have to have robust governance. It's going to have the need to have the right ethical guardrails, and then it's gonna have to have, yes, compliance at scale, but a critical piece. For any institution enterprise of not just size or scale, because this also applies for small, medium sized businesses, but any institution or company of seriousness, they actually need to have the right governance around it. So what I mean by that is they need visibility. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. **Sabastian Niles:** That's right. They need control. They need observability. What does it actually mean? What are the agents doing? Also when are the agents effectively doing handoffs to humans? Then when do humans actually be able to say, okay, hey, let's go get the AI agent doing it. By the way, here's the thing that. Really, we have these weekly AI summits where we're in deep with our incredibly brilliant, our chief AI scientists, our technology product teams, I, and sort of the rest of the C-suite we're in the thicket with them every week going through all these sets of items. Is as we look to the future, but actually the present that sort of we're building is, it's not just human to agent handoff interactions. It's actually agent to agent. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Sabastian Niles:** You can have agent to agent to agent, then sort of go back to the human. So how does when you think of these guardrails, there's gonna be different sets of guardrails. Some are preventative, some are runtime guardrails, some are like self-improving guardrails. But you can say, I get pretty excited about this because I think the impact, please. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting, because the guardrails are determined by humans, we have to set certain rules to make sure that things don't go our hand. Also you rightfully also point out things like observability within the AI agents, what are they really doing? I also notice in the agent force three launches, a lot seems to be centered on the command and dashboard to help monitor the different agents and what they're doing. Because think if you're an agent boss. **Sabastian Niles:** If you yourself you're running, commanding a, managing a whole sort of fleet of agents. You have your own agent span of control. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Sabastian Niles:** You need a command center. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. Also I know model contact protocol is very, is a sexy topic now, but people are not thinking about the trust level where you need to have some trust before it just. The AI agent goes through and do something else. So if I were to ask that, we often talk about the promise of artificial intelligence, but what are the real world consequences with untrusted AI from your point of view? Particularly I think you have rightfully pointed out, like in healthcare, in financial services, these are domains were high trust. Are really required because we have so much confidential data about the customers. **Sabastian Niles:** You've touched on it, that's exactly right. Is that we're going to be seeing artificial intelligence deployed in context where the stakes are very high. Again, there are upsides and promise to that you can think of. There's a lot of areas where unfortunately, there are medical mistakes. That have occurred, including things that affect people with fewer resources. So part of the promise is actually how could you use artificial intelligence to actually raise the floor of that quality. So that really, every individual human can have essentially access to this virtual team of experts, humans, human physicians. Absolutely. But also AI supporting those diagnoses of diagnoses, of supporting the follow up. Also sometimes reducing burnout, because sometimes mistakes happen in healthcare or other things from humans that are tired and burnout. So that's also, or maybe can AI can help sort of around that, but to your point, like what are the stakes? You highlighted some of them, which is, and we see this still with the generative AI issues that come up as look accuracy, hallucination. Hallucination. I think trusted, GenAI does rely on being grounded on trusted data. But also have visibility and understanding, what are the data sources coming from, how do we understand it? How do you also have consistency maybe across different data domains in different sets of areas. But I'll sort of step back a little bit when we think of I. Agents and we, something we think of, we think of our, we think of agents, we think of the different apps. We think of the different versions of AI. We think of the metadata. We think of adding agent layers to these things. I highlight all this because what we also think about quite a bit in these areas is. There're kind of five attributes as such. Like what is an agent, an AI agent supposed to do. One is going to be okay, what's, what's the role? What's the task that they're doing, working with humans? Another one is the data or the knowledge, like what's the knowledge they're supposed to have access to? Or maybe what's the knowledge data they're not supposed to, so to have access to, that's a guard rail. Then you have a whole set of guardrails. What should they do? Not the by which, by the way. Well, I'll get to this sort of in a moment. The channels, where are they going to work? Like maybe in Slack. Slack has been such an incredible, I was just speaking to a. Customer the other day, and they're like, we basically, slack is our operating system for how we kind of, which is like really exciting. My company runs on Slack, your company runs on Slack. If you have feedback, I want to make sure you're successful of AI by the way. **Bernard Leong:** AI by the way. **Sabastian Niles:** Oh, that's terrific. Great to, great to hear that. But when we think of agents, what's the roles, what's the capabilities, like the task, what should they be able to do? What are the guardrails? Where are the channels in which they work. What's the data, the knowledge they have to, here's the interesting and complex element. So take you and me, we got jobs. Well, as humans, what are the elements of our jobs? We have guardrails, codes of conduct requirements, things we're supposed to do, not going to do. Responsibility. We have responsibility. We have roles, we have. What's the knowledge? What's the data we're supposed to access? What are the channels? Confidentiality. Where do we work? Do we do our work in Slack? Do we do the work on the phone with voice? Do we do it in person? But that's, I think, an interesting element when you think of these five dimensions of how you would design a craft, an AI agent. They're actually very analogous to kind of what are the dimensions of just how we approach our work and not to overly anthropomorphize. Yet I think there are certain important insights around that when we think of what's that future human AI workforce, human labor with digital labor coming together. That actually, I think does give us different sets of insights, including how you think of trust, responsibility, and impact so that you can achieve the results that you want to achieve. **Bernard Leong:** How would you think about this situation where in some situations when the agent AI are a bit like black boxes, where you really do not know what is thinking and what is doing, how do you put that guardrails into the kind of situation. **Sabastian Niles:** I think this is critical. I think that for enterprise grade, enterprise ready agentic AI systems there are gonna be three elements that are fundamental and this is how we build and develop it sort of with our customers. We're going to need transparency. We're going to need explainability. We're going to need auditability. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Sabastian Niles:** Meaning what occurred? And why. Be able to kind of go back and sort of see the different steps because, and that's different than maybe kind of consumer facing consumer relevant, but at least again, within the enterprise, there's this heightened expectation of understanding what exactly occurred and we actually do believe it's achievable with the right, if you build actually the technology in sort of the correct. The correct way so that you actually deal with this black box. **Bernard Leong:** Because the audit trail is important because one of the things about agents, they could make 1000 decisions and 999 will work. Then there is just one decision, maybe just miss something. Then you need to have a way to actually go and audit back the trail. Why do you do this wrongly? Just like human beings. **Sabastian Niles:** Just like human beings. This is exactly right. Look, and when we think of the roles of the future, the jobs of the future, the needs of the future, we're going to have like what is quality control look like, in an agentic era. How do you think about, and also errors. How do you think about checking, how do we have those sets of issues? Because it's not just, okay, were mistakes made or, did it fully align with what we sort of wish to occur. It's also, okay, how do we drive better effectiveness? I think the other piece is, what are the new roles, the new tasks, the new jobs that certainly get created around this. Some of them do involve by the way, who are the people who are going to really kind of understand and unpack. What exactly do the AI do? How do we think of that, experts in that collaboration between human, and AI. Then there's a lot of, obviously you can imagine legal and policy and different set of issues, but also for any member of a C-suite, for a CFO. For a Chief operating officer. For all these sort of different sets of folks, how will they lead effectively and reimagine some of their own functions and priorities and teams when you have the possibility of AI to help you accelerate, but also make better decisions. Ultimately kind of presumably achieve your goals faster. I think the other element there though is, effectively, if we kinda get to, how do we get to better decision making between humans and AI, well, maybe the AI can help you or help your organization come up with the right goals, in a way that hadn't been before. So there isn't, there doesn't just have to be the element of what do we automate, and what do we, how do we get rid of the tedious tasks. Absolutely. But it can also maybe have a very sort of as a sort of strategic partner, thought partner routine of the priorities, and help you to organize those priorities into yourself. Think that is actionable. **Sabastian Niles:** I think I agree with that. Well, now what about you though? Tell me how are you kind of tackling AI? What do you see as the opportunities or the risks or the. **Bernard Leong:** I work in a enterprise AI company. Since I'm a startup, I have the perfect architecture to do a lot of things using AI. So what I discover now is that a lot of tasks that is repeated or I found a way to automate using AI. **Sabastian Niles:** Wow. **Bernard Leong:** So you can think of like a via customer call where I, we still require G rail to ask the customer, can I record this? But the biggest difference now is that I can capture most of the requirements through that conversation. The beauty is that I just have to press one button and ask the Large language model and say, hey, can you retrace the conversation? Can you bring out all the features that the customer wants? Then can you organize it into a statement of work for me? That is something that used to be done for about three to five days by a consultant. That is now being reduced into minutes. So I think that is one of the biggest change of how to work productively in this. But I have to ask you this question, what is the one thing about trust and responsibility in the era of agent AI that very few do? **Sabastian Niles:** Oh that's a great question. Just that it requires vigilance, it requires also taking trust seriously in the generative AI era, I used to have a phrase that trust begins long before the prompt and continues long after the output. I think that element of what do we think of end-to-end trust first processes and taking responsibility and impact seriously. **Bernard Leong:** That's a good one. I'm actually gonna be teaching a class on that. After we have this conversation. I like that line. **Sabastian Niles:** Feel free. But okay. That's interesting. **Bernard Leong:** Coming back to this conversation now, I think given that you talk about working with customers, how is now, Salesforce working to ensure, transparency and accountability in a way that the AI agents make decisions, but also at the same time being able to put the guardrails there. So, I mean, we talk about agent force for example. How is this being done in reality? **Sabastian Niles:** Sure. Look, one, it does depend sort of on the use case, what is needed, we try to really design and deliver solutions that are responsive to the customer needs. As you can imagine, particularly we have a lot of customers that really want to benefit from our deeply unified platform and like the full force and power kind of across the sets of solutions. But sometimes it can involve trust patterns. Really kind of understanding what are the different sets of pieces of how it comes together. So that again, you achieve the outcomes that you want. Effectiveness and relevancy accuracy. Sometimes that also evolves. Again, we have a trust layer, because there is at the base. So one thing is at Salesforce, at least we're not sort of releasing just agents into the wild. The sort of agentic technology that customers expect from us and ask us to build and deliver is really grounded and just can be decades of trusted protocols of respect for enterprise, say access controls. Also being dependent on customer specific workflows and data that they've been using and relying with us for a long time. So those are, I think some of the elements around that. But again, companies need to have, what's their data strategy, what's their data governance, making sure again, the agents and sort of all the different sort of solutions are grounded in that relevant data. The workflows that are most important to that customer. Look, we also try to make things easy for people. Salesforce is a company. As we've always really believed, when we think of business as the greatest platform for change and impact, we believe in democratizing access to the technology empowering people. So, look, we have out of the box use cases across every single industry. Again, it could be for governments how they think of serving their constituents better, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, consumer facing, retail. I could go down sort of all these different sets of buckets, but really kind of just have, okay, here are the workflows that we know are most impactful and aligned to what your business objectives are, what your actual sort of needs are. Then we just sort of can build it together and just it, it was with a customer the other day the CTO, she's like, this just works. Similarly, we do a lot of work with. We think of enablement at democratizing access technology. One of our enablement engines is we have something called Trailhead. Which is really kind of just how do we drive one of the number of these business councils around AI impact and AI ethics, but also how do we have AI acceleration. Trailhead is one of the methods where we think, how do, how can communities, how can companies build capacity, AI literacy, digital literacy around these items. So if you're ever won, go on Trailhead, it's available. You can become, we call it a, become an agent Blazer. For years we've had this thing called trailblazers. Trailblazers, and we have millions around the world. We want to have, there be millions of agent blazers, but. We care about this because we actually don't believe that. AI and Genix should be wholly implemented and delivered fully, top down, the point is, you should actually have the actual people, the teams, the companies at any level yourself, but actually any of your team members come work, come build on our platform, we'll give you a button. Build. Build my first agent, because having your hands in the soil, it not just gives you kind of confidence and control that this technology is real. It's present, it can be developed, but it's actually very empowering because you may come up with use cases that are even more impactful sort of than the ones that we may sort of have out of the box. Then we can build something new for you, particularly as you think of bringing together disparate data and silo data and the like, so that ultimately you can kind of have all the different sort of enterprise sets of areas of importance be brought together. So you have effective agents or other AI tools. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting that point. I think there was a very good study that 70% of the AI that is supposed to be implemented is actually all done in the wrangling and the harmonizing of data. You brought that out really specific. I actually know, foundation, we have an office for ethical and human. How does that office work and how do you partner with your product and engineering teams? I think this is one of the most unique things about it's we you haven't seen yet. **Sabastian Niles:** Well look, I think rooted in our number one value of trust is how do we operationalize that? So yeah, we have our office of ethical and humane use of technology. Just, someone was said to me the other day, he said, you guys are the very rare comp rare company that it's actually willing to say that. A core value of yours is trust. Similarly, like you're one of the rare companies that would actually say, we're a company, we're gonna have an office of ethical and humane use. Of technology to really grapple with these sort set of different topics. As noted. But the office of OEHU, office of Ethical Human Use is an office I oversee. It also is overseeing engaged within our technology and product organization. Because we want to have both of those sort of deep sets of areas. So the work of that group, whether it's on policies, whether it's on. I mentioned earlier there's a concept in cybersecurity of a shift left. Are you familiar with it? But similarly, when we think of trust and ethics and responsibility and observability, is okay, how do you build it in to the product design early on, and then also testing, and sort of really testing and being willing to sort of assess is this doing the right things? Is it causing, are there issues being created? How do you resolve that? I encourage you to read, and actually anyone who's listening or watching we've issued our inaugural, it's the first ever, trusted AI and agents impact report. We really seek to engage and sort of think about these set of issues. As a company, we're a public, publicly traded company. We have a board of directors, we have our internal governance systems, and we actually deeply care and think about what's that oversight of artificial intelligence as a company, and across sort of our different sets of sets of stakeholders so that we're navigating and calibrating opportunity and risk effectively. So we engage really at every level, whether it's our board of directors on these issues, whether it's our management teams, whether it's again, each of the sort of different sets of functions, both on customer zero, but also making sure we have these really rapid feedback loops. Just like with customers we want to make sure we're really, we just had a CIO advisory board meeting two days. Just really, in there with these incredible leaders who are building, who are architecting, who are deploying and making sure we're getting all this sort of feedback. Even the tough feedback because it's really important because we are really committed to that north star of customer success. **Bernard Leong:** I guess the, when it comes to customers, then how do you approach building trust with enterprise customers? I think they also become increasingly nervous about handing control way to autonomous AI systems. I think this is one of those things. Plus now AI agents are also evolving from rules to reasoning, so how do you help them or guide them towards thinking about handing that part of that control, but still able to still allow them to function in this new world. **Sabastian Niles:** Thank you for posing that look in the enterprise grade context and a sense similar to how cybersecurity evolved. But when we think of AI systems and agentic AI our concept that we invented of trusted agendas actually hits this point, which is what's the shared responsibility. What's the shared trust? The shared discipline around these areas where actually the customers want to have control. They should. They want to have confidence in these systems they want to also make sure they're achieving compliance at scale. So the reason I mention that is. Just this area of okay, the customer will have certain specifications and what they want. The agents, say to do or they may want sort of their other AI systems, but then they also want to have the control and flexibility to kind of sometime fine tune the different set of areas and so, we may have tools and solutions, trust related items for that. Then it's the customer's decision actually in terms of, okay, where do they really want to turn the dial? Different sets of issues around sort of the use cases on the context. So a big piece of this actually, again, there is the making sure the customers are empowered, whether it's through the command centers for humans and agents, but that visibility, the observability the governance, but then also what are the, how they think about the guardrails and their view on guardrails may also evolve. **Bernard Leong:** So this is a question that I usually get from CEOs when I teach class corporate classes. I bring consulting for them. They will tell me that my IO kids should, what should I do with them, with AI? My first answer says, yeah, you should let them use it, but you should be there with them as a guide. So what they're really worried about is that the kids outsource their thinking into the AI. But then I'm gonna move this question this, and I take this analogy to solve, bring it to our conversation. So in the future, how would you envision humans, AI agents collaborating effectively without one side being overly dependent on the other? I mean, humans have that tendency of being overly reliant on. Humans. AI, well outsource our thinking away. **Sabastian Niles:** Hey, I mean, look, I think the reality of that is don't humans also sometimes have a tendency to maybe overly on, other humans in a context. I mean, we all do that. I share that actually again, because I think there are similar principles. If you also mention around as we think of what's the society that we want to have, hopefully the society we deserve to have. But the humanity is actually very much in control of these items, of defining what is, I used to think that the secret impact or success was having a really first class view of the future. I don't really think that anymore. I think the secret is more how do you have a first class view of scenarios around the future. We've had at Salesforce, a futures team for a very long time. I bring them in and we kinda debate, we kinda see differences as the scenarios. When you think of as parents or educators. It all starts with really embracing and understanding again, that the future is one of humans with AI, humans and AI agents together. So what that means is, okay, how do you educate? For my own view, I have three children, blessed to have them. My view on it is I actually really want them to be engaging with the technology actually say, here, take some of these AI fluency courses. Engage with it. Debate. Sometimes I get emails and I'm like did they write this? Did they send it to the, but the key thing is using that to then engage in the human conversation because ultimately we need AI to help us spend more of our time on that, which makes us more uniquely human. When you think of if you're from of the sustainable development goals, for example. All these issues of clean water. Access to resources, healthcare. Look, these are all areas that humanity has yet to solve and get right. That's one of the reasons now, we've had these series of global AI summits. Salesforce, we were very engaged in each of them. They started in Bletchley Park in the UK around safety. Then when I was in Korea around the next summit that talks about innovation, safety, and inclusivity. Then in Paris we're talking about AI action. Then there'll be one in India that we're working on with the government and the team there, is just. We really need to embrace the technology so that one, we understand it, but two, we're able to deploy it in the ways that are most meaningful and useful to us, because one of the challenges I used to do work around the digital divide. Similarly going forward, what is that? Are there gonna be sort of divides, are you gonna have certain companies in certain industries that embrace this in a trust first way, and then are able to accelerate and leap past their competitors, but similarly people are worried about that in their communities and their neighborhoods families is, what does competition look like? But I think really it's it's gonna have to be more of, right now at Salesforce, we every year we do a future force. Which is we bring like of the pleasure of having these interns come in. So I've got a whole host of interns at Salesforce and just for example, I was just with some of them, they're the ones who chose to join our legal corporate affairs team. I was just chatting with them around AI. How they use it. They just start showing me like, yeah, here's how we're using AI to like work through this problem. Here's that. We did actually a little clip because I said, wait, this is really kind of exciting. They're just so natural with it and comfortable with it. I said, hey, you've got this wisdom here. We need to make sure we're sharing that with sort of everyone. We've got 75, 70 7,000 people at the company. We have to really be learning from each other constantly just earlier today I was doing a global town hall. We started to do it from here. We're doing it for here from Singapore because the region's very important to us globally. But one of the areas that we were really talking about is, ah, what does AI transformation mean? But in very hands-on level. A key piece of it was we're gonna handle it in a very empowering way, because each of these folks, on our teams, they know best their own work. They know what excellence and effectiveness looks like. So we want actually these teams to be the ones that start to say, ah, how might I use AI to augment myself to automate away the things I really don't want to free me up for sort of additional sets of tasks. That's what it means. You can democratize access to these technologies, not just kind of in an abstract way, but like with the people with whom you're working, and leading and managing. Then also how again, kind of at every level and be open to just learning. I think that's gonna be one of the most important areas going forward for our families, for our communities. Is curiosity. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one question that you wish more people would ask you about trust and responsibility with agent AI? **Sabastian Niles:** What's the one question. Well, maybe a little sort of silly, but I think you'll get it. more of how can governance and guardrails and guidance be a catalyst and be an accelerant for innovation. Rather than kind of this sort of cliched view of, oh, it's a blocker, or, oh, I don't want to kind of deal with these sets of issues. I think honestly that's I think a key area. **Bernard Leong:** How would you give them like some high level guidance, like this is how you should approach it. Then if I were to ask that question to you, like just give them like maybe three very important principles. **Sabastian Niles:** Look, I think when you're dealing with enterprise grade, needing enterprise ready solutions. Guardrails, provide confidence to move faster. See, I believe that effective governance, common sense guidance, sort of ethical common sense guardrails, provide permission, and they provide clarity because then folks know, okay, how can we, how do we move forward, that's right how do we make this safe, responsible, ethical? I think that's actually part of why so many people think of it in personal relationships or contact the speed of trust. But similarly that's I think that's a key piece to this, is that in an organizational context in order to have adoption at scale, which is what you need with AI. In order to really be comfortable with using agents to drive forward your workflows, to partner humans with AI on these issues, it actually only will occur with a strong sense of, okay, where does trust, responsibility, impact come into play? Because we're not actually just playing around, which is good. It's good to play, it's good to games. But again, in these more serious contexts, people want effectiveness. They want to know sort of what's the business value, but they also want to have again, that visibility and the observability and the governance around it so that they can stay in control, have that command center and then correct sort of along the way. So does that address kind of what you're asking? **Bernard Leong:** I think that that's a very good advice. So my traditional closing question then, what does great look like for trust and responsibility on agent AI for Salesforce in the next couple of years? **Sabastian Niles:** What does great look like? Look, I think we are in a just really once in a generational moment here. At Salesforce people have said that we were the first to move on agents at scale. What does great look like? It means we're also known to be the first to move with integrity, with trust at the forefront. It's going to mean, even wider sort of global adoption is going to mean more use cases across all sets of it could be regulated industries, it could be other sets of cases. The other thing honestly, where I think what great looks like is going to be at that kinda regional level sort of in each country, in each context. Not one size fits all. One big area that we're very committed to and focused on is actually for the small and medium sized businesses and commercial businesses as well as we serve the largest enterprises. But we really see this incredible opportunity for the small and medium sized businesses here to scale up. There's a common sort of statistic that also says, oh, most small businesses that really, the engine of so much growth. Most small businesses fail. Where our vision is with Agent Force, with different sets of our solutions, but really small businesses really embracing the humans with AI, bringing in sort of the agentic layer to the small, medium sized businesses. What if that was no longer true? What if instead of most small businesses failing, what if more small businesses succeeded? Then they were able to grow their impact. Grow their revenue. Include, I mean, imagine what that would mean, for communities. For family. So I think that's a big piece. I think the other thing, what does great look like? Salesforce has always been committed to the ecosystem approach to success. So an ecosystem of AgTech trust, an ecosystem of what a customer and stakeholder success look like at scale when it comes to AI, an ecosystem approach to innovation, ecosystem approach to equality, an ecosystem approach to sustainability. All of these sort of sets of areas. That's how we think. We have Salesforce ventures, where we're just have the privilege of partnering with a lot of these companies. We're investing in these companies, but we're so committed to that. Customer success is what great looks like, is just really incredible levels of continued customer success at scale with speed, but always in trust. **Bernard Leong:** I'm gonna look forward to see what's gonna come out in ASEAN forces, the next Agent Force 4.0\. You're already thinking about it. Sabastian, many thanks for coming on the show. So, in closing, very quick one. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Sabastian Niles:** Oh, for books. Oh my gosh. Movies, food books, movies. Well, actually there's so many terrific books out there around AI for AI 2027, there's this or that, but there's actually a book I've been rereading and it's called the Future Self. It's why a friend of mine, a professor, but what it really kind of talks about is that when we want to have impact, when we want to have hope, when we want to have just sort of a view of kind of what are we going forward, it's not actually the past that drives us, it's actually a view of the future of our own futures as individuals, as humans of our organizations. This is, I think, just a such a powerful book, particularly now of what's that view we're gonna have? Of the future because once you have a first class view of at least a set of scenarios around the future, you then are empowered to decide which is the future scenario I want to avoid, but which is the future scenario I actually want to accelerate and have manifest. **Bernard Leong:** Great book recommendation. How do my audience find you? **Sabastian Niles:** Oh online. You can just type my name in if you want. Sabastian Niles, Salesforce. But I would also say try our help.salesforce.com. Give us feedback. But yeah, happy to hopefully they'll find us on this podcast. **Bernard Leong:** Of course you can definitely follow this podcast and many thanks for coming on the show. I definitely can find us on Spotify, YouTube, every channel. However I'm really enjoyed this conversation and I think I took a lot of great lessons before going back to teach my class. So Sabastian, many thanks for coming on the show. **Sabastian Niles:** Wonderful. Invite me to your class one day, perhaps. It's real pleasure. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Patrick shared the backstory behind Apple's century-defining Faustian bargain and progressed through how he uncovered the untold story of Asia's contract manufacturing history through Apple's supply chain point of view. He unpacks the famous "Apple Squeeze" philosophy of paying suppliers minimally while providing invaluable training, and shares fascinating stories from characters like the ruthless negotiator Tony Blevins to the tragic figure of Jackie Haynes. Throughout the conversation, Patrick demonstrates how Apple inadvertently created China's contract manufacturing capabilities and explains why the company's current attempts to diversify to India face insurmountable cultural and political barriers. Last but not least, he argues that Apple's very success in China has become its greatest vulnerability, trapped in a relationship where going too fast risks Beijing's ire, while going too slow means remaining stuck in an increasingly untenable position. --- > "I quote a study that looked at 84 countries in terms of internal migration and India was dead last. That's not a knock against the culture. It's just not part of the culture that young women in particular leave home at 17, go to the other side of the country and work in a factory. You don't have that. So what's the phrase: **Culture eats strategy for breakfast**. Apple might have a plan, but like good luck upending 5,000 years of Indian culture to make it happen." - **Patrick McGee, author of "Apple in China"** **Profile:** [Patrick McGee](https://patrick-mcgee.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Author of "[Apple in China](https://appleinchina.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" and San Francisco correspondent for the [Financial Times](https://ft.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([FT Profile](https://www.ft.com/patrick-mcgee?ref=analysepodcast.com)). ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and today we are exploring how [Apple](https://apple.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), once the world's most valuable company, becomes so intertwined with China, that the decoupling between them is almost impossible. With me today is [Patrick McGee](https://patrick-mcgee.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), San Francisco correspondent for the Financial Times and author of the newly released book "[Apple in China](https://appleinchina.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com): The Capture of the World's Greatest Company," spanning about 448 pages. Based on 200 interviews he unraveled Apple's century-defining Faustian bargain, concentrating 90% of its production in China, investing a staggering $275 billion, equivalent to the Marshall Plan and training millions, effectively transferring Apple's technological DNA into the heart of China's industrial ascent. In doing so, he demonstrates that the story of Apple's dependence on China's manufacturing and supply chain is the history of contract manufacturing of East Asia's countries told through Apple's lens. I finished the book over my work trip in Philippines and I have to say it was engaging to the point that I was glued to the book over three hours on the plane. So Patrick, welcome to the show. **Patrick McGee:** Thanks, Bernard. Great introduction. Thank you. **Bernard Leong:** Like all stories, I always start off with my guest's origin story. So how do you start your career? **Patrick McGee:** Well, I studied religion at university and I spent four years telling people that no, I was not going to be a priest. I was an atheist studying religion. Really the anthropology, the psychology of religion. I mean, if you're atheist, the study of religion is even more fascinating because if you don't think anything exists, then why does it have such a force over human action, human history and everything else. So it's a fascinating degree and I got really involved in it for my four years in Toronto. I'm Canadian. The trouble is nobody cares about your study of religion. No job. No law firm or any corporate entity is looking for students who've studied religion for four years. So it's great for just general education and the humanities. It's good for cocktail parties. It is not good for job prospects. So really what I fell into by happenstance was a job at a Canadian magazine just because I liked reading, writing, and thinking. So I fell into it in that way. Then I happened to find myself in Washington with a job writing about economics, macroeconomics a year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. So that just forced me to become a financial journalist. Then when the Financial Times hired me to live in Hong Kong, that was my introduction to Asia and China in particular. I'd been there before, but in terms of a career and then I spent three years in Germany covering supply chains in the automotive industry. A lot of stories about the Volkswagen scandal, and then I covered Apple for four years out of California. So if you do the Steve Jobsian thing of connecting the dots backwards, you get basically China supply chains and Apple. That I think is the quickest origin story of my book. **Bernard Leong:** So I just only have one question before I get to the main subject of the day because there's a lot to dive in. So from your career journey, what are the lessons you can share with my audience? **Patrick McGee:** I suppose I just feel like I had a lot of lateral moves in my career and a lot of things that I didn't love about the earliest jobs I had. I mean, I was a municipal bond reporter for two or three years. That's kind of boring in a certain sense, but anything is interesting if you give it enough attention. I mean, it's like a $4 trillion market. It has to do with how cities fund themselves in this tax exempt bond market. I think you just have to have a little bit of faith. Remember I'm an atheist here, but have a little bit of faith that whatever you're learning is gonna sum out to add up to a unique idiosyncratic worldview. Because the more you follow some path in your own way, the more diverse your own worldview becomes. So if you're just embracing each stage, then I think you end up with something that's unique in the long run. So in other words, you can often think, well what, is there any point in me reading the same books as everybody else? But if you have like three or four different interests that are wildly different and you're reading books about those or doing some travel and experiencing that, you're probably getting way off the beaten path in ways that you don't even know. So I don't know. So long as you're putting effort into what makes today interesting or today fulfilling, I think the long term kind of takes care of itself. **Bernard Leong:** So I want to talk to the main subject of the day about your book "Apple in China." I want to start, the structure of the book begins on the date of March 15th, 2013, a day after President Xi Jinping is inaugurated as China's new president. I guess what happened on that day to Apple? Why is it a defining moment for Apple's history in China? **Patrick McGee:** When I worked out the contours of the story during the book pitch, it was always clear that this was the day that was going to open the book. It's because it's the beginning of what I call the political awakening. So it's part five of the book, but it's also in the prologue. So it's effectively like Xi Jinping has this new sheriff in town impact on Apple immediately. So one day after he becomes president and we're really talking like 12 hours after his first press release, Apple employees in Shanghai are confronted by a whole bunch of media including Western media like CNN, but also a bunch of Chinese media who have all been briefed by [MOFCOM](https://english.mofcom.gov.cn/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[Ministry of Commerce, People's Republic of China\] as to there's going to be a big program tonight, criticizing Apple for its warranty differences. So this thing is called CCTV's Consumer Day, and it's every March 15th of every year. It goes back to 1991, really the days of Deng Xiaoping. The idea is that companies are called out for not living up to the socialist ethos of China for most of the nineties, I think all of the nineties actually. It was local companies, but you began to have western companies come under criticism in the early two thousands. 2012, it was McDonald's. In 2013, it's the world's most valuable company. It's Apple. This is a time when Tim Cook is only pretty new to being CEO. Steve Jobs has passed away maybe 18 months before. Apple doesn't really know what it's dealing with. They are at the time, the most wildly successful producer, maybe you would say, manufacturer in China. They're also the most successful retail company that's not Chinese operating in the country. Yet nobody senior from Apple lives in the country. They really don't understand the culture, they really don't understand the politics. This is the first "oh shit" moment that they have. It's really interesting that it's so quickly after Xi Jinping comes into power because he is taking China in a very different direction. Arguably the first entity to really understand that, or at least that had the opportunity to understand it, is Apple. So I could go on, but I mean really it's the origin story of why Apple has to begin to understand how to speak the local language. **Bernard Leong:** Before we get to this part five, I want to walk back all the way to the beginning of the book. I think what I appreciate in reading the book is that you tell the story of Apple right from the beginning of the history of their supply chain. Going back to the moment when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, Apple's manufacturing supply chain only spanned across few countries where I live with Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan. What was the world like for Apple before going to China in supply chain? **Patrick McGee:** The thing, so I hate that you're calling it supply chain just because I feel like we're losing the reader. **Bernard Leong:** No, no, no, no, no. It's interesting because the way I read the book was that it's like the history of Asia's manufacturing told through Apple's lens, which I thought is a very interesting perspective from my point, which just as I think Chris Miller's book "[Chip War](https://www.amazon.sg/Chip-War-Worlds-Critical-Technology/dp/1982172002?ref=analysepodcast.com)" was about this history of semiconductor from Asia's point of view. **Patrick McGee:** No, absolutely. If you don't know, Chris Miller and I share an agent, a publisher and an editor. He was the person who said, you should turn this into a book. I took that very seriously. We've never met, and yet I would still consider him a mentor. I mean, "Chip War" is a fantastic book, so if listeners haven't listened to it or read it, they absolutely should. **Bernard Leong:** He [\[Chris Miller\] was on the show](https://www.analysepodcast.com/rise-asia-semiconductors-history-pov-chris-miller/), by the way, just to let you know. **Patrick McGee:** I know. But that doesn't mean everyone's read it. Fantastic book. The thing that people need to remember is that Apple manufactured its own products from the founding of the two Steves in a garage in 1976\. Really up until around 2003, when they closed their factories in California, basically closed their factory in Ireland and more or less closed their factory in Singapore. So what that means is that given like Steve Wozniak's genius of being able to disassemble a computer, improve it and then reassemble it, and Steve Jobs' visionary appeal and marketing prowess. I mean, that is the origins of the company. Manufacturing is baked into the DNA of Apple. The companies that are founded 10 years later that are replicating what IBM has done in the PC do not have that same ethos. Because what's happened in that interim period is that the IBM PC has come out and then been cloned and famously, except that it's really not all that well known, but this is like the birth of contract manufacturing in the West. I mean, this is Foxconn technically exists, but you have western companies like SCI, Jabil Electronics, Celestica. There's this interesting thing that happens where everybody's using Windows, everybody's using Intel and the way that you get market share is just through boring stuff about cutting cost and cutting margin. So it's really a boring war over distribution, logistics and manufacturing efficiencies. Apple isn't really part of this battle. They're certainly not leading it. They're trying to do everything themselves at a time when IBM and everyone else is beginning to outsource first the manufacturing of the circuit board, but then the assembly of the entire computer. As those companies go to war with each other for market share, because it's all low margin, so it's all about high volume, they're the ones who shift to Asia. This is really like the rise of Taiwan as an electronics powerhouse. Same with Japan. So Apple is nearly bankrupt as a result of not playing this game by 1996. So they have to sell their own facility in Colorado in spring 1996\. They're literally days away from bankruptcy. I had to tell this story because you need to understand that DNA of Apple is manufacturing. So when they go into manufacturing through outsourcers, they are orchestrating the process in a level of maniacal detail and without any tolerance for defects in a way that none of the other companies are. Because most of these other companies never had manufacturing as part of their DNA. So I don't even think outsourcing is the right term because Apple takes such control of its supply chain, really down four tiers, that they're not just handing over blueprints and saying, here's our design. Build this for us. Let us know when it's done. They are sending plane loads of engineers to those factories and today, hundreds of factories in China to get it all done. This is the wild story, the missing topography of Apple that I don't think anybody really understands. **Bernard Leong:** That comes to the point: we are often told about the successful partnership between Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive, who lead the industrial design or ID team. The story that is not told is how that design is being translated into production. I think in the early days there was this point where the new iMac was un-manufacturable. There is something to learn from that episode. What did Apple do to correct itself that issue later on because it was very difficult to manufacture? So they had a lot of conflict between the industrial design team and the production team. **Patrick McGee:** I mean this is the secret sauce of Apple, which is that they have this pyramid structure where ID sits at the top, that's industrial design. So Jonny Ive's team, only about two dozen people are putting together like the look form factor and feel of product. So why is the iMac translucent and Bondi blue? It's because a bunch of guys on ID all thought that was gonna be the best way to do it. They send it over the fence, if you will, throw it over the fence to PD or product design, which is another level of genius, but it's a different team and they have to make sure that we can actually fit in the electronics and the circuit board and everything like that. It really is worth knowing those guys are geniuses as well. It's just a different level of genius. They throw it over the fence to manufacturing design. This is an instrumental group of people at Apple that has given, has honestly no ink has been shared on them before. So MD, way back in the time. By the way, they're called supply-based engineers. MD comes later to give them like the congruence of like medical doctor is actually part of it because they're feeling under-appreciated. So they're given this two letter abbreviation just like ID and PD. That's much later. But nevertheless, the position itself already exists. These are the people who go, as I said, by the plane load to factories at first in places like LG in Gumi, Korea, to really teach all of the manufacturing partners how to give a shit, to quote Steve Jobs. There's a Chinese phrase, I don't speak Mandarin, but it's just about good enough. Apple is never about good enough. They care about the back of computer. They care about the design of the inside of the computer. This isn't intuitive. This needed to be taught. So Jonny Ive and team were really redefining the aesthetics of at first desktop computers, but then later handheld items like the iPod, and they needed partners that would live up to Apple's quality. So what's really crazy is that I think anyone who's read the full book gets to an understanding that actually what I'm saying is kind of commonsensical, even though if you hear a 92-second soundbite of me talking, it can sound like I'm totally unhinged because the numbers are just unfathomable and we'll get to that. But the reason why it's commonsensical is because there are Hollywood movies about Steve Jobs going on a tirade and lifting up all of the people around him in terms of what they're capable of. Yet we've somehow missed that if you take that culture, if you take that mentality and then you build 230 million iPhones a year someplace else, of course that culture has to be transplanted into another country. So unless you think that China had that culture in the late nineties and early two thousands, and obviously it didn't, then of course Apple had this massive impact because there's literally 1,700 facilities in the Apple supply chain. You needed to inculcate that culture into all of them to make things at all, and especially to make things in the volumes that they've created. So the book is about China, but it is really just a manufacturing-led history of Apple, which sounds boring until you realize that it's a character-driven narrative with all kinds of fascinating people. **Bernard Leong:** That also explains why a lot of people in Asia are reading that book because it really tells a very important story of what happened in the last few decades that leads to the rise of the region, but... **Patrick McGee:** Can I just jump in just to say one thing is that sometimes the perception of the book probably, because it has a dragon eating an apple on the cover, is that it's anti-China and it's like, if anything I'm saying Apple doesn't give China enough credit. China is absolutely paramount to Apple's success. **Bernard Leong:** I totally agree with you on that. I think that the caricature of the book was wrongly interpreted. It's actually telling you a lot. Why is it so difficult to decouple from China? Not just because Apple is innovative, but the Chinese are also innovative at the same time with the manufacturing process. One interesting part of this puzzle is [Terry Gou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry%5FGou?ref=analysepodcast.com), the founder of Foxconn, otherwise known as Uncle Terry in the book, and then there is this very famous phone call to an important executive where he says, "I can fix this." Who is this important executive and what it meant for Foxconn to become an important contract manufacturer for Apple moving forward, specifically in the Apple development cycle, which is the pyramid structure you talk about with Jonny Ive from the top. **Patrick McGee:** Okay. So to give 15 seconds of context here, LG is so successful building the translucent iMac out of Korea, that Apple basically decides to take themselves out of the equation and put all final assembly for the product into LG. This is the first Apple product to be given to an outsourcer like this. But Apple has, as we talked about earlier, operations in three continents. So basically asks LG to do the same thing. So LG sets up operations in Mexico and in Wales. I feel like, I don't care how much you think you know about Apple. Like you don't know the details about what happens in Wales and Mexico. This has just never been written about before and short. Long story short, it's a disaster. It's a great strategy. It doesn't work out at all. For whatever reason, the LG executives just are not able to make this strategy work. Terry Gou calls up Tim Cook, senior vice president of operations and says "I can fix this. Give me a chance." The relationship there really matters. So Tim Cook is mostly known as an IBM executive, but at the time he was at Compaq and Compaq in the late nineties was the king of the clones, most successful PC company on the planet at the time. So Foxconn and Compaq actually had this relationship. So Terry Gou and Tim Cook already know each other. Why Tim Cook would leave the most successful company for Apple, which was basically on the verge of bankruptcy, is a real mystery. I think Terry Gou gets intrigued by that, because Tim Cook, I would describe as competence incarnate. The idea that he's gonna go to this fledgling company to make a difference is intriguing to him. So he senses opportunity. Terry Gou really understands more than anybody else that the value of working with Apple is that they're doing these incredibly different designs. They're not big in volumes. You're certainly not making much money from them. They will really negotiate the hell with you to get the best deal for them and not for you, and yet to understand their designs and to fulfil their orders, they will train your entire workforce by having America's best engineers, right? Apple's engineers come train you. So Terry Gou is brilliant at this. I have this funny anecdote from Tony Fadell, for instance, where the Apple engineers would show up one day after training someone for three months or whatever, and they would find that they don't know anybody in the room. It's because Terry Gou had taken all the engineers who had done like a semester of training with Apple and then just moved them onto the Dell line, moved them onto the Compaq line where they can use those skills and actually make money. He just put a whole bunch of new students in front of Apple as if a new semester had started and Apple just had to put up with him, be like, well, train these people well. So, no, absolutely. I mean, look, Terry Gou is the equivalent of Henry Ford, a century ago in America. It's hard to overstate his importance on turning Shenzhen from a series of fishing villages into the megapolis it is today. But the thing that I'm emphasizing is that Apple has been Foxconn's biggest client since 2000. **Bernard Leong:** It is Taiwanese. **Patrick McGee:** It's Taiwanese and the fact that Taiwanese and the role of the Taishang, the Taiwanese entrepreneur is building up mainland China is absolutely instrumental to the rise of China and absolutely instrumental to the rise of Apple. **Bernard Leong:** The template which Apple will eventually use in China is to send their teams in Cupertino to China, where they'll share the knowledge on manufacturing with the local manufacturers and even co-creating the techniques with the supply chain. I think Foxconn's education by Apple is probably the most important stepping stone that's eventually brought to China. Can you talk about the process in how Foxconn distinguishes itself against the other contract manufacturers in the ASEAN markets, for example, the Korean and the Japanese. I think that is the real difference when that got moved to China. **Patrick McGee:** The OEM \[[Original Equipment Manufacturer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original%5Fequipment%5Fmanufacturer?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] versus ODM \[[Original Design Manufacturer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original%5Fdesign%5Fmanufacturer?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] distinction. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Patrick McGee:** I don't wanna lose your audience because I think it's a little bit wonky, but... **Bernard Leong:** My audience is very wonky. **Patrick McGee:** All right. If you need to fast forward, go through it. Okay. So in the late 1990s, really what the Taiwanese were trying to do, companies like Asus, the predecessor organization of Pegatron, companies like Quanta, they're all trying to be ODMs original design manufacturers. The reason why is that it's really low value to just do assembly. But if you can tell a Western corporation, look, we're actually gonna take over your design and take over your R&D, we will do that stuff. Then you can basically pick a computer out of a catalog and we'll just badge it with your brand name. That's higher margin for them. They can get paid more for that. Terry Gou does something different, which is that he only is interested in being an OEM original equipment manufacturer, which means that he's never gonna compete with you. He's just gonna take your designs and move heaven and earth to get it done. But the significance of this is basically the politics. Because in order to be a successful OEM, you're not just wanting to do the final assembly. You wanna do all the adjacent tasks. You wanna be as vertically integrated as possible. You want to do the metal stamping, the plastic injection molding, all the tooling you wanna set up, the production line, et cetera. Right? So none of that's R&D. None of that's the high end engineering and yet it's instrumental for what Apple needs. In order to do that well, you need labor intensity. You need a lot of people, which means you need a lot of space. You need a lot of real estate. So Terry Gou isn't just brilliant at manufacturing, he's brilliant at parlaying Apple's orders into political deals with local officials to get the land and to get the migrant labor. He begins in the 1980s building dormitories for the migrant laborers to have a place to stay. Because you have to understand like the people that are working in Shenzhen aren't locals to Shenzhen, right? They are coming from the west, not really as part of a political program under Deng Xiaoping. It's really just something like, they're like fleeing to go sense opportunity. The communist power almost has to put up with this in a certain way. I mean, that probably needs to be more history written on this subject. So it's kind of fascinating. Apple is just able to take advantage of the situation better than anybody else. So they are late to China. I mean, that's worth knowing. In the same way that they are late to MP3 players or they are late to smartphones, but they do it better than everybody else. They are late to outsourcing. They're late to China, but they do better than everybody else. So the way that I explain it is that someone like Dell or HP, they see China for its scale and for its low cost, right? A way of saying they see it for its margins or maybe even it's just lower customer prices. Apple sees the same dynamics and understands that they've got unconstrained design potential that no matter what Jonny Ive comes up with, if you've got people earning less than 50 cents an hour, hardworking people that will work 12 hours a day in factories the size of football fields with world class machinery purchased by the Chinese government because Foxconn's Terry Gou is a genius in getting all that stuff. Then you can build anything and that's really what gives birth to the iPod and the iPhone. **Bernard Leong:** So Foxconn has managed to use Shenzhen in China as a base and eventually scale the manufacturing to what we call China speed: an ability to get things done in China at a rapid pace beyond the comprehension of Western visitors. In fact, now China speed is almost everything, including AI as well. How did Apple eventually transport all that manufacturing into China and created that dependency for themselves? **Patrick McGee:** Well, okay, so the standard narrative would tell you that Tim Cook comes in 1998\. He moves everything and closes Apple factories. I think this is basically dead wrong. He is not the architect of the move to China, and it's not that somebody else is the architect. There is no architect. You have to understand that the contract manufacturers and the assemblers are in fierce competition with each other, and they are the ones who are moving to Asia. Then once they're in Asia, they are the ones moving to mainland China, right? In other words, in order to win orders, in order to win volume and in order to do so at profitable levels, they are the ones who quote unquote discover China, especially after China has entered the World Trade Organization and has these bonded zones, right? These tax exempt areas where you can import things without tariffs and you can export things without duties and such. So it's state directed from the get go because to get migrant laborers to your factories, it's often the state that's literally going out to these villages in state sponsored buses and then bringing people to the factories. Tim Cook's not the architect, it's just that everything in China begins to look more efficient, more price competitive and so forth. So if you have, as Apple did, I mean in 2000, Apple is building products in Singapore, California, Wales, Czech Republic, Korea, like two other places. But China is just beginning to look like the place for every single product. So there's no grand strategy. It's just that like everything you're building, whether it's a laptop or the iPod or a desktop. Every decision is just leading you to China. So what's really interesting here is I think you have this dynamic where the Western company thinks, wow, we're powerful suppliers are doing anything to win these orders. I think it's 20/20 hindsight that it's like, no, we're witnessing the emergence of a superpower, the siren call of an emerging superpower luring in these companies because they understand from the get go and they've got joint venture models going back to the 1980s. That if western companies are here, if they're operating here, there is just an implicit transfer of knowledge where our workers learn these skills and then we can thrive on our own. So that's the story of many a company, many an industry high speed rail or what have you in China. That's the story over a longer period with Apple, I mean Apple's like the king of all companies that has ever quote unquote like conquered the Chinese market but then found itself in competition with the very suppliers that it built up. **Bernard Leong:** So one colourful character from this story that you're telling is this guy called Tony Blevins and how he negotiates. The other thing that I also like about the book is what I call the phenomenal Apple squeeze on Apple's suppliers. With this mantra, "***we won't pay you much, but the experience will be invaluable.***" Can you talk about Tony's negotiating style and a famous Apple squeeze? I think what is really funny is the irony on how the Chinese government used it back on Apple later in the relationship. **Patrick McGee:** Okay. Remind me of the second half of that question in a minute. So, it's funny, I haven't been asked about Tony Blevins in an interview and he's just an amazing character. I mean, he's someone who grows up in a really impoverished zip code in America in North Carolina. He's just clearly very talented. He's very smart, but he is not book smart. I don't know that he reads much at all, but he's got real street smarts and his father has a side hustle selling used cars. He and his brother have like a competition every month when they're teenagers. The competition is who can sell the shittiest car for the most money, right? So he has the mentality of, I won't have a penny wasted in negotiation. He's just absolutely ruthless. He would argue as he does, and you could find this on YouTube for instance, that you either had to be ruthless or you weren't in the game at all. I mean, I quote somebody who says, looking back 20 years, the only companies that could negotiate with Apple were themselves assholes. If they weren't assholes, they don't exist anymore. I mean, that's the nature of the game. So he embodies this temperament. My opening scene with him is that he goes to these lawyers at Inventec when they're wanting to build the first iPod, which is built in Taiwan, not China, as most people think. He basically says, "*Here's the contract. We don't have time for you to read the contract. You just need to sign it now. We'll give you the deal.*" Of course, they're aghast, they're thinking, multiple lawyers need to read the contract and need to go through it with a fine tooth comb and all that. It gets them to sign it without even doing it. I only use that as one anecdote when I was trying to fact check that I talked to somebody that was pretty senior and they were like, oh my God, Tony did that all the time. The kind of power he had. I mean, he just knew how hungry the contract manufacturers were for Apple orders. So that ends up being instrumental there to their success. The Apple squeeze is my coinage, and I'm not trying to boast about it. I'm trying distinguish it from some reviewers who think that it's the term used within Cupertino and it's not, or if it is, it's quite the coincidence because I made it that myself. The Apple squeeze is basically like, well, to give it a bit of context, in 2013 when Xi Jinping, as we discussed, goes after Apple, he goes after them because it looks like this exploitative company. Because the more a company like Foxconn works with Apple, the lower their margins are. I mean, Apple makes less money in pure dollars than Foxconn for the first four years of their partnership from 2000 to 2003\. Right. Foxconn makes more money and has higher margin. I mean, that's incredible. But by 2012, Foxconn's margins have collapsed by about two thirds, Apple's have gone up by 25 times from 1% to 25%. So there's all kinds of reasons why you would look at that and say, Apple's an exploitative power. They're not in China for China, they don't seem to be helping indigenous innovation. Apple flips this on its head by explaining what I call the Apple squeeze to Chinese officials in May, 2016, when Tim Cook himself goes to Zhongnanhai and speaks to the high powers of the CCP leadership at their citadel of communist power. The Apple squeeze is my coinage for how Apple would say to their suppliers. Look, you are not gonna make a lot of money from us. You might even lose money at times. You're gonna earn 1%. Maybe if things are really efficient, you'll earn 2%, but we are gonna train the hell out of your whole team. What you do with those skills afterwards is up to you. So it's kind of this amazing thing where they're having to tell Chinese officials, you have no idea what impact we're having on your country, and the numbers they come up with themselves internally are insane. So the numbers that I keep using on the speaker circuit here is that by Apple's own estimate, they have trained 28 million people, so greater than the labor force of California. What's the population of Singapore? **Bernard Leong:** Well, five million. **Patrick McGee:** Okay, so way bigger than the entire population of Singapore. I mean, just consider like if everyone in Singapore had been trained by Apple, like that would be significant. It's six times that. **Bernard Leong:** I would rather they have that actually. **Patrick McGee:** Okay. But it's really hard to get your mind about that. Then Apple does its own internal study and realizes that they're investing $55 billion a year into Chinese factories, which is such a large figure that I couldn't find any corporate equivalent. So I had to go to government efforts. The comparisons I use, I think I use four. But the two that people like are, I wanted to compare it to the Marshall Plan just because it seemed like a nation building effort in terms of the impact they were having. That's what I was getting. Like anecdotally, I didn't think the numbers would actually match. So when I went to go look at how much the Marshall Plan was and converted it to 2015 dollars, I expected it to be quite a lot, quite a bit larger than what Apple was spending in China. In fact, Apple was spending double the annual expenditure of the Marshall Plan. If readers don't know, Marshall Plan is like the American led effort to help revitalize 16 countries after World War II. For a single corporation to be spending double that amount in a single country with the ruthless efficiencies that Apple has and in the targeted area of high tech electronics, which is Xi Jinping's most desirable thing for China to be good at. I mean, that's just incredible and that's where it's very much like chip war in the same way that Chris Miller tells the story of an industry. But it gets geopolitical because of the nature of how the manufacturing gets diffused around the world. My history becomes geopolitical because Apple is just such a major presence and they end up having this enormous influence, not really on China, the entire country, but on four major industrial clusters where by Tim Cook's estimate, they have 3 million people working on Apple products within any given 12 month period. So just enormous influence and somehow this story hadn't been told. **Bernard Leong:** So I'm gonna get to the interlude. So what is the one thing you know about Apple in China that very few do? **Patrick McGee:** Well, it's gonna be different now that the book is published. I would've had a much better answer five weeks ago. **Bernard Leong:** Probably. But if, let's say you were to rewind back to the five weeks, what would you think? **Patrick McGee:** Oh, I mean, it would just be what I just said essentially. I mean, sorry to give you a disappointing answer, but the idea that Apple had a nation building like influence on China is I think a narrative that unless you have the context sounds just insane. But I haven't come across a single person that has read through the whole book and then says, I think you're overstating your case, or I think you're wrong. A whole bunch of people that worked at Apple who I never had any contact with, including people that I tried to reach out to who never responded, having the past month read the book and said like, you nailed it. Like you got this right. That is the influence we had. Or I've had people say, I always thought we had the power. I didn't know that there was a longer term strategy being used against us, but nobody has said, you're doing the math wrong, or something like that, which is maybe what my biggest worry was that I was somehow missing something because it's a ludicrous thing to conclude. **Bernard Leong:** I find it very surprisingly that the critics of the book keep disputing their number. It is not important. It's actually the kind of expertise that Apple has brought to train China. So I want to get to the second half of the story. **Patrick McGee:** Just to round out that point. The numbers are the easiest thing to convince you we're in the ballpark of being correct, but actually the anecdotes and the efficiency and the other things like that I think are actually more important. The numbers actually aren't that important. They're just indicative that we're in the right ballpark. **Bernard Leong:** It is the right narrative to place. I want to get to the next half of the story. So after the 2013 moment, what are the steps that Apple takes to resolve those issues that is brought up by the Chinese government? I think you talk about they started a proper way of messaging to the Chinese government. That was the first step. **Patrick McGee:** So it's worth knowing that in 2013, 2014, I mean, Apple is seeing a bunch of problems in China. I mean, laws are being introduced that are like existential to how Apple does its operation. So for instance, Apple often relies on temporary workers. What's called the dispatch labor system in China. This is migrant labor that is larger than 300 million people in the country. So it's just a larger labor force than the United States. They're hard to get your head around that. But the laws exist federally, but the enforcement is local. So Apple begins to understand the way out of this isn't to upend our operations and not rely on temp labor. It's to do wink wink arrangements with the mayor of the city where we're developing things because it's not supposed to be enforced. That is not the point of the law. The point of the law is for Apple to be put in a bind where the use of the law could be used against them, but it won't be if you just act the right way and you demonstrate the way that you're helping the local cadres. So that's kind of fascinating. So it's worth knowing, just like other companies are really being put in a bind here. So I rely on a Reuters report that, for instance, 30 different companies were all in a room together, like the representatives and some Chinese officials said like, we're issuing anti-trust investigations against all of you effectively. If you put up a fight, we'll double or triple your fines. The example that I go into is Qualcomm, which has a three year antitrust battle with China, and eventually signs up for a joint venture. Okay? So, gives Beijing what it wants and pays a billion dollars. The quote I have from somebody is something like, they stole our intellectual property and made us pay them a billion dollars. But at least we didn't lose our business. Shit hits the fan so much for Qualcomm that they actually refuse to send people to China because they worry they're gonna be kidnapped. I mean, this is the climate that Apple finds itself in. So they hire or name eight people who call themselves the gang of eight very senior. These are the first senior people living in the country and because they worried their products are gonna be blacklisted. So for the first time ever, they have people running from within the country, government relations, Apple University procurement operations, third party channel sales, Apple retail, et cetera. You have like two vice presidents in the group and a number of directors. They're supposed to be the eyes and ears of Cupertino on the ground. They're the ones who basically come up with what I've called the Apple squeeze, where they basically recommend that Apple get outside of its own worldview, which is very secretive, and instead sing from the hilltops if necessary, so that every official in China realizes we are having a dramatic influence on what Beijing calls indigenous innovation. This is my wording of course, but Apple realizes in the course of their own study, we are the biggest supporter of Made in China 2025, which is an enormous claim because Made in China 2025, when it came out 10 years ago, it was considered immediately by Congress and by Washington writ large, this anti-Western plan where China was going to sever itself, sever its reliance from the West to be self-sufficient in robotics, in automation and everything. The idea that Western companies are helping it at all is a big claim. The idea that Apple more than any other entity on the globe is the biggest supporter, the biggest cheerleader of Made in China 2025. It's hard to overstate what I'm alleging there. **Bernard Leong:** So one key member from the Gang of Eight is a person by the name of Doug Guthrie, I think. What did the Apple executives get right and wrong about China before he joined? I think one of the most interesting part is how did he educate the Apple executives in Cupertino, which is in the headquarters on China. **Patrick McGee:** So we all know that Foxconn is the main assembly partner to Apple. I think what people don't know, and what I certainly didn't know as an Apple reporter is that before 2013, before Consumer Day Foxconn is also the company that Apple has outsourced its government politicking to, in other words, Foxconn, because it's the final assembly group. It's the center of the industrial cluster. Then what you have around it is the companies, some of them Foxconn subsidiaries, but some sometimes not, that are doing things like the glass, I don't know the memory, anything you can think of in the phone, right? The chassis, the plastic injection molding, et cetera. So they have all kinds of enormous influence. I've got this great anecdote from 2010, for instance, when Terry Gou is meeting Tim Cook and they're discussing two breakthrough products, the first iPad and the iPhone 4\. Terry Gou is essentially more bullish about both of these products than Tim Cook is. I mean, Tim Cook's a smart guy, but he hates inventory. He doesn't want to overproduce these things. Terry Gou basically makes a bet with him on the spot and says, I think you're way off with your estimates. I think the volume of these products is going to go exponentially larger than you think. Here's what I propose. I'm gonna build two entire campuses for you. One in Chengdu today known as iPad City, and one in Zhengzhou named iPhone City. If I'm right about the orders, like we win the orders, like no going to Pegatron, no going to anybody else. If we get this right, we get the products and it's a historic bet on the part of Terry Gou. He does it. Going back to Foxconn's politicking, the reason why he's wanting to move to these inland cities is because Beijing has these five year plans, right? One of them, especially after the global financial crisis, is that they're really worried about the incredibly hot growth of the coastal cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai, and what a dichotomy there is between that and the rather poor growth inland in the country. Foxconn has its own selfish reasons, right? Which is that this is after the issue with the suicides, for instance, right? Where people jumped to their death off the roofs of Foxconn buildings, terrible PR for Foxconn. I mean, even today, and this was 15 years ago, right? It's like the one thing people know about Foxconn, rather things, right? They'll say, A, they assemble iPhones B they had some suicide problem at some point. That's what people know about Foxconn, which is unfortunate because it's a really stunning company in some respects, in really all respects I should say. So he is able to direct Foxconn business toward the inland because he understands that people wanna be closer to their villages that they've come from. They don't want to have to take a 20 hour train journey to Suzhou or to Shenzhen. So he's brilliant doing it for his own purposes, but he is also understanding like the way the winds blow at the highest level of politics and especially the local level of politics. Because China's a lot more decentralized than Westerners understand. **Bernard Leong:** Which is actually one of the big things I don't think the West really understand. They're very decentralized to the cities. **Patrick McGee:** It's because you call the country communist and so a Westerner lazily thinks, oh, it's a top down system just like Moscow. It really isn't. I describe this through, I think, the lens of Doug Guthrie because he's this China expert who gets hired by Apple. I describe it as federalism on steroids where the local cadres are incentivized to get growth in their areas at the expense of another region in China. So they act more like a venture capitalist does to sit on the board, draw in orders and drive growth really. So Foxconn's Terry Gou really understands the politics and by understanding the politics, he's able to gear Apple's manufacturing in certain directions and Apple, and he does such a good job effectively, that Apple doesn't feel the need to have people on the ground and it doesn't feel the need to really, I don't know, contradict him or do anything themselves. This is actually understandable if you realize how small the Apple business is in China in 2008\. But then it absolutely explodes. I think it goes up by around 2,800%, the greater China revenues between 2008 and 2012, if that's right. **Bernard Leong:** There was the surprise as well that really China becomes such a big market and essentially became the second largest market, I think after the US. **Patrick McGee:** My favourite part of the narrative, and we probably don't have to go into it, but let's just say for the listener, it involves organized crime. It involves all kinds of crazy narratives within China that really, it's, I mean, that chapter that's part four really, so four or five chapters, that's probably the chapter that's most educational for me as the writer, but educational for the reader in understanding various aspects of how China works and what the culture of China is, and so forth. I mean, so it's a fascinating lens into China, just through the lens of Apple and the growth years of the iPhone. **Bernard Leong:** I think eventually Apple did succumb to the power of the Chinese government and eventually they conform towards what the government wanted. Of course now led to this pretty untenable situation. I think. Let's reflect a little bit. So I think Apple has helped the Chinese supply chain to develop capabilities in smartphone manufacturing. They eventually give China a competitive edge. Do you think Huawei, Xiaomi, and others are the beneficiaries of these competencies and also explains that why Apple is now being challenged by them? **Patrick McGee:** I don't even think you could. What would be the counter argument? **Bernard Leong:** Would you see the same story happen to Tesla as well? I mean, it is already happening anyway. I don't think Elon doesn't realize that. **Patrick McGee:** That's a good question. Let's stick with Apple and then we can come back to Tesla. But Tesla is a section in the book just for listeners don't know what Bernard is referring to. It's because Tesla effectively adopts the Apple model and convinces public officials that they'll do for EVs what Apple did for smartphones. It's only a few pages, but I think they're very profound, those pages. It was quite the insight. **Bernard Leong:** It has a very good connection to what Tesla's gonna face very soon. **Patrick McGee:** Absolutely. I mean, look, the basic stats are that Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo with a couple other brands have more than 55% market share globally in smartphones. Smartphone's the most iconic device of the 21st century. The reason why they're so good at making smartphones is that Apple taught all of their suppliers. I don't know what the counter narrative would be. I mean, those companies in terms of their electronics prowess and making smartphones, I mean, they basically don't exist without Apple's operational paradigm operating in China. The cultural transplant of Cupertino. The DNA, if you will, of going to these four major industrial clusters is just instrumental to the rise of China. Not as a manufacturing powerhouse, but in particular as a advanced electronics powerhouse. I mean, I don't think any company comes close to China, going from made in China, feeling like synonymous with cheap quality to made in China being world leading. I think China's so damn good at advanced manufacturing today that experts fathom to even comprehend, just how many industrial robots they have. Just how complex and efficient the topography of Chinese manufacturing is and so forth. I would argue, I don't even think Apple fully understands it. In other words, Apple people are going in and out of these factories all the time, but I think they attribute so much of China's success to their own merit that they think they can go replicate this in India. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I think China did so much. Because it wasn't just the factories, right? It was the eight lane highways between the factories. It was the high speed rail train that does the freight. It's like the 20 some ports that China has so that if there's a rainstorm in one place, you just ship it from another one. I mean, that's not true in Vietnam. If you have a rainstorm in Vietnam, it's like the whole country's covered in rain, like it's just too small of a country. China doesn't have that problem. I'm going off on tangents, but... **Bernard Leong:** Then the question is how does that now go to Tesla? Right. I mean, you see what Apple has gotten, actually, I've seen this I think about probably a decade ago, and I had the conversation with [Horace Dediu](https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-32-the-asymco-trilogy-with-horace-dediu-part-2-apple-in-asia-luxury/), who's been on my show at least six times. **Patrick McGee:** Oh, wow. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think the story will play out with Tesla as well? **Patrick McGee:** I think it's already playing out. Now look to contradict myself first, I would say I don't know that it's so meaningful that BYD sells more cars than Tesla. What I mean by that is that Apple was panicking is maybe too strong a word, but in 2010, Apple didn't realize what we would take as common sense today, which is that they own the richest quintile of users on the planet. So 2010 is the year that Android overtakes iPhone, I believe. 80% market share, 20% market share. So Apple is, I mean, this is when they're suing Samsung, right? I mean, they're panicking that the designs that they've created are going to be replicated and taken over by somebody else. Instead, history to some extent is very kind to Apple, which is that Apple basically just is able to develop a moat by having iOS and some other key features. For the iPhone 4, the quote from someone from manufacturing design is that we are going to make the iPhone 4 so damn difficult to replicate that companies trying to rival us will either go broke or go nuts trying to do it. So Apple's able to establish itself as the premium leader, right? So where, what I'm drawing from this is that in retrospect, it didn't matter that Android takes over the market, right? Android is 80% of the market today. Apple is 20%, and yet the margins are flipped, right? Apple has 20% market share and 80% of the industry profits. I mean, again, pause the podcast and try to think about that. Find me another industry anywhere remotely close to it. So it is possible that Tesla is able to be a premium car maker that makes far more profit than BYD in the long run and has a brand image that's associated with all kinds of various strengths or whatever that others don't come up with. On the other hand, as far as I can tell from some experts I know in the field of self-driving, it's the Chinese who are doing far better with self-driving than even Tesla and Tesla's renowned for self-driving capabilities. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't know that history is set. I don't know that Tesla is gonna be outcompeted by all of its Chinese rivals, but the best EVs in the world, certainly in terms of value are all made in China right now. I do think Tesla played a pretty instrumental role catalyzing that by training a bunch of their suppliers, which we're going through shortly here, but it's in the book in a little bit more detail. **Bernard Leong:** If you ever come to Southeast Asia, you just see how much the BYD have just swept the entire market in like two years. I barely used to see at least one Tesla. Now it's one Tesla with five BYDs running on the road. **Patrick McGee:** But this is where you're grappling with the differences in state led capitalism because BYD just cut the prices of its cars something of an average $8,000 or something. That is so difficult for a company like Tesla to contend with because they prioritize shareholder returns and reinvesting the dividends of what they're able to make. The Chinese competitors are just so large that they have the impact of de-industrialized rival nations. So unless I'm mistaken in this, I believe Chinese automakers in the aggregate can produce 60 million cars a year. That is two out of three for the whole planet. So that's why even someone like Joe Biden had to put a hundred percent tariffs on EVs. I mean, that's panicking Western nations, that's panicking countries like Germany. That's really hard to grapple with. **Bernard Leong:** So there was just two more things I wanted to get to, which I hope to get in the next couple minutes. But of course, the story of how Apple worked with TSMC also came through our good friend Uncle Terry as well. How do you see the current situation of Taiwan where 90% of the semiconductor manufacturing is also concentrated there? I think it's actually presented what I call a double whammy for Apple as an existential risk. **Patrick McGee:** I don't know that I have to say much more than what you just said. I mean, I quote Nicholas Kristof saying: TSMC is the first company in the world where if they were to stop producing the consequence would be a global recession. It's hard to overstate the importance of TSMC for the modern world. Just for what you just said, 90% of advanced chips are made on this small island by this large company, small island. Taiwan is of course not a geopolitical threat. It is a fantastic ally. The trouble is that Xi Jinping has said, we want to annex Taiwan. It's part of our country, and we're not gonna leave this for the next generation. So in terms of Apple's business, if that happens, it's the equivalent of a meteor strike. I mean, if that sounds too hyperbolic, let me just point out that Warren Buffett invested around $5 billion in TSMC and then divested all of it within a matter of months and basically said, I love the company. I don't like its location, so I had to reconsider my investment. Warren Buffett is Apple's single biggest investor, and while I was writing the book, he divested two thirds of his investment in Apple, and he hasn't explained why, but I believe the logic that he had for divesting from TSMC applies 100% to Apple without TSMC, there is no iPhone. I mean as simple as that for multiple years. So a double whammy is saying it in the lightest way possible. **Bernard Leong:** That comes to this question then now of course to recently to navigate the current tensions between China and the U.S. Apple is going to move their supply chain to India. Based on my understanding of the India supply chain, the manufacturing costs are actually, it's gonna be five to 8% higher than in China, which actually is a surprise to me. The difference rising to something about 10%. I quote this number from Reuters actually. So we are not even talking about the supplier and components sourcing and the transfer of engineering capabilities from China to India. I think you kind of alluded to it, but I just want to get your point of view again, from your perspective. *Can Apple make it work in India?* **Patrick McGee:** I would love to be wrong, but no is the short answer. If it can happen, it's a 15 year effort. But before we even involve what China would do if Apple was making that move, let's just talk about India in particular. The similarities that people point to between China and India are really superficial. In other words, both have 1.4 billion people. So it's like, oh, great, well that's perfect. The differences between the cultures are profound and something as simple as you don't have migrant labor going from one side of the country to another. In India, I quote a study that looked at 84 countries in terms of internal migration and India was dead last. That's not a knock against the culture, it's just not part of the culture that young women in particular leave home at 17, go to the other side of the country and work in a factory. You don't have that. So what's the phrase culture eats strategy for breakfast? Apple might have a plan, but good luck upending 5,000 years of Indian culture to make it happen. There's so many reasons it can't happen. One of them is that India is a democracy. I hate to say it because I'm pro-democracy, but the way that Beijing comes up with a five-year plan and everybody clicks their heels and tries to do it in some way or shape or fashion, I mean that it is a decentralized model in how they go about it. But there's no questioning the plan. In India, there's all kinds of questioning of the plan. I mean, there is no top down method for getting every province to compete against one another to get this all done. There's no incentivizing of the local cadres down the line to build factories and everything. So sometimes people hear the latest announcements and they think it's a big deal. Like Foxconn, a few weeks ago, announced a $1.5 billion investment in India with 30,000 employees that are gonna be working at a factory. 30,000 employees is 1% of the number of people in the Chinese supply chain. So you can have two things in your mind at the same time. Right? Which 30,000 is a lot of people and versus the Chinese supply chain, it's almost nothing. So it's really hard to understand just how large the Chinese supply chain is and how world competitive it is. So just on the pure merits of can India replicate what China did, unfortunately, I'm very pessimistic. On top of that, China doesn't wanna let it happen. China wants technology transfer to be one way gate, which means the technology information comes in, but it doesn't leave. So they're really in a prime position to basically have the lights go out, have the electricity go out at certain factories. If they need to show Apple that they don't like the latest press release, they don't like the latest Tim Cook's comments about India, because Apple is so wedded to China and their very success in China is their vulnerability. So we've already seen this in the last couple of months where India needs a whole bunch of people that are from China, that have the experiential know-how, and Beijing is just blocking their visas of going to India. Apple needs a bunch of Chinese made machinery to go to the Indian production lines. Beijing has just said, well, we're not sending it. That's a really difficult conundrum to get past and we're only talking about Beijing. There's also the problem that Apple has a $70 billion business from Chinese consumers, and they rightly see the iPhone as an indigenous product. Right? If Apple becomes the poster boy for decoupling from China, derisking from China. Those people start buying Xiaomi and Huawei phones in much, much bigger numbers. So Apple has to do this very, very slow movement where if they're, it's like they can't go too fast. I'm quoting someone in the book here, Jay Goldberg, they go too fast, they risk the ire of Beijing and Chinese consumers. If they go too slow, they remain stuck. So they have to find this perfect pace, a light jog, if you will, to get to India. There's no guarantee it'll work at all. China can put up roadblocks whenever it sees fit. So I wish it wasn't the case, but I'm like a friendly Canadian golden retriever, but on this issue, I'm really pessimistic. I don't see a way out. **Bernard Leong:** Okay. So what is the one question that you wish more people would ask you about your book? **Patrick McGee:** It might be about the characters. I mean, nobody has ever asked me about Jackie Haynes ever. **Bernard Leong:** Tell me about Jackie Haynes. **Patrick McGee:** So I have a mini tragedy within the book, which is the story of Jackie Haynes. I say tragedy because, so she's someone that worked with Tim Cook at three different companies going back to the early 1980s at IBM. After Foxconn has these suicides and stuff, she comes out of retirement after working with Apple for about eight years to lead supplier responsibility. Apple really has an effort, like we are going to improve the lives of our workers. Jackie refers to Foxconn workers and others as her clients, and she's really there to make things better. I mean, Apple wants to be a shining light for others to follow. Tim Cook says as much in an interview in 2013. It doesn't go as planned is the short answer. She runs up against two major problems. One is the operational demands of Apple's culture. So when suppliers are trying to respond to Apple, they're just not able to prioritize worker rights the way that they would like to because Apple and the chapter is called cognitive dissonance. Is basically demanding one thing and asking for another at the same time, and they're directly opposed to each other. The suppliers are always gonna prioritize meeting Apple's demands rather than making sure that the conditions are right. The other thing probably just as consequential is that this coincides with the end of Xi Jinping's first term and the beginning of his second term where he's really going after civil society groups in China, really flexing his muscles and making it difficult for people protesting in the streets, demanding worker rights, demanding reforms and saying like, we're Marxists, like this is what you taught us in school and we demand better lives and better conditions in Chinese factories. Xi Jinping basically just makes that impossible. So the things that Jackie Haynes is trying to do, basically are not able to be possible because of both Apple and Beijing. She basically has to move on to other products. Then she dies a few years later, having failed at this project. So, I guess I would wanna talk more about that. I'd wanna talk more about Isabel Mahe, the head of Apple China for the last seven years. **Bernard Leong:** So, that comes to my traditional closing question. What would be the key takeaways you want the readers to gain from your book, such as is a success to you? **Patrick McGee:** I guess what I told John Stewart is that I want the book to be a Trojan horse, wherein I think more people need to understand the fragility and resilience of supply chains. They need to understand more the U.S. China tech rivalry and why that will determine hegemony in the 21st century. They just need to know more about Chinese history. Because Chinese history is fascinating and it's consequential and it's tough for the lay person to read books that are gonna get them up to speed on those subjects because they're often a little bit dry, they're a little bit dull, and we all live busy lives. So it's just not a common thing to see just someone on the train, just reading of the latest history of China. I wanted to package all those important themes into a book about the sexy product that you stare at for four hours a day. The sex appeal of the book was Apple's products, characters like Jonny Ive, but I'm tricking you in a way that actually what you're learning about is it's Apple history, but it's all these other things. But if I said, Bernard, I've got a great book about supply chain, like you wouldn't have me on the show. **Bernard Leong:** I would have you on my show because it's talking about exactly what is happening in Asia. **Patrick McGee:** Okay. Well, most people wouldn't. I mean, there's a reason why the subtitle is not why supply chains matter or something like that. I mean, nobody would read that. So I hope I've answered your question, but I mean, that's the takeaway that I want people to be more conversant on these issues, and I really, the goal was selfish. I wanted to be more conversant on these issues, but the way to do it was through Apple, was through Tesla, et cetera. **Bernard Leong:** So Patrick, many thanks for coming on the show. Just two quick things. Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Patrick McGee:** The two best books I've read in the last five years are both by the same author. He's Chilean and his name is [Benjamin Labatut](https://www.amazon.com/Books-Benjam%C3%ADn-Labatut/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I'm probably getting the pronunciation wrong. There's a decent chance it's Benjamin rather than Benjamin, but it's L-A-B-A-T-U-T. One of them is called "[When We Cease to Understand the World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When%5FWe%5FCease%5Fto%5FUnderstand%5Fthe%5FWorld?ref=analysepodcast.com)" It's on the birth of quantum mechanics and on the, his book is really about like the best thinkers in the world and how like the height of knowledge blurs into madness. So it's really freely a gripping read. He uses the tools of a novelist to tell nonfiction stories. The other one's called "[The Maniac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FMANIAC?ref=analysepodcast.com)" I didn't love the title until I realized that Maniac was an acronym for a computer. It's kind of a biography of [John von Neumann,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%5Fvon%5FNeumann?ref=analysepodcast.com) who he basically says is the most like, interesting and consequential mind of the 20th century, which is quite a big claim. But the final third is actually about the birth of AI. John von Neumann's the godfather of AI. But the final third of the book is actually about [AlphaGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y&ref=analysepodcast.com), the DeepMind Project on the biggest players in Go. So it's actually like a great and gripping introduction to artificial intelligence in a historical sense. But again, he's telling biography, but like he's doing so through the lens of fiction. So he tells the biography of John von Neumann through the voice of his wife, his daughter, his colleagues, and so forth. So it is just a gripping read. I wish I had half the writing skill that he has. It's just amazing. **Bernard Leong:** How do my audience find you then? **Patrick McGee:** You know, [appleinchina.com](https://appleinchina.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I believe that domain was available, but it was, that's probably the best place to go. **Bernard Leong:** Good. That was actually how I also look for it as well. I just only have one little acknowledgement to make. I want to thank [Lionel Barber, author of "Gambling Man"](https://www.analysepodcast.com/gambling-man-the-secret-story-of-the-worlds-greatest-disruptor-masayoshi-son-with-lionel-barber/) that helped me to connect to you and I didn't realize we have so many connections in between. So, Patrick, many thanks for being on the show and I look forward to speaking to you again. **Patrick McGee:** Thanks Bernard. I hope I'm in Singapore soon and I'd love to see you in person. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He shares his journey with IBM after business school, reflecting on the evolution of personal computers to AI today. Hans explains IBM's unique approach combining hybrid cloud infrastructure with AI for Enterprise, emphasizing how their granite models and data fabric enable businesses and governments to maintain control over their data while scaling AI capabilities. He highlights customer stories from Indonesian telecoms company to internal IBM transformations, showcasing how companies are re-engineering everything from HR to supply chains using domain-specific AI models. Addressing the challenges of AI implementation, he emphasizes the importance of foundational infrastructure and governance, while advocating for smaller, cost-effective models over GPU-heavy approaches. Closing the conversation, Hans shares his vision for IBM's growing presence in Asia as the key to enterprise AI success. --- > "At IBM, we really work on two emerging technologies: hybrid cloud and AI for enterprise. These two are deeply connected. Hybrid cloud for us means that regardless of where the data sits whether the compute is on-premise, off-premise, or across multiple clouds. We believe the client should have the control and flexibility to choose where to run and place their data. If you look at the facts, a very high percentage of client data is still on-premise. It hasn't moved to the cloud for obvious reasons. So, how can you scale AI if you don’t have proper access to that data? AI is all about the data. That’s why we believe in a strategy that redefines and rethinks everything. We call it the Great Technology Reset." - **Hans Dekkers** **Profile:** **Hans Dekkers**, General Manager [IBM](https://www.ibm.com/us-en?ref=analysepodcast.com) Asia Pacific and China ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hans-a-t-dekkers/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [IBM](https://asean.newsroom.ibm.com/Hans-Dekkers?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, when we talk about enterprise AI, IBM is definitely at the forefront. So with me today, Hans Dekkers, General Manager IBM Asia Pacific, I want to understand what is the impact of AI in the Asia Pacific? Thanks to the team from IBM and I get to host this show with your video production team. So welcome to the show, Hans. **Hans Dekkers:** Thank you. It's so good to see you. You're becoming a superstar on the internet, so the privilege is absolutely ours. **Bernard Leong:** I'm sure my guest is actually the reason why I'm here. So while doing research for this interview, I was struck by your global journey by steering the world's leading tech firms in the Asia Pacific. I wanted to start with your career journey. What drew you to IBM immediately from your business school experience? **Hans Dekkers:** First of all, I was one of those kids that genuinely is deeply interested in technology. So as a kid programmed, the first games, used a Commodore 64\. Maybe it's before your time. **Bernard Leong:** I remember the Commodore 64, the IBM PC and IBM Pentium. **Hans Dekkers:** IBM PC, the 286, the 386, the first Intel processors that came. But I'm also very much into disassembling cars and radios. We used to pull everything apart we're trying to put it back together. **Bernard Leong:** That is not like these days where everything's integrated together you don't know what's inside. **Hans Dekkers:** Like try to fix a Dyson, right? That's right and not easy. So very much technology educated, in all the technology from network infrastructure design, chip design, programming. Very deep technical. Did my business studies at my own companies, then really stopped in saying what's next? Where do you as a young professional start your career? There are many places I was privileged to start at big banks, at big trading firms, many technology companies. But in the end, when I was still young. I asked, "Who's the biggest technology company out there? Who is the one that actually impacts the outcome of society?" When you really take that aperture, they're only very, very few companies. IBM was the one for me at least that came on top. So I started an internship as a trainee at IBM about 17 years ago. That's how the journey started. **Bernard Leong:** So through IBM, you led different geographies from Europe to Asia. What led you to Singapore can you talk about your current role for IBM Asia Pacific? **Hans Dekkers:** So first, I'm one of those global kids, so I lived a large part of my life in Asia, a large part in Europe and in Northern America. Always in IBM, I took on different roles. I've been from systems to software to coverage to strategy, always with clients. I love talking to the client, always at the heart of where you can make the most impact. I always loved to have the privilege to leading big teams. Really get the best of that IBM team in service of your client or your partner to get to a real outcome. So many different roles, many different geographies coming back to Singapore because it's the second time we as a family live in Singapore. About 10 years ago, we were here as well. It's just a beautiful region. It's got the deepest cultures, the longest history. It's got 60+% of GDP growth. It is the geography that is always on the move. China, South Korea, you've got Australia, New Zealand, you've got India. Always something's happening, any dimension. So it's great to be back. **Bernard Leong:** So looking back, given the 17 years with IBM, what are the pivotal lessons you can share about your career journey to a younger audience out there? **Hans Dekkers:** I think we always say, finding the solution actually is not that difficult. It's finding the right problem. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting. **Hans Dekkers:** In IBM, there's always, if you find the right problem, you supplement it with data with science. If you find the right problem, then you can work together with your client in actually addressing it. As a technology leader, as a technology company, we're privileged because in some topics we can see that future, maybe our client cannot. Then to help a client from point A to point B is incredibly rewarding. **Bernard Leong:** So you find that whole customer journey, the ROI that you achieve, that is the most rewarding? **Hans Dekkers:** Yes. To do something that the client or the government or whoever you are working with seem to be impossible, to do something that is truly meaningful for them for society. It's really what keeps me going. **Bernard Leong:** So we are gonna come to the main subject of today. I want to talk about IBM in the Asia Pacific achieving AI ROI. Even when I was working for one of the cloud companies, I think a lot of people don't look at the underlying numbers and one of the highest revenue drivers for AI is in IBM. **Hans Dekkers:** Right. **Bernard Leong:** So I want to explore the intersection of AI enterprise growth with IBM's current strategy. So given that the Asia Pacific region is now experiencing so much rapid digital transformation, what is the scale of the AI market opportunity here in this region from your perspective? **Hans Dekkers:** Unparalleled. I don't think we can even quantify how big that impact that opportunity will be. We have to recognize, maybe we can discuss a couple of foundational elements to "what is AI? what is it based on?". In the end, how do you scale it? Because it's all about scaling that capability. If you keep it small, what's the in the end outcome? In IBM, we really work on two emerging technologies. One is what we call hybrid cloud. The other one is AI for Enterprise. These two are deeply connected. Hybrid cloud for us is that regardless of where the data sits, regardless of where the compute is, on premise, off premise, multiple clouds, we believe that the client should have the control flexibility on where to run place their data. Now, if you just look at some facts that a very high percentage of client data is still on premise. It hasn't moved to cloud for obvious reasons. Then how can you scale AI if you don't have proper access to that data? Because AI, it's all about the data. So we believe in a strategy first that redefines, rethinks, we call it the great technology reset. Rethinks that foundational capability of hybrid. Can we access tap into, secure, govern the full foundational landscape of infrastructure data, number one. If you are able to start there, you can start scaling AI use cases. If you don't have that in place, with the right proper governance, you'll struggle as an enterprise. So first step where we help clients is this, we create a horizontal platform, data platform across all of their estate. **Bernard Leong:** So it's like chaining all the different data layers for the client, whether it's on-premises or on the cloud, but then it just makes sure that they have the correct security governance so that the AI can access do work with whatever data they have. **Hans Dekkers:** Right. We do it by not moving the data. In many cases, we leave the data where it is, but we create that horizontally connected platform. Underneath you could do the same with your infrastructure because many of our clients started on a journey to cloud with no end. So they're using the hyper-scalers, which is fantastic. It's really easy to start with. If they grow bigger, maybe it becomes less cost effective or geopolitical situation changes. You want to move it from a hyperscaler to on-premises. If you design your infrastructure architectures correctly, you're able to move fairly easily on-premises, off-premises from X86 to maybe mainframes or from mainframes to X86 vice versa. You're very flexible. So both infrastructure layer, data layer, we believe that it needs to be horizontally connected. Then we get to AI. Now, when you look at AI, we believe in two fundamental things. First, your data needs to remain your data. It's no one else's data. It's your data, which is very important if you're an enterprise client or the government of Singapore. Your data is your data. There's nothing IBM or any other company for that matter, should have to do with your data. It's your data. It's your intellectual property. Second one is that we believe that the AI models that we build are small nimble. They need to be cost effective precise. They should can be owned governed by you as an end client, which is very important. Then there's a third piece that we believe it needs to be open. So the models we govern need to be open enterprise, grade ready, domain specific so you can get the most value from it. **Bernard Leong:** So my understanding, given that you talk about the two sites first, is the data infrastructure. Then there is a second part, which is the AI. Of all the AI stuff, I know the most groundbreaking is definitely Watson. The first AI to beating Garry Kasparov in International Chess. This is long before the days of AI playing Go and you know, also beating Jeopardy. Can you tell me about how IBM thinks about AI as a product or maybe service for the customers? **Hans Dekkers:** Right. I'll get to that. You started at chess, which, the chess computer in that time, it was the first time that a computer took up the challenge to the human brain, Kasparov. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. Kasparov. **Hans Dekkers:** Kasparov lost that match. **Bernard Leong:** The Deep Blue match. **Hans Dekkers:** The Deep Blue match. Now chess at that time, no. But now I would say it's a very simple game because it's a game that is provisioned on finite set of moves. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Hans Dekkers:** Now we have chess computers that can easily calculate, you did this, therefore I can do this. At the time it was groundbreaking. So it was really the starting point of a computer against AI. It's the very first ingredient where we saw what could be possible. Then Jeopardy came. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. That was harder. **Hans Dekkers:** Much harder because it was based on natural language. But not in a way that our AI models work today. So it was more based on machine learning. It was still based on logic. Today, it's a much more math based prediction of what's the next letter, what's the next word, in an AI model, which brings us now to the conversation of how IBM looks at AI. We fundamentally believe in three big components of AI. One is the data, we call this Watsonx data. It's that data platform across multiple infrastructures. It's your data lake. The starting point of this is what we call Watsonx AI, which is a studio, where you can bring together multitude of models. It's not one model. It's a multitude of layering of models where you combine it into your model as an enterprise or as a government. So you can create in our studio your model. The third piece as important is a governance piece. Watsonx governance. Is the model biased? Does it use the right language? Is it aligned to how you communicate to your clients? So you can do it the same way as almost you teach your children. Don't use this language. If you want to be on time, be on time. So it's almost governing the output of the model you can tweak it. So it's a controlling function which is very important. **Bernard Leong:** I remember because while doing research, I also know that you have a data fabric layer that actually allows you to go even multi-cloud architecture. **Hans Dekkers:** Correct. I think we're the only company that goes across a multitude of these clouds. **Bernard Leong:** I was advising a retail client in Dubai on that. I worked out that you guys are the only ones with the data fabric, but maybe given the opportunity. So you explained the data structure. You talk about the AI. How does IBM uniquely position to capture that opportunity in Asia Pacific? **Hans Dekkers:** So it's not only Asia Pacific, but I would say IBM wide. We believe that our CEO talks about this a lot: the cost of AI is still too high. It's about a hundred times too high. It has to come down. As with every technological innovation, if it's cheaper, more people can use it. Once it becomes even cheaper, it will become natural to the way we operate. One of the main reasons to make it cheaper is to use smaller domain specific models. Small models are very accurate, we can train them really well. We don't need massive amounts of GPUs to train these smaller models. You need less because they're smaller. We believe in these smaller models, there will be a place for big models. About 10 to 12 of them, a dozen of them will exist in the world, but the rest all will be small. **Bernard Leong:** Can you give an example of a smaller model? **Hans Dekkers:** So imagine you are a bank, imagine you are on a trading floor. You don't want your model to be good trained in Russian poetry. That's probably true. So you want it to be really good at running financial analysis on maybe the market or in certain stocks based on your history, based on all the data available in your enterprise. We help our clients with those domain specific models. **Bernard Leong:** So specifically, what are the top challenges for enterprise when it's in this region, in the Asia Pacific region? I'm sure you come across a lot of different kind of clients. Again, I guess maybe when you talk to them, there must be some generic set of challenges they face. What are the common ones? **Hans Dekkers:** I think many of them are leaning in very heavily to AI have leaned in into, for example, the hyperscalers a lot. I love Asia because they start, they don't talk talk talk. They start, they get going. While saying that, a lot of where we are today needs a lot of foundation, foundational re-engineering or optimization. Many enterprises haven't gone there yet, so they want to jump onto AI. But if you're not in a hybrid by design environment, it becomes very difficult to make best use of AI capabilities that are out there. First step I would say is to truly gauge where am I in my technical health? Where am I where do I need to improve quickly to make best use of scaling AI use cases? This is where I think Asia ASEAN clients can go very fast. **Bernard Leong:** Then the question then is how do then the clients think about the ROI for AI? **Hans Dekkers:** I think today they're still experimenting. They don't have a good idea yet. There are many numbers out there of productivity improvements. We've got a lot of our own experience, but in the end, when you project a use case that we have done with our clients onto their business, then I think if we really go through help the client see it, I think that journey becomes very meaningful. **Bernard Leong:** Are there, like, without mentioning specific clients yet, because I'm gonna come to that later, but are there very specific kind of metrics? Like is it really in terms of productivity savings or is it something to do with say, revenue growth? That really interest the clients more. **Hans Dekkers:** I would say in the end it's about redefining how clients operate, how they process. So it's business growth. There's a lot of productivity gain, which is the low hanging fruit. There's optimization on how you communicate with client. There's optimization on HR. There's optimization in your supply chains. These are all productivity improvements, which are great will make you better in serving your end client. But I believe there's a huge opportunity to re-engineer the business model of the enterprise themselves. **Bernard Leong:** So you definitely have done, many clients, are there really like an actual use case that you're very proud of it is a customer story that you can share? **Hans Dekkers:** I always like to start with what we have done as a company because we are one big enterprise. So if you look at how the HR teams re-engineered, how we run HR within IBM. If you look at the ROI we can provide you those details. It's unbelievable. Our supply chain, how we re-engineered it. We create a lot of chips. We create a lot of machines, a lot of hardware, completely re-engineered the supply chain. If you look at the way we do forecasting the way we do accurate reporting, all of this has been completely optimized with AI. If you look at our consulting teams on how they optimize what they do for end clients, completely fueled with AI capabilities. It is a great shift. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing that you know about IBM's focus on AI that very few people do? **Hans Dekkers:** Excellent question. So IBM creates its own models. We call it IBM granite, the family of granite models. Which actually also aligns with what you mentioned earlier about smaller models the right expertise, because that is also the rationale of actually using the company's IP. **Hans Dekkers:** A hundred percent. **Bernard Leong:** So maybe now, given that you know, in Asia it's such a culturally diverse with so many different regulatory, how do you see the landscape for IBM's AI strategy to actually touch different markets? I think Singapore, we are lucky. We have all the AI policies done on there, but let's say we go into, say a country like Indonesia, where still at a formulation stage, but maybe even Japan Korea will have a good AI policy. How does IBM navigate it? **Hans Dekkers:** I think in any maturity, depending on how you would create that maturity, I think IBM can be a great player. Everyone that wants to take that next step in technology actually can find a very good partner in IBM, including Singapore. Because the world outside US is changing so fast, geopolitical, it's changing. If you look at protectionism of data, for example, it's changing very fast. You got data laws that are being passed. All of this has a huge impact onto how to run your technology estate how do you get the most benefit from it. You have vendors that increase price dramatically. If you're stuck with them, that's a problem because it will consume all of your budget. If you're not flexible enough in making your own decisions, something COVID really taught us, then you're in a deficit. So it's the companies that built this agility of change make sure that their technology landscapes are ready for that change that will reap the most benefits. In Asia, depending on how you grade maturity. Again, I think every country, every enterprise can be on that journey. Some are more mature than others. But I believe anyone can benefit from someone in Indonesian Surabaya to somewhere in Pune in India. It doesn't matter where you are physically. I think the benefits of what we can do together is unparalleled. **Bernard Leong:** So, Hans I want to specifically go into customer use cases. Can you share like any interesting customer stories where the IBM AI has actually helped customers in this region make an impact? **Hans Dekkers:** I mean, many. I would say the most recent one, recent, is a collaboration, a true partnership we went into with a telecom in Indonesia. **Bernard Leong:** Okay. **Hans Dekkers:** Telecom is basically it's got a huge infrastructure, a huge infrastructure provider to government, to enterprises, small, medium businesses. They're gonna embrace IBM's watsonx platform for all use cases, which, if you look at Indonesia as one of the bigger countries makes total sense. Because your data is your data. You can control it, you can govern it. We can apply it to a multitude of use cases. So it's a beautiful example of where, in this case, a partner us are completely collaborating to bring AI to a country, a country of Indonesia in this case. **Bernard Leong:** Nice. So like now, this year, a lot of people say this is going to be the rise of AI agents. What kind of opportunities do you foresee for these in the Asia Pacific region? **Hans Dekkers:** I mean, GenAI agents, I think it's gonna yet again transform how we experience AI. We recently done a great POC where we had multitude of agents. HR, finance, legal, business functions basically debate with each other. We were following the debate. So we threw in a hypothesis, I want to create a presentation on something. They were debating each other. You could follow the flow by which they were debating they were constructing a narrative. Which gave us insights that we would not come up with. So this continuous evolvement of how capable agents are, what they could do is gonna change how we operate. **Bernard Leong:** So for, I mean, given Asia Pacific is such a dynamic growing region, let's say, for companies that are still very early stage in their AI journey, what would be your advice for them to think about implementing AI successfully sustainably? **Hans Dekkers:** So this is gonna sound difficult. It's not. Decide on infrastructure, plumb your data platform. Make sure you have the right tool set. Make sure you own the data, you own the model, then govern it correctly, then plug in the use cases that you want run. **Bernard Leong:** So what kind of principles that actually guides IBM in terms of when they determine whether a new AI solution actually add value to its clients at enterprise scale? **Hans Dekkers:** I mean, we do it together with our clients. So in many cases, our client comes with a problem, this is a problem I have, or this is a situation that I don't really have a solution for. Then we work together. We've got our client engineering teams. So we basically unpick that problem using this technology. That's one way. The other way is that we look at a company we say. This is the way you've always operated. What happens if we plug this technology onto how you always operate it? Could it look very different? There, it's really interesting. As soon as the client allows us to have that conversation, a whole new world of business models opens up. This will continue to evolve. So it's finding that connect between IBM the client on the right problem. Then the solutions will emerge. **Bernard Leong:** So what is the one insight you wish more people would ask you about implementing AI that they don't usually ask you? **Hans Dekkers:** I think the notion is that today everyone talks about AI equals GPU. GPU is important, but what I call inferencing is much more important. So creating that initial model, that initial philosophy, fairly simple. Then how do you train it? If you have a 3-year-old kid, it's great, but a 3-year-old kid cannot solve deep enterprise problems. That is done through continuous learning of helping, in this case a kid, progress into that enterprise state. This is where I hope clients basically work with us much more deeply. They think AI needs GPUs. I need to pump in all my data then I have an AI model. I can run a new business model. **Bernard Leong:** Right. It's basically what I call the customer collaboration value, to sort of get the customers to work together to produce the solution that actually fits them, rather than thinking about just training the models. Am I, did I get that correct? **Hans Dekkers:** It is directionally absolutely correct. How do we re-pivot to what's the outcome a client wants how do we get there fastest? Often the real work is in the training the tuning. It's not in the initial creation. **Bernard Leong:** You think that inference is going to be much more important in the next couple of years? **Hans Dekkers:** I think it will increase in importance. I also know that you'll need a very differentiated set of hardware to be good at inferencing. The GPU is fantastic, but it's really good at what it does today. It may not be optimized for tuning. So you'll see that there are what we call APUs, AI processing units, they're much better at inferencing. **Bernard Leong:** So my traditional closing question, what does great look like for IBM in Asia Pacific in the next few years? **Hans Dekkers:** I think it's reestablishing growing presence in doing technology in the right way the right way is a perception, but I really, together with all IBMers across the region will want to reestablish IBM for what it is today, not what it may have been 20 years ago. We're such a growing technology force. We've got such a differentiated view that I hope, I expect, I believe that in the years from now, we will be a much bigger technology company in Asia. **Bernard Leong:** So, Hans, many thanks for coming on the show share with me the insights on what IBM is doing specifically with AI data in the Asia Pacific region. I have two small quick closing questions. First one, anything that have inspired you recently? **Hans Dekkers:** Like what? A book or a movie, TV or even could be something inspiring, I think depending on the topic, there's so many inspirations. I like reading books. But also series, I don't have too much time, but once I do. You got great series now. I don't know if you watch [The Last Of Us](https://www.hbo.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYyofRQHeuJ6fiQEAAAEy?ref=analysepodcast.com), it is pretty creepy. But it's fun to watch friends neighbours. Funny but very US centric. I would say. But I also like to go into history. So some of the history movies. Also on the region there recently was one on Korea, South Korea on the coup that happened. So I like things that are connected to deep stories. On books. I recently read a while ago ["The Geek Way" by Andrew McAfee](https://www.amazon.sg/Geek-Way-Radical-Mindset-Extraordinary/dp/103502618X/ref=asc%5Fdf%5F103502618X?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** I haven't read that book yet. **Hans Dekkers:** You should absolutely read it because it talks about some of the business fundamentals that I think are really important for future leaders it talks about radical candor, openness and scientific thinking. It's a great book to have your mind framed correctly. **Bernard Leong:** I should pick up that book. But my last question, how do my audience find you? **Hans Dekkers:** Find me in LinkedIn. Find me by coming to IBM, find me online. Very accessible. So if you have questions, if you have remarks. Please do reach out and we'll be in touch. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find us on Spotify, YouTube, all the other channels, then subscribe to us. We just hit our hundred K subscribers. So many thanks for the support Hans. It was a great conversation. Many thanks for hosting me here, I look forward to speak to you soon. **Hans Dekkers:** Awesome. Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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In the conversation, Mohan reflected on the evolution of Southeast Asia's ecosystem through different eras and offered his perspectives in how startups need to navigate the current funding winter in Southeast Asia. He also shared the spark that inspired him to set Orvel Ventures and how the investment thesis will fit better for the Southeast Asia region. Last but not least, he offered his vision what great would look like for Orvel and E27 in the next decade. --- > "If you take a step back and ask, how has the last 10-15 years panned out? The truth of the matter is that Southeast Asia has not done as well as it should have based on the reports and projections that existed earlier. There have been fundamental flaws from a culture standpoint with respect to how the ecosystem has been shaped. I think there has been too much of a mirror of what's happening in Silicon Valley and figuring out how to replicate those concepts in Southeast Asia, whereas there should have been a better, more localized, customized, regional model to suit the culture and concepts in this region. We've mirrored our fundraising, our entire ecosystem to be too much like Silicon Valley - blitzscaling style model, power law style investing which in hindsight, maybe were not the right approaches. There's also been an over-reliance on funding." **\- Mohan Belani, CEO & Co-founder of E27, Partner at Orvel Ventures** ### **Profile:** [Mohan Belani](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohanbelani/?ref=analysepodcast.com), CEO & Co-founder, [E27](https://e27.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Partner, [Orvel Ventures](https://orvel.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and E27 has been integral part of the Southeast Asia startup and investor ecosystem for the past decade. With me today, Mohan Belani, CEO and co-founder of E27 and partner at Orvel Ventures to reflect and look ahead where we are heading with the ecosystem. Of course, I have to disclose first that [Orvel VC](https://www.orvel.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is an investor to one of my companies, [Dorje AI](https://dorje.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com). So with that out the way, Mohan, welcome to the show. Honored to have you here. **Mohan Belani:** Thanks for having me. It's really great to be part of this. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, and of course, the [Echelon Conference 2025](https://e27.co/echelon/singapore/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is coming next week (on 10 and 11 June 2025). So in preparing for this interview, I noted that you are also part of the [National University of Singapore (NUS) Overseas College (NOC) program in Silicon Valley](https://enterprise.nus.edu.sg/education-programmes/nus-overseas-colleges/programmes/our-noc-locations/silicon-valley/?ref=analysepodcast.com). To start off, how did that experience influence your entrepreneurial journey? **Mohan Belani:** The program was pivotal in quite a few ways. The first part is in really exposing me to this concept called startups where small, nimble teams with limited resources and a very tight timeframe to execution can actually solve really big problems. So the company that I was a part of, I was effectively employee number one. So it was me and the CEO the whole time. He had an outsourced tech team. He hired a director of engineering a few weeks after I came in. It was just the three of us all along. So the exposure to doing trade shows, to doing marketing and business development \[BD\] was an amazing holistic understanding to what it was to build a company. NOC provided that groundwork fundamental experience of working at companies. The attachment that we had on the education side was with the classes at Stanford taught by the very reputable Tom Kosnik. It was amazing to have a balance between the theoretical classroom understanding of entrepreneurship and the practical day to day workings of starting up. I even remember the other professors I had in class, had the startups of their own. So it was just a fascinating melting pot of events, learning, hands-on experience and of course, the constant intermingling with other founders in the valley that really shaped my entire worldview of what it meant to be part of the startup ecosystem. Of course, this led me to working on E27 and making my entire life's career to helping work on the startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia. **Bernard Leong:** If you were to reflect on your journey, what are some of the pivotal lessons you have learned from NOC or your entire career and can share with the aspiring entrepreneurs out there? **Mohan Belani:** So I remember on the NOC side, there were two stories I like to share with people. The first one I remember within the first couple of weeks in the office, I was trying to tell my boss, Saeed that we should really do something about the UX \[user experience\], and he basically said, "Look, we don't have a budget for UX person. By the way, my friends have tried out the product. The product works fine. I think it's great. So there's nothing to worry about." So I learned very quickly that in order to get support for what I was trying to push, I decided to email like a hundred of my friends mostly back in Singapore, and say, "Hey, check out this product that I'm part of that is happening. Give me your super honest feedback and we'll see." Like literally 99% of the feedback was just the product was bad and crap, the UX was bad. Back then we still printed emails \[on paper\]. So I literally printed the emails, stapled a stack of them, left it on his table the night before, and the next day he came in, looked at it and called me over shortly after he said, "Okay, maybe we should. I hear you on the need to improve our UX. I recognize the feedback. Now is not the time, but I promise you give me some time and I'll get a UX person in on a project level." Sometimes if you want to push through ideas, it's not enough to just have it from your innate self. Getting customer validation, customer feedback, or the general community to support and back what you're doing from a data-driven standpoint is quite meaningful and powerful. The second story was about opening up and asking, which I thought has really helped me to today was that I wanted to go to New York to attend a conference, which my boss was going for. We didn't have the budget to fly me there. The good news is that my grandparents live in New York, so accommodation was free. But the ticket cost for the event was about USD $3000\. So my boss was like, no way you're going. So I quietly emailed the company and I said, "Hey, I'm from Singapore, I'm part of this NUS NOC program. I studied in Stanford. I want to come and volunteer time and effort to supporting the event." The organizer came back saying, "Yes sure, come by and meet me at the registration booth and you can do some volunteer work for us. Okay, problem number one solved. I got a volunteer pass. Problem number two was the tickets. So that was simple because I scrambled some cash, borrowed some money from my roommates and managed to get the cheapest flight over, which had a layover and all, but got that done. Then housing was covered. The moment I landed at the event,the guy at registration gave me a gold pass. He's like, "This is our highest tier pass. Take the pass. Enjoy yourself. Go learn, meet great people, and I hope you have a wonderful time." I was like, wait. I said, wait a minute. What the hell happened? So I had a higher tier of pass than my boss. I was getting into the VIP sessions I had pretty much full access and that led me to like, be pitching to some of the potential clients. I had a stack of name cards that I collected, brought them back to the company a week later and then we started doing demos with these clients. We closed some of them. But it fundamentally started from me just going, Hey, can I do something to support you that then allows me to get a pass that I can cover with the cost of the ticket? I think that's this whole idea of just come on, just ask was something that really opened up my mind. I would've never done that before in the past. So I guess the Silicon Valley environment sparked that whole initiative to just go out there and try things out. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, it reminded me of the Jensen Huang story where he had to ask the President from SEGA to pay him just before the company \[NVIDIA\] was about to go bankrupt. In this video, we have a different life story but the same lesson. The asking is the most important for all entrepreneurs. You totally reflected that lesson pretty well. So, the main subject of the day is to talk about E27 and your reflection over the evolution of the entire Southeast Asia startup ecosystem. To help my audience as a baseline, can you share the story of E27 from its origin story all the way to its evolution as a platform for startups and investors today? **Mohan Belani:** Yeah, so the company originally started as a community in NUS and it was actually originally started by a couple of other folks Justin Lee, Bjorn Lee, and a whole bunch of individuals that are actually all successful founders today, including the founders of Zopim and MoneyMax. So if I recall correctly, there were about 20 of them that started this as a community in NUS. When it started, I was still in the U.S. So when I came back from NOC in July 2007, I got integrated in this group. The reason why it became or got registered as a company was because way back when MDA \[Media Development Authority, Singapore that is now Infocomm Media Development Authority - IMDA\] had the iJAM program, NUS was one of the incubating companies. I believe you had a fund too at that time. **Bernard Leong:** That was my first fund. **Mohan Belani:** So NUS wanted to collaborate with this group of individuals that were very active and passionate about startups and very close to the student community. So that's how Optimatic, the parent company of E27 started. Then they were doing contractual work for NUS to run the Garage startup incubator back in Prince George's Park, the bungalows at the back. But that led to the investment in companies like PatSnap, 2359 Media, SG and a few others. So it started as a community and then over the years it was doing events. I went on to work at a tech company called [Little Lives](https://www.littlelives.com/en?ref=analysepodcast.com), which if you have a child in the kindergarten today, there's a high chance that you would be using the app. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. I use that app. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah, so I did the first sales to the MOE and the kindergartens, and did the iPad training for the teachers. I worked at Mig33 for a while, and then I had a gaming company shortly after that. But the honest truth to that, sometime around 2011 and for most of that period, deep down inside, I really wanted to get back to supporting startup companies. **Mohan Belani:** The core thesis that I had in my mind, and this is a thesis that was not new because I even pitched it to Saeed Amidi who was the CEO and founder of Plug and Play when I was back in the valley, was this concept that if you look at Southeast Asia, it is riddled with problems and also opportunities. Those opportunities are not going to be capitalized by the larger companies. Neither are they going to be fixed by the government. The one core group of people that should be tackling these problems and can do them in a scalable manner, is going to be founders and entrepreneurs, and the startup mindset is what is needed to fix all the issues in Southeast Asia. So if we as a platform could support more startups, give them the visibility, provide them the access to the investors, give them the information that they need to better be competitive, a lot less startups will fail. And so 2011, I set up with that and said, "Hey, I'm going to do this. I want to do this. You want to be part of it? We went back to the original core group of E27 folks restructured the cap table and basically said, look, we have a plan to bring this to another level. I brought in our first angel investor who's still on my board, Nick Lim, whose fund is called 8Capital. Yeah. With that first initial 25K check it led to what it is today." **Bernard Leong:** From Garage, E27 also moved to Block 71, which is the integral part of the startup ecosystem within Singapore itself. Now of course, Block 71 is all over the world. **Mohan Belani:** Yes. At that period, we were close to MDA and NUS to discuss the initial seedling ideas of this concept called Block 71\. When it first started, we had the opportunity to be one of the incubators, FatFish on the second floor in Block 71 itself. Because there were a lot of stringent requirements around what kind of companies could be there. So long story short, we managed to be part of it and then, we were based there all the way until 2018\. Yeah. It was an amazing environment to be in. **Bernard Leong:** You got all the best like there is INSEAD business school, there is Fusionopolis and all the startups are there in Blk 71. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah, it was like a startup zoo because you would have people from all over the world coming visiting, and it was like a central hub of activities happening. Unfortunately, it didn't have much event space back then, or we would've probably done a lot more events, but it was really like the melting pot of the early Singapore startup ecosystem when there was barely even Series A funding. So I think that original opportunity to be in the center from a physicality standpoint of the entire rise and growth of the startup ecosystem where we were very fortunate to be in that place, and then over time we had our own office on the fifth floor, and then we moved over to Science Park in 2018. **Bernard Leong:** Oh, okay. But it's still very new to the center of all the things. I think Block 71 is still running strong these days. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah. I think the community is still strong. I mean, it's very professionalized in a lot of ways. Now it's run by JTC, there are multiple blocks. I believe there's Block 69\. I can't even remember all the different numbers, but fundamentally, it's really become a very integral part of the ecosystem, and is a brand name kind of known to be synonymous with starting up. **Bernard Leong:** When you think about then to now, what were some of the significant challenges you faced in those early days and the growing stages of E27, and then how do you overcome some of them? **Mohan Belani:** I think in the very start the large part of the challenge were around fundamental missing building blocks of what it needed to have as a good ecosystem. So there was always this chicken and egg issue around funding and investors. I remember that while the \[Singapore\] government played a really amazing role at trying to make sure that there was capital it never felt like there was enough. So everything we did there, were always bigger questions around. How do you get to Series A? How do you get to Series B? Does the ecosystem have that support for it? Rather than focusing back on really the companies and what they were doing, so I think the earlier part from maybe 2012 to 2015 that was the first part of the challenge. From 2015 to like 2018, those were the boom days. There was capital coming in. There was starting to be really good companies coming out. I remember there was the period where there were so many different programs to support founders both on the capital, the talent, the market access side, and more importantly, there were also interesting, like back people with the right backgrounds from corporate, they were willing to say, "*Hey, look, I'm going to leave my corporate opportunity jump into this startup bandwagon and raise capital*." There was also the early formulations of interesting ideas and verticals that had started to shape up, like fintech was really starting to shape up to be an interesting vertical. Health-tech was another big area starting out, but I think it hasn't really fully reached its full potential. The B2B \[business to business\] marketplaces had been starting up in 2012\. That period was still very consumer centric and with consumer comes the need for a lot of capital and that's where a lot of the investment thesis would fail. But 2015 to 2018 was a larger emergence of B2B. I remember even at the tail end, you started to have sub micro verticals around such mental health and where you had the logistics supply chain. That started coming up and along with these problems and opportunities came an interesting diversity of corporate venture funds, later stage funds, international funds. **Bernard Leong:** That is right before that COVID period. But there's another boom between 2020 and 2021\. What about that era then from that buildup all the way to 2018 to 2020 **Mohan Belani:** I think there was a good buildup. In 2020, there was a major crash because everyone's just like, oh crap, what do we do now? But I think 2020 to 2021 was when things just went on another level, I mean, majorly because of the interest rates issue and the stock markets. So \[the market\] going all nuts and plus all the COVID money coming in. But there was also that realization that certain sectors are doing extremely well. No one had a clear sensing of when the world would open up. So maybe everyone thought that we would be stuck watching Netflix, using Zoom and consuming digital services in perpetuity. So there was a massive fervor. Of course, the Web3 space started really heating up and very exciting in that period, which helped also channel a different type of capital into the ecosystem. Both founders and funds were also raising at record levels. Remember there were like funds popping up every other day raising anywhere between 50 to $300 million funds all over the region. I'm not sure how a lot of them are doing, but last I heard, I think it's been a struggle. But on the founders side, the founders that were able to capitalize on capital raises at that period, I'm sure they must have done really well. But they must have taken a massive hit on their valuations from that period until now. So the startup ecosystem lost a sense of bearing. But then again, it was also comparing itself with the capital markets on the U.S. side. In that sense, every founder would've done what they should do, which is to just capitalize on the opportunity, raise capital, push hard, and see what happens at a later stage. **Bernard Leong:** So from your perspective how do you see your role being both media and also community platform where you have to support the startups through this entire period, these different stages you identify. What do you feel is the role then and now? **Mohan Belani:** Yes. So we've always played the role of an ecosystem builder. Media is a byproduct of ecosystem building. The large reason why we launched the media arm was simply because we wanted to educate and inform the ecosystem not to have a journalism stance to investigate what was happening. So media for us has always been an avenue whereby we can uncover and feature interesting companies and what's happening in the ecosystem. But we also realized that as an organization, we are not the subject matter experts in any particular field. So I think it was around 2015 to 2016 is when we launched our contributor program. Basically, it's a glorified guest post concept. What we realized is that if you are a founder in AI, if you're a founder in logistics, you've probably done enough research and due diligence about that sector to then be a thought leader. All of this was pre LinkedIn thought leadership content side. So we were very actively engaging the entire ecosystem, founder, investor, corporate to basically say, Hey, can you be a thought leader on the platform, create content and write about it. So the tricky part is that we had to just make sure that the content was not overly a sales pitch about what they were doing. But was providing true value to the ecosystem. Then that funneled into our events with the way we structured the content at our conferences. A lot of our conference content is, again, very thought leadership driven. Less about organizations or companies or being critical of their business. I think that shaped the culture that we have. Our core value number one is respect the ecosystem. We don't believe in creating content that maybe vilifies or pushes down a particular individual or company. I think constructive criticism is important. Organizations will make mistakes. You will have some bad actors, eFishery for example. But we want to focus on the individuals that are doing good work. We want to focus on the knowledge sharing, the thought leadership content that we feel will elevate this ecosystem. **Bernard Leong:** So from Singapore, you actually also go across different parts of Southeast Asia. How do you find when you go into the other different countries, say Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, or Philippines, what is the sense like when you bring the E27 kind of community platform across these countries? Is there is a different vibe or different perspective? **Mohan Belani:** Yeah. So in the early days, we really had not much intention to regionalize and go abroad. The reason is because we did not have the resources, but also the know-how and how it started is that regional players would contact us to say, "*Hey, why aren't you doing Echelon in my particular country?*" We're like: "Oh, do you want an Echelon? How do we do it? Is there an appetite? Is there a market for it?" Most of the time, it'll be: "why don't I help you out and we'll do an event here." That's how the roadshow concept came about. In our heyday, we used to have 13 Echelon roadshows all across APAC \[Asia Pacific\], including Central Asia, Mongolia, Australia, and every major city across Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. A lot of this was driven by partners, not by us. We strongly believe that in order for us to add value to the ecosystem, we need to collaborate and partner with the local communities and local ecosystem players, whether they are investors, whether they're governments, or whether they're local equivalents of E27. **Bernard Leong:** What would you have done differently? Let's say, you know what you know now, and then you rewind backwards and then start all over again. or you may stick to the same decision all the way. **Mohan Belani:** So we learned a lot by going out to all these markets. On hindsight, what we could have done better, is to be smarter in evaluating whether an ecosystem was ready. Most ecosystems were really just not ready. So when we went in, when we did the activities, we were basically working with founders or an ecosystem that was maybe five years behind. So we might do an event. If it might go extremely well, but there'll be no follow through after that. It's not about the founders or investors not doing the job, it's the ecosystem that was just too early. So on one level, that would've been something that we should have been a bit more mindful and smarter about. The second thing is that we should have figured out how to better capitalize on the platform to support these regions and not the events. I think culturally we were always stuck: Are we a product company? Are we a community? Are we an events company? Up to COVID, we were very much an events mindset organization and the platform was just purely content and maybe to market events. COVID was a wake up call for us and an opportunity to be more community and platform centric from an online standpoint. On hindsight, if we had done that earlier. we could have impacted ecosystems on a much deeper and much more sustainable level. **Bernard Leong:** With the rise of new technologies across the entire decade, we have mobile, then we had crypto and AI now, and the market dynamics have changed quite significantly over this period of time. For E27, what is the thing that you can adapt to stay relevant and also continue providing that value to the ecosystem? **Mohan Belani:** That's a really great question because in the early days, a lot of the companies were B2C \[Business to Consumer\], and then that evolved to be B2B and even B2B2C. There were very few verticals that made sense, SaaS, maybe marketplaces. But over time, there were deeper verticals that started coming up. Fintech was a very deep vertical that started coming out. HR was another deep one. Even CX like customer experience was a deep one, so for us, I think what we've always done is to say, look, we know that there will be a flavour of the month concept in the startup ecosystem. I remember in 2020, the flavour of the month was food tech companies, partly because Singapore was having a food security crisis, wanted to invest in making our food networks a bit more resilient. But there was a whole plant-based movement and all that. Now nobody talks about food tech companies. So we realized if we went after or chased after a certain vertical, it might be too risky for us. We need to be a bit more generic and serve the larger general entrepreneurship ecosystem. Now we will miss out on certain areas. Like for example if you're a fintech company, the Singapore FinTech Festival and some fintech-centric organizations might provide you a lot more deeper value. But if you look at what we are doing, the general startup ecosystem with some nuggets of verticalization is what we are looking at. So AI is a vertical, for example, we really cannot ignore. To be honest, it's not so much of a vertical, but an entire ecosystem centric integration that's going to happen. To me, in a year or two, we will stop even talking about AI because it's going to be a feature in every company. The same way how social, local and mobile was something that Silicon Valley was talking about like crazy in the 2012 era. No one talks about it now because it's assumed that every company is a social or local or mobile company. The same way with AI. But AI goes across the board. Regardless of B2B, B2C, regardless of fintech, healthtech or logistics, AI has a role to play, and that's why we focus a lot more on AI in the recent Echelons last year as well as this year. But we want to be an agnostic platform for startups. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about the Southeast Asia investor and startup ecosystem that very few do? **Mohan Belani:** If you take a step back and ask, okay. How has the last 10 to 15 years panned out? The truth of the matter is that Southeast Asia has not done as well as it should have been based on the reports and the projections that existed earlier, but also, to me, there have been fundamental flaws from a culture standpoint with respect to how the ecosystem has been shaped and in a way that has led to why we launched Orvel Ventures. I think there has been too much of a mirror of what's happening in Silicon Valley and figuring out how to replicate those concepts in Southeast Asia, whereas if you ask me there should have been a better, more localized, customized, regional model to suit the culture and concepts in this region. So that's the first part of the problem. I think we've mirrored our fundraising, our entire ecosystem to be too much like Silicon Valley. So blitzscaling style model, power law style investing which in hindsight, maybe were not the right approaches. The second thing is, there's also been an over-reliance on funding. So for markets like Philippines, interestingly, because they've not been the darling of the ecosystem from a fundraising standpoint, they've had to be more resilient to make sure that they go to market faster and get revenue faster. That's starting to show in terms of some of the quality of the companies. **Bernard Leong:** You see the same, even in like Malaysia, given that they have much more vibrant crypto companies? **Mohan Belani:** Malaysia has always been a great ecosystem if you're looking to build a small, medium size startup. The problem with us in the region is our obsession with Silicon Valley metrics for success, which is, if you're not building to be a unicorn, no VC is going to invest in you. I invested in one Malaysian company and he's a good founder, he's building a great business, and he raised capital from his previous company, from tier one VCs. When I asked him, why didn't the VCs invest in the new company? The messaging was that, oh, this does not have unicorn potential. I'm like: What is wrong with us as an ecosystem? Why haven't we learned that the power law way of investing in this region does not always work and probably will not work for a while. **Bernard Leong:** So it would be fair because we move forward with Orvel Ventures, so I want to walk you a step back and say, "Hey, what was the spark that inspired you to establish Orvel Ventures?" I think your investment thesis is very different. And by the way, I like the way you define the origin of Orvel Ventures. Maybe you want to talk about the name, how it came about? **Mohan Belani:** Yeah. So Orvel stands for Origin Velocity. I never intended to start a fund. I know a lot of people casually over the last 10 to 15 years have said, "Hey, why don't you start a fund?" For me, I did not think that I am suited to be in the finance side of the ecosystem. I'm better suited to be on the founder side and the ecosystem building side. So, I'd rather work with and build relationships with the VCs and use their capital to support the ecosystem, which is what we've done on E27\. We have our investor portal with over a thousand investors. The Echelon business matching activity that we do, a lot of founders actually raise capital through Echelon. So that to me has been the right fit. But in 2022 I was doing some of my usual angel investment with Milan, who's now my partner at Orvel. So Milan and I caught up over a drink because I've done some deals with him, but never met him face to face. We started with this one question. It's like: "*Hey, if you were going to start a company tomorrow, who would you want to raise from?*" So I had my list of about three to five investors who I liked, and Milan had his list and we were comparing notes. As we went through the list and we were talking, we started to realize, look. In our current stage, us being a bit more experienced in the ecosystem, us knowing how we want to build companies, we realized that most VCs were not ideal for founders of our level. That means a bit older, have done it before, need more support than pure capital. So we started to dissect the problem. Let's look at the founder side. What would a more senior seasoned founder need? Through the discussions, we realized capital is something that they could very easily get from the network, and most VCs would throw money at them, but what they really, really needed was strategic networks that helped to open doors for them, that allowed them to go to market faster, improve their runway, thanks to the warm relationships that a strategic investor could provide. So network driven was one key part. The second part was on the portfolio construction standpoint. We looked at a lot of the funds that existed today, a lot of them went in with cheque sizes that allowed them to have 10-15% ownership in the companies. Then we realized that over time it was really hard for these funds to exit the companies because unless a very large later stage investor came in, they really couldn't sell down and return money back to LPs. So you needed to bet on the power law model, which meant that you would have to, let's say, invest in 20 companies knowing that very well, that 18 of them will either die or not return you a dime, and you hope that the final two get a unicorn 100X level exit. So the 18 founders that you originally support will be left to die. To me, that's the shitty thing. I felt when during COVID, I'm talking to a lot of my angel portfolio companies, the one conversation they will have with me, they're like, "*Why aren't my investors supporting me now when I need them the most?*" And I openly say, "It's not you, it's the model. They're looking for that one unicorn exit in their portfolio. If you're not that, they're not going to support you. And again, it's not that they're mean or evil. It's a function of the model." The last part was the LP side. So I've been an LP in funds. I know multiple people who are LPs in funds. I've had some great successes as a fund LP. I've had some not so good successes. The one common theme, if you talk to any LP that has invested in Southeast Asia funds, the answer is always no DPI \[[Distributed to Paid-In Capital](https://carta.com/learn/private-funds/management/fund-performance/dpi/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\]. Like virtually no. There's virtually very little or no DPI in most Southeast Asia funds, whereas if you look at some of the American funds and other funds that I've invested in, there's typically some level of DPI within the first couple of years. Again, there are many reasons for that. On some level, it's the nature of the ecosystem. A lot more M&A happens. On some level, the funds are better at getting out as good as they are in getting in. So we looked at these three issues and said, "*How can we launch a fund that tackles this problem or at least alleviates some of these problems?*" So we started a fund that is network driven, so the capital that we provide is up to on average a hundred K \[thousand\]. Second issue is that we only take a 1% ownership. We increase that up to 3% over time. But the goal is to take very small stakes in many, many companies as opposed to large stakes in maybe 10 to 20 companies. More importantly, these companies at the point of investment have to be generating revenue. Our valuation shouldn't be more than 20-25x of gross margin multiples, which means that our entry prices are not at a ridiculous level that a lot of funds get into. **Bernard Leong:** So, let's say if a company, because AI companies are quite different. I suppose if they can get profitable, then there is a DPI that you can return to your fund, right. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they could do share buybacks, they could do dividends. There are multiple ways to work around that. But importantly, is to not fall into the trap of investing in a tier one founder with a tier one lead VC in a really hot market, and then having a 15 to 20 million pre-money valuation with no real product or no revenue. So it was making sure that we were very deliberate, that we wanted to go back to investing in companies that have good financial fundamentals. They might not be unicorns, but they could be really a good hundred million dollar to $200 million companies. **Bernard Leong:** You're right. The ecosystem actually missed out a lot on these companies **Mohan Belani:** Absolutely. Yeah. And here's the thing. In 2022 when we were talking about this, the truth is we still got a lot of blank stares from investors looking at us going like, what nonsense is this? That's not VC investing. The one group of people that resonated very well with us were the founders and most of the exited founders. And that's the first bucket of capital that we raised from founders that have exited that said, look, this model, I want to see this model work and hence I'm giving you this capital. But I really wish a fund like that existed when I was building my company. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think that your fund will ever reach a point where you could also do almost like a private equity where you can actually even roll up companies? You are looking at that kind of trajectory. You're not looking for the power law type, but you're actually looking for very sustainable, but essentially provide a proper DPI from their point of view. **Mohan Belani:** I think to do that effectively, you definitely need a large amount of capital and you need a team that has the management experience with respect to either operator management or consultancy type management. But for us, we are dealing with a very small fund. We like small funds. We don't like funds that are more than 20 million. Even from an investment standpoint, I generally don't invest in larger funds. I made the mistake of investing in one or two large funds. To be honest, the outcomes have not been great. So for me, smaller funds have limited resources in terms of dry powder that they can invest and they typically invest earlier at rounds that are at a price that is a lot more pragmatic. I think smaller funds also have a higher chance of, at the very least, returning their base capital, which is, in my experience, the smaller funds I've invested in have done quite well in doing that. **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you. Actually, coming to think about it as an angel investor myself, I'm very curious to hear your point of view on this. What are the traits that you look out for when you invest in startup founders? **Mohan Belani:** So I stopped actively angel investing. But interestingly, I did one deal early this year. I wasn't intending to, but the founder reached out to me, he was an old friend of mine. The part that got me over the line was very simple. One is that it was a problem that he deeply resonated with and was looking for a company to invest in to solve the problem. It's in a sector I would've never thought of, which is in the film testing sector. **Bernard Leong:** That's interesting. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah. If you think of sectors, I think that's probably a sector I wouldn't even know existed. He's deeply passionate about a sector he has built up research knowledge and information repository in the entire sector for many years because of his personal passion. Two is that he's been looking actively for founders to invest in. He never found one and decided he just needed to scratch that itch. So on his own dime, he built a prototype, got a small team together, got a very strong proof of concept that started to validate potentially what the idea looked like before he even raised a dime. So based on that logic, I know this founder really well and I know how hardworking and passionate he is, and this is a sector he's deeply passionate about. He's spent many years of his life researching it and understanding it. He managed to get to a level whereby he has something to show the world with his own capital, and he's put a team together to support him in that process. So for me, these are the kind of founders I would want to back. **Bernard Leong:** So if I reverse the question, what are the red flags then? **Mohan Belani:** So the red flags for me are founders whereby they're raising capital for the pure sake of raising capital to get their product out or to get their company going. Like they don't seem to have any real skin in the game with respect to, let's say, putting in their own capital, or at least maybe bootstrapping or working on the product for six to 12 months. They're just purely using investor capital to get there. **Bernard Leong:** Do you notice that this is becoming a big problem? Because I also notice in startup founders, some of the startup founders I talked to seems to be very heavily reliant on raising more and more capital, but never got to a stage where they can actually be revenue positive. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah, I mean, again, we've all drunk the Kool-Aid of raising capital and of course it doesn't help that media platforms also glorify founders that raise capital. So do events. So we've drunk that Silicon Valley Kool-Aid of VC \[venture capital\] fundraising, when we should be flipping the switch and going, Hey, look, how do I make sure I get to financial sustainability as quickly as possible on my own? Then venture capital is a catalyst for me to get to the next level where I know organically I can't get there quickly. I think that's the missing gap in VC. So VC to me is really good for two things. One, it's good to invest in the craziest ideas that no one in the world will touch. The founders are deeply passionate about it, and they need capital because there's maybe a deep tech centric expertise, or the market is not ready to pay for it. So that's where VC comes in. So if we look at the plant-based meat sector, that's one good example of how VC capital was really able to unlock that sector extremely well. The second part is when you have something and you want to scale it, you know it works. There's product market fit. Now you need to scale it to a level that your product can get into the hands of a large number of people. This can be a big company, and VC money is literally the fuel to the fire. If you are using VC money to be the fire starter, that's wrong. VC money is the fuel to the fire. In that scenario, I think VC money is phenomenal. **Bernard Leong:** You've seen the Southeast Asia startup ecosystem growth. I guess one question, if you were to look back towards it, how do you now perceive the current state of venture capital? I think that some of the funds have reached that time and you rightfully point out that the DPI problem is there. How do you think I'm starting to see even like there's like a Series B gap now. I don't know whether Series C will exist. Maybe all the capital is now starting around pre-seed to seed. That's the only way you have funding. After that, it is probably very difficult to raise unless you say you really have the product market fit, you can add fuel to the fire, otherwise having it as a fire starter will not work for you either. **Bernard Leong:** How would you think about venture capital within the region? Do you think that it's going to be very challenging or maybe it's going to be just a blip for a while? Maybe you need the fundamentals growing. there's some hope that you look at, the Vietnam market, you look at say like for example, you identified Philippines as well. I think Malaysia is interesting because I have seen very good crypto companies come from there. **Mohan Belani:** I think later stage venture capital is going to have a very tough time. Early stage venture capital, if done right with the correct pricing entry points, I think they will not have an issue. So my question to the ecosystem is this: If you can build a company, scale it to maybe 10 million revenue and get it to like 30-40% net margin, not the EBITDA bullshit. The 30-40% net margin to me, that is a very good success. With that net margin, you can buy out and do share buybacks for all the early stage investors **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, that's possible. I think this is actually doable. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah, it is very doable, but most companies just don't think of growth and scale that way. But to them, I think that concept is probably a failure. There are two problems here. The first problem is that most companies can probably get to 2 million revenue, maybe three. Then at that stage, they might have maybe 10% net margin, but for them to get a 30% net margin, it might be difficult. But this is where I think AI is a massive opportunity, with workflow automation and some level of scalability. Using AI agents, you can get to the 30% margin. So if you have a company doing two to three million with 30% net margins, then the question is now can you scale this to 10 million to 15 million? This is where new markets come in, expansion to other markets in the region. So you're essentially creating multiple markets doing two to three million combined. And I think if at the next level you can do a 10 million company revenue at a 30% net margin, you can buy out all the early stage VCs that came in. They will all make a multiple positive return. That's what the ecosystem needs. Now, some companies will get from the 10 million to the 100 million valuation or revenue. And I think that level of companies are mostly companies that either are deeply entrenched in this region or they will have to scale to markets like Europe or U.S. like, I mean, if we look at PatSnap, for example, they have already started exploring the U.S. market. Carousell, on the other hand, deeply entrenched in this region. Really pushing hard to get their top line closer to a 100 million level. But the net margin is always going to be an issue. So PropertyGuru, another clear example of a company deeply entrenched in this region. EQT privatized the company so that they can maximize the net margins from it. But that to me is another, like the few great examples of companies that can get to a significant amount of revenue, be publicly listed, good net margins. But I think for most other founders, aspire to build a 2 million to 3 million revenue company with a 20-30% net margin. First, you get to that milestone. You can buy back all your early investors, and everybody will be happy, **Bernard Leong:** So if you think about it then, what are the sectors or technology now you think would be good for startups in Southeast Asia? Because it seems to me market penetration is one of the clear things. If you stay within this market, there's a challenge. Even for myself, I'm thinking a lot more about the Australia and New Zealand market, which are developed markets where there are clear customers there or even the U.S. market or European markets. Where do you think what kind of sectors that really makes sense within this current, I guess 2024 batch of startups? Because I think it's actually a good time because the more depressed the era is, actually the better startups will come from the era. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah. The unfortunate truth is that we've just been depressed for quite a while. Everyone thought that maybe by 2024 the startup market will recover, but it's still been depressed for a while. So I think that's the only demoralizing part. So the country matters. So if you look at markets like the Philippines, what I've noticed is that consumer centric opportunities, food centric opportunities, local brands. Those are completely missing. There's a blue ocean there for companies to capitalize on. Markets like Singapore and Malaysia, there are interesting vertical SaaS opportunities. Yes. I think AI is providing disruption there, but high quality vertical SaaS opportunities, focus on painful manual issues. I would say document processing, for example. So one of our Orvel portfolios, [Staple AI](https://www.staple.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com), I mean, they're doing extremely well, focusing on document processing problems that exist in a lot of the key markets in this region. So deep verticalized AI based SaaS kind of companies, I think still have a very strong fit. The third opportunity I think that we can look to capitalize on, is potentially B2B marketplaces in certain verticals. Again, in markets like Philippines or Indonesia, where there are enough inefficiencies in the market that tech can come in and capitalize and make it a bit simpler and then leverage the productivity improvement. The last one is on talent arbitrage. So one of our Orvel portfolios, they provide English education talent to markets like Europe. The company is called [EdgeTutor](https://www.edgetutor.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com). So talent arbitrage, where you are selling from a lower cost base to a much higher revenue opportunity base are models that could work. So I think at least in this part of the world English education is one thing I've seen. I heard of a company trying to provide nursing or healthcare centric talent and arbitrage it with markets like the U.S. and then Europe. with some level of education and certification training involved. So I think that's another opportunity to potentially capitalize on. Then you have the longer far-flung opportunities like waste management, FinTech in terms of mortgage lending and all. But I think those are far and few in between. Like you really have to have the good set of founders that have the experience in their space, the right technology, and then the right relationships with the current incumbent players. I think what we've learned in Indonesia is that if you are trying to completely disrupt or go in and try to take away all the existing players, those things don't work. But if you go in, you integrate with incumbents, you help them get more productive while you also sell your product or service, I think those are models that will make a lot of sense. So [Baskit](https://baskit.app/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Ringkas](https://ringkas.co.id/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Indonesia. Those are two clear examples: Baskit being in the supply chain space and Ringkas being in the mortgage lending space. They have very nicely integrated with the current players, so they don't try to get rid of them or disrupt them. The results have shown that those two are doing extremely well. **Bernard Leong:** What happened with the recent the boom and bust in 2021 in Southeast Asia that actually got a couple of high profile failures. I think we look at Zilingo, eFishery and probably a couple others. What are your reflections on the ecosystem on those situations, and do you see difficulty of actually VC firms now getting LPs to actually invest in the region now? **Mohan Belani:** Firstly, I would say that they're not, like these unfortunate incidents are not a reflection of the ecosystem at large. It's an isolated one-off case where whether the founder or the teams have zero accountability and integrity over what it means to run a business, what it means to take investor or external capital. So I would say those are isolated. I mean, if we look at Builder AI, that's another example of a global American company, completely exploding. Same issue, integrity issues, fudging numbers and all that. So I think I would reflect that from an individual standpoint, less about the whole ecosystem at large. But the challenge is that the repercussions here is that the questions are always asked in terms of what could the VCs have done to better predict or to better foresee this, what part of their due diligence was missing, what gap was not there. So if you have tier one investors that are aggressively investing, how is it that their own due diligence or their own checks and balances were passed in companies like that and could there be many more? Those larger questions will need a bit more time. But the truth is could it have been avoided. My honest opinion is no, because if [Gibran (from Efishery)](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-04-15/how-indonesian-startup-efishery-s-ex-ceo-gibran-huzaifah-faked-the-numbers?ref=analysepodcast.com) wanted to fudge numbers and lie to his investors, he would've done anything and everything to get there. The challenge in the ecosystem is that if one particular investor started to get really deep in the due diligence (DD) process it would've unfortunately derailed the entire fundraising plan of the company and then caused a lot more problems for the company itself. So it's a tricky issue. Like on some level, you want investors to be really thorough in DD, but on another level, bad founders will always figure out how to hide shit from their investors, I empathize with the VCs that invested in the company. I don't think it's entirely their incompetence or incapability that led to the situation, but I think what upsets me and pisses me off the most is the fact that individuals like Gibran and everyone else that has done this, have taken no accountability. There have been no organizations that have put them to task. I see VCs going on LinkedIn saying things like oh, we should be moving forward. This is a blip in the ecosystem, but putting them to task is not helpful to the ecosystem. I think that's complete nonsense. The investors should sue him. They should sue their auditors. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, that's right. **Mohan Belani:** They should throw him in jail. It's as simple as that. It is fraud on a crazy level. And I think the worst thing is that media companies should stop giving him visibility, stop treating his story like a sad story of how he tried to do this for the betterment of his employees and because he couldn't figure out another way out. From an ecosystem standpoint, we have to reflect on how we want to manage these situations moving forward. **Bernard Leong:** So what is the one question that you wish more people would ask you? Be it, whether it's E27 or Orvel Ventures? **Mohan Belani:** I actually wish people would be a bit more critical on the stuff they read. In terms of the numbers that are raised from a fundraising standpoint, or the numbers that are raised from an exit standpoint, and whether the stakeholders in all of these equations actually truly benefited. We've seen multiple fundraising stories over the years where the founders celebrate by posting on LinkedIn. The article that you read on E27, TechInAsia and DealStreetAsia is a really rosy number, but the insiders know that actually no one really made money, or there are nuances in the deal that is not a true reflection of what people read outside. **Bernard Leong:** So you wish people would ask you actually what is the critique of the ecosystem? That's a very good question from my point of view. **Mohan Belani:** Critique what you're reading. I mean, a lot of companies also share fundraising stories and like for example, they might share that, oh, company X raised this amount when actually it was many rounds over the last two years, put together, and now they're making the fundraising announcement to make it seem like the fundraising was a significant amount. The little things like that matter from an accountability standpoint. If founders can get away here and there on all these little things, they will start getting away on the company level from a governance level on the investor update level, and then before you know it, you have another eFishery situation. **Bernard Leong:** So my traditional closing question then, and looking ahead, what does great look like for E27 and Orvel Ventures from your point of view in the next few years? **Mohan Belani:** So for E27, I am always aspiring to figure out how can we make a larger impact on the ecosystem. We did our three-year plan earlier this year, and we were really trying to figure out, okay, how do we really measure the impact in terms of the number of stakeholders that we really impact? And we finally came out with a model to calculate that, whether it's the investors, founders and all. So our goal actually is that within a three year timeframe we want to be able to impact a million stakeholders across the region. And this could be again, founders, investors, corporates, governments alike. It's going to be a mix of offline and online, but we need to be better at measuring the impact of the programs and activities that we do and making sure that we are doing them in a financially sustainable model and a scalable model, which means also rethinking how many Echelons that we do or rethinking where we want to make investments on the product level. And also rethinking what part of the entrepreneurship ecosystem do we want to impact. For a large part of our life, we've always impacted the founder level and the investor level. And then I tell my team, there's an entire organization within a startup that we don't seem to do enough for. Like people within the marketing team, the product team, the tech team. The finance team. That's why we actually started Flux, which is a sister event. A couple of years ago we ran one, I think in April this year. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, it's a pretty good event **Mohan Belani:** Yeah. The concept is like, it's not large, couple hundred people. We want to go vertical. So the Flux event that we did was for AI marketing leaders. It's like, can we get the deeper levels of marketing folks at an event, impact them to improve their skills? So that they can become better marketing leaders for tomorrow. Can we do the same with product leaders? Can we do the same with HR leaders, finance leaders, so that way, we really truly impact the larger ecosystem and not just the founders and investors. So that's the goal for us on the E27 side. On the Orvel side we've actually done the first round of our first check investments. Right now we are taking a very hands-on approach to supporting the portfolio. Helping them figure out, okay, what kind of milestones they have over the next six months, how can we use our network to help them get there? And then that will allow us to start doing follow on investments in these companies. So it's really a hands-on portfolio centric approach that we are focused on for the next six months or the rest of the year essentially. **Bernard Leong:** So, Mohan, thanks for coming on the show and definitely two more quick questions to ask you. First is any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Mohan Belani:** So, the most recent book I read let me just pull out the title to make sure I get it correct is called "[The AI Driven Leader](https://www.amazon.sg/dp/B0DB8QL3ZK?ref%5F=mr%5Freferred%5Fus%5Fsg%5Fsg&ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Geoff Woods. So that book has been helpful because it basically changes the frame and narrative with respect to how you use AI. A lot of the AI usage now is now okay. Improving workflow or helping me with my speech or my marketing content and all that. But the opportunity that this book provides is how do you take a step back, like everyone says, think of AI as a really smart intern. I think this book basically says, what if AI could be a really smart advisor or board member? How would you use AI to sometimes also question you to see if your biases or your assumptions are correct, and how can AI give you a more strategic view of the work that you're doing on a more long-term level? So it's a very different narrative with respect to AI usage. And it's not meant to immediately drive outcome or make you do something, but help you basically find gaps in your thinking. Identify opportunities based on strengths or review some of the strategies that you have in place with your teams. So very different view on how AI should be used. That has been quite meaningful. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you? And of course, can you talk about your next upcoming Echelon event? **Mohan Belani:** Sure. So we have our Echelon event coming up next week on June 10 and 11\. It's going to be held at Suntec City with three stages, a few hundred companies that will be present at the event. But more importantly, if you want to get the pulse of what's happening in Southeast Asia, if you want to meet who are the primary movers, shakers, the key individuals, whether it is the investors, the founders even the corporates, it's a really good event to get that sensing. Like the feedback I've always gotten from people is that the moment they walk in, the energy and the culture around meeting people, getting deals done, driving for business activity is something they don't see at other events. And for us, every one of the platforms or features that we have is meant to drive a business outcome, whether it is to raise capital or to drive partnerships. So if this is something that resonates with your audience, I think they should definitely check out the Echelon event happening next week. June 10 and 11\. I'm most active on LinkedIn on a personal level. I do have an Instagram account and Facebook account, but I barely post. I mostly reshare my wife's posts. So that's typically what I do from pure laziness and my happiness to have a bit more of a private life. But LinkedIn is really the best way to connect with me. Just search for Mohan Belani, follow E27\. And then you should be able to find me there. **Bernard Leong:** Congratulations and now you're a full-time dad too, right? **Mohan Belani:** Oh, yes, I am a very happy and full time dad. I just celebrated my daughter's second birthday over the weekend. So, yeah, super happy with it. **Bernard Leong:** So thank you very much for coming on the show, and you can definitely find us on Spotify and YouTube, and of course subscribe to our newsletter as well. Mohan, thanks for coming on the show and thank you for the 15 years, or even more than that, I think even 17 to 18 years of actually working with the Southeast Asia ecosystem. You're someone that actually helped to shepherd along this whole entire space hopefully for another two to three decades or more. **Mohan Belani:** Yeah, yeah. As long as I can. I've always told people that for me, it's always been a privilege to be able to do the work that we do. And I always tell people, no ecosystem, no E27\. And that's why I think I believe as an organization, we need to play a role in working together and collaborating with the ecosystem for the greater good of the startup and investor community. So I'm really appreciative and thankful that you have me here to be able to share my story. So thank you for having me. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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In the conversation, Allen explained his journey from "accidental hotelier" to longevity entrepreneur, outlining the six pillars of longevity. He emphasized that the gap isn't in knowledge but in action, highlighting how his upcoming 38,000 square foot facility in Singapore brings medical, fitness, recovery, sleep, and nutrition services under one roof to help people change their lifestyles. Allen discussed how MOVE Repeat has acquired three brands operating in 50+ studios across five countries and shifted from traditional subscription models to pay-as-you-go to ensure consistent customer satisfaction. Last but not least, Allen describes what great would look like for his fitness, wellness and longevity businesses. --- > "I think the why is so important, but it's always not really being asked. Most people want to know, 'What's your growth look like?' or 'How is this offering different from another offering?' Those are the questions we get most of the time. But going back to the real why we actually do this in the first place is the most critical question if you ask me. For myself personally, it is all about having a positive impact in society. We have chosen to go down the route of wellness, fitness, and longevity to have that positive impact, which we believe is extremely important and a strong one whereby I'm personally putting a lot of energy, funds, and capital behind it to ensure we educate the community and society to establish and adopt healthy and active lifestyles that will only benefit the entire population." - **Allen Law** **Profile:** Allen Law, Co-Founder, [MOVE Repeat](https://www.moverepeat.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Chairman, [REVL Training](https://revltraining.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Principal, [Seveno Capital](https://seveno.capital/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Founder, [Park Hotel Group](https://www.parkhotelgroup.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenlawphg/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the powers of business, technology, and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and everyone wants to live longer. How does longevity combined with wellness and fitness help us to live longer? With me today, Allen Law, co-founder of MOVE Repeat, chairman of REVL, training Principal of Seveno Capital, founder of Park Hotel Group. Allen, first of all, a big thank you to you and Grand Park City Hall for hosting me here and having this face-to-face interview. So to begin, welcome to the show. **Allen Law:** Thank you. ## Allen Law's Origin Story **Bernard Leong:** Your journey from hotel magnet to a wellness entrepreneur is fascinating. I always want to start with origin stories. Can you share how your business career began? **Allen Law:** I started with hotels as what I call an accidental hotelier. My family originally was in government manufacturing. Then they ventured out to fashion retailing and real estate back in Hong Kong during my grandfather's days. As the generation grew, our family had one very good philosophy whereby we only have one family member in one business unit. So as that generation grew from my grandfather's one to my dad's generation with six of them to my generation now with over 20 of us, and the next generation I cannot keep counting already. The idea for the family is to grow a business that you can somehow relate to, but yet it's a separate business. It then becomes a seeding venture and a business group on its own. For me, I started with hotels but in recent years I've started to seed businesses in the wellness and longevity medicine field, hoping to bring it to a much bigger platform and standalone as a business venture. ## Leadership Lessons from Hospitality **Bernard Leong:** You stepped into leadership at Park Hotel Group at just 24 years old, then transformed it into a regional hospitality leader. Reflecting on that experience, what leadership lessons did you internalize early on, especially from observing your family in business? **Allen Law:** I was literally a fresh grad from university in UK and I just got a call from my parents that they had invested in a hotel property in Hong Kong. They had no intention of learning how to run a hotel. So as the next generation who just graduated, I got the call from my father saying it was time for me to come back and start learning about the hotel business. I took the next flight home and literally drowned myself in the hotel. I started with almost a fast-track management training program that typically would take 24 months, but I completed it within nine months doing two shifts every day. At the end, I wrote a proposal to the family saying I saw tremendous opportunity for tourism across Asia. For us being in real estate, I felt putting more funds behind investing in hotels was a good move. That's when I got the family to set aside funds for me to invest further in the hotel business. That was less than one year after I joined. **Bernard Leong:** I remember you telling this interesting story at King's College. My wife was an alumni, and I happened to sit in as a spouse. That talk about how you set up the business from your entrepreneur journey was very inspiring. ## Transition to Wellness and Longevity **Bernard Leong:** Based on your shift from hospitality to wellness, fitness, and longevity business, what lessons from your career journey can you share with my audience? **Allen Law:** Getting your hands dirty. Go back to principle. What is the business set out to do? What is its ultimate goal beyond financial success? In business, every business has its P&L, costs to pay, and wants to make money. But that is just financial sustainability, a given for any business. What makes a successful company is ultimately falling back to what is your ultimate purpose and impact in society. Once we have that "why" very solid, when it comes to the "what" and the "how," it will be a lot easier. **Bernard Leong:** That's really good advice. First principles thinking is what you're alluding to. ## Defining Wellness, Fitness, and Longevity **Bernard Leong:** For the benefit of the general audience, could you share how you define the business of wellness, fitness, and longevity? During our lunch before this conversation, you spoke about the six-pillar framework on longevity. Can you walk us through the different pillars and explain how the framework informs your strategy? **Allen Law:** The wellness and longevity view is quite wide, but ultimately it goes back to the principle of what are the foundations of living a healthy long life. If you follow the lifestyle medicine principle, they have six key pillars, some of which the audiences and the public already know, but somehow is getting tough for people to execute. ## The Six Pillars of Longevity **Allen Law:** The first one is sleep well. Literally just sleep well. Eight hours of sleep is essential. If you don't get good sleep, it affects the rest of your day. Next is physical exercise. Everyone knows exercise is healthy for us and proven by many scientific research. It not only helps us keep a healthy body but helps our mind get sharper as we go through our day making important decisions. Next is food intake. Do we go with the healthy diet or the junk food that is easily accessible today? In lifestyle medicine research, they say you probably make over a hundred decisions just on food alone - whether to look at this food, eat that food, how much to eat, and when to eat. In one day, you'll have a hundred of these questions. These small decisions you make daily will affect your food choices. Then there's avoiding harmful substances like cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. That's almost a given. Having positive social connection is critical for mental health. Last but not least is stress management. We are all somehow caught up in a very stressed environment, especially those living in the city. Most of us work in high-stress environments, but how we manage and de-stress is an important process to put in place. **Bernard Leong:** I totally agree about stress management. I once went to the U.S., stayed in the Bay Area, and took a stress management course that helped me take away the heartburn I was having. ## Market Opportunities and Business Strategies **Bernard Leong:** What is the potential market opportunity and how are your businesses - MOVE Repeat, REVL, and Seveno Capital - poised to make a difference in these segments? **Allen Law:** We started with exercise first. I co-founded MOVE Repeat two years ago, and we acquired the largest yoga chain in Singapore, Yoga Movement. Last year I brought Yoga Movement to Hong Kong as well, with the intention to continue a chain operation there and subsequently in North Asia. We also own the Strong Pilates Singapore franchise. Early this year we announced the acquisition of REVL Training from Australia. Currently, MOVE Repeat has three brands operating in five countries with over 50 studios. ## Scaling Fitness and Wellness Brands **Bernard Leong:** What drove that transition from hospitality to fitness, wellness, and longevity? How did your experience from Park Hotel Group shape the way you approach MOVE Repeat, REVL, and other businesses to scale so quickly? **Allen Law:** When running Park Hotel Group, we looked at what part of wellness we were already involved in. All our hotels had a gym, a pool, and some resort hotels had spa treatments and yoga sessions. Fitness offering was already part of the hotel, just a very small business we called the "minor operating department." I was thinking, since we already had some limited know-how in the fitness area, why not start looking into how we could grow that fitness segment as a business on its own. That's how MOVE Repeat was born. I was practicing at Yoga Movement at that time and loved their culture, brand, and service delivery, so I got in touch with their founder and we got a deal done. **Bernard Leong:** Scaling is always one of the most difficult parts, but probably because you already have previous experience scaling hotels, this is much easier? **Allen Law:** Scaling is actually not the difficult part, to be honest. The importance is having your initial concept right - the proof of concept. You need to make sure your first offering is good. We all make mistakes, especially with the first one, and need to continue fine-tuning until you've established a model you can multiply. For Yoga Movement, Strong Pilates, and REVL Training, they all established proven models whereby they already multiplied to a certain extent within their initial geographical locations. For me, it's just taking something already well established and taking it beyond their home market. That's the easier part. With my experience in different jurisdictions, understanding local rules, regulations, and nuances makes the inroad to a new market easier and reduces risk. Now we're focusing on building community in each market. You'd be surprised how many visitors come to our locations and express interest in becoming franchisees in new markets. It's about having that foundation of a community whereby your community is so satisfied with the offering that they want to bring you somewhere else. **Bernard Leong:** You have Yoga Movement, REVL, MOVE Repeat, Pilates - diverse modalities. What's the thinking about building an ecosystem versus scaling one dominant brand? Do you leverage their diversity for centralized economies of scale, or do they help fulfill the fitness/wellness pillar of the six pillars? **Allen Law:** Each brand will have its own growth strategy, but at MOVE Repeat, we help each brand take out non-essential items - back-office administrative work, HR-related matters, marketing strategy. We handle these at the MOVE Repeat level, letting the brands focus on what they're good at - delivering service excellence at each studio and training their trainers and instructors to deliver new programs. MOVE Repeat helps brands outsource nuances while they focus on the important parts. We continue to look at other modalities and brands to add to the portfolio. We'll see strategic growth in the near future where we have a sizable collection of brands and operations across the world. At that point, we'll potentially introduce a cap membership or cross-credit system where you can be a MOVE Repeat member and access all the various brands. **Bernard Leong:** That would be what customers want given all these different modalities, accessible through just one brand. As chairman of REVL, what's the vision for that brand? **Allen Law:** For REVL, it's one of our fastest-growing brands within the portfolio. We expect to double our size in the next 12 months, and in three years, grow revenue sixfold. The growth trajectory is tremendous. Our team headquartered in Australia is working extremely hard to ensure our backend can support that growth. The demand is there, so it's about ensuring our supply chain and operation can support it. **Bernard Leong:** What drew you to that model? There's also localization required. Australia is somewhat similar to Singapore as city-based, but maybe different from other jurisdictions. How do you think about taking these global trends and localizing them? **Allen Law:** The global trend at least for REVL Training is strength and conditioning group exercise. More people are joining events like High Rocks as fitness competitions, and many of our members want to be trained for their games. REVL Training conducts internal games as well. Recently in Singapore, we collaborated with Rugby Seven and had our REVL games at the National Stadium. People now recognize it's not just about burning calories, which you typically see in running or cycling. People recognize you need to incorporate strength training as well. REVL is the best fit because you have both strength and cardio portions that train both sides. The global trend definitely supports what REVL Training is doing. **Bernard Leong:** What's interesting about consumer behavior in Singapore, Australia, or greater Asia Pacific regarding how people engage with fitness, lifestyle, and wellness? **Allen Law:** The trend is people want variety. The old model was each fitness brand trying to tie you in with a 12-month contract. We don't believe in contracts. We sell even single classes - you can just drop in for one class. If you want cheaper options, you can commit to 5, 10, or 20 classes. It's pay-as-you-go. This forces us to be on our toes because if our service isn't satisfactory, customers won't come back. This is customer obsession. It helps our entire team focus on making every session count, every customer satisfaction count, instead of the old days where someone signs a contract, and whether they come in or are happy doesn't really matter. ## Holistic Approach to Longevity **Bernard Leong:** What's one thing you know about the longevity, fitness, and wellness business that very few do? **Allen Law:** Everything I know the industry probably knows also, but what stands out is the word "holistic." The market currently focuses mostly on one piece of the puzzle. Exercise brands are all about exercise. They might touch a little on nutrition - your trainer may say you need to eat healthier or increase protein intake - but ultimately, each offering is niche in one pillar of the longevity pillars. The importance is not about one pillar, but looking holistically at all six key pillars and how they interrelate. If you don't sleep well, how do you expect to go through your day properly? Exercise is important, but so is recovery and sleep. If you don't recover, how do you exercise again tomorrow? **Bernard Leong:** My wife and I mandate ourselves to sleep eight hours a day because it really affects energy the next day. **Allen Law:** It's all about holistic wellness. You need to focus on all key pillars, not just one. You may not be excellent in all - that's fine. Take small steps on each rather than taking one extreme. ## Upcoming Ventures in Longevity **Bernard Leong:** I know you're venturing into longevity with a new business still in stealth mode. Can you share about the upcoming launch and how it complements the broader MOVE Repeat vision? **Allen Law:** It's exactly about being holistic. Many people ask what we're trying to do and how it's different from market offerings. What we're offering can be found, but you'd need to go to 6-8 different places. We're bringing all of this in-house to one location with one brand and one team to handle all 6-7 things you'd potentially need to go outside for, including the medicine part. We have a longevity clinic focusing on lifestyle medicine with medical doctors and our chief scientific officer endorsing the protocols, research, and how we prescribe lifestyle to individuals, giving advice on active steps they can take to improve their health. We incorporate health coaches to guide you along your wellness journey. Our facilities include exercise options like Pilates, yoga, and gym. We have a recovery area with contrast therapy, cryotherapy, and oxygen chambers. We're working with sleep specialists and consultants to guide you on incorporating sleep into daily life, not to mention food, which is extremely important. We have dieticians and nutritionists helping craft menus for our F&B offering and providing consultations to meet each person's needs. Everyone's taste buds are different, and most want variety in cuisine. We don't stick with one cuisine, so we encourage the team to provide variety suitable to individual preferences and circumstances. **Bernard Leong:** My wife and I took some of these practices. It looks like you're taking the whole thing to scale with the entire end-to-end process customized for everyone. ## Longevity Startups and Investments **Bernard Leong:** There seems to be a strong movement of startups entering the longevity sector. Singapore is a hotbed - I'm part of the Angel Network with tech executives, the [XA Network](https://xanetwork.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), looking into longevity startups. There's [Mito Health](https://mitohealth.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) locally through Y Combinator, and a well-known venture capitalist who's a former co-founder of match dot com is involved. There are different spectrum approaches from healthcare, fitness, and technology perspectives. What are your thoughts on reconciling these different strengths? **Allen Law:** Now you need to add Seveno Capital, where our fund is 100% focused on longevity and health span. We've received so much interest from various startups in the longevity field, which is why we set up this fund. We see a funding gap despite what you mentioned about funds putting money behind it. We're trying to provide a fund with extreme focus and know-how in the longevity field to back these ideas, while having scientists and researchers endorse whether these ideas and projects can potentially be successful. **Bernard Leong:** Could they even be integrated into the business as part of the collaboration? **Allen Law:** It's not a requirement, but potentially as our wellness, fitness, and longevity portfolio grows, there will be synergy across different brands in the portfolio. It's strictly not a must, but most partners see us as a better choice of funding partner because beyond money and capital, they get know-how and support from our wider portfolio. **Bernard Leong:** I should probably bridge the XA team with you for a conversation. ## Designing a Comprehensive Wellness Facility **Bernard Leong:** The 38,000 square foot facility you're creating in Singapore is a significant step, putting medical, fitness, and wellness all in one place. How do you think about the medical science and clinical expertise embedded in the design and delivery? **Allen Law:** It's the first of its kind in Singapore, if not in Asia. You'll find very little similar setup outside. We go back to first principles - what do we want to achieve? We want to cause positive impact to one's health span. The more people we can help, the more successful we are. We asked if the issue is a knowledge gap and determined it's not. People know what's important to live a healthy life, but how come so many aren't living healthily and have chronic diseases? The data and trends show it's getting worse. The gap is between knowledge and action. The hardest part is changing one's lifestyle. Everyone says they're busy, don't have time, don't have money. But if we do a zero-based analysis for our lifestyle - assuming we have nothing planned today, what would we do? We might start with meditation, maybe a yoga session, then eat a healthy breakfast before starting work. Instead, most people dive into email and check their phones first. Perhaps we can dial back and apply a zero-based analysis to our routine for a healthier outcome. Our offering is built around that. We have a large team of experts and professionals to help people design their daily routines. We become their buddy to encourage, remind, and sometimes nudge them to ensure they make lifestyle changes, which are difficult. Sometimes you literally need a buddy on this journey. Sometimes you have cheat days - that's fine. It's about how you incorporate all this into daily life. It can't be too hard, or after a month, you'll forget everything and be back to square one. **Bernard Leong:** I notice this in fitness training. You get a coach not because you need them to count reps but to push you to do more weight. ## Evaluating Longevity Startups **Bernard Leong:** With Seveno Capital, you have the mindset of an entrepreneur. When evaluating investments in the longevity space, what specific traits and qualities do you look for in founders or market segments that you find most compelling? **Allen Law:** For Seveno, we have a very clear mission, so our first filter is whether the startup or founder's mindset aligns with what we set out to do - improving health span. The second is examining how the founder intends to deliver human health span benefits versus just creating a nice story or making quick money. We need to drill down to the real intent. Is there a deeper story driving the founder? Every startup faces many challenges, and whether a founder can persevere with determination makes the difference between success and failure. Having a deep understanding of the founder's philosophy and mindset behind starting the business is our second most important criterion. **Bernard Leong:** What are your long-term visions for integrating technology and science across wellness, fitness, and longevity businesses? It's very multidisciplinary. What mental models do you need to navigate such a business when technology people come from a tech viewpoint and medical people from a medical viewpoint? **Allen Law:** First and foremost, our offering is anchored by science. We ensure everything we do or advise is science-backed and evidence-based. Data is important - tracking how your biometrics look today, and then after going through certain programs, diagnostics, and protocols, how your numbers look three months later. We want to show people realistically and scientifically what the data looks like if they follow certain steps with us. We believe those data will drive people to want more and progress through their health journey with us. ## Building a Health-Conscious Community **Bernard Leong:** During our lunch, I clearly remember your emphasis on community. How do you envisage the role of community in promoting holistic health across your ventures? The Pilates and Yoga Movement initiatives are all community-based growth. **Allen Law:** If you look at today's longevity offerings, most attract the wealthy top 5% of the population, with some even marketed as status symbols costing hundreds of thousands a year. What we're trying to do, with the help of technology and AI, is democratize our offering to bring down costs and open it up to the middle 50% of the population who can afford healthier options, improving the Blue Zone in Singapore and the region. We strongly believe the science is strong but the action is weak. Improving health at a population level for a Blue Zone is achievable. The stumbling block is creating a model where it's easy enough for people to start making small changes that, with data feedback over months, they can see results and become advocates themselves. The more people involved, the more it becomes the social norm. The old social norm was going to a bar to drink and chat. Now alcohol sales are reducing, and we hope to see the social norm shift to yoga studios, gyms, or healthy diets as places for social connection. **Bernard Leong:** In fact, people don't even want to drink alcohol anymore. They want non-alcoholic beverages that taste similar, which has taken away about 24% of alcoholic business. **Allen Law:** Exactly. Most big alcohol brands now sell non-alcoholic versions of the same products. ## Final Thoughts and Recommendations **Bernard Leong:** What's one question you wish more people would ask you about REVL, MOVE Repeat, or any of your businesses or longevity? **Allen Law:** I would say the "why" behind why we are in this business. The "why" is so important but is rarely asked. Most people want to know about growth or how offerings differ from competitors. For myself personally, it's all about having a positive impact on society. We've chosen wellness, fitness, and longevity to have that positive impact. I'm personally putting a lot of energy, funds, and capital behind it to ensure we educate the community and society to establish and adopt healthy, active lifestyles that will benefit the entire population. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: What does great look like for REVL, MOVE Repeat, and all the businesses including Seveno Capital for the next few years? **Allen Law:** It's definitely community building, whether building an investment community supporting small businesses in the same field, or like REVL or Yoga Movement, continuing to build communities that engage with individuals and share why yoga or strength conditioning training is beneficial. Building that community is ultimately our most important task. With that, the organization will grow with community growth. If our community doesn't grow, the organization will stagnate as demand is capped. **Bernard Leong:** I like the approach because one of the six pillars you highlighted is the importance of social interactions. The community part is actually very hard. The first five pillars are possible, but the community part is really the strength of what you're building. **Allen Law:** It's actually the magic touch. It's like the old saying that word of mouth is the best marketing. If you build a community where users or customers are happy with your offering, they'll tell their friends and family. I can do yoga anywhere, even roll out a mat in my backyard, but when I enter a yoga studio, the vibe and energy shared within the studio is totally different. That community, whether verbal or non-verbal, just being in the same space, you sense the energy in the room. When you're chilling in the lounge area chatting with others who are either new to wellness and exercise or have been practicing for years, the conversation is very positive and encouraging for the entire community. I always urge friends and associates to just take that first step of engaging with some of these wellness communities. That's all you need. You'll feel the vibe, get positive energy from it, and want to do more yourself. **Bernard Leong:** That's a very good way to close the question. Allen, thank you for coming to the show. In closing, any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Allen Law:** I recently read "[The Whole Story](https://www.amazon.sg/Whole-Story-Adventures-Love-Capitalism/dp/1637745125?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Whole Foods founder John Mackey. It's quite inspiring how he started Whole Foods and is now engaged in a similar business called "Love Life" - a lifestyle offering encouraging healthier lifestyle choices with facilities to support that. **Bernard Leong:** That's an interesting book. I bought it but haven't started reading it yet. Final question - how can my audience find you? **Allen Law:** The easiest would be my LinkedIn profile. I regularly update it - Allen Law - you'll find me there. **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find the podcast everywhere. We just hit 100K subscribers this week. Allen, many thanks for coming on the show. I look forward to continuing the conversation. **Allen Law:** Thank you very much. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. 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In the conversation, Alice explained WhatsApp's three guiding principles: simple, reliable, and private. She emphasized that the features they say "no" to are often more important than those they approve, highlighting how WhatsApp has evolved beyond personal messaging to include business services that serve over 200 million businesses globally and balancing innovation with trust on how Meta AI is integrated into the platform. Last but not least, Alice describes what great would look like for WhatsApp continuing to be the most private way for people to communicate while maintaining simplicity and reliability at global scale. --- > "Now, some people are only ever going to want to use WhatsApp to message the people in their life, and they should be able to carry on doing that and have an incredibly simple experience in doing so. But we're increasingly seeing that users want to use WhatsApp for more than messaging close friends and family. It's why we're doing things like business messaging. It's why we built new features like channels and status and updates tab separate from your personal chats. We think that if we carry on getting the core of private messaging right, it also gives us the opportunity to build more of these features that users want." - **Alice Newton-Rex** **Profile:** **Alice Newton-Rex**, Vice President & Head of Product, [WhatsApp](https://www.whatsapp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-newton-rex-4713191a/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and I often say that in a world where privacy is increasingly scrutinized, the true differentiator for platforms is how they balance innovation with trust. How do we continue to evolve messaging in a way that is both intelligent and private? With me today is Alice Newton-Rex, Vice President and Head of Product for [WhatsApp](https://www.whatsapp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) to dive into this very question. We explore how WhatsApp, being used by probably 2 billion people globally \[which has been updated to [3 billion by TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/01/whatsapp-now-has-more-than-3-billion-users/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on 1 May 2025 and you will hear 2 billion here given the recording was done weeks before the announcement\], is shaping the future of private messaging, leveraging Meta AI and empowering business across emerging markets. Alice, welcome to the show. **Alice Newton-Rex:** Hi. Thank you so much for having me on. **Bernard Leong:** It's early morning in Singapore. In preparing for this interview, I found out that we are both alumni from Cambridge University in the UK, not the other one in Boston. So to start with the origin story, how did you begin your journey? **Alice Newton-Rex:** When I was at Cambridge, I studied classics, Latin and ancient Greek as well as the culture of those two civilizations. Learning the ancient languages was a really good background for the rigours of learning coding languages, and learning about how people lived in societies very different from my own was an important grounding in the empathy needed to build products that will serve people in different countries around the world. I think lots of people underestimate the benefits of an education in the humanities, even if you're planning to have a technical career. After my undergraduate degree, I did a year-long fellowship at Harvard where I learned to code among other things and worked with a group at MIT developing a mobile health app for use in low-income settings. Then I came back to the UK and started my career at the UK's then-new government digital service where we set out to build public services online that were as well designed and easy to use as the best private sector digital services. After that, I joined a Series A startup called WorldRemit, an app for international money transfer, mostly for migrants sending money from the US and Europe back to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Over the next five years, I led the product and design teams as we grew the service to more than 150 countries around the world and the business to be worth billions of dollars. Then I joined WhatsApp initially to lead their product team in the UK. WhatsApp has two engineering sites in California and London. **Bernard Leong:** So that was how you ended up at WhatsApp and subsequently from there, you are now leading product. Given that you've gone through the government side and doing a lot of work related to messaging in the emerging markets, can you share any lessons about your career journey so far? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I think a lot of people see their career as a series of stepping stones that they have to make it across to get to some career goal. I think this is a mistake. In my experience, people accelerate faster when they work on problems they really care about rather than choosing roles for some perceived future value to their career. Even if that doesn't work out, at least you've always been working on problems you care about. I didn't think for a moment when I joined WhatsApp that within three years I would be the head of product, and I definitely wasn't planning for that. But I loved my job, that showed, and I think it contributed to me getting this role. **Bernard Leong:** I think that's a point - usually it's the journey rather than the destination itself. I probably should get to the main subject of the day. I want to talk about WhatsApp, a little bit about business, Meta AI and privacy. WhatsApp is now more than a chat app; it's probably essential infrastructure in many parts of the world. So for a start, how do you think about prioritizing product innovation for such a vast global and culturally diverse user base? I'm sure in your journey, a user of WhatsApp in Singapore is probably very different from a user in India or maybe in Australia. **Alice Newton-Rex:** Absolutely, over 2 billion people in more than 180 countries rely on WhatsApp every day, and we take that responsibility really seriously. We always try to stay true to three core principles as we design the app: simple, reliable, and private. You'll probably hear me say those three words a lot today, so you'll be able to empathize with my team, who also hear them a lot. In fact, "simple, reliable, private" is the name of my conference room in the office. I think you can't say something enough. Let me say a bit more about what it means. We think the app should be so simple that anyone anywhere could use it. People often tell me, "even my grandparents find it easy to use WhatsApp," which I love. It needs to be so reliable that it will work even if you're on a basic smartphone in rural India with a poor data connection. We've learned that if we make it work even in the toughest circumstances, then it actually works better for everyone, even if you are a tech worker with the latest phone and super high-speed wifi in Singapore. And it needs to be private because without privacy in your communication, you aren't free to be yourself, not to mention that you're vulnerable to hackers or criminals or anyone who wants to steal your information. So anything we build has to be designed with these three principles in mind. In terms of picking what to build, a huge part of our process is listening to our users and understanding what things they want to do with the product or what they are already trying to use it for but getting stuck. Now, some people are only ever going to want to use WhatsApp to message the people in their life, and they should be able to carry on doing that and have an incredibly simple experience in doing so. But we're increasingly seeing that users want to use WhatsApp for more than messaging close friends and family. It's why we're doing things like business messaging. It's why we built new features like channels and status and updates tab separate from your personal chats. We think that if we carry on getting the core of private messaging right, it also gives us the opportunity to build more of these features that users want. **Bernard Leong:** One interesting question because I also like product as well. When you first stepped into being the VP of product role, what was the steepest learning curve in leading such a high-impact platform? I'm pretty sure that as you said, the three core principles need to be right because you're designing for so many users in the world. **Alice Newton-Rex:** The steepest learning curve was probably learning that the features you say no to are more important than the features you say yes to. With such a massive and diverse user base, it's easy to come up with 50 ideas before breakfast - cool blue sky things that tens of millions of people might want to use, but that leaves a few billion people who don't want them. Not only does that clutter up the app, but it also distracts you from working on the core things that people really care about - things that sometimes sound less exciting, like driving up core reliability or making small improvements for the user journeys that collectively people are using billions of times a day. Like, recently we just made it a little bit easier to send a reaction, and it's had a major impact on how people use the app - many more reactions are being sent. So I have to say no to a lot of ideas and keep my team laser-focused on the things that most people really want, irrespective of whether they're super noticeable, like introducing channels or AI, or very subtle, like improving the results when you search for your contacts. **Bernard Leong:** I find the channels part interesting because I can actually get information, specifically when I teach in the university and need to disseminate information to the students on my side of the world. For context, can you give my audience a snapshot of WhatsApp's current product footprint? I probably started right at the beginning when I first used WhatsApp - it was basically sending private messages, images and videos. Today there are a lot of business services as well. **Alice Newton-Rex:** At its core, WhatsApp is a private messaging app for conversations between friends and family, and I think that's the main WhatsApp we're all familiar with. Outside of the calls and chats tab, the other most important tab is the updates tab, which is where you'll find status - that's WhatsApp's stories product for sharing updates from your daily life with contacts - and channels, which were introduced in 2023 as a way to keep up to date with things that you're interested in. Then we have the WhatsApp business app, which is a free app with more than 200 million users made for small and medium businesses that allows them to connect with their customers. Lastly, we have the WhatsApp business platform - that's our product for larger businesses that need a more scalable solution to connect with their customers. These are businesses like an airline sending boarding passes to their users, or an e-commerce company, or a bank. People can either reach out to receive support from a business like this or they opt in to receive useful information in return. We charge businesses to send these types of messages. **Bernard Leong:** In many countries, mobile is probably the primary gateway to the internet. How do those usage patterns actually influence how you think about the product? Because the entry point is different. **Alice Newton-Rex:** You're absolutely right about mobile. Indeed for many people around the world, I think WhatsApp is really their experience of the internet. That's definitely shaped our business products. For example, one of our two major revenue lines is click-to-WhatsApp ads. These are ads that run on Facebook and Instagram. When you click on them, instead of taking you to a business's website, they take you directly into a WhatsApp chat with the business. A lot of the businesses we serve don't even have a website - they just run their whole operation on WhatsApp. So it's great for them to be able to advertise in a way that suits their business. On the consumer side, we design features with an awareness of people's mobile behavior. In a lot of countries around the world, including many in Asia, we know that users often have more than one SIM and therefore more than one number on their phone. So we give them the ability to have two numbers on WhatsApp that they can toggle between. As well as people having two numbers on one phone in lower-income settings, lots of people share phones within a household. That makes some of our privacy features so important, like Chat Lock, which allows you to hide particularly personal chats so they don't appear in your inbox and you enter a special pin to access them. **Bernard Leong:** That is interesting because I actually didn't think about use cases like one house sharing one phone but with multiple users. Have any market-specific behaviours or trends surprised you from a product leadership standpoint, specifically in emerging economies? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I spend most of my life in the UK where WhatsApp is ubiquitous for speaking to friends and family. But when I travel to other countries, especially emerging economies, I am often amazed at how much people use WhatsApp for interacting with businesses. This is true also in Southeast Asia, especially countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore where a lot of small businesses are already using WhatsApp to connect with their customers, whether that's a local grocer, pet shop owner, or fashion outlet. This behavior happened long before we ever had specific business products, but it's what inspired us to launch the WhatsApp business app in 2018 and make it easier for businesses to do the things they were already trying to do. This version of WhatsApp has features like away messages because you can't always be on as a business owner, or catalogs, which lets them share their products easily. Another consumer trend we've seen, particularly in some emerging markets, is users prefer to send voice messages over typing because they're fast and easy and let you have a more expressive conversation. But the problem with voice messages is the receivers don't always like listening to them, perhaps if you're on the move or in a loud place or you just get a long voice message and don't have time to listen to it. For some of those moments, we introduced voice message transcriptions last year which turn the voice message into text so you can keep up with it however you want. **Bernard Leong:** I have not encountered that, but I do know that in China, most people would do voice messaging much more often compared to other parts of the world. When I see Chinese users using WhatsApp to communicate with me, they end up doing the same behavior. But the transcription feature - I should try to figure out how to use that because I would prefer just seeing the message rather than listening to it. One more curious point. In my previous role as a CIO, we were looking at [WhatsApp for Business](https://business.whatsapp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) to have one of the subsidiaries use it as a customer relationship management tool to engage for purchase of new properties. WhatsApp for Business supports everything from very small merchants to global enterprises like Singapore Airlines - I now receive my notifications through them via WhatsApp. How has this ecosystem evolved and what does the current scale look like today? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I think you're right to call out the very different kinds of businesses using WhatsApp for Business. As I said, it all kicked off in 2018 when we started really supporting businesses, although in fact they had been widespread on the platform for a long time before that. Maybe a good way to understand the scale is to look at some of the kinds of businesses. There's a small family business called Ruly Silver that makes customized jewelry specializing in wedding bands. They're based in Jakarta, Indonesia. They've got just one small physical store, but using the WhatsApp business app and its various tools, they've been able to export their jewelry all the way to places like Paris. It's not an isolated example. Today there are more than 200 million users of the WhatsApp business app. Staying with Indonesia examples, a large established organization like Bank Mandiri uses WhatsApp Business Platform to manage close to 10,000 interactions daily. When I was in India recently, I bought a ticket for the Delhi metro directly within a WhatsApp thread like tens of thousands of other people do all the time. And this is happening at scale - at WhatsApp scale - all around the world. **Bernard Leong:** I forgot to mention, for me, Saturday is when I go to send all my kids via Grab driver across all the different tuition centers. Most of the tuition centers use WhatsApp for all communications that are disseminated to us, even down to dealing with payments. So it's pretty ubiquitous in terms of how users are engaging businesses in this part of the world. I'm quite curious - WhatsApp is renowned for its commitment to privacy. This was true from the beginning, even before it was acquired by Meta. How do you ensure these new features, including AI, still align with the foundational promise of privacy? I think this is an area you are probably most qualified to talk about. **Alice Newton-Rex:** I'm really pleased you asked about that because privacy is at the heart of everything we do. I mentioned it's in our core three design principles. We use end-to-end encryption by default to protect all your chats with friends, family, colleagues, so that no one else, not even WhatsApp can see them. That's the very baseline of our privacy promise. But we also look for ways to make WhatsApp even more private on top of that. We think of these as adding additional layers of protection. In recent years, I'm thinking of features like disappearing messages and view-once messages, so that conversations disappear on a timer. We've added a bunch of group controls, like the ability to leave a group silently - that was a hotly demanded one - and also control who can add you to a group. We've given users more power to decide who sees when you're online and silence unknown callers. Right now we're testing advanced chat privacy, which will give users even more control over who can export your chats or save media that you share with them in one-to-ones and groups. As for AI, Meta AI only reads what you share with it, but your personal messages remain end-to-end encrypted. Chats with AI are visually indicated so it's very clear that they're different from your personal messages and conversations. Because we've had such great feedback on AI and WhatsApp so far, we are continuing to explore ways to make it more useful, maybe to give you help in writing your messages or reading your noisy group chats. There are, of course, major technical challenges about how we can do this in a private way, so we won't be releasing any features until we've innovated enough behind the scenes to ensure that this can be done while preserving the privacy of everyone's personal messages. **Bernard Leong:** AI is a little bit more tricky because you have the foundation models which are pretty large and require quite a lot of server-side computing. There are also what we call small language models. Perhaps from there, until the best model comes along, maybe that would be more useful when it goes into phones themselves. You already talked about your three key principles. Let's say you want to decide whether a new feature, specifically anything around privacy or AI, should be added. How do the principles guide your team in thinking about it, so that it actually adds value rather than introducing complexity for the product? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I touched on this a little bit earlier, but I think it is the central trade-off decision that we're always trying to make. The principle is: if you just want to use WhatsApp to message the people in your life, then you should be able to do that and have a great experience. It's so important that we protect that core experience. But because we are always listening to our users, we know that there are a lot of other people who are eager to do more with WhatsApp. We want to be able to meet the most important of those needs with other optional experiences. Channels, which is one of the biggest product changes I've led in this role, is a good example of how we approach this. We'd heard from a lot of people that they wanted to be able to keep up with the topics and organizations they're interested in alongside their private messages. So we built channels as a one-way broadcast tool and we decided to put it in the updates tab, so it'd be separate from your private messages. We also wanted to build the most private version of this feature. For example, no one else can see which channels you are following. So even though it was introducing a broadcast feature, we wanted to adhere to our principles around privacy. So far it's proved quite popular. Some big use cases are sports teams giving real-time updates on matches, entertainment like Indonesian Idol or Netflix, governments like the Singapore government, which has a big channel with over a hundred thousand followers, and some celebrities. I loved your university example as well. But it's not for everyone, and that's fine. If you don't want to follow a single channel, you don't have to, and you're not going to see any channel updates. With WhatsApp, we want you to always feel in control. **Bernard Leong:** One of the best use cases I have for my students is because I teach AI in universities, both technical and for business executives, and the field is changing so much - practically every week. It almost becomes like my weekly channel to send updated information to them. I always tell them, whatever I teach you, in three months something has changed. So I made a commitment that we will update any materials that have changed and send it to them across WhatsApp. When I watch WhatsApp, the iteration doesn't tend to be so fast. What is the balance between iterating on the product quickly versus maintaining user trust? Especially working at your scale, because one feature change can affect so many people, and different cultures may have different nuances in how they use WhatsApp. **Alice Newton-Rex:** That's a great question. The real answer is if we ever encounter a conflict between iterating, especially trying to iterate fast, and user trust, then we would pick user trust every time. That's quite rare in technology companies. We would rather move more slowly if a feature needs more time to hit our quality bar or be as simple, reliable, and private as what users expect and deserve from WhatsApp. Having said that, getting improvements into the hands of our users faster has been a big focus for me and the WhatsApp leadership team since I took on this role. We've evolved the organization to make that possible. I think it's been working. We are shipping improvements faster than ever before, and we've had some recognition for this. For example, last year we were one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of the Year, which would've been inconceivable for WhatsApp only a few years ago. But more important than industry awards, we've heard a huge amount of love from our users for all of the new features we've brought them lately, some of which they've been hoping for a long time. Whether it's core messaging features like editing messages or the unread filter, or features and updates like channels. A great one we launched pretty recently this year is the ability to add music to your status, and that's delighted a lot of people. **Bernard Leong:** I saw that one. When I look at every product, I always try to work out exactly what kind of users they are intended for. What is one thing that you know about privacy and WhatsApp that very few do? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I think very few people know how much work goes into building WhatsApp's high levels of privacy, especially at our scale. Encryption introduces big technical challenges into features that otherwise seem simple. For example, adding polls, which is one of those features people have been asking for ages, and we did not too long ago. Because with encryption, so much happens on the client side versus on the server. Another example was adding end-to-end encrypted backups, which was a big technical challenge if you consider that over a hundred billion messages are sent every day. We were the first product at scale to introduce this, and then Apple followed, which we thought was great. But it required an entirely new framework for key storage and cloud storage. We were happy to invest in that work so that we could give people more privacy. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of the innovations at this kind of scale are very subtle and not many people realize it. I think Facebook has actually innovated not just in that, but even in databases and open computing as well. And now with Meta AI integrated into WhatsApp, what is the mental model that's going to be guiding AI within that? What are the most interesting use cases that will be exciting from your vantage point when integrating AI into messaging? You alluded to the fact that people were thinking about asking the AI to frame messages. **Alice Newton-Rex:** In many countries, as you say, you can now chat with the Meta AI assistant directly in WhatsApp. My personal belief is that messaging will be the main way that people interact with AI in the future. The promise of LLMs is you can find out anything or eventually do anything just by having a chat with an intelligent agent. We've designed WhatsApp for chatting. I also think WhatsApp can democratize AI by making it available to a global audience, not just the usual tech elites and early adopters. We're already seeing the signs of this. Meta AI within WhatsApp is popular in the US but it's also been really popular in countries like India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Colombia. I'm excited about how useful it is and how it can help people get things done in their daily lives. Some of the popular use cases for Meta AI on WhatsApp are for homework help, whether for yourself or your children. Or for recipe ideas and other information seeking. Sometimes people tell me they're using things like, "somebody sent me a message about this thing - help me understand what that thing is." People are also using it to be creative. That's another really interesting avenue. You can generate stickers or images of anything you like. You can even generate images of yourself, which is pretty fun, like "imagine me climbing Mount Everest." Lastly, there are big opportunities that AI is creating for business messaging. We see an opportunity for AI assistants to help businesses of any size benefit from being able to have closer, more engaging interactions with their customers. We're testing agents right now with a small number of businesses in a few markets to start, including Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and we expect to scale more soon. I'm just excited to see where we can take it. **Bernard Leong:** I have two questions for that, but I'll go with a more interesting one first. For the upcoming features, you're testing things like AI agents for businesses. How do you specifically design it to enhance user control or safety within WhatsApp itself? **Alice Newton-Rex:** User control and safety is paramount when we're designing anything. Specifically in the case of the AI that businesses are using, a huge part of it is making sure everybody understands the nature of the conversation. The user has to get information and choose to continue to know that they're having a conversation with an AI business. The business is also doing the same - knows that the AI can be responding on their behalf to their customers. But zooming out from the AI agents specifically, a lot of our safety work is done in the backend, such as using machine learning to identify spams and scammers based on things like how many messages are they sending per second, and then we can remove those bad accounts. Some of it's more visible stuff. WhatsApp is fundamentally architected to protect people from unwanted contacts. You can't search for people or message them unless you have their phone number. Whenever you get a message from someone who isn't in your contacts, we've always asked you right away if you want to block or report them. We've tried to enhance some of these safety features and controls more recently. Maybe AI will help people impersonate other people, but when somebody starts a conversation with you, now we show a context card when you get a message from someone you don't know. That will give you information like: is the phone number saved in your phone book? What country is the number from? Do you have any groups in common? These kinds of things help people decide whether they want to continue the conversation or block the number. Similarly, now we're giving people the option to silence all unknown callers since we know a lot of scams take place via calls. **Bernard Leong:** I totally like your block feature. When I get an unknown number, typically even if it sounds relatively legitimate, sometimes it's actually a scamming message, so I just press the block button and get rid of it. If it's actually surprisingly a business account, I like the way you designed it so when I press that button, it automatically gets everything done, and you even give me the option to delete the conversation as well. How do you ensure safe AI features, which may require context of your information, remain non-intrusive and preserve the kind of simplicity that WhatsApp has? I'm not even talking about adding things like hallucination, because AI also has the propensity of making errors. **Alice Newton-Rex:** First and most importantly, all of our AI features are optional. If you don't want to use them and you just want to keep messaging the way you are today, you can totally do that. I mentioned earlier that we try and make the chats with AI really visually distinct so it's clear to people that these are different than their personal messages and conversations. But in general, I actually think one of the interesting things is that people like interacting with AI within WhatsApp because they find it simple. They don't have to download and learn some new app. They can just interact by chatting in the thread the way they normally do. **Bernard Leong:** They actually sometimes just use the AI casually to generate an image or an emoji. Given that while a lot of people talk about this year as the year for AI agents, and now WhatsApp is becoming increasingly important for business and transactions, what are some of the key safety challenges that the product will be addressing from your point of view? **Alice Newton-Rex:** One big upcoming feature that's going to be really impactful is usernames, which are going to add an extra degree of privacy so that you don't need to share your phone number when you're messaging someone, including when you're messaging a business. We always make it clear to people when they are chatting with a business, and we let you block and report them and share the reasons that you're doing that. We've got policies in place that businesses have to follow about what they can or cannot sell or promote on WhatsApp. Recently we also launched Meta Verified, which is where we verify that someone is the real business they say they are. In return, we make it easier for businesses to build credibility with their customers by getting a blue verified badge and impersonation protection among some other things. **Bernard Leong:** For Meta Verified, how does the business user actually get access to it? Is it just registering through your platform and making sure that they upload the relevant documents to verify who they are, or some form of business know-your-customer? **Alice Newton-Rex:** It's exactly that. If you're a user of the WhatsApp business app, you can go through our verification flow where you need to provide some information about yourself, and then if we can verify you, we'll award you that verified blue badge. It comes with a bunch of additional useful features for businesses as well. **Bernard Leong:** How would you assess user trust, qualitatively or quantitatively, within WhatsApp? **Alice Newton-Rex:** We hear from our users in various ways. We get a ton of feedback and feature requests and people telling us what they like or what they don't like within the app itself, using the feedback option. That's how we originally heard a lot about people wanting reactions before we'd introduced that, for example. In fact, we had a massive spike in feedback after we started a gradual rollout of Meta AI in Indonesia, where vast numbers of people who didn't have access yet got in touch to say they wanted us to make it available to them immediately, which was encouraging. We also hear feedback on social and we listen to those channels carefully. And we travel to countries where WhatsApp is used a lot to hear from users on the ground. We think it's important for everyone who's building WhatsApp to use the app so they can learn from our users directly. Even the leadership team - I've personally made recent trips to India, Mexico, Brazil, to do user research about the app and on new features. Nothing really compares to getting to talk to people in person, see their context, and just learn more about their lives. **Bernard Leong:** In every trip you go, whether it's Mexico or India, you come back with this whole list of features that you and your team think about where to prioritize? **Alice Newton-Rex:** Yes, it's always a challenge for the team. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about WhatsApp? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I think I wish more people would ask me, why is privacy so important in communication? **Bernard Leong:** Why is privacy so important then? **Alice Newton-Rex:** Thank you. Privacy protects everyone, whether it's journalists talking to their sources, or conversations between doctors and patients, or when you need to share your credit card number with your child. The reality is all of our personal exchanges are at risk from increasing threats posed by hackers, malware companies, and more. But it goes beyond that. We believe in everyday privacy, not just privacy for the hypersensitive conversations, because everyday privacy makes you feel free to be yourself. You wouldn't feel comfortable being yourself if there was a camera in your living room recording everything you did and said. You wouldn't accept it in your physical life and you shouldn't accept it in your digital life either. Of course end-to-end encryption is the gold standard here. But another nice example of everyday privacy on WhatsApp is disappearing messages. It's a relief to know you can say what you want now and not have it hanging around forever and ever into the future. As we launched that, it's growing hugely. Now lots of people have it turned on by default for all of their conversations. **Bernard Leong:** I do know that specifically for younger kids and teenagers, they like to do that. So my traditional closing question: What does great look like for WhatsApp in the next few years on the product and privacy? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I think it looks like continuing to be the best, most private way that people can communicate and continuing to keep the app simple, reliable, and private for more than 2 billion people. **Bernard Leong:** Alice, many thanks for coming on the show and educating me on the evolution of WhatsApp. I'm talking about an app that I probably use at least 10% of the time on my mobile phone. In closing, any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I was trying to think if I could give pithy answers like business books or something, but honestly, I'm the mother to a two and 4-year-old, so I read a lot of children's books. And I think the older ones are all of the best ones, like [Dr. Seuss](https://www.seussville.com/books/?ref=analysepodcast.com). There are some great life lessons in there. I don't know if you know "[Oh, the Places You'll Go!](https://www.amazon.sg/Oh-Places-Youll-Dr-Seuss/dp/0679805273?ref=analysepodcast.com)", but the way it talks about handling adversity in life, I think that's brilliant. **Bernard Leong:** Believe it or not, I think children's books from the UK are actually better than most parts of the world. Like [Oliver Jeffers](https://oliverjeffers.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[author of Lost & Found\] and the other lady \[[Julia Donaldson](https://www.juliadonaldson.co.uk/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] who writes very good books on that. So how can my audience find you? **Alice Newton-Rex:** I'm on LinkedIn as Alice Newton-Rex, or if you're interested in getting more news about everything exciting that's coming up on WhatsApp and all of the features my team and I are working on, you can follow the official WhatsApp channel, as well as the @WhatsApp handle and @WhatsAppBusiness handles on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/whatsapp/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [X](https://x.com/WhatsApp?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/WhatsApp) and [LinkedIn](https://url.avanan.click/v2/r02/%5F%5F%5Fhttps:/urldefense.com/v3/%5F%5Fhttps:/www.linkedin.com/company/whatsapp%5F%5F;!!Bt8RZUm9aw!-SyreOA6l5HxKjHFXx0v6WiBhHPSwXYsMY-gHRkUFLVMpa%5Fh2jG5TJJ8KxX5FdS563Qj34FRnHa4qrG8iMEPhg$%5F%5F%5F.YXAxZTphcmNoZXl0cGU6YTpvOjIzYjUwN2Q3NGJiNzg5MWMxNzBhNDIzNGM2Yjg0ZGM3Ojc6Nzc5ZDphYzE0OTA1OTBkM2E3NGVhYWNhOTlkOWVhMjg3YzlmODFmMmQwYTBjYWZjZmQ3OTFjZTQ1MzNjOWRhOGYzNTQxOmg6VDpG?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** You can definitely find our podcast anywhere, from YouTube to Spotify. And of course, drop us feedback on any channel that you want to. Alice, many thanks for coming on the show, and thank you for sharing a lot of what you are building today with us. **Alice Newton-Rex:** Thank you too. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Beginning with his career journey from network engineering to tech leadership across Asian markets, Patrick explained how Databricks pioneered the Lakehouse architecture and integrated generative AI into enterprise workloads. Emphasizing the critical role of data quality in AI success, he showcased compelling customer case studies from across ASEAN and revealed striking generative AI trends in Asia - notably that 85% of organizations lack proper architecture to support AI workloads, reinforcing that clean data remains foundational for effective AI implementation. Patrick concluded by sharing his vision of what success looks like for Databricks in Southeast Asia. --- > " We did a survey with The Economist globally which obviously included Europe and APAC as well. And we asked the question, 'Does my organization's current architecture supports the unique demands of AI workloads.' Basically 85% said, 'No. We don't have the architecture to support it.' Some partially does, but it needs lots of modifications. So we can still feel a lot of people are still in the early stages and that data point ties back to: 85% of GenAI \[proof of concepts\] has not gone into production. I think that another interesting point is, 'Does your architecture connect AI application? -your relevant business data.' which is probably nearly even more important for me. Again, it was still about 80%- 'We don't have that.' Because that business data is all over the place. **Without the clean data, you cannot get good AI.**" - **Patrick Kelly** **Profile: Patrick Kelly,** Senior Director for Digital Natives, Startups & Enterprise and Commercial Sales in Southeast Asia at Databricks ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-kelly-aab6168/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to [Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and I often inform the decision makers in businesses that data is important for artificial intelligence to work. How do we ensure enterprise AI applications power the businesses in Southeast Asia? With me today, Patrick Kelly, Senior Director for Digital Natives Startup and Enterprise Commercial Sales in Southeast Asia from Databricks to discuss this subject. Patrick, welcome to the show. **Patrick Kelly:** Thanks, Bernard. Great to be here. **Bernard Leong:** I should mention, we were ex-colleagues and you are probably my mentor and boss when I first joined AWS \[Amazon Web Services\] and really guided me through the launch process. So thank you very much, Patrick, for doing this with me. **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah, those were fun days. We can talk about that today for sure. **Bernard Leong:** Sure. Of course. Without doubt, we always start with the origin story of our guests. So with your origin story, how did you start your career? **Patrick Kelly:** Surprisingly I'm in sales now quite a long time, but I did start in technology. I was a networking engineer when I first started my career working a lot in enterprise networking, Cisco, Juniper, doing banking systems and stuff like that. That was pretty interesting. I was really into that. Then I moved into telecom. So I joined Ericsson, which is the big Swedish telecom equipment vendor. I'm Irish, so that was based in Ireland. But then I joined the professional services team, global services. So I did projects all over the world. It was fantastic. Like in Brazil, in Jordan, in Australia and then landed up in Japan. I went to Japan on a four-week assignment, and I ended up staying five years. In Japan was interesting because I went from engineering into consulting. So network consulting for SoftBank. Back then LTE was just launching around 2009 and SoftBank had the exclusive rights for the iPhone. And the iPhone was a new beast on the network. All the signaling and we didn't know how to handle it. So we did a lot of consulting work for SoftBank, how to manage the load in Tokyo and really high densely populated areas. So that was pretty cool. From there, I moved into sales, selling the services, selling the hardware, selling the software. And then from Japan, that brought me over to Singapore because in \[the\] telco \[business\], Japan and Korea are always number one. They're first with 5G, first with all the new technologies. When we started doing virtualization on telecom networks, we brought that over to Southeast Asia. We worked with SingTel and Telekom Malaysia and brought that all around the region as well. From there, after about nine years, I joined the startup world, so I joined a startup doing IoT, which was Jasper at the time. That was a really interesting role. And that then led me into AWS, where I spent about five years doing different roles. Started with the IoT business, then we did the analytics business together and machine learning business, Bernard, and then took on the ISV business, which was our B2B software sales. **Bernard Leong:** We collaborated a lot during that period in AWS. **Patrick Kelly:** A lot. Yes. I remember in Malaysia we did a lot of good stuff, good case studies as well. And then finally the role was both ISV \[independent software vendor\], but also digital native as well, so the likes of Grab and Traveloka and all those iconic B2C young customers. Then it led me to Databricks where I'm doing a similar role. In that digital side. But then I also have more of what we call commercial or emerging enterprise: traditional companies, but very big across Southeast Asia who are trying to understand how to use data and AI to solve business problems. **Bernard Leong:** How did you actually come to this present role with Databricks? **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah, I was thinking about when I was in the process of it, and I thought back to our days when, back in 2019 when we had the DAMM team: Data and Analytics team and Machine Learning. Where we were talking about those problems. How do we solve problems with data? Like customers have a lot of data, but for a lot of them it was in a data lake or a data swamp, they couldn't get real insights into it. We helped a lot of customers with that and especially with our machine learning solution lab, solving really tough problems through data science. When I was in the process with Databricks, I was thinking about how to get back to something that's really specific and into a certain technology domain. Amazon is fantastic. You have all of the services and all of the technology, but you become super broad because you're selling 200 services. But Databricks has a very defined focus on a data platform. We're building intelligence on top. It's AI as well and that was something that really excited me, and also building a team and building a business again, because I think data and AI now, or even last year, was probably at the same stage as cloud was maybe six, seven years ago in Southeast Asia. So it's in that early stage of customer mind share and transformation. **Bernard Leong:** I totally agree with you. The essential parts of AI is actually to do with data, and I find that the integration when we work together between data analytics and machine learning, or even what we call generative AI, tends to now integrate quite seamlessly once the customers actually have a pretty good understanding of where their data structures are. So before I'm going to get to the most exciting part of today's conversation, I definitely must ask you this: From your career journey, what lessons can you share with my audience? **Patrick Kelly:** I always think in anything, it's personal over professional. So no one's ever going to remember if you work long hours or long weekends when you retire. So personal goals are super important because your personal goals are going to drive your professional goals down the line. I think that's super important. I know you're passionate around NUS and education. It's a huge part of your life as well. I think with a lot of my team, I've got an acquisition team of people newer in their career, and I always say to them, you don't need to be in a rush. Your time is now the right time. Don't be looking at other people and thinking, "I should be like that person." Enjoy the moment. It goes super fast. Then focus on your profession. If you're an engineer, if you're a data scientist, you have to be expert in what you do. Coding skills need to be practiced. I think there's a lot of noise around AI changing everything - like you won't need software developers anymore. I don't buy that at all. Software development is an art in how you create software and I don't think AI can get there so fast. And definitely in sales. Sales is a profession. You need to work at it. You need to work on your discovery, understand customer problems. Go deep to understand that technical pain. Translate the business objectives and then show how your solution can actually differentiate and help them solve those problems. You only get good at that by practicing. I think delivering results is super important. We know that from Amazon. So we start with customer obsession and end with deliver results, and we have all the leadership principles in between, but really it's a trailing indicator of success. It shows that the strategy you have, the tactics you execute on, they worked, and then you get the results at the end, and then finally coming back to the whole personal piece. Just be kind and be a nice person. Karma can come around and bite you. So just be a nice person and I think things will happen. **Bernard Leong:** Patrick, you're one of the best people that I've worked with. I'm definitely saying this in public because I really enjoyed how you guided me through some of the processes when we were thinking about how to do sales with the ISVs and the mental models behind it. So let's get to the main subject of the day: Databricks in ASEAN and in the age of data and AI. To start, can you talk about the total market opportunity of AI and data in the Asia Pacific or maybe even Southeast Asia, specifically for business enterprises and why Databricks is poised to capture this market. **Patrick Kelly:** Before we even look at the data and AI, I want to look at the cloud market. I think in Southeast Asia, talking to different people like Gartner and IDC, roughly it's about $20 billion, probably about eight to 10% of that IT spend is in the cloud with hyperscalers: AWS \[Amazon Web Services\], GCP \[Google Cloud Platform\], Azure \[Microsoft\], Alibaba Cloud & etc. For specifically data AI workloads, we think it's about a 1 billion market for Southeast Asia. That's excluding the compute and GPUs. Here we're talking about the SaaS \[Software as a Service\], PaaS \[Platform as a Service\] piece and the analytics software angle. So it's a huge market and it's growing very fast. For Databricks globally, we're growing like 70%, and in the \[ASEAN\] region we're actually growing faster than that. So it's pretty hyper growth. For Databricks globally, we're the fastest growing enterprise software company ever. Last run rate globally 2.4 billion at north of 60% growth rate. And really at Databricks, our mission is to democratize data and AI. Helping data teams solve the world's toughest problems. You notice there, I mentioned data. Data is core of everything. If you don't have clean data, you cannot do AI. And where Databricks came from, we invented Spark, which a lot of people know, which really revolutionized how data processing worked at scale from the Hadoop days. We pioneered the Lakehouse concept, which means you have your data lake and your data warehouse. You put that together, which then drives down TCO \[total cost of ownership\] and enables self service analytics. So you get analytics from cloud cost storage from S3\. You don't have expensive data warehouse to manage and deploy. And then lastly, I think most importantly now we are talking about data intelligence. So we're talking about how customers can democratize insights with natural language, and build AI on top of their data, their own private enterprise data. They're not giving that data away to anyone. We always say don't give your data to Databricks - your data drives your insights on top of it. That will really differentiate your business. **Bernard Leong:** Just to help my audience, TCO means total cost of ownership. And I think one of the major muscles was Databricks' acquisition of Mosaic as well for the AI side. So maybe we should just baseline our audience, given that they are from very different walks of businesses. Can you explain the concept of generative AI and data lake houses and how they help business enterprises to actually achieve their business goals? One of the things that you have really alluded to is the use of the lake house concept that actually drives down this total cost of ownership and the self-service analytics very quickly. **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah, so with Lakehouse, traditionally before we had cloud, we had on-premise data systems. So we had a warehouse on-premise, but that was very structured data columns, tables. Think Excel. So you could ask questions, go in and filter and say, "What was my sales report for January?" That's very easy to see. So that was the warehouse world. As the internet became prevalent across the world, we had websites and pictures and images and video and social media and all this unstructured data. And the cloud came around and we said, okay, how do we store this cheaply? Now for Amazon, the first service was Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). So that storage became very cheap and we put everything in there. We created a Data Lake. So we had a data lake, and then we had a data warehouse on-prem. Then we thought we could put a data warehouse into the cloud. So data warehouses came into the cloud. Amazon had Redshift, Google had BigQuery, Azure has Synapse. So they built all these data warehouses in the cloud for the structured data. But we still had the same problem. We still had data silos, so unstructured data is in your lake. All your structured data is in your warehouse and trying to find some commonality between both. It still needs a lot of work from the engineering team, from the data analyst team. They're still churning through creating reports and doing a lot of manual effort. So that was a real problem statement, and also the cost of both. You're paying for storage in your data lake, you're also paying for storage within the data warehouse. And we found there has to be a better way of doing this. So the founders of Databricks from Berkeley wrote an academic paper defining how this architecture should look like, what are the key principles around it, and what does it mean for customers. And that's where the Lakehouse concept started a couple of years ago. **Bernard Leong:** How does the strategy of Databricks with that current architecture depend on this Lakehouse concept, and then how does it evolve into the AI side? **Patrick Kelly:** So Lakehouse underpins everything. So we have all of your data sitting in low cost cloud storage, and then all your analysts and data scientists can work off the same copy of data. So one copy of data. That's underpinning everything. Now, as you know, Bernard, you were talking about AI back when it was called ML. So now with that single copy of data, you can run a machine learning model. You can train it with different data sets, but it's not a data set sitting in this environment or another data set here with data drift and then the model - you're not double-guessing the model. You're not saying, "Is that a good outcome?' because you're not sure if the data is clean or not. So once you have that then you can add intelligence on top of that Lakehouse architecture. We're calling that data intelligence. So GenAI obviously is the talk of the world when GPT came around, but we are not forgetting classic AI. Those great use cases around predicting customer churn, forecasting demand, optimizing customer experience, those are huge benefits for companies today. GenAI obviously will generate content and you'll have smart digital advisors in financial services, robo advisors, which is fantastic. But I think we should talk about AI in the wider sense of generative, but also classic. **Bernard Leong:** It is a very good point. Currently a lot of people just focus on GenAI, but they forgot actually there's a lot of very classical use cases that are already being solved by basic AI. In those use cases that you have mentioned, I'm curious - I know that Databricks is a pretty well known company funded by Andreessen Horowitz, and I have listened to a couple of panels planned by your CEO Ali. What is the current business footprint of Databricks in ASEAN? **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah, I'll start with APJ \[Asia Pacific and Japan\]. We've got really five defined markets across the area. Starting with India and then we've got ASEAN, Greater China, Japan, Korea, and then down to ANZ \[Australia and New Zealand\]. So in ASEAN, Singapore is our headquarters. So last year when we did our Data+AI World Tour, which was a flagship event in Singapore, we announced that Singapore is now the regional hub for APJ. We had plans to increase Singapore-based workforce working with Singapore EDB \[Economic Development Board\]. Adding critical roles in field engineering to help customers unlock problems, our professional services, strategy, ops, learning enablement, etc. So we're building out a whole team across all the different functions. Across APJ we've over 800 employees with about 150 who are based in Singapore. Part of that investment is really our commitment to democratization. What that really means is we're going to upskill greater than 10,000 data and AI talent within Singapore. That's a partnership with IMDA, training partners, NTUC Learning Hub, and NUS ICT Academy. **Bernard Leong:** You have also done some work with startups as well specifically with GenAI. Can you talk a little bit about that? **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah, I am super passionate on the Gen AI part in what I do. So back in middle of last year, we were thinking about our Databricks for Startup program. A lot like the hyperscalers, we invest in them, we give them credits, we give them go-to-market expertise and help them think about how to build a product on Databricks. In ASEAN with Gen AI Fund, when that was set up to invest specifically in GenAI startups, set up by ex-Amazonians as well. You've got Denning, Laura and Kai Yong there. So we know them pretty well and we did a six-city tour last year and it was great. It was great for us because we found 500 new companies that we didn't know about. That weren't in our purview. So that was fantastic. And then we've got a lot of them building with us now. We're investing in them, obviously GenAI Fund is investing equity in them as well. Now, in two weeks on April 10th, we're going to do a startup matching. So the startups we've identified as high priority with enterprises, and we're doing that with EDB in Singapore in with Google on April 10th. So that's going to be a great event to see how these companies grow. **Bernard Leong:** I probably also want to highlight that Databricks is multi-cloud. It's definitely not just only working with Amazon Web Services, also Google GCP, and even Microsoft Azure as well. So, how are customers now using Databricks in ASEAN? Can you just share some interesting case studies? **Patrick Kelly:** Sure. I think it's super varied. We've got everything from highly regulated industries like FSI and Telco to some of the largest digital native customers like Grab across the region. Grab is a great one because they really worked with Databricks for many years, building customer data platform. As you can imagine, they've got millions of data points coming in across customers, across ride hailing, across food delivery, across all the different signals on their advertising. So how do they manage all those touchpoints and build a customer-centric experience, and then personalize recommendations for their millions of customers? Another example is GetGo in Singapore. You've probably used it before, largest car sharing platform in Singapore that really helped improve customer satisfaction and their fleet utilization. So some key data points - they really accelerated time to insights by 66% for their fleet maintenance. Now they can deliver insights seven times faster, making next business day decision making. They wanted to figure out how customers actually use the car. So analysing booking behavior and refilling patterns, they could actually reduce fuel theft by 50%, which was really impactful for them and their business by minimising misuse of fuel cards and enhancing overall customer trust. In more regulated environments like GovTech for example, which you work a lot with as well. So they're in charge of the public sector digital transformation using Databricks to empower self-service analytics through our data security and governance, because all the different government agencies need to have access to just the data that they need. They really achieved dashboards that could be created three times faster. They could democratize 50% of data across corporate divisions and actually saved 8,000 labor hours annually, which is massive for a government agency. **Bernard Leong:** So they're actually taking the entire Databricks at scale for the entire Singapore government. **Patrick Kelly:** Totally. The productivity gains are fantastic because the platform is taking away a lot of that manual tedious work. **Bernard Leong:** I hear a lot about multi-regional companies like Grab and then local companies in Singapore. Can you talk about maybe other use cases in other parts of ASEAN? I believe that Siam Commercial Bank is also one of your customers, right? **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah. Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) is a great customer of ours. In the FSI space, being a huge bank and having a large data estate. So what we really worked with them on was how to create a seamless and personalised digitised banking experience. But the big thing they wanted to do is create a customer 360, which is AI powered. That really means when you engage with the bank through the website, the mobile app, or in person, all those data points are tied together. So if you access through the web that is all logged and mapped, and you're not duplicating data. A lot of paper is removed from the process. But the real game changer for them was how they can do instant loan approvals. A lot of times today you put in a loan application, you fill in the paperwork, you sign it, you have to scan it, and then you send it off and wait two weeks for it to come back. But now it's a one-click process because SCB have built a profile of you, built a risk profile, know your income, know your spending, and can predict if you qualify for this based on predictive analysis. Out of this, the customer experience was fantastic, but they've seen a twofold increase in approval rates for their digital lending products. **Bernard Leong:** So on the AI credit score, I remember in those days when in AWS, we talked about it, but now to see it in action is an interesting outcome. So what are the unexpected insights or challenges that you have learned from your customers in the ASEAN region now? **Patrick Kelly:** Customers are the ultimate source of feedback. So one of our principles at Databricks is really obsess over customers. We are founded by academics who build products and are scientists. So when we build the products, we really take in the requirements of the field and what customers are telling us, and then we build that back into the product capabilities and features. So we get feedback on our streaming service, we get feedback on our warehouse, we get feedback on our UI \[user interface\]. For example, Databricks Assistant, which is our UI which will add coding pieces to tables. A lot of that is feedback from our community and from our customers. **Bernard Leong:** That's how you get the feedback. Given now we have proliferation of foundation models and AI agents, how does Databricks think about its position within the market itself? **Patrick Kelly:** Yes, the acquisition of Mosaic AI for us was really a game changer in how we think about AI and also the talent that we brought into the company. We have a very deep and talented research team at Mosaic AI who were really solving hard problems at scale. Especially in the science part, deep science of data points. And what that really brought us was thinking deeply around enterprise quality solutions. And when I say enterprise quality, something that has to be really robust on security governance and be able to deliver that at a very low cost to serve. So really our position is that you should maintain full control over your data and your model. You should not give that away to any LLM \[Large Language Models\] SaaS model or model that is out in the market because we feel that then the data that you're using to train someone else's model if you're in retail industry. Then someone else can use that model and can potentially benefit from the data that you've used to train that model. So you should really maintain control. The next thing is really production quality at scale. Scale in an enterprise means you need to have that capability, but you also need to manage quality, hallucination, and toxicity. That's super important. A lot of that is refined from your governance practice within the enterprise so you can control that as well. Cost, I have mentioned already - \[Databricks\] really drive down that cost. Obviously we're a big partner of all the GPU providers, Nvidia as well, so we can help on that as well. And then with native support we've built out the GenAI framework end to end. The idea is that we want to abstract away a lot of technology hopefully so that you don't have to think about RAG and vector databases and embeddings and all those things. A person just needs to say "I've got a business problem, I'm trying to develop an internal knowledge chatbot for my HR." They should be able to just roll that straight away and then the platform will take care of what's underneath. That's the objective framework that we're building. **Bernard Leong:** So in the Databricks viewpoint, those layers are being abstracted away from the customer so that they can basically just focus on getting what they need specifically out of their data - could be insights, could be specific kind of analysis. And am I right to say that the large language model you have, the DBRX, is also currently being deployed on the Databricks architecture as well? **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah, so DBRX was the best performing model, I think for about 10 days until the next LLAMA \[model\] came out. **Bernard Leong:** It is going to come back again. Every other week, I am getting "*this model performs better than the other model*," so I'm going to expect a better model from DBRX at some point. **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah. Well, the purpose of it was not to show the best performing model, it was to show that you could do it at a cost effective way. Our CEO, Ali talked about it when we launched it, we trained that model from scratch and did a lot of optimisations, especially with the mixture of experts model, especially how you call an expert for coding or an expert for English or an expert for math. We did that all for $10 million, which is pretty amazing at the time. **Bernard Leong:** It's pretty impressive for enterprise AI application. I talked to various enterprises who are using Databricks and I think it's pretty interesting that it's what I call a full enterprise-driven AI model, and I think very few foundation models are thinking about that because they're trying to cover all things for all people. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about Databricks in Asia that very few do? **Patrick Kelly:** I think obviously the technology is there. We present at our events, we show the tech and we work with customers and partners. But I think one thing is we are an extremely diverse company with people from lots of different cultural backgrounds. For my team, I've got obviously Singaporeans, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, French, Irish - very diverse background of culture, which is fantastic for the team. But then from company experience, we've hired people from all sorts of backgrounds. Of course we've got people from hyperscalers, myself from AWS, people from GCP and Microsoft, but also we've got a lot of people from application vendors like Salesforce, Workday, observability vendors like New Relic. We've got people from system integrators who bring experience of building solutions end to end and implementation plans. I think that diversity really helps us learn from each other and how to serve our customers better. For example, a lot of people may have been selling CDP \[customer data platform\] solutions and know all those use cases inside out, or someone has come from an SI \[system integrator\] and implemented really complex on-premise data warehouse migrations and we can learn from that as well. So it really helps us be a very holistic team around delivering the data intelligence platform for customers. **Bernard Leong:** So one curious question I really have is thinking about the trends in generative AI and data, what are the trends that are globally or even locally that you have seen becoming important for business applications, thinking about their enterprise AI deployments? **Patrick Kelly:** The main thing with GenAI now is of course, agent. Agent is a new buzzword. **Bernard Leong:** It is the new buzzword. Agent AI. **Patrick Kelly:** We'll call it a buzzword. But we're seeing actual deployments. So MasterCard have just deployed an agent framework for their digital payment assessment after doing like 300 POCs, which they openly talk about. Because it was the last 18 months of testing, seeing what works. Our last report with the Economist found about 85% of GenAI projects were still POCs and didn't go to production. But we're seeing the first stages of actually production now with agents. Because agent is end-to-end, where GenAI at the start was very point-specific. Okay, it's LLM and I'm just doing this piece. You need to have the whole end-to-end framework. Another trend we're seeing, and actually I was speaking to a big GSI \[global systems integrator\] yesterday about this - a lot of customers want to access all their data under management. So they want it all in one place. They've got data everywhere. It's in the data lake. It's in data warehouse, some is in SAP, some is in Salesforce, some is in different platforms, marketing platforms. They want it all in one place to see how they can actually get better insights. And that's something we're working hard on, which is something called Lake Flow Connect, where we connect into all these systems and pull only the pertinent data to get the answers that the business wants. **Bernard Leong:** It is basically the data connector layer very similar to what Anthropic now called Model Context Protocol, MCP or something like that. **Patrick Kelly:** Yes. And then super important is governance and security. That is key. That is at the start. It's not a bolt-on. If you don't have your governance set up on your data to figure out who can look at what, what is the lineage, who can access what at what time, and be able to trace that back to your system, especially in enterprise, in a regulated industry, if you have any breach you're going to be in trouble. So we think that governance is such an important part, and it's non-negotiable. We always said that at AWS as well: Security is job zero. **Bernard Leong:** Governance is very important. A lot of the senior executives when I train in NUS focus a lot on how to think about guardrails with the data. That is probably one of the key concerns for enterprise customers. A lot of companies who are serving these customers don't really think about how important that element is. But how about locally then in terms of trendlines for generative AI and data? **Patrick Kelly:** I think there are different stages of adoption. So I think really advanced big digital native businesses, they built data platforms over many years and they built AI stacks - variation of self-built or built with cloud providers, or built with Databricks as well. So they really help us challenge us on delivering better performance, better price-performance, better outcomes, challenge us on the agent frameworks, which is fantastic. Again, giving us feedback about our product as well. I think on the enterprise side, a lot of them are really fed up with their legacy on-prem warehouse. It's a real cost on the business and getting data out is super laborious. So a lot of them are looking to migrate to the cloud, build their lakehouse on the cloud, which will then drive those insights. I think a key part of how we're helping customers there is we did announce an acquisition of BladesBridge. BladesBridge is a data warehouse analyser tool. So we'll analyse your on-prem data warehouse, look at what that would look like, and then we'll be able to convert the code into cloud. So it's a really great way of moving into a cloud-based lakehouse. And then as we move to the mid-market, SMBs really just want access to their data to drive their business without having a heavy lift. So they're looking for cost effective BI solutions. How can they really get insight to their data, allow self-service analytics, ask questions of it, and there we're providing our GenAI assistant, which lets you ask a natural language question and then enables you to build dashboards. So we call it AI BI. So we're kind of rethinking the world of BI where it's not just dashboards - it should be dashboards and ask questions and you should be able to draw a dashboard and pull in data points that you like. **Bernard Leong:** So essentially this AI BI is kind of the fusion of the earlier iteration of business intelligence to be able to get your analytics, but then now having the AI to power the insights on top of that. Is that how I understand it correctly? **Patrick Kelly:** Correct. So you could just put in a prompt and say, "give me the sales report for the last 12 months and graph it in a bar chart" and boom away you go. That's all your data, on your data only. **Bernard Leong:** I was looking at some of the reports out there from Databricks. You talked about some data relating to ASEAN specifically on the current architecture and also how Asian countries are viewing GenAI as strategically important. Can you elaborate about that or maybe provide more colour about the market? **Patrick Kelly:** We did a survey with The Economist globally including Europe and APAC as well. We asked the question, "My organization's current architecture supports the unique demands of AI workloads" and basically 85% said no, we don't have the architecture to support it. Some said it partially does, but it needs lots of modifications so we can still feel a lot of people are still in the early stage and that data point ties back to 85% of GenAI has not gone into production. I think another interesting point is "Does your architecture connect AI applications to your relevant business data?" which is probably even more important for me. And again, it was still about 80% - "We don't have that." Because that business data is all over the place. As we talked about at the start Bernard, without the clean data, you cannot get good AI. **Bernard Leong:** So it is the same infrastructure question that hasn't been really addressed. **Patrick Kelly:** I would agree, yes. **Bernard Leong:** I think more business owners should talk to you then. **Patrick Kelly:** Yes. **Bernard Leong:** How about the perception of ASEAN countries in terms of the strategic importance of GenAI? **Patrick Kelly:** I thought this was super interesting. Along with UK and Japan, ASEAN is up there at around 70-80% saying GenAI is critical to their long-term strategic goals, which is really interesting. Whereas compared to Korea which was at about 65%, which is a little bit surprising for me being Korea, a very high tech country. So it really shows that in ASEAN, a lot of companies are thinking about how to use GenAI to really differentiate the business, grow the business, and actually drive growth for my company. But I think it also drives a lot of growth for the countries as well. It will drive GDP, we'll have startups, we'll have new businesses, we'll have training. So the societal impact is going to be pretty huge. **Bernard Leong:** We talked a bit about the large language models from the perspective of which new model comes out. But let me flip the question a little bit - from your perspective, what should businesses be thinking about with Foundation AI models? **Bernard Leong:** For example, we talk about Databricks DBRX, and then how do they actually think about the agent AI workflows as well? I think there's still a lot of education that we need to help decision makers to think about these workflows. **Patrick Kelly:** There's always going to be a new model, right? We launched DBRX and the whole intent was to show a leading LLM could be trained and tuned for $10 million. Of course then DeepSeek came out, which kind of rocked the world a bit, which is fantastic, showing how you can innovate with technology limitations. And then we have Claude Manus, which is showing an agent working across multiple different platforms, which is super cool as well. But our belief is that you should have a platform with clean data. You should have access to all of these models which we provide. So we've got an API gateway, which you can then decide, okay, I've got my data set here, I want to run a GenAI application. Should I use GPT? Should I use Claude? Should I use DeepSeek? We provide you that capability. We think you should choose the best model fit for that use case. **Bernard Leong:** I'm sure that now we are going to see everything go through the applications there. So what would be your advice for business owners in thinking about implementing AI applications in their organisations? **Patrick Kelly:** For the AI application, it really depends on who the product team is in your company. I think a lot of companies now, if you think of the digital natives, they have teams. They have a chief product officer and product managers, probably a bit less so in the enterprise where it was probably sitting under an IT team or some application team or customer service team. I think they need to really think about what is the product and what is it doing. And with a product design, then you'll start thinking about what the technology maps underneath. **Bernard Leong:** So it sounds like you think there's been a lot of proof of concept over the last two years. How much is actually in production and how can we drive them towards the production workloads? **Patrick Kelly:** I think it was 85% from the last time we saw from the Economist Report, and I'm seeing that as well in the field. We did a lot of POCs last year on internal knowledge chatbots, external customer service assistance, content creation for marketing and things like that as well. A lot of that has actually gone into production, which is interesting. Sales augmentation, preparing sales outbound and messaging - a lot of that is done by AI today because I think that's super useful. But I think the real external facing GenAI use cases we haven't seen at scale yet. But I think it's coming there because people were still concerned and customers were concerned about hallucination and giving the wrong information. We had the Air Canada case and the Chevy case giving wrong information from the chatbot to the customer. But I think with guardrails and security and being able to train the model, but train the system what you should say and what you cannot say - again, that's all tied in your enterprise governance and your security posture. I think that's where we can help a lot of companies get to production. **Bernard Leong:** So what is the one question that you wish more people would ask you about Databricks? **Patrick Kelly:** I'd love them to ask me what is data intelligence? **Bernard Leong:** Then what is data intelligence? **Patrick Kelly:** Well, people always ask me what the lakehouse is, but we say the lakehouse is the architecture. But with data intelligence, as I said before, it's democratising access to your data to derive intelligence. So it's data and it's your AI. So with data intelligence, you have clean data and you know where it is and you know what you can do about it, but you can derive intelligence from it. So you can ask a question about your customer, you can ask a question about your operations, and a lot of it is very natural language and being able to get answers immediately. And that for us is data intelligence, and for the smallest company in the world to the largest enterprise, we think everyone's going to adopt this approach. **Bernard Leong:** That's so concise. I'm going to try to use that tagline too. **Patrick Kelly:** Please do. Please market it for me. **Bernard Leong:** So my traditional closing question, what does great look like for Databricks in ASEAN from your perspective? **Patrick Kelly:** Great question. I think we alluded at the start - I think we're really at the start of something special especially around AI. It's like a once in a lifetime opportunity to change how people work, how people live, how people connect with each other through the concept of data intelligence. It's for the smallest company, for the largest enterprises, for regulated industries, for government - to really unlock a lot of data and solve a lot of really hard problems. We're really here to solve hard problems. And then for our people, it's all about creating a career defining experience. We're the fastest growing software company ever. We're growing north of 60% and we're really investing in our people. We're investing in resources, we're investing in the tech to really deliver on the data intelligence strategy. And then super important for me, especially in Southeast Asia, is building that ecosystem with our partners. You mentioned before, we work with all the cloud providers. We work with system integrators, we work with ISVs, we work with country associations like IMDA, Malaysia Digital, and Vietnam. How do we really drive the ecosystem to upskill? I said 10,000 people in Singapore, but millions of people across Southeast Asia - that's going to be great for us. **Bernard Leong:** Wow. That's a very good way to conclude this. So, Patrick, many thanks for coming on the show. And of course, if you are recruiting I strongly recommend anyone to join you because Patrick has been a very fair and great boss to me when I was working with him and taught me a lot. So, in closing, I have two quick questions. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Patrick Kelly:** I was thinking about this. I travel around ASEAN a lot, and Singapore, we're super spoiled with how we come in and out of the airport - face recognition and everything else. And usually every other airport I need a visa because I have an Irish passport and I need to apply before and get a stamp and all this kind of stuff. But I got to Jakarta two weeks ago. I was going through my normal queue, and the guy comes over and said, "No, Auto Gate." I'm like, "That can't be true. Auto Gate for me?" He says, "Yeah, go up." I had my visa on my QR code. I scan, facial recognition, and I'm through. It was the fastest time I've ever been through Jakarta Airport in my life. All of that is underpinned by AI - facial recognition, mapping back to the data where I have my QR code mapped to my passport number. So that was super amazing for me and that's an innovation that's just going to grow tourism for Indonesia like crazy. **Bernard Leong:** I had the same experience in KLIA Kuala Lumpur as well recently, also the same thing. Auto Gate, just go right through. You don't even need to get a fast track special discount to get through. So my final question - how can my audience find you? **Patrick Kelly:** LinkedIn is best. You can get me on LinkedIn or patrick dot kelly at databricks dot com. Welcome any conversation you have, anything you're looking for around Lakehouse data intelligence. Happy to talk. **Bernard Leong:** You can subscribe to us everywhere from YouTube to Spotify, it's all in video now. And of course share with us your feedback and give us a five-star rating from any of the podcast platform. Patrick, many thanks for coming on the show. Really enjoyed this conversation and I wish you all the best and definitely we will talk again soon. **Patrick Kelly:** Yeah, Bernard, one last plug. [Data and AI Summit from Databricks](https://www.databricks.com/dataaisummit?ref=analysepodcast.com) on June 9th to the 12th. If you're interested, please register. It's going to be awesome. We're looking to have more than 20,000 people this year. Great forum to learn, great experiences, all sorts of customers, industries, etc. So we would urge you to join that. **Bernard Leong:** Definitely. So, if you're interested, go ahead and take part in this event. Patrick, many thanks. **Patrick Kelly:** Thanks, Bernard. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Starting from his career journey from traditional banking to blockchain analytics, Andrew shares his expertise on how sanctioned entities operate in the cryptocurrency space and the sophisticated techniques employed by state-sponsored hackers. He explains how blockchain's transparency enables tracking of stolen funds, revealing that over 90% of the stolen $1.5 billion remains on the blockchain despite moving through thousands of wallets. Andrew details how sanctioned states are increasingly turning to stablecoins and decentralized finance to evade traditional banking controls, while emphasizing the importance of KYC procedures and blockchain analytics in disrupting illicit activities. Last but not least, Andrew shares his perspectives on emerging threats in cryptocurrency security, including how AI-powered deepfakes and digital identity forgery are lowering barriers to sophisticated attacks. --- > "The thing that's most fascinating, we talk a lot about how complex North Korea is here but when you compare it to some of the other illicit groups, particularly those that are sanctioned, say your terrorist organization that's soliciting donations on Telegram or some other social media outlet understanding what that difference in the level of complexity is, I think is really fascinating to actually know about. When we're talking about DPRK, we're talking about laundering of funds through tens of thousands. By the time we're done, it'll be hundreds of thousands of wallets. And then on the other end of it, We have a terrorist organization that was, sanctioned mid last year for facilitating on behalf of Hamas. After they got sanctioned and their addresses that they were using, got seized and disrupted. They got annoyed and they tried to bridge funds with their new Ethereum wallet after they received a few donations and they didn't even have the gas fees to facilitate it. And the transaction, when we're talking about the difference in the level of complexity here, it is really fascinating to know the nuance and it's not to say that, other nation states, like Russia or Iran don't have any level of complexity. They certainly do." - **Andrew Fierman, Head of National Security Intelligence at Chainalysis Inc** **Profile:** Andrew Fierman, Head of National Security Intelligence at [Chainalysis](https://www.chainalysis.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Inc ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-fierman-87511611/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyze Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and the [recent Bybit hack by the Lazarus Group](https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/bybit-exchange-hack-february-2025-crypto-security-dprk/?ref=analysepodcast.com) has shaken the entire crypto market. With me today, Andrew Fierman, head of National Security Intelligence at Chainalysis, to share with us on the fallout and the key takeaways from their recent [Crypto Crime Report from Chainalysis 2025](https://go.chainalysis.com/2025-Crypto-Crime-Report.html?ref=analysepodcast.com). So, Andrew, welcome to the show. **Andrew Fierman:** Thanks for having me. **Bernard Leong:** First, I want to start with your origin story. How did you start your career? **Andrew Fierman:** I've been in financial crimes compliance for about a decade prior to joining Chainalysis. I started doing Know Your Customer at JPMorgan Chase. I got more into anti-money laundering, sanctions, and found a unique interest in sanctions and geopolitics, especially around understanding how illicit actors were facilitating sanctions evasion through financial institutions. What I realized is most people who are on a sanctioned list aren't typically going to walk into a US bank to bring US dollars directly. So my question was always, how are they going about doing that? I have studied everything from how terrorist organizations use charities to how North Korea uses shell companies or employs evasive tactics in the shipping industry, to how Russia and Iran have done it historically. After taking on the role as head of sanctions at Barclays, I decided to come over to Chainalysis, where I got to focus on this entire new landscape and figure out how these actors and everything that they do traditionally in finance applies to the blockchain. I've been here for a little bit over three years now. **Bernard Leong:** This is interesting because you transitioned from a traditional banking institution to the dynamic world of blockchain analytics at Chainalysis. What are the key differences and learning experiences that helped you make that transition? **Andrew Fierman:** It was a lot of studying new terminology and understanding how the blockchain operates. But being fully honest, after spending some time at Chainalysis doing introductory courses, I realized pretty quickly that many concepts when tracing money translate easily. Knowing how Bitcoin versus Ethereum gets laundered is certainly different than following US dollars, but the concept of shell companies now becomes hops or unknown intermediaries, and utilizing different jurisdictions is still a very typical typology. So a lot translated clearly for me early on. **Bernard Leong:** How about things like crypto Twitter? There are Twitter accounts that do sleuthing and checking which wallets have made transfers. Does that increase your monitoring surface area or does it help make it different compared to traditional institutions, where there's no "financial Twitter" to know who is sending cash? **Andrew Fierman:** You've touched on a unique aspect of blockchain transparency. When it comes to financial institutions, the SWIFT system and messages that belong to transactions at your financial institution only belong to your institution. They're not sitting on a block explorer or on crypto Twitter for everyone to analyze. It's impressive following how quickly those on platforms like Twitter come to help, especially with instances like [Bybit](https://www.bybit.com/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com). One fascinating angle I see from Chainalysis is that our role is to map the entire ecosystem. We can visualize start points and end points in how money moves overall, which adds a layer of context that maybe crypto Twitter doesn't get. We're not as privatized as a financial institution, but we have more context when doing our investigations. **Bernard Leong:** Being a crypto investor for a long time, I've been following Chainalysis. What lessons from your career journey can you share with my audience? **Andrew Fierman:** Always be open to new challenges and don't just follow processes and procedures, but push your understanding to new areas. The blockchain ecosystem is here to stay. I see people from the compliance industry finally trying to catch up and wanting to get into crypto. But it's crypto, AI, emerging technology broadly speaking - diving in and being willing to learn these new things doesn't just help career opportunities, but helps you better fight against the crime you're investigating. ### Bybit Hack Analysis **Bernard Leong:** Let's get to the main subject: the Bybit hack, [the Lazarus group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus%5FGroup?ref=analysepodcast.com), and the Cyber Crime report from Chainalysis 2025\. First, let's start with the recent Bybit hack. The theft is approximately 1.5 billion USD in cryptocurrency, and most has allegedly been laundered off on the Tor chain, reportedly orchestrated by North Korea's Lazarus group. From your professional standpoint, can you walk us through the tactics and methods employed in this breach and how they align with previous patterns observed from state-sponsored actors? **Andrew Fierman:** In this specific incident, the exploit occurred through an impact on a third-party vendor, SafeWallet, that was being utilized by Bybit. This made it look like a transfer from a cold storage wallet to a warm wallet was being finished, but the funds got exploited out to a wallet controlled by North Korea without the awareness of those doing the signing on the Bybit side. This is a unique method using the third-party vendor as the access point, but North Korea and the Lazarus Group have always used varying forms of social engineering to gain access. Whether sending a phishing email to apply malware, getting in the back door through IT remote employees - the techniques evolve. This is a trend with North Korea for decades. They're a heavily sanctioned nation without much value in exports or international trade partners, so their way of making money has always come through unique ways of evading sanctions. Exploiting the crypto and Web3 ecosystem is just the newest technique. Every time these hacks occur, the industry develops a blueprint to improve security measures. However, as they improve security, North Korea will find different ways. Part of it is a volume play - if you have tens of thousands of employees and send out emails, maybe during bonus season saying "here's your bonus information, click here," somebody will be excited to see their bonus and click the link. Then it's too late. So while there was a unique angle in exploiting a third-party vendor providing access to Bybit, rather than directly through Bybit, the aspect of social engineering is standard but ever growing in capability and creativity. **Bernard Leong:** It's interesting how they implemented a hack by putting in software that made the user think it was safe. There's also the concentration risk of putting so much money in one wallet, which isn't typical practice. They had to tie the machine back and look at the software on the laptop to discover some software that was deleted the next day. That's what makes this hack so sophisticated. The Lazarus group has been implicated in high-profile cryptocurrency thefts - can you shed light on their typical operational methods and how they've evolved? **Andrew Fierman:** When discussing social engineering, they're getting more creative in their technical access points. For the on-chain aspect, North Korea from a nation-state perspective is by far the most technically advanced illicit actor. They use a consistent fingerprint in laundering funds. We've seen this happen repeatedly where Lazarus group gets the exploit to a single wallet, then breaks down funds to a handful of wallets, usually a few dozen, and starts bridging using DeFi protocols and no-KYC instant swap services to move from Ethereum into Bitcoin. They then chop it up further through mixers to further obfuscate where funds are going. While it's complicated, hope isn't lost. The 1.5 billion was stolen, and there's been wording about it being "laundered," but the laundering process has just begun. As of a few days ago, our numbers indicate over 90% of the funds are still on the blockchain. For the 10% no longer there, that includes seizures and disruptions (like with Mantle's 43 million seized quickly after the hack), lost funds, fees, and small portions that have been off-ramped. We're currently tracking over 4,000 Bitcoin wallets with balances. With stronger compliance in the ecosystem than ever before and more regulation, compliance teams at exchanges are more reactive and readily available to seize funds if they come to their platform. When dealing with 1.5 billion, you can't just bring that to your corner store to launder into cash. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, off-ramping is definitely difficult. From a sanctions perspective, what evolving tactics do you observe in their laundering process, and how effective are current enforcement measures in countering their strategies? **Andrew Fierman:** This is by far the largest hack ever - before this, it was 611 million, now 1.5 billion. The scale and volume at which they're laundering isn't someone sitting in a room pressing buttons to move funds. This is a coordinated, meticulous effort. Concepts like AI bots and timed transactions are likely playing a persistent role. When laundering $20 million, there's only so much you can do before losing more to fees than it's worth laundering, so that process happens more quickly with fewer wallets. But with 1.5 billion dollars, it's a waiting game for North Korea. While the bounty program was set up and while Chainalysis, other blockchain analytics firms, governments, and crypto Twitter are tracking in real time, the goal isn't just to break it up and launder it quickly. Part of it is waiting - sitting on funds for weeks, months, years, until the news cycle cools down and people focus elsewhere. Then they'll pick up the pace again. With the development of compliance programs in the global crypto exchange ecosystem, along with awareness and capabilities of government agencies and blockchain analytics firms, plus crypto Twitter sleuths, you have people attempting to disrupt any dollar possible. Because the blockchain is a real-time, borderless, 24-hour function, so is the industry around it. That's unique - with the SWIFT system, you're talking about something open from 8am to 6pm Eastern time, five days a week. If you haven't laundered your money by 6pm and everyone's gone for the weekend, you wait until Monday. But Lazarus group knows that's not the case here. I was in my living room at 10:30am when I found out this happened on a Friday, and Bybit is headquartered in Dubai. So that's roughly 7:30pm Friday night when people have gone home for the weekend. Getting a team operating around the clock to monitor this - that timing wasn't coincidental for North Korea. **Bernard Leong:** The 24/7 element makes it challenging and exciting for people trying to understand what's happening in such a short time. Considering the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, what role does blockchain analytics and international cooperation play in identifying and mitigating risks posed by state-sponsored cybercriminal groups like the Lazarus group? **Andrew Fierman:** Tracing through bridges and DeFi protocols can be done by anyone with investigative capabilities. The real focus is still on transferring crypto to fiat. As off-ramping becomes more challenging, the industry is doing a better job. While we don't want to watch them try to launder until they have zero dollars left from fees, there's value in making it significantly more difficult for North Korea to cash out. The days are gone when you could sneak $500,000 or a million dollars out of a mainstream exchange in 2025\. While crypto is 24/7, fiat transfers aren't. You can request to cash out and wire proceeds to your bank, but there's still a 24-72 hour hold before funds leave the exchange. This creates an opportunity to disrupt. Because exchanges have real-time 24-hour incident response teams, the blockchain analytics community has global services and intelligence teams working 24/7, and law enforcement is doing the same, there's an ever-present opportunity to seize and disrupt. We announced early on that alongside Tether, we seized $100,000\. While $100,000 out of 1.5 billion doesn't feel like much, doing that every few days takes money away quickly, and that adds up. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one thing very few people know in cryptocurrency and national security intelligence when dealing with sanctioned groups? **Andrew Fierman:** The most fascinating thing is comparing North Korea's complexity to other illicit groups, particularly sanctioned ones like terrorist organizations soliciting donations on Telegram or social media. Understanding that difference in complexity is fascinating. With DPRK, we're talking about laundering funds through tens of thousands - by the time we're done, hundreds of thousands of wallets. Then on the other end, we have a terrorist organization sanctioned mid-last year for facilitating on behalf of Hamas. After they were sanctioned and their addresses seized, they got annoyed and tried to bridge funds with a new Ethereum wallet after receiving donations, but didn't even have the gas fees to facilitate the transaction. The difference in complexity is remarkable. Other nation-states like Russia or Iran certainly have complexity - we've seen Iran and the Revolutionary Guard Corps launder money effectively at scales of hundreds of millions of dollars. But the unique differences between different sanctioned actors and how they utilize cryptocurrency are fascinating. **Bernard Leong:** It would be a joke if they don't have enough gas to make transactions. Given increasing sophistication, what can cryptocurrency exchanges and companies do to bolster defenses against such threats? When I started in 2015, every transaction sent to a wallet is now monitored. It's difficult for these groups to off-ramp through exchanges. What else can exchanges do to improve defenses? **Andrew Fierman:** One thing that's taken off is blockchain analytics. For those unfamiliar with how a blockchain analytics firm integrates with an exchange or financial institution: the analytics firm's goal is to map the crypto ecosystem, including wallets used to launder proceeds from this 1.5 billion hack. We map those in real-time, so when money moves, we tag it as "Bybit stolen funds." Any customer using our product who receives those funds gets an alert notification, allowing them to freeze and disrupt them. The challenging aspect that every exchange and financial institution continues working on is KYC. People don't sign up as "Lazarus group laundering person #2." This is likely someone with falsified documentation operating in a permitted jurisdiction who may have done some trading before. Once they receive laundered Bybit hack funds, exchanges need to understand what other touchpoints that person has - other accounts with the same email or IP address - utilizing the full tech stack of metadata available in internet banking to ensure these hackers aren't sitting at your exchange waiting to receive funds. The industry has come leaps and bounds, making it harder. The bigger the hack and more money at stake, the harder it is to get those funds off-ramped. ### Sanctions and Alternative Financial Mechanisms **Bernard Leong:** Let's discuss the 2025 Crypto Crime Report by Chainalysis. It highlights a shift where sanctioned states are increasingly utilizing stablecoins, CBDCs, and decentralized finance platforms to circumvent enforcement. Can you elaborate on how these alternative financial mechanisms are being leveraged for sanctions evasion? **Andrew Fierman:** If you consider the value of stablecoins for a sanctioned nation or actor: when sanctioned, you can't utilize the US dollar in traditional banking. Because of the stability and global usage of the US dollar, it remains the primary trading currency. If you can't access it through traditional institutions, a stablecoin becomes an interesting option, giving you ability to utilize the US dollar equivalent. The problem for them is that stablecoin issuers can freeze funds wherever they're located. You don't need to wait for funds to reach a centralized exchange that will respond to law enforcement. If you know funds in a wallet belong to a sanctioned person, stablecoin issuers can seize and disrupt. We just saw this in the takedown of Guarantex, Russia's largest sanctioned cryptocurrency exchange. It facilitated tens of billions of dollars involving ransomware laundering and sanctions evasion for oligarchs. With one move, about 28 million in USDT was seized by Tether, and law enforcement took down their website - a one-two punch knocking them out. For a sanctioned entity like Russia, where nearly every Russian bank has been sanctioned and subject to secondary sanctions, everyday Russians needing to move money looked to Guarantex, which used stablecoins. But now they've lost those stablecoins through seizure. **Bernard Leong:** With countries like Russia passing legislation to support international crypto payments and aligning with nations like China and India, what challenges does this pose to traditional sanction frameworks? How are authorities adapting? **Andrew Fierman:** Secondary sanctions play a unique role. If an entity is sanctioned, doing business with them can cause a fine or criminal liability. But interacting with someone subject to secondary sanctions means you could get sanctioned yourself, which doesn't apply when interacting with normally sanctioned entities. Secondary sanctions are really "the stick" - we're not just financially punishing you for doing business with these actors; you're subject to sanctions risk yourself. Because all mainstream Russian financial institutions are subject to secondary sanctions, jurisdictions like China or India considering business with Russia in rupees or other non-US currencies will have second thoughts when secondary sanctions apply. These were applied across different aspects, including Guarantex. While Russia has produced legislation to facilitate cryptocurrency for international business, I'm curious how that works in reality at scale. China was interested in doing business with Russia before secondary sanctions were implemented, which created a cooling effect. Plus, the issue with stablecoins means if you want something similar to the US dollar with international partners, you risk those funds being seized at any point in the transaction. There's an opportunity, and it's not that it doesn't or can't happen. But most people don't want to conduct international trade with volatile assets. If you're selling oil at a discount and getting Bitcoin that drops 10% in a day, you're losing money due to currency volatility. It's yet to be seen how this would work at scale in reality. **Bernard Leong:** As decentralized finance platforms persist and evolve, how are authorities and compliance tools adapting to close loopholes exploited by sanctioned states, where traditional banking controls become ineffective because they bypass traditional exchanges for decentralized ones? **Andrew Fierman:** The regulatory framework around decentralized protocols and the DeFi ecosystem is still debated. Tornado Cash has been a hot button topic across the country. My take on the US government's sentiment is that mixing services and DeFi protocols can exist, but not for laundering hundreds of millions for North Korea. This raises questions about solutions like IP blocking and automated controls for DeFi protocols to block certain wallet types. After the Tornado Cash designation, people sent Tornado Cash funds to Jimmy Fallon and Snoop Dogg's wallets in protest, tainting them with sanctioned entity exposure, potentially preventing them from using DeFi protocols or cashing out personal funds. **Bernard Leong:** That's like the dusting attacks I see as a Coinbase wallet owner. Exchanges will recognize if you refuse to declare it as a dusting attack. But how are these illicit activities becoming more widespread where consumers can get involved in secondary sanction situations? **Andrew Fierman:** Most government agencies understand that if you've been dusted with a few dollars, you're probably not a national security risk. **Bernard Leong:** But that's what they did to Jimmy Fallon and everyone. **Andrew Fierman:** Yes, Jimmy Fallon and Snoop Dogg, the national security risks in the United States! Just kidding. This is part of the growth process in the crypto ecosystem. I don't have a crystal ball for where compliance and regulation will land, but the sentiment exists. I read today that one protocol that had been used had taken fees from transfers, and there was a request to return those earned fees from the hack. The financing mechanism in crypto could use more clarification around regulatory boundaries and frameworks. **Bernard Leong:** In this situation, what proactive measures can the crypto industry implement to enhance compliance and address illicit activities, specifically with evolving tech like DeFi and privacy coins? There have been proposals like Vitalik's privacy pools, and builders trying to develop protocols addressing industry issues. **Andrew Fierman:** There are many possible approaches, ultimately requiring a balancing act on both sides. We've seen large exchanges off-board privacy coins like Monero. Some deal with mixers, some don't. How should exchanges treat funds from mixers? Perhaps zero-knowledge proofs could help validate that someone's source of funds was clean, and they're just mixing because they wanted to send money without revealing their wealth. There are endless possibilities where there could be more compliance and regulation alongside more freedom and opportunity to operate with mutual middle ground. ### Future Developments and Closing **Bernard Leong:** What question do you wish more people would ask you about sanctions and the crypto industry? **Andrew Fierman:** Where am I going on my next vacation? No, I think it's "what's next?" As entities like Lazarus Group continue being creative, how will they go about it, and what's their next approach? These questions are constantly on my mind. What I believe is next with North Korea is that the barrier to technology facilitating access points is lowering. If you wanted a fake passport 10 years ago, you had to use a darknet market and wait for physical mail. Today, people can create convincing deepfake passports for a few dollars to $50 that could pass KYC. For a few hundred dollars, you could set up AI voice and facial recognition to validate identity. Even if an exchange asks for a 10-second video holding today's newspaper with your passport, someone can make that happen with a few hundred dollars and appear to be Brad Pitt. Access to this sophistication will challenge the industry in preventing North Korea from creating these entry points. The emerging threat is new technology and how our compliance programs and Web3 companies hiring remote employees conduct due diligence to verify information. Blockchain might be an answer with smart contracts validating identity. **Bernard Leong:** But no one has implemented it yet. **Andrew Fierman:** We're not there yet. There's no national repository confirming every citizen's identity. **Bernard Leong:** I notice blockchain companies now do extensive background searches, even on developers they hire, fearing compromise. This changes how people discuss the industry versus 10 years ago when pseudonymous persons could join protocols. So my closing question: what does success mean for the crypto industry in fending off these sanctioned hacker groups? **Andrew Fierman:** Part of it is learning from security breaches and ensuring strong security frameworks and due diligence processes for employees, so your organization isn't susceptible to security risks. I'd probably say for everyone: don't click on any email link ever. **Bernard Leong:** I literally do that now. I go to the website separately and sometimes check in incognito mode. **Andrew Fierman:** On the other side, continue building effective, active compliance programs that can disrupt a network immediately when law enforcement calls. Blockchain analytics firms should continue helping facilitate seizure, disruption, and return of funds. The transparency and immutability of the blockchain itself is a security measure - the fact that every transaction is visible and we're still tracking over 90% of 1.5 billion dollars after it's moved through tens of thousands of wallets. Not all of that missing 10% has been cashed out - it includes fees, frozen funds, and some cash-outs. The industry is getting smarter and better, making incidents harder to execute, which hopefully someday deters even attempting them. **Bernard Leong:** I look forward to days when cryptocurrency exchanges don't get hacked. Andrew, thanks for coming on the show and educating me on nuanced aspects of sanctions that normal people don't think about. In closing, any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Andrew Fierman:** The recommendation of the day is to read "The Lazarus Heist" by Jeff White if you want to know how currency and traditional banks have been exploited by North Korea. It reads like an action thriller. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you? **Andrew Fierman:** Just on LinkedIn. Look me up by name. I'm not a crypto Twitter guy myself. **Bernard Leong:** But you monitor crypto Twitter. **Andrew Fierman:** Exactly. **Bernard Leong:** Thanks for coming on the show. You can all subscribe to us on YouTube and Spotify. We are now on video and across all broadcast platforms. Drop us a note if there's anything you'd like to hear about. Andrew, thanks for coming on the show, and I look forward to speaking with you again. **Andrew Fierman:** Thanks for having me, Bernard. I really appreciate it. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Starting from his career journey, Mark shared his experiences and mental models in recruiting, developing and retaining top talent while emphasized how the STAR program in Airbus can gather experts from areas outside of Airbus to provide different perspectives on how the aviation industry can learn from best practices in other industries given the emerging technologies. Last but not least, Mark shared his perspectives on what does great look like for global talent management. --- > "When I discuss with senior leaders, interview them, or assess them for senior roles, they often come to me, and I ask them: 'What makes you unique? How do you see yourself?' Eighty percent of them tell me what they can't do. They talk about their development needs, and I say, 'Is that how you pitch yourself? Is that what you really bring to the table? You sit with a headhunter and tell me what you can’t do—why not tell me what you’re really good at?' Your exceptional value-add, your competitive advantage—that’s what makes an impact, not what you cannot do. Development needs require a mitigation strategy, yes, but I believe that focusing on your unique strengths will take you further in your career." - **Mark Reinecke** ### Profile: **Mark Reinecke**, Senior Vice President, Top Executive Management and Talent Acquisition and STAR Program Director, [**Airbus**](https://www.airbus.com/en?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-reinecke-6253b015/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and in the hunt for global talent, given the proliferation of technologies from AI to drones, how do multinational corporations in the world handle the new wave of talent acquisition and retention. With me today, a special guest that's very close to my heart, Mark Reinecke, Senior Vice President, Top Executive Management and Talent Acquisition to talk through this. I'm very thankful because Mark Reinecke is the person who recruited me to Airbus and I have fond memories of the company still leading today in global aviation. **Bernard Leong:** Mark Reinecke, welcome to the show. **Mark Reinecke:** Thank you Bernard Leong. **Bernard Leong:** You are here for the space and technology week. **Mark Reinecke:** I'm actually here for two events. Originally we were always part of a cooperation between the STAR program and the Global Space Technology Convention. This year for the first time, EDB decided to create a space week, so we have five or six events together with the STAR program. I will elaborate a little bit later what the STAR program is, but it's a cooperation we have since many years. **Bernard Leong:** Being an ex alum of it, I want to know more about your origin story. How did you start your career? **Mark Reinecke:** I started my career a very long time ago, more than three decades. I'm not an aerospace geek. I'm not an aviation guy by nature. I was born in a small town in the northern part of Germany. Most people know it because the headquarter of VW is located there - Volkswagen. I joined the automotive industry, but not VW. I joined Mercedes. I didn't want to spend my life where I was born because I'm an adventurous guy. I like to discover new places. So I went to join Mercedes as a trainee, did several jobs in HR in Stuttgart, Berlin, and before being in charge of international HR for the Western hemisphere for the truck division. **Bernard Leong:** How did you eventually make your way to Airbus? **Mark Reinecke:** It's actually a funny story. A former colleague of mine joined, back then it was called Daimler Benz Aerospace. He joined a satellite company called Dornier. And he called me one day and said, "Hey, don't you want to join Airbus?" I said, "Airbus? Airbus is a subsidiary of Daimler Benz Aerospace, which is a subsidiary of Daimler Benz. So it's the third leg in a subsidiary role. Why should I join them? I'm sitting nice in the headquarter in Stuttgart, having a nice job." He said, "No, I made a mistake. I went there." And I laughed when I saw. It was actually a company called Air Cabin back then, a subsidiary of Airbus, producing panels for the aircraft interior. I loved the people, I loved the management, so I decided to join them as HR Director and spent two and a half years there. **Bernard Leong:** And then that eventually lead you to Airbus? **Mark Reinecke:** It was part of Airbus at the end of the day, but it was not the end of my automotive journey. After two and a half years, Daimler needed people. Daimler was a very central organized company, and they liked people when they moved. So they saw somebody who moved from the automotive division into the aerospace sector, so they wanted me back. So in end of 1999, beginning of 2000, I was asked to come back primarily to be part of the PMI post merger integration team for Daimler and Chrysler. I spent a lot of time in Detroit. Later on, it was a project for the way to develop and analyze potential assessment for senior leaders. I ended up being, for two years, the head of HR for a subsidiary, a joint venture between Porsche and Daimler. Super interesting story. **Bernard Leong:** Very interesting story. **Mark Reinecke:** Honestly, I think I would have stayed there a little bit longer, had Daimler not decided to back off and give all the shares back to Porsche. **Bernard Leong:** I know that story. So, you eventually got into Airbus, you do group trustings, searching for the best talent to hire for Airbus. Before I get to the main subject of the day, I want to ask you, in your career journey, what are the key lessons that you can share with my audience? **Mark Reinecke:** That's a tough one. I would say, first of all, make daily learning a habit because what brought you there might not bring you further. You need to be able to reinvent yourself. If you always do the same thing, you always have the same result. The world is evolving and if the world evolves, the world will be ahead of you. The second is what people never know. When I discuss with senior leaders, when I have interviews, assess them for senior roles, and they come to me and I ask them, "What makes you unique? How would you see yourself?" 80% of them tell me what they can't do. They tell me the development needs, and I say, "Is it how you do a pitch? Is it what you really can bring to the table? You sit with a headhunter and tell me what you can't do? Why don't you tell me what you're really good at? Your exceptional value add, your competitive advantage." Because that's what makes the impact, not what you cannot do. It's a development need where you need a mitigation strategy. I always believe unique strength brings you further in your career. **Bernard Leong:** So I want to get to the main subject of the day. I want to think about global leadership acquisition and management because this is a pretty VUCA era now. So I want to first get a sense of, can you talk about more about your role and responsibility within Airbus itself? **Mark Reinecke:** It's a very long title as you mentioned at the beginning - Top Executive Management Talent Acquisition. In the end it's pretty simple. I'm in charge of the top 250 - everything that corresponds to staffing, recruitment, succession plan development for the top 250 leaders. I work on behalf of the Chief HR Officer together with the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors, but the Board of Directors will be supplied by my boss. What we do is ensuring that we really have the right developed top executives at all times. We have a development plan, a career path. We do coaching, leadership, internal, external mentoring and so on. We really use external experts to help them get an outside-in view. Then there's one part, and you will laugh again now, which is the talent acquisition. Talent acquisition is not that we are only hunting people outside. It is the creation of a certain kind of ecosystem, which we have done some years ago. We have two sources here. We have the STAR program, but we come to this a little bit later. And we have search partners who help us to fill the pipe and to fill the pool of friends of the house who might one day join or not Airbus. You don't have to join Airbus to be a friend of the house of Airbus. **Bernard Leong:** Being part of the program, I'm very honored, and it's probably one of the best places to actually have very good conversations. For example, Victoria Coleman, who recently joined, I think was a very long time attendee of the STAR program meetings as such. So from your perspective, how do you now look at the landscape of global talent and then analyze them before approaching them to join your organization? **Mark Reinecke:** Before we approach people, I would say the most important is that you know what you want. So you need a certain kind of strategy. You need to have your succession planning right and you need some strategic foresight. So we constantly try to analyze industry trends, leadership competencies and the requirements. And lately more and more skills. Because people talk more about skills management. Because a lot of people have skills you don't even know about, which might be needed for the future before we say, "Okay, this is the person we want to have." It's really not about just a job request and then we look for the right people here. Another thing we do internally very often is that we really make sure that our people really have the right performance and track record. Because very often we talk about leadership, and I always emphasize sometimes you need some hard skills in order to do the job, which is as important as the leadership part. And another thing is for people joining Airbus - and they know you're going to ask me about it because you went through it yourself - the cultural and leadership fit with Airbus, which is not an easy part. And again, we're trying to build long lasting relationships with people. It's not about jumping in and recruit, we try to connect people, which is much better than just taking it to the box, "Okay, there is a person, put him on the job." **Bernard Leong:** And then how do organizations actually approach the challenge of actually attracting and integrating talent just from outside the core industry? For example, we talk about myself and some of the other fellows within the STAR program who are basically experts in certain technology, could it be AI, computer vision, digital transformation, even sustainability. How do you actually approach in trying to bring them into aviation industry because the cultural values is very different and even the expertise required? I actually enjoyed my learning curve with Airbus. I went through a very good onboarding program, really got to know the business. And even today when people ask me, it's like, "Yeah, when I tell them a little bit more about aviation, it's like, wow, we didn't know it was that complex." Like, "Well, Airbus taught me everything there." **Mark Reinecke:** Again, it's not about recruitment. It's about really strategic capability building in key areas like digital transformation, innovation. Our core expertise is aerospace, is aviation, and it will always be, but we need to cross fertilize it. It's cross industry knowledge that can accelerate innovation and bring fresh perspectives. And having said that, there comes a price with it. Because the people come with a certain kind of experience, which is different than the one in Airbus, which is on the one side good. On the other side, it will be a shock for the system if you come with this knowledge. How to really make sure that we can harness this? That's the critical part, where we really, really put a lot of emphasis. We know it's not easy. We are not always successful. But we definitely need fresh eyes. And again, Airbus's ambition on leading the aviation industry decarbonization journey is still there. The goal is still 2050 of net zero carbon emission. Alone with our people, I don't think we will achieve it. We have very good people in our company, very good engineers. But we need as well some challengers, people, and some challengers from the outside of our industry. **Bernard Leong:** So what's the one thing you know about in this area of getting talent acquisition and management that very few do? **Mark Reinecke:** What I do this week. I'm here for the STAR Program, five days in Singapore, Space Week and Global Space and Technology Convention with a lot of stars, fellows of yours, and I have a normal job. But this week is not about my normal job. I'm really here solely for the STAR program and the long impact of the STAR program. Because other companies mainly focus on leadership development. That's what we have done with the STAR program. It's a strategic corporate development program which aims at creating an external network for our Executive Committee and the top management. We launched this back in 2013, actually the idea is from 2012, when I was together with the head of innovation of Conferry, late Peter Everett, who unfortunately passed away. We were sitting, having a good glass of wine and we came up with, "Why do we always have to recruit when we have a problem, or when we have an open job? Why can't we just get the knowledge in a different way?" Because what you want is the knowledge. Does it always mean you have to hire somebody? Or, if you have a problem, what do you do? You recruit internally, you recruit externally, you hire a consultant. I say, there must be something else. I came with the idea of creating a club of friends of the house. Thought leaders, next practice leaders who are somehow unique. They can be completely different than average people. They can come from NGOs, they can come from startups, they can come from administrations, they can come from MNCs, but it doesn't have to be aviation. They can come from whatever industry, from functions worldwide. And it was enabling us to really get these next practices, innovative thinking and enabling the needed outside-in view for us. Because when you ask internal people, when top managers ask, and we are all part somehow of an organization, when an internal top manager asks his teams, they don't really dare to tell you what they think. A consultant on the other side will tell you what you know and charges you a bomb. These people - and you were part of it, you were part, you were sitting on the other side of the workshops and having discussions - you are practitioners and you tell us even if we don't want to hear it. Even sometimes it hurts. And our top managers, they love it. They are on the hotspot, but they go there because they say, "Okay, we learned something." These people don't hide behind the curtain. **Bernard Leong:** And they don't hide back. I would have to also thank Peter, who actually got me into the STAR Program and to really have frank and interesting conversations. I think I met Jesse Kelman, Danny Bowman, who's actually one of the co-founders of Amazon Prime Air. And many of the other stars, Marcus and John as well. I want to hear some interesting stories here. Can you share a success story where you brought in one of the talent from STAR Program and bring them into Airbus and there has been some significant change and improvements within the organization? **Mark Reinecke:** I'll try to do it without naming anyone. Because we have a certain kind of Chatham House rules as well. But I'll name somebody you may immediately know who it is, who was a member of the STAR program, was based out of Singapore, is originally Dutch, very long working for a big MNC. I knew him for 10 years and we were always in touch over the years and he always brought insight. He was part of the workshops, and so on. Ultimately, coming from another global conglomerate, he came into Airbus. It took a while. It took 10 years, but it was never the aim to immediately jump on this. And again, I don't know if I say it, but the STAR program is not a recruitment program. That's right. It can lead to recruitment, but the aim is really having thought leadership discussions with an external advisory council. So this person came in and immediately he was in the commercial organization, brought his external view, was running the region Europe and is now - people can look it up because I still don't want to say the name - and now made it after a couple of years, really with this external view and very international background. And he's definitely somebody who's now part of the Executive Committee in charge of all the international organization. And it was a full success, even though at the beginning people were a bit, "Okay, he's different than we are." But the difference is really broad is the open mindset, curiosity, and we needed it to create our international organization. **Bernard Leong:** So this is where I want to ask you, what are the kinds of challenges organization face from integrating this external talent from the different industries into a traditional industry like aviation to get that unique corporate culture. We talk about it and I think you alluded to the fact that it's not really very simple. It's not as in, you snap, you bring a talent in, there needs to be some integration and maybe people within the system also get a little bit of a shock as that happened. What are the things that you try to make sure that you have to do so that those talent can integrate and essentially become a team player of the organization? **Mark Reinecke:** It's a tough one. Because normally you think, okay, you hire somebody from the outside with an executive search firm. Very often, you do assessments, you do several interviews, you know, you have eight or 10 interviews before you are finally selected at that level, even if it's the blessing of the Executive Committee, but the complexity of our industry, the regulations, the certification process have played a pivotal role on how the culture is. We have longer development cycles. Everything takes a long time, and for people who come from fast paced industries, you have startups, they get very nervous. Meetings, the governance culture, and you know, you sit in meetings and you ask yourself, "Why are we not deciding? We could decide already." These are really challenges for them. So we have to make sure that they do understand that and I have to bring you back to the year 1999 when it was decided to create this company back then, EADS. Four companies from four countries and the day after they are one, should be one company, one culture. It takes time. So we have learned to accept diversity and the differences because that's for me accepting diversity and stability in the end of the day, but it takes time that you don't fight it. And then on top of that, our engineers - and we are an engineering driven company - they are so proud, and I'm proud myself. I'm not an engineer of what they produce. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Mark Reinecke:** And you have seen it. When you can see the drones, when you can see the platforms, when you can see the aircraft, the helicopters, the satellites, it's just amazing. They have tears in their eyes. They're so proud. So they think, "Okay. Why should we do something else different now? What does this new person bring me in the end of the day when he or she comes in? We are great. So why change?" But again, as I said before, if we continue to do what we have been doing in the past, and the world is evolving, and now with things like AI, we all know how things can evolve very fast. And the last point I want to mention, Bernard Leong, is we have a very high tissue rejection. I don't know how it is in other multinationals. And it's very, very, very, very key that we help the people and we have for all the top leaders, we have an exclusive tailor made onboarding program. They get assigned a buddy and this buddy - you can ask, the buddy is not there to mentor you, the buddy is there so you can ask any stupid question, from where do I have to go to the toilet, to the canteen, to what is the best way to reach out to a person, where to park my car. It's really to indulge the culture, but to have a safe harbor to ask somebody who knows the culture, and to really have the chance to ask this person questions you don't dare to ask because you don't want to look dumb. You can't look dumb in this way. **Bernard Leong:** And have you ever thought about the fact that maybe you also have reverse pollinated into the people who are in the STAR program who get to understand Airbus culture? I, for one, actually learned a lot about, actually I came to appreciate safety a lot more. The appreciation of actually building for quality. On that, have you ever thought that, you know, that might have even have reverse pollinated from the group of people who usually comes from having these conversations and learning on that. **Mark Reinecke:** Again, I think it's a two way street. It's not a one way street. We learn a lot, but I know that even people who have been with Airbus, and we have learned as well that, take your own case, Bernard Leong, you came in for a mission. When the mission was finished, it was clear that maybe your future is not without us, which is okay. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. **Mark Reinecke:** And it was difficult for us to accept it as an HR organization. To say, "Okay, why do you bring in people for three or four years? And then they go and say, yeah, because the mission is finished." It's the new way of doing things. It's the new normal you have already with the gig economy. So no, there's a cross pollination in the end of the day. And to be very frank, I think we learn as much as the stars learn. Or people who join Airbus and then leave. **Bernard Leong:** I have a really curious question. I mean, one of the most interesting parts of the STAR program is actually to be able to have all these very interesting and groundbreaking conversations about technologies and what is the value in the aviation space, or maybe even adjacent businesses as well. What are your perspectives now looking at emerging technologies, for example, AI, not necessarily generative AI, and other technologies sometimes could be 3D printing. And maybe now people even talk about crypto. I don't know how it gets into it, but how do the perspectives that you hear shape the way even how you think about what you do in Airbus daily, like the way you maybe think about acquiring and retaining talent? **Mark Reinecke:** Let me give an answer. And here I take my role as an HR guy because I'm not an engineer. Otherwise I will look stupid in front of you because you are an engineer. AI will definitely play a major role and a key role in the future of HR. We are already the first step of this journey when it comes to feeding succession plans. But it's really at the beginning. Because we have to do our homework first. Because everybody talks about AI, I wouldn't say, "Okay, we have to get our act together because we have so many data." We first have to decide, "Okay, what is it that we want to achieve?" The question is, what do you want to have as an outcome? Then to collect the data, and then maybe we talk about machine learning in order to have some tools which can identify successes for us. But you need to make your homework. The homework is collect the data, ask the key questions at the end of the day. What is it what you want to achieve? What is a career breaker? What is a career maker? Is it the language? Is it the boss? Is it the structure? Is the salary increases? The development program? What is it? What brings you there? So unless we haven't done that, we cannot blame AI for not giving us the right people out of the system. So for me, we're not planning to automatize things because in the end, it's for me a certain kind of enabler to make better human decisions, because at the end we are humans, and honestly, I strongly do believe that it will help us a lot, to improve our decision making. Even on the onboarding, maybe. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. **Mark Reinecke:** But again, I think it will remain that individual development remains a human expertise. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. And does any of talking on these new topics along with the other members of the STAR program give you a perspective of what the future will look like in the aviation industry as well? **Mark Reinecke:** Oh, that's a tough one, because I get so many perspectives on the discussions with the STAR program. I maybe highlight two things. Yesterday, two days ago, coming back to the week. Two days ago, we had a new session with the STAR program member who made a certain kind of presentation. Four stars and Airbus management. So it wasn't Airbus hosting. And it was more about how AI and what are the five most relevant technologies: Blockchain, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc. which will definitely have a major impact on all industries, on society. And we have five years to get ready. What's our plan? And it was super interesting to see and you saw the people just melting away. And you get out of it and you start to think, "Okay, what does it mean for me? What does it mean for my family? What does it mean for Airbus? What does it mean for my job in the end?" So it's an inspiration. Honestly, it's just unique. The second thing is, do you remember, I don't know if you remember, we had our workshops on UAVs. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I remember that. **Mark Reinecke:** And we have for sure, we had super people around the table. Everybody was raving, "UAVs is going to come" and so on. Unfortunately, we had the CEO of an insurance company around the table. Who said, "Technology is great. You will build it. And I have no doubts one day, these things are going to fly - you Airbus, other companies, and so on. And when I hear you all, it's just about the business model. It's about the scaling up. It's about the technology, who owns what and who does what." "The one question I would like to ask you guys, all of you sitting around, when this thing falls off the sky - who is accountable? The OEM? The city, the regulator, the pilot, the passenger, or whoever? There must be somebody, because somebody must be accountable and liable. And we have to ask this question." There was silence in the room and that's what I described in the end because he was not a regulator. Regulator, we know how they work. He was from the insurance side, and by the way, he's an aviation geek, but he knows aviation very well. We were taking a break, reflecting, thinking. It brings a new perspective. And that's how it always works in these discussions. **Bernard Leong:** So I'm probably going to ask, like, what is the one question you wish people would ask you more about global talent acquisition and management? **Mark Reinecke:** I said STAR program is my hobby, which it definitely is, and many people, I would put it this way. Some people ask me, "Mark Reinecke, why do you think networks are so important?" **Bernard Leong:** Why do you think networks are so important? That's my question now. I know why. **Mark Reinecke:** And here, frankly, and I talk about internal and the external network, and I give two examples. People underestimate the power of networks. A network doesn't mean that you just go around and meet people for the sake of meeting people. Network means to me that you have a genuine professional network and you can ask people. And they can help you to do something. Particularly in Airbus, it's super important because you can learn from them. Because whenever you know somebody, and people are somehow still scared. When you look at our community, the 200 stars we have, you throw a question in, somebody will answer. And whatever it is, you get the answer. And the same applies for Airbus, which is a very complex company. And I always tell the people, take your time to create the network. Because if you don't know people, people don't know you. And you won't get things done. I know some people think it's a waste of time. I strongly believe in a company like Airbus, which is because of its history, very complex. Four founding countries. You need to spend the time with the people to get to know them and for them to get to know you. And if you don't want to do that, you're set up for failure. The second thing is the external network. And we have spoken a lot about the STAR program. I don't even know if it was the intention you had to speak a lot about the STAR program, but it's not my intention. I'm very often approached by colleagues, by other companies. "We have heard about the STAR program. What is it? We would like to do it." And I have no problem sharing what we do. Even though Chatham House rules apply when we are in the STAR program workshops, because they are friends. We don't have NDAs, to be very clear, with any of the stars. So they get more information, but we trust them as they trust us. And the problem is the people think you can create something like this in one or two years. And it's not a budget line. It's not about money. Yes, it costs money when we do these things. But for me, it doesn't cost, it's an investment and the investment is not the money, there's a budget line only, it's the time. I spend in peak times, 50, 60 percent of my time for the STAR program. Normally it's about 30, 40%, which is a lot. And this applies as well for somebody in my team who's working. It's some other team members who support that. I tried to visit every star once a year. So friendship needs to be nurtured. It's like plants. You don't water them, they fade away and they die. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Mark Reinecke:** And then friendship dies away. So if I don't see you for the next 10 years, it is still okay. "I haven't seen him for 10 years. He's not interested in me, so I'm not interested in him." And same applies for Airbus. But as we meet regularly, we stay in touch, we discuss about trends. You asked me to do a podcast, and that's how it works. And people are not ready to invest the time. They think they can buy friendship and when they realize, it's not depending only on the product. Yes, we have super products, but it's not depending on the product. It's much more depending as well on the willingness to set it up, to have a product, a long breath, because we do it since 10 years, we still do it and we have done nearly 200 workshops with the stars for our top management, and it's still there and it's getting bigger and bigger. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, I'm totally still there for some of the gatherings and it's really a great place to actually have those intellectual conversations. So I have my traditional closing question. What does great look like for you? For global talent acquisition and management, you know, large corporation? **Mark Reinecke:** I take my habits head again. I don't talk about the STAR program, because we have been speaking about that so long. Preparation of the next generation of leaders, robustness of succession plan, and diversity while I emphasize diversity with a capital D that means it's gender, international - we are an international company, we definitely need as well international mindset. So we need different people and we know what the price it comes with because different people means different cultures. You know my background, I'm quite diverse, even though I'm officially originally from Germany, but I've spent most of my time not in Germany. And we need really to ensure that the company is led by the best minds and they are not only exceptional in their own fields, but they are deeply aligned with our mission. And you know that our mission is pioneering sustainable aerospace for a safe and united world. So they need to embark on this journey. And there are long term things like I discussed. Succession plans at all levels, be ready, being attractive to talent and not only attracting them, retaining them. And that is the key issue. This has a lot of things to do with the culture, the way we do things, the way you welcome people and so on so that they don't go away after six months and swallow the bitter pill, and then afterwards spit it out. And the second thing is preparing our current leaders. There are a lot of leaders out there who see all these new technologies coming, everything coming. They heard the name of AI, but they don't really know what it is. They don't probably know what the difference between AI and machine learning is, and so on. But we need to take the time to prepare them as well, because they might still be there. So it's again, it's preparing the future, but as well taking care of the ones who are out there, because they might still be there for a couple of years and they're good guys, ladies, to make them successful. **Bernard Leong:** Mark Reinecke, many thanks for coming on the show. And I say, I really look forward to having this conversation with you over the last 10 years. And I really got this. So in closing, I have two quick questions. Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Mark Reinecke:** I'm glad to be here in Singapore. I honestly get my inspiration, like I said before, from meeting so many new diverse people. And every time I go back to Airbus, I have so many ideas. And you know that Airbus is a super company. We know what we have. We know our challenges. But there's so many other things you can learn, which is like reading 20 books, 30 books in one week when you have these discussions. Yesterday we had a super session, which was done with another star on the future role and how should Singapore develop. And I was just listening in and learning so much about the ecosystem in Singapore, which I didn't know. And that's the one thing. And the second thing is, these insightful sessions, these discussions, but as well, I have a passion for people. And be it the Airbus people, and the outside people, and I meet with them all the time. My team knows, when I'm on the road, I don't accept any conferences, meetings with Europe or whatever. So I'm there for the people. I hardly even call, just if it's important, because I want to spend the time with the people. In the end, this is an inspiration for my job. It's being present, actually being present, and I love my job. **Bernard Leong:** So how do my audience find you? **Mark Reinecke:** They can find me through you very easily through LinkedIn. **Bernard Leong:** Okay, cool. So you can definitely find the podcast everywhere now on YouTube, Spotify, in video and definitely, subscribe to our newsletter. And of course, drop me any feedback if you have on the podcast. Mark Reinecke, many thanks for coming on the show. I just have to give one more shout out on my very first STAR dinner. I actually learned so much. And one of the things that I actually learned was airport design and this really great gentleman, Casper, who always talk about design. Every time I see him over the last 10 years, we're always talking about what's the next great UI from walking past an airport. So I really thank you for this conversation and many thanks for coming on the show. **Mark Reinecke:** Most welcome and thank you for the challenging questions. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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We began with Lionel's career journey as the former editor of Financial Times and why inspired him to work on this book. We progressed how he put together a nuanced portrait of Masa as a resilient outsider whose Korean-Japanese heritage fueled his drive to succeed in Japan's stratified society and shared stories of Masa's evolution from software distributor to global tech investor with Vision Fund. Lionel explains how this "eternal optimist" has consistently ridden technological waves for four decades while making and losing billions. He unpacks Masa's unique investment philosophy of thinking big, his revolutionary $100 billion Vision Fund that disrupted venture capital norms, and his latest half-trillion-dollar bet on AI. Throughout the conversation, Lionel reveals the complexity behind the caricature, arguing that history will remember Masa as an extraordinarily consequential figure in global tech investing despite his mixed record of spectacular wins and losses. --- > "They will judge Masa to have been an extraordinarily consequential investor and historic figure in world investing and tech investing because he has made not just spectacular bets—but he's made so many people rich. I mean, with other people's money. All these founders, he's given them money, he's been an enormous disruptor, and he's built global businesses. He's built a huge business in Japan on the mobile operator. So for all these reasons, I know he sometimes feels dissatisfied with his legacy, and he's now trying to build his greatest legacy in the march to artificial general intelligence. Maybe the legacy will finally be judged by whether this bet pays off. What will his role be in the AI revolution? I would say to him, 'You've done pretty well so far.' " - **Lionel Barber, author of "Gambling Man"** **Profile:** Lionel Barber, Author of "[Gambling Man: The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Gambling-Man/Lionel-Barber/9781668070741?ref=analysepodcast.com)" ([Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/166807074X?tag=simonsayscom&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Apple Books](https://books.apple.com/us/book/gambling-man/id6503703500?ref=analysepodcast.com)), former Editor of the [Financial Times](https://ft.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lionel-barber-473826135/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [X - formerly known as Twitter](https://x.com/lionelbarber?lang=en&ref=analysepodcast.com), [FT Profile](https://www.ft.com/lionel-barber?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel%5FBarber?ref=analysepodcast.com), [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yv5ux5l7lcvmxexdswey5hqx?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and Masayoshi San, CEO of [Softbank Group](https://www.softbank.jp/en//?ref=analysepodcast.com), remains to be one of the movers and shakers of global tech. What's the one common line that makes him larger than life? With me today, Lionel Barber, author of "Gambling Man, The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi San", and former editor of the Financial Times, which I'm a lifelong subscriber as well, to help us to demystify the Japanese tycoon who is now making headway even in the area I'm working on: AI. Lionel, welcome to the show. **Lionel Barber:** It's great to be here, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** Of course, it's a tradition on the podcast to start with origin stories. How did you start your career and eventually became the editor of the Financial Times? **Lionel Barber:** I began my career as an Englishman in Scotland, so that wasn't easy, on the paper called The Scotsman in Edinburgh, where I was a reporter, and then I worked briefly in Glasgow. From there, I went to London two and a half years later. **Bernard Leong:** So you have an illustrious career in journalism and also chronicled some of the biggest, major business stories of our times. Before we dive in, how do you describe the journey of covering these stories in your own words? **Lionel Barber:** Well, I was on the Scotsman and I had needed to find a speciality and something I was passionate about. I remember Mrs. Thatcher's intellectual guru, Sir Keith Joseph giving a speech in Glasgow about how interesting business was and why weren't journalists more interested in business and risk taking and entrepreneurs. So I decided to follow his advice and I became a business journalist. That's what I was on the Sunday Times. Then the Financial Times hired me in 1985\. That was my passion. I did write about politics \[and\] I've interviewed a lot of world leaders during my time, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Li Keqiang, Wen Jiabao, not Lee Kuan Yew, unfortunately, although I've met him. So, but all through this time, I was trying to write about business and the economy and understand how the modern world worked. **Bernard Leong:** I will add some of the really great investigative journalism that's done by the Financial Times as well. **Lionel Barber:** Yes, I led the [Wirecard story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirecard%5Fscandal?ref=analysepodcast.com), which we did some great work on \[see [FT's coverage on Wirecard](https://www.ft.com/stream/5deafe76-ed2f-37ec-9a0f-f755a83b33e1?ref=analysepodcast.com)\]. That was probably one of the biggest investigations that I oversaw as editor during my 14 years at the Financial Times. I was very proud of that story, but we did other work too. I've always thought that investigative journalism, i.e. deep reporting is a very important part of being a great journalist. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, and it still is today. So looking back, what were the biggest lessons you learned from your career journey that you can share with a younger audience out there? **Lionel Barber:** Stay curious. Don't be cynical. You've got to be able to have an open mind when you're a reporter and journalist. Reporting is not about having opinions, it's about finding facts. And then show a bit of humility and humour, because if you're sitting opposite a very powerful person, male or female, you need to listen. Show some humility. Don't think that you're the most important person in the room. My final advice is when you're interviewing somebody, don't fill the silence. Actually wait for the other person to keep speaking. The biggest mistake of all for journalists is to fill the silence during an interview. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you for the advice. I'll bear that in mind when I interview my next guest. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2025/03/gambling-man-9781668070741_hr.jpg)](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Gambling-Man/Lionel-Barber/9781668070741?ref=analysepodcast.com) Picture Credits: Simon and Schuster That comes to the main story of the day. I want to talk about your new book, Gambling Man, because I have been looking forward to a book. Because the only other biography about the person you cover, Masayoshi San, the current CEO of SoftBank, has been a fan-boy book. So to start off, of course, I've really enjoyed the Gambling Man. It took me within two days to finish the whole book, reading page to page. So having covered global business leaders for years, what stood out to you about Masayoshi San? **Lionel Barber:** Well, he's just been there at the heart of the action. In all the big tech investing stories, for more than four decades. I describe him as this "Forrest Gump" type character. He's there and he's either trying to buy the company or a piece of the company. He's made some of the most spectacular bets on Yahoo early, on Alibaba, and latterly on Arm, the British semiconductor design company. They've come up, but he's also lost lots of money. He lost about 97 percent of his paper wealth when the dot com bubble burst. So that made him a very interesting character to me because, bottom line, follow the money. If there's lots of money, there's bound to be good stories and a lot of good characters to write about. **Bernard Leong:** What is the one thing you know about Masayoshi San after researching and writing this book that very few do? **Lionel Barber:** I think he is enormously resilient. I think people overlook this. They look at the big mouth, the big promises. The talk of creating trillion dollar companies lasting 300 years, all this and what they miss is the essence of the character and crucially, and I'm sure we'll talk a bit about this, the fact that he's an outsider in his own society in a very stratified society in Japan. He's Korean-Japanese, and that gives him tremendous motivation to succeed. Somebody said to me, the thing you need to understand about Masayoshi San is: he has the biggest chip on his shoulder that of anybody you'll ever meet. I think that's a bit harsh, but there is something which we can discuss about his character that I find very interesting. **Bernard Leong:** That comes to the core part of the title: Gambling Man, suggests that risk taking part as the defining trait of Masa San. Can you elaborate on the core themes of the book then? **Lionel Barber:** Obviously, somebody who loses and gains tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth and takes this giant risk taking is something of a gambler. Now, he would say that he's worked it all out, I don't believe that all the time. I think he acts on instinct, so that sense of explaining the giant risk taking appetite. How do you do that? Why does he do it? That's a very important thing. The theme of the outsider and also the theme of riding the technological wave of the last four decades from the microchip to the internet, to the mobile internet, and now artificial intelligence. I mean, he's ridden that wave consistently for more than four decades. Guess what? He still survived. He's not given up. He's not moved on like Jeff Bezos at Amazon or Bill Gates. He's still there at the head of SoftBank. **Bernard Leong:** I also find that he's like an eternal optimist. He's always thinking about the next wave and the next and the next next wave there as well. **Lionel Barber:** Yeah, that's a very good way of putting it, Bernard, that he's an eternal optimist. I think he's never down, or he can be down, but he's not a pessimist about what he thinks is the right thing to do or the right direction of technology or markets. He looks long term and he's always bouncing back because he thinks there's another opportunity to make money, to succeed with an interesting idea. He is, by the way, very curious still, which is a strength. But yeah, the power of optimism, but there's also something which I think you asked a great question, which is what does some people do they or don't they not know? I think there's something slightly unfulfilled about him. There's something a bit sad. He's never satisfied. I describe him once as like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill and then it always comes down, but he's back again. So there's something. Yeah, that's optimism, but there's also something slightly tragic actually. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, that's true. There's never an end point to something for him. **Lionel Barber:** Yes, exactly. That's about that. He talked to me about that in the last interview that I did with him in Tokyo. **Bernard Leong:** Because he's based in Japan and most Asian leaders tend to be secretive and don't really talk much about their story. What are the biggest challenges in documenting his story for you? **Lionel Barber:** Bernard, he is very secretive. He's one of the most secretive people I've ever met. He really doesn't like to talk about where he lives, what he's doing, his schedule, his plans. Everything is secretive, because he wants to surprise people, but also he's a very private man. I mean, I decided not to go deep into his family, not because there are dark secrets, I don't think there are, but it's very difficult because he doesn't want to talk about that. He did face, in the late 90s, some kidnapping threats because he got close and worked closely with Rupert Murdoch when they were buying and setting up a satellite TV joint venture. So you've got to respect him on that, but also there's a cultural problem. I mean, I don't speak Japanese. I visited when I was editor of the Financial Times because we were bought by Nikkei. I visited Japan 14 times in four years to cement the relationship, but I don't speak Japanese. I did five trips to Japan in 14 months to see Masayoshi San. By the way, twice he said he was too busy which he talked about the challenges. That's a challenge. The other challenge is just trying to penetrate what is a very well constructed narrative where he tells the same stories again and again and again that everybody else has retailed. So I wanted to penetrate that. So one way of doing that was to talk to other people who've worked with him, particularly in the West. But that's another story. But there were significant challenges. It cost, by the way, a lot of money to travel around the world all the time to Japan and to Silicon Valley, you know, more than half a dozen times. So that's a challenge too. **Bernard Leong:** Of course, it comes up to this, the product of this work. And I probably been looking forward to a book like this to read. So one thing that I do draw from the biography is that Masayoshi Son's Korean heritage and his father's pachinko business have actually played quite a big role in shaping his worldview. How does his upbringing influence also his approach to business? **Lionel Barber:** Well, his father grew up. He was born in 1936, so he went through the war, which was terrible. Obviously, for Koreans in Japan, they were non-citizens. Remember the family? The grandfather came in 1917 and worked in a coal mine and the grandmother 10 years later. So they were economic migrants, and father born in 36 after the war. It's a catastrophe. The war for Japan. Obviously, after \[the devestation of\] nuclear atomic bombs, they go back to Korea and they're rejected by their own families and cousins. So they go back to Japan and they're living in a slum. I mean, it's a shantytown. Masa is born in 1957\. His father was originally a bootlegger selling moonshine, and then a pig breeder, and then a loan shark, and then Pachinko, he buys pachinko parlors. So he's in the underground economy. I mean, dealing with the underworld a bit, it's very dark and shady. He makes money, but Masa, crucially, the influence of his parents is one, he is a hustler. Two, he decides: "I don't want to go that way. I want to work in the open, in a new business. The way he deals with this is he tells his parents, I'm leaving for America. I'm going to go to high school, I'm going to go to college in America." Now that's a huge break. He's the second son in the family. It's a liberation to learn English because it gives him a new tool. But it also makes him very special when he goes back to Japan because he says, first of all, I'm going to be Korean Japanese. I'm going to live under my own name. Not like my parents, not have a Japanese alias, Yasumoto, I'm going to be called Son. I'm going to have a new business, which is software distribution. So all this makes him very different from his parents and his father, but he certainly knows how to hustle. **Bernard Leong:** You have clearly laid out the aspects of that family background that somehow has been overlooked in terms of understanding his entrepreneur mindset. He does have a very unique entrepreneurial story. What do you think from the coverage of the biography? What do you think were the defining moments that shaped him as a business leader? **Lionel Barber:** Well, the first was he couldn't get credit. He couldn't get bank loans as an entrepreneur with starting his own company. Can you believe that? For a new business. I mean, can you think of the greater odds and obstacles? So he needed people to help and he got some help from older people who gave him some advice and also stood for him right at the beginning. So that's the very first serious moment where he breaks that he can get the money. He's living a bit on the edge, but he's also chosen a new product line, which is distribution of software in 1981\. That's important. Another defining moment was that he decides to invest in America. He's buying businesses in telemarketing and then a trade fair, very important in Las Vegas. Because suddenly he's meeting all these famous people and he's running the show at the trade fair, you know, people like Larry Ellison of Oracle, Steve Jobs of Apple. That's how they meet. So he's a great networker. I think that was very important. I mean, there are numerous places, but I'd say in the early days the other one is obviously he makes loads of money, richest man in the world for three days. Think about that in February 2000 and then it all goes. He loses 97 percent of his wealth in the dot com bubble, but he pivots to saying, "I'm going to create a broadband business". So those are some of the pivotal moments and obviously buying Vodafone Japan, the mobile operator and creating his own mobile phone business. **Bernard Leong:** So that's where I find it's very interesting about Masa. How did he manage to build from this small software distributor where the origins of when Softbank started, followed by purchase of tech conferences, and getting distributorship, then subsequently, pivot into a kind of a global tech conglomerate with a telco that challenges the likes of KDDI and NTT DoCoMo? Then there was his ownership of ARM. Okay, because I'm from Cambridge University. ARM is one, it's almost like the Intel to Silicon Valley. The ARM founders helped Cambridge University with all the sponsorship. I know the founders myself as well. Then that was Masa's reputation of a great investor. **Lionel Barber:** You know, these are great questions. First of all, he understands where technology is going. So starting with software distribution is fine. I mean, he becomes the number one distributor, but that's obviously not enough for scale. He's always been interested in investing. So you have to distinguish these two roles, which by the way is often overlooked. He can play the role of both investor and operator. When he focuses, but he's looking to build an empire. I mean, he talks about empire almost like Imperial Japan. He wants to be a global player. So it's never enough just to be number one in Japan. He wants to build an empire so that first manifests itself with having stakes in more than 400 companies. Can you believe that during the dot com bubble? But when he goes into broadband and takes on the most powerful operator, once the most valuable company in the world, NTT Docomo. He understands he needs scale for the empire. That's why he goes in for the lever. I believe it's bit of Vodafone Japan, but then that's not enough. He wants to replicate the model in America. So he buys Sprint. He talks about a company worth a trillion dollars. Then there's the pivot to "I need to be investing. I see that the giant tech bubble, maybe not a bubble, but you know, these companies like Google, like Facebook, like Amazon, they're huge companies, I want a piece of that". So that's when he starts investing and he creates the vision fund: to invest or turbo charge tech companies around built around the Internet and mobile. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, it would have been bad of me not to forget about Yahoo Japan as well. **Lionel Barber:** Very important. Well, Bernard, that's very important because of what we're seeing now with Open AI. The key thing is when he buys the stake in Yahoo, he gets 40%. There's this great conversation with co-founder Jerry Yang, who I interviewed. Yang basically says, "I don't need your money, and I don't need 100 million." Masa looks at him and says, "Everybody needs 100 million". There's a bit of the mafia about that. But the crucial thing is, he says, "I'm investing in you, I'm giving you the money, but I want the name Yahoo, and I want to have my own Japan e-commerce business. So you give me your whole Japan" Jerry Young says, "Well, we can't fund or give you all the people". Then Masa says, "I'll do it myself. I just need the name." That's what he does. He brings American technology and know-how to his domestic market. He's the great middleman in that respect. **Bernard Leong:** So this is the part where I find pretty interesting and because you have actually met and interviewed Masa. Masa has seamlessly switched between being a business operator and an investor. From your conversations with him and your research about him, do you find one of these roles are more natural for him? Or maybe for him, it's just both sides of the same coin. They see he's able to switch between them. **Lionel Barber:** I think he can play both roles. He's flexible, but what people who worked with him a long time and know him say is the question is when he focuses or not, and his mind works very quickly. I mean, he falls in and out of love with people. He has enthusiasm \[on something\]. One day he will be spending six weeks designing in great detail the new city of Neom with all the tech around it. He's like an architect. He has that artistic streak, by the way. I mean, he can go into tremendous detail. He can be an operator like with Sprint, but on the other hand he likes to go to the tables. He likes to be investing in companies. So there's a tension between the two roles. Sometimes that tension proves to be quite strong. But I definitely think it's wrong just to call him a gambler or just an investor. I think he really does go deep into technology. He can operate. Whether by the way, we haven't talked about this, but how good is he at managing people? I mean, that's maybe a question mark. So if you're talking about an all-around CEO leader, I mean, he does tend to fall in and out of love with people. He plays and lets people feud and fight within the company, which is sometimes not great. **Bernard Leong:** That's where the audacious bets comes in, right? You think of Alibaba and WeWork. What does his investment philosophy actually reveals about his mindset? **Lionel Barber:** Think big. I mean, he just falls in love with people who think that they can take over the world. People like Adam Neumann, this Jesus Christ like figure from Israel at WeWork. And, you know, they almost egg each other on. They're encouraging each other to talk bigger. The other thing is: he'll never talk to you about profit and loss. He's not interested in that. He's just interested in growth, in revenue, total accessible market. He wants to see if he'd go on a plane and he'd come and see people, people would come to Tokyo and I've talked to somebody who was hoping to get 50 million. Masa said, "No, not 50 million. You need 500 million." The guy didn't know what to do with the money. But Masa is saying, you need the money, think big and go for scale. **Bernard Leong:** That's the part that some people can think that scale and go beyond that. We're talking about some of the successes like Jack Ma of Alibaba, maybe Sam Altman with Open AI and et cetera. There are some very good stories as well, but then there's also the spectacular bets that gone south to like the WeWorks and others. **Lionel Barber:** That's right, yeah. Bernard, let me just say one word on Alibaba. The fact is that Jack Ma did not say to Masa in that first meeting in Beijing in 1999, he didn't say, I'm going to take over the world. Massa understood the potential of a Chinese eBay with Alibaba, and then Masa also really helps. I interviewed Joe Tsai, the co-founder of Alibaba. He mentioned that Masa really helped to develop the B2B business with Alibaba and should take great credit for that. **Bernard Leong:** That's the part where you actually review some things that people thinks that he's just only investing, but the bets that come out, actually his involvement, his involvement is far more greater than what is actually shown in the open. This is the part of the story that I really enjoy books like yours, when you dive very deep into that person and really figure out what are the things that are real and what are the things that actually the normal people's perception is not correct. I mean, I hear a lot of U.S. podcasts. They are always looking to him as like some fool, clown or joker, but I don't think they understand what is Masa really good at. **Lionel Barber:** Again, Bernard, you've put your finger on the button there that that's exactly right. It's easy to see him in terms of a caricature, like he's this Yoda figure just because he's not very tall, and he does joke, but that doesn't mean to say he's actually a very serious person. By the way, he used the joker role to obscure his serious intent. He has also read Sun Tzu's Art of War. He's very good at deception. That's the way he plays things, so people underestimate him. **Bernard Leong:** Given SoftBank's mixed record, there are two parts to the Vision Fund. The first part is there was a very good coverage from your book about how the vision fund is actually assembled together. Many people just read the headlines, but I think as in how he came to doing the fund. Would you want to elaborate on that? **Lionel Barber:** Well, he clearly imagined that he would completely change the model of investment funds. By the way, I'll explain why I don't think this is a VC \[venture capital\] fund. I mean, everybody, he definitely disrupted the venture capital market, but the way the fund worked was not like a venture capital fund. Basically, he decided to throw a wall of money at everybody at founders, but also at the venture capital industry. So while normally people would go for say a 5 billion fund, that would be high. He said, not even 20 billion. He suddenly says he's on an airplane to the Gulf. He's going to Qatar, and then on to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. He basically says, "No, I want a hundred billion dollars." Now this is completely different from everybody. Then he gets the 60 billion: 45 billion from Saudi Arabia, 15 from the Emiratis. So he's got a gigantic war chest. Now, there are two issues here, at least. One is, he guarantees as part of the negotiations to give the Saudis, the Emiratis and the other LPs, a 7 percent coupon. So he's already down, he's having to give 7 percent annually, right? Irrespective of the returns. The second thing is he's not investing in startups. He's investing in companies that have been around for, say, five to six years. WeWork, Uber, and he's force feeding the companies. He says turbocharging. I like force feeding. He thinks that's the fastest way to growth. When he gets into difficulty with WeWork, instead of saying, well, okay, it didn't work, because in venture capital, you know, some work, some don't. It's about moonshots. He decides to stick with it. He bails it out, goes in even deeper. So he's breaking all these normal rules. But overall he's trying to make a huge amount of money off a huge amount of money. As people say, most people can only make a huge amount of money off a low amount of money. That's the way it works in and this is what's called the power law. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, he got the ARM deal correct. The DoorDash deal is also correct. **Lionel Barber:** Correct. I mean, on ARM, by the way, he bought ARM, this wonderful company that, as you say, based in Cambridge, and I did interview the founder, Herman Hauser, Masa was ridiculous, talking about the Internet of Things and ARM. But he paid 32 billion in cash, and he got the company in 15 days. Can you believe it? In 2015, but that was a year before the vision fund. So he put ARM in the vision fund later for a large portion of it. Actually that transaction took place before. **Bernard Leong:** So given the relentless drive and also the willingness to take risks, do you think that Massa has actually changed the way how modern tech investing actually works? Because I do recall VCs making this point to me once is there's another exit strategy, sell to SoftBank. **Lionel Barber:** Yeah, he obviously has changed the way investors work. People felt that they had to respond in this venture capital arms race. So he comes up with 100 billion, Tiger Global, they suddenly were amassing large amounts of money. Look at Anderson Horowitz now on around the AI fund. Look at Sequoia in Silicon Valley. They all had to bulk up to match Masa's firepower. Now, he disrupted their party, so he's really despised by a lot of people in the venture capital industry in Silicon Valley. He's admired in some quarters as very creative. Basically they didn't like the competition, but they also didn't like the way in which he arguably unrealistically forced up valuations by putting so much money in and increased the risk of a crash. You had something of a crash just before the COVID pandemic and Masa obviously then lost a lot of money. The Vision Fund now is okay. I mean, you would have done slightly better with in just investing in ordinary equities. The Vision Fund too is, you know, not good at all. So his record in that sense is quite, somewhat indifferent, although you've mentioned a couple of hits. I mean, it is a bit like a pop album, isn't it? He's got a couple of great songs, but the whole album, not so good. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, but the story still remains to be told, right? I mean, there's still Open AI and we still do not know how far this is going to go as well. **Lionel Barber:** Yeah. Well, this is the big new story. And I was very pleased because I've just come back from America. I've been there for just over two weeks. And would you believe it, but the day of the publication of my book, Gambling Man, Massa announces that he's not putting just a hundred billion dollars in OpenAI. He's putting five hundred billion dollars. He's teamed up with Sam Altman's OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. I mean, he couldn't make this up in the Stargate venture. **Bernard Leong:** So I have two more questions. My first one is, what's the one question you wish more people would ask you about Masayoshi Son and the book? **Lionel Barber:** I think, I ask him what was the hardest question. **Bernard Leong:** Okay, well, I'm going to ask you now. What was the hardest question? **Lionel Barber:** The hardest question was when I asked him about where he lived in Tokyo because it's a giant secret. So that was a delicate matter. You know, but I said to him, look, I've interviewed 16 people have been in your house. It's an amazing house. And you know, somebody called it Wayne Manor, which is the \[ficitionalized\] Batman's home because it's so secretive and underground. So I think that that's probably the hardest question. **Bernard Leong:** That comes to my final question, Dan, how do you think business history will judge Masayoshi Son and what would you think his legacy would be? **Lionel Barber:** I think they will judge Masa to have been an extraordinarily consequential investor and historic figure in world investing and tech investing because he has made not just spectacular bets, but he's made so many people rich, I mean, with other people's money, but all these founders, he's given them money, he's created, he's been an enormous disruptor, and he's built global businesses He's built a huge business in Japan as the mobile operator. So for all these reasons, I know he sometimes feels dissatisfied with his legacy, and he's now trying to build his greatest legacy around the march to artificial general intelligence, and maybe the legacy will be finally judged as to, you know, does this bet come off? What will his role be in the AI revolution? I would say to him, you've done pretty well so far. Let's don't mess it up at the end. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. And I just have to point out one interesting fact from your book that I really enjoyed was the part where he was announcing his so-called retirement. Then his lieutenants went to Tadashi Yanai, who is also the founder of Uniqlo, who's supposed to be Japan's richest man. Then he said, "What retirement?" **Lionel Barber:** Yes, he did. There were some magic moments with people who know him. I really enjoyed talking with Mr. Yanai. He's a great figure, as you say. He is seen still as a big outsider in Japan. He's mistrusted by the elite in Japan. So he's had to overcome a lot of prejudice, and he's managed to do that. **Bernard Leong:** So, Lionel, many thanks for coming on the show. I really enjoyed this conversation because this is the conversation I want to have. In closing. I have two quick ones: Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? **Lionel Barber:** Of course, Bernard. I wish I could have written as good a biography, as great a biography of the one I have just read, which is a book called Titan, which is the biography of [John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow](https://www.amazon.sg/dp/1400077303?ref%5F=mr%5Freferred%5Fus%5Fsg%5Fsg&ref=analysepodcast.com). I think it's a brilliant, brilliant business biography, which tells you about one of the great robber barons of the late 19th century. By the way, Massa looks at the robber barons and sees what they did, wants to be, you know, in that pantheon, but that's a great book. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, and my 13 year old daughter has read that book and I practice a little bit of the Masa's father parenting onto my son as well. **Lionel Barber:** Oh, wow. Oh, Bernard. She's going to be amazing. **Bernard Leong:** How do my audience find you and the book? **Lionel Barber:** Well, do find me on Twitter, or Blue Sky at Lionel Barber. And, you can also see me in the Financial Times books that I've read. And the book is Gambling Man, you kindly mentioned, by One Signal, or Penguin Random House in the UK, and you can see that on Amazon. Anybody who likes the book, please write a recommendation. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. I will definitely add a recommendation to the book on Amazon. I bought it in the Apple Books immediately to try to read it as quickly as I can. So, you can definitely find this podcast anywhere, whether Spotify, YouTube, and definitely subscribe to on LinkedIn newsletter. Lionel, I definitely think you'll be writing better and greater books and let me know when and we can come on the show and have a chat again. **Lionel Barber:** Well, I've really enjoyed this, Bernard. You've asked some great questions, and I really appreciate how you've dug deep into the book and understood what I was trying to do. For a writer and an author, you know, we're very sensitive souls, so we love it when somebody appreciates what you're trying to do. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. **Lionel Barber:** Great, I loved it. Thank you, Bernard. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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She shares her investigative journey behind *Scam Inc.*, her latest podcast series, revealing how cybercriminal syndicates operate like multinational corporations—leveraging AI, crypto, and human trafficking to fuel their scams. Sue-Lin explains why Southeast Asia has become a hub for these illicit operations, the psychological manipulation that makes anyone vulnerable, and the deep-rooted connections between scamming, money laundering, and political corruption. We discuss the Kansas bank collapse, the rise of pig butchering scams, and how law enforcement struggles to keep up with decentralized criminal networks. Closing the conversation, Sue-Lin highlights what individuals, governments, and financial institutions must do to fight back against the next wave of AI-powered fraud. --- > "We're all vulnerable. And I hadn't thought about that previously. I thought, oh, it's only a small group of people who might fall for this. What I've learned is actually \[that\] these scammers are so sophisticated. They have so much money. Based on my reporting, this industry, you know, is maybe more lucrative than the illicit drug trade, uh, and these criminal syndicates might be making over 500 billion US dollars a year. So that means they have access to the latest technology, whether it's voice cloning or face changing software. They can buy the latest in AI tools. they can stay several steps ahead of most law enforcement organizations in most places in the world, and, you know, re-invest in their businesses, because that's how they view what they're doing. They just see this as a business line, and they want to make a profit. That's why we called the podcast Scam Inc, because I think the way to understand what we're seeing is that this is an industry and everyone's driven by profits. So the fact that the criminals have so much money makes it really difficult for governments, police or international organizations or banks or crypto exchanges or social media companies to tackle this huge and growing problem." **\- Sue-Lin Wong** **Profile: Sue-Lin Wong**, Southeast Asia Correspondent, [The Economist](https://www.economist.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/suelinwong/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and the host of "[The Prince](https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/the-prince?ref=analysepodcast.com)" and "[Scam Inc](https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc?ref=analysepodcast.com)" podcast series \[Subscription Required\]. Picture Credits: Scam Inc logo from The Economist. ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premiere podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia, I am Bernard Leong and you must be frustrated by the inundation of scam emails, phone calls and messages pervading your phone every day. The problem has led to millions of losses globally and yet part of the story happens in Asia. With me today, Wong Sue-Lin, Southeast Asia correspondent from The Economist, to talk about their new podcast series, “Scam-Inc” and its implications in the region which we live in. First of all, I completed the whole series back to back over the last weekend and am a fan of your earlier series, The Prince. Sue-Lin, welcome to the show. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Well, thanks so much for having me, Bernard, and it's a delight to know you are a longtime subscriber of The Economist. **Bernard Leong:** I want to start off first by getting your origin story. How did you start your career and eventually land your present role with The Economist? **Sue-Lin Wong:** I was born and raised in Australia. After high school, I spent a year in China teaching English, and I really fell in love with the country. I decided I wanted to return after university. So I went home, studied Asian Studies and Law at the Australian National University, and in my final year, I applied for a bunch of jobs in Asia, including in China. I was very fortunate to get a job with Reuters through their graduate trainee program. I spent a year training in Shanghai and then joined the Reuters Beijing Bureau as one of their economics correspondents. From there, I covered a whole range of topics, including China-North Korea relations. I later opened the Reuters Shenzhen Bureau before moving to the Financial Times in China. After my time with the FT, I joined The Economist. **Bernard Leong:** From your career journey, what are some interesting lessons you can share with my audience?Given your experience with the Financial Times, Reuters, and now The Economist, I’m sure your time covering China has provided you with some very interesting insights. **Sue-Lin Wong:** I’d say listen deeply and try to understand other people rather than coming in with your own preconceived notions. Stay curious. I feel very unqualified to give life advice, so I'll keep it broad and vague. **Bernard Leong:** Cool. I want to ask about your earlier show, *The Prince*, which is how I first got to know your work. The series details the chronology of President Xi Jinping’s rise to power. Since it debuted three years ago, how was the response to the series? What are your reflections on it, and do you have any thoughts on continuing the story now that he has secured his third term? **Sue-Lin Wong:** Many good questions. I was struck by how well *The Prince* was received. When you’re making a long-form podcast, you never really know whether people will listen or find it interesting. As journalists, we just want people to read our articles and listen to our podcasts. **Sue-Lin Wong:** It’s been a very pleasant surprise that so many people remain curious about Xi Jinping. I still receive comments three years after the series was made. As for a follow-up, I don’t have any plans. I am now based in Singapore, covering Southeast Asia. I think continuing that story would be a task for someone currently based in China who still covers China. **Bernard Leong:** So I'm going to get to the main subject of the day, which is also what you have been covering in Southeast Asia, which is about *Scam Inc.*, the podcast series. What was the initial inspiration for *Scam Inc.*? How did the collapse of this bank in Kansas serve as the starting point before exploring the global issue? **Sue-Lin Wong:** I arrived in Singapore about two years ago to start my new beat covering Southeast Asia. Once I arrived, I realized scams were a huge story in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia. I started covering bits and pieces of the story, and the more I covered it, the more I realized that this is an enormous global issue. But it really has its roots in Asia. I thought to myself, this would actually make a really, really interesting long-form narrative podcast. Then, I went looking for a way into the story for an audience that perhaps isn't as familiar with the Asian angles, given that The Economist has subscribers all over the world and is very global. When I read the news that a bank had collapsed in rural Kansas, I thought, wow, there's something here. I needed to investigate it and figure out if it was in any way connected with what I was seeing every day in Southeast Asia while covering my beat, which is a world away from rural Kansas. **Bernard Leong:** The series actually covered quite a lot of ground, involving fraud, human trafficking, and money laundering. What are the key takeaways that you hope your listeners will remember after listening to this eight-episode series? **Sue-Lin Wong:** There are many things, but I think what we are witnessing is the biggest shift in how transnational crime works in modern history. Gone are the days of familiar hierarchical structures where you had tattooed gangsters and powerful godfathers at the top of some kind of mafia pyramid. Instead, we now see a marketplace that is incredibly entrepreneurial and much more of a network rather than a rigid structure. It's sort of like the gig economy of organized crime. You might have one small group that works on just kidnapping people, another group that traffics them into scam compounds in Myanmar, the Philippines, or Cambodia, and another small group that just registers foreign SIM cards in iPhones that the scammers use. Another group specializes in just one part of the money laundering chain. That is something really important to understand in order for us to figure out how to even begin tackling this problem. But beyond this big shift in how transnational crime works, I hope people will remember the stories we tell in this podcast series. There are so many incredible characters—some with very tragic stories, some moving, and some inspiring. I hope it's those voices that will stick with listeners. **Bernard Leong:** When I was listening to it, I could feel the emotional stories coming out, specifically not just from the people being scammed but also from the scammers, because you profiled some of them along the way. One term that stood out was "pig butchering," which was covered in the series. I found it very interesting that you had a Chinese podcaster explain the entire concept. Why is this term so fitting for describing these scams, and how do its origins in China inform the global phenomenon of scamming? **Sue-Lin Wong:** It's quite a distinctive term—pig butchering—because it's a direct translation from the Chinese *sha zhu pan*. What’s important to understand about how this scam works is that criminals see scam victims as pigs to fatten up. They try to build trust, spend time talking to them, and then go in for the slaughter—when they attempt to dupe the victim out of large sums of money. I first heard about the term pig butchering in Chinese when I was covering China. One of my favorite Chinese-language podcasts, *Guxue FM* or *Story FM*, has done a lot of reporting on pig butchering scams. I was very excited for *Scam Inc.* to be able to interview the host of that Chinese podcast about the origins of the term and how he has covered this huge story in China. **Bernard Leong:** That was one of the most memorable parts of the podcast when I was listening to it. There were two stories in particular that stood out—one from Shane Haynes in Kansas and Carina, who lost $150,000 in a crypto scam. Why are these individuals so susceptible to these scams? Is it because of the COVID-19 era, where people became lonely and isolated? Or are there specific manipulation techniques that scammers use to exploit them in their vulnerable states? **Sue-Lin Wong:** That’s exactly right. Scammers use incredibly sophisticated and predatory psychological manipulation to prey on all of our vulnerabilities. They identify frailties and exploit them—whether it’s greed, fear, loneliness, grief, boredom, or even exhaustion. Sometimes, I’m scrolling through my phone and get sent a link, and I don’t think much about it. But if that link contained malware, it could completely ruin my life if I clicked on it. Scammers are very good at identifying human vulnerabilities, and they have countless tactics to catch people off guard. For example, in love scams, they might start by love bombing—showering someone with attention and affection. Once they’ve built trust, they use urgency, saying, "You have to put your money in right now," or fear, such as, "If you don’t do this, you’ll regret it." They might even gaslight the victim. One aspect of this story that I became really obsessed with while reporting *Scam Inc.* was the psychology behind scams. Why do people fall for them? I started out this project thinking, "Oh, I would never fall for a scam. I wouldn’t be that stupid." But after working on this for several months, I’ve completely changed my mind. I now believe that any of us could fall for a scam, depending on where we are mentally and emotionally and how well scammers know how to press our buttons. I’ve come away with a lot more humility than when I started. **Bernard Leong:** I follow this particular conference called DEFCON, which is the world's largest cybersecurity conference. One of the competitions focuses on social engineering, and I recall a story where, within four minutes, a participant was able to extract a significant amount of personal information from someone just by engaging in casual conversation and asking qualifying questions. The ability to manipulate people emotionally is something that often goes unnoticed. From the scammers, we move into the interconnected nature of scamming. One issue that stood out from the podcast was how criminal syndicates from China have relocated their operations to Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. What insights can you share about the evolving landscape of cybercrime, and what is its impact on global economies and societies? This seems to be one of the most underreported aspects of the issue. Even living in Southeast Asia myself, I find it concerning, especially for my kids. There are increasing cases of human trafficking, and one of the most disturbing stories from the podcast was about individuals from the Philippines and Nigeria who were tricked into taking jobs abroad, only to end up trafficked into scam compounds in Myanmar. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Just like pig butchering is a term that originates from China, the roots of this entire scam industry can also be traced back there. For years, Chinese criminals were primarily scamming fellow Chinese citizens, largely because of the rise of online payments through platforms like WeChat and Alipay. These took off earlier in China than in other parts of the world, where bank transfers remained more common. When Xi Jinping came to power, his sweeping anti-corruption campaign targeted many illicit networks, including those in Macau, which has long been Asia’s gambling hub. Many criminals operating there were forced to move their activities to Southeast Asia. Initially, they relocated to the Philippines, but over time, they spread to Myanmar, Cambodia, and Thailand. This was the beginning of the global online scam industry, as Chinese-origin syndicates realized that online fraud was an incredibly lucrative business. They transitioned from illicit trades like drugs, prostitution, and online gambling to large-scale online fraud. Initially, these syndicates primarily targeted Chinese victims, but when COVID-19 made it difficult to recruit low-level scammers from China due to border closures, they began diversifying. They realized they didn’t need to limit themselves to Chinese victims—they could target people all over the world. That’s when they started kidnapping English-speaking individuals from different countries. Our podcast features stories from victims in the Philippines, Uganda, South Africa, and South Asia. What started as a China-centric issue has now grown into a massive global problem. **Bernard Leong:** That was a particularly striking part of the series. Another perspective you covered was that of the scammers themselves. One such story was about Rita from the Philippines, who provided an insider perspective on how scam compounds in Myanmar operate. What were some of the key takeaways from her experience regarding the structure, motivations, and ethical dilemmas faced by individuals working in these compounds? Some of them managed to escape and share their stories, but I imagine there are still a large number of people trapped in these operations. Many families are struggling to find and locate their loved ones. **Sue-Lin Wong:** It’s a deeply tragic story. In 2023, the United Nations estimated that nearly a quarter of a million people in Myanmar and Cambodia had been trafficked and forced to scam victims around the world. The problem persists because thousands of people are being tricked into what they believe are legitimate jobs in customer service or online marketing in places like Bangkok. They are given plane tickets, flown to Bangkok, and then picked up at the airport under the pretense of being taken to their accommodations. In reality, they are trafficked across the border into Myanmar, where they are forced to work in scam compounds. However, what complicates the situation even further is that the vast majority of people working in these scam compounds are actually there voluntarily. Due to war, poverty, or lack of opportunities, many people are simply looking for stable, well-paid jobs. Excluding Singapore, the average salary in most of Southeast Asia is only a few hundred US dollars per month. Many highly educated individuals, including university graduates fluent in multiple languages, see this as an opportunity for employment. This presents a significant challenge for law enforcement—what can they do when so many people are incentivized to seek out these jobs to support themselves and their families? The human trafficking aspect of this story is devastating, but the fact that some people are willingly engaging in scams as a means of survival adds another layer of complexity. It’s a very difficult issue to tackle. **Bernard Leong:** For those who return, some even choose to go back and work in these operations again. That was another deeply unsettling revelation from the podcast. From all your research and reporting, what is the one thing you’ve learned about scams that very few people understand? **Sue-Lin Wong:** I think the biggest takeaway is that we are all vulnerable. Before working on this podcast, I assumed that only a small group of people would fall for these scams. But what I’ve learned is that these scammers are incredibly sophisticated and well-funded. Based on my reporting, this industry may now be more lucrative than the illicit drug trade, with criminal syndicates generating over $500 billion annually. That level of wealth gives them access to the latest technology, including voice cloning and face-changing software. They can purchase cutting-edge AI tools and stay several steps ahead of law enforcement across the world. What makes this so difficult for governments, police, international organizations, banks, crypto exchanges, and social media companies is that these scammers reinvest their profits to further improve their operations. They view scams not as crimes but as a business—one that they constantly refine and expand. That’s why we called the podcast *Scam Inc.*—because what we are seeing is an entire industry driven by profit. The sheer amount of money these criminals have at their disposal makes this an incredibly challenging problem to solve. **Bernard Leong:** That's also one of the angles I thought made the story really interesting. When you mentioned it as an enterprise, there are significant economic drivers behind the incentives and behaviors involved. One story that stood out was that of Alice Guo, a mayor in the Philippines, which raises questions about state capture by criminal enterprises. What does her case reveal about the intersection of politics, corruption, and the scam industry in Southeast Asia? Maybe you can talk a little bit about her story and why dealing with these issues socially has become so difficult. **Sue-Lin Wong:** As I was starting this project and spending some time in Kansas, I saw a story break in the Philippines about a small-town mayor accused of being a Chinese spy. **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Somehow, this was all connected to scam compounds, and I thought, what is going on there? I went to the Philippines and visited this small town, Bamban, after the mayor had already disappeared, which turned into an episode of *Scam Inc.*. Essentially, this woman claimed to be Filipino and spoke fluent Tagalog. She ran for mayor of this small town, but it was later revealed that she was an enabler for scam criminals. Bamban is a very small, rundown town with mostly one-story buildings. However, right next to the mayor's office, there was an enormous tech park with 36 high-rise buildings—something you would expect to see in downtown Singapore or New York. This turned out to be a massive scam compound run by criminals of Chinese origin. Alice Guo, the mayor, had her name on utilities bills and official documents, but it turned out she was actually Guo Huaping, a Chinese national who had moved to the Philippines, obtained a Filipino passport, and learned how to navigate the political system to help these criminals set up operations. They used the town as a base to run scam operations targeting victims worldwide. The whole country became obsessed with the story. Normally, the average Filipino isn’t too interested in Senate hearings, but in this case, they were watching hours of them unfold. The revelations became more shocking as more details emerged. Then, while I was making the podcast, Al Jazeera released a documentary claiming she was a Chinese spy. That led me down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out the legitimacy of those allegations. My conclusions? Well, you'll have to listen to the podcast. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, I think listeners should definitely check out the podcast to understand the full extent of the story. **Sue-Lin Wong:** If I may add, I don’t think the Philippines is an exception. Unfortunately, criminal syndicates have figured out how to infiltrate high levels of business and government across Southeast Asia. The Philippines is more of a case study than an outlier. What’s even more shocking is that while this industry began in China and then spread to Southeast Asia, it is now going global. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Scam compounds have been discovered in places as far as Peru, Georgia, and Ghana. There was even one found last year in the Isle of Man, between England and Ireland. **Bernard Leong:** Eastern Europe as well. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Yes, Eastern Europe too. This problem isn’t going away anytime soon. **Bernard Leong:** Since we are based in Singapore, this issue really hits home. The recent high-profile money laundering case here exposed how illicit funds from scams are legitimized and spent. To be fair, the Singapore government worked with Interpol to apprehend the perpetrators. Your podcast highlights how authorities here have been proactive in educating citizens on scam prevention. What are the common methods scammers use to launder stolen money, and what does this reveal about the vulnerabilities of global financial networks? **Sue-Lin Wong:** When I started digging into the Kansas bank collapse, where the CEO fell victim to a pig butchering scam and embezzled $47 million from his own bank— **Bernard Leong:** That's right. **Sue-Lin Wong:** He thought he was making money in crypto, but in reality, he had sent the funds to scammers. I became obsessed with the question: where did that $47 million go? More broadly, where do the hundreds of billions of dollars in scam proceeds end up? A big part of my podcast series traces these financial flows. The Singapore money laundering case—the largest in the country’s history and one of the biggest globally—offers a fascinating case study of how criminals operate. Once scam money is stolen, syndicates disperse it across multiple crypto wallets, moving it rapidly to evade law enforcement tracking. They use various laundering services within the scamming industry itself. As I mentioned earlier, some scam networks specialize solely in money laundering. Criminals use laundering services to cycle their funds through multiple crypto wallets and sometimes mix illicit money with legitimate transactions. Then, they try to reintegrate this money into the global financial system. In Singapore’s case, they used money mules—often young Singaporeans recruited by friends to open bank accounts under their names but linked to different phone numbers. You and I see ads everywhere in Singapore warning people not to become money mules. That’s directly connected to *Scam Inc.* and the Singapore money laundering case. Low-level money mules are one of the key ways criminals move dirty money into the legitimate economy, transferring funds into accounts registered under individuals who don’t realize the full extent of their involvement. Another common method is through shell companies. Criminals set up companies with no real operations to reintegrate illicit funds back into the global economy. Ultimately, the scam proceeds end up in major financial hubs—places where these criminals want to live, send their children to elite schools, and invest in assets. That’s why places like Singapore, Dubai, New York, and London are often at the center of money laundering investigations. **Bernard Leong:** I recall a story from when I was head of the Singapore Post Office network. There were incidents where grandmothers came in wanting to remit large sums—two or three thousand dollars. Fortunately, my service ambassadors intervened and stopped them. We had to bring in the police to prevent them from wiring the money because they insisted it was for someone they trusted. After that, we worked closely with law enforcement to prevent similar cases. I believe a recent law was passed in Singapore, stating that banks cannot freeze accounts, whereas previously, it was left to the customer’s discretion. As someone working in digital finance, I often tell my colleagues at conferences that while moving money has become as simple as pressing a button, having a human in the loop—like at the post office—prevents people from losing their life savings. Otherwise, many elderly people would be at risk. **Sue-Lin Wong:** In some cases, grandmothers were also recruited as money mules. **Bernard Leong:** No, they weren’t recruited—they were being manipulated into sending their life savings. This early form of scam victimization has been happening for a long time. I remember my service ambassadors stepping in to block transfers, and I believe they deserved recognition for their efforts. People don’t always realize how vulnerable the system has become, especially with the rise of seamless and frictionless digital money transfers. Shifting back to money laundering and scams, I previously had a guest from Chainalysis on my show. Their work in tracing the flow of illicit funds is crucial. Can you explain the capabilities and limitations of using cryptocurrencies to track scam money, and how does this add complexity to scam operations? From my understanding as a cryptocurrency investor, many criminals now avoid crypto because it is easily traceable. **Sue-Lin Wong:** That’s a common misconception. I initially knew very little about cryptocurrencies, but I learned that crypto isn’t untraceable—it’s anonymous. **Bernard Leong:** It’s not untraceable. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Exactly. Crypto transactions can be traced, but unlike bank transfers, crypto doesn’t necessarily require personal details to send and receive money. That’s why scammers encourage victims to use cryptocurrencies—there’s less oversight compared to traditional banking systems. Chainalysis, a firm I interviewed for *Scam Inc.*, specializes in crypto forensics. Their analysts function like private investigators, tracking transactions across blockchain networks. They helped me trace where the money from the Kansas bank collapse went after the CEO embezzled it. Often, scam money moves from wallet to wallet, making it hard to follow. What was particularly fascinating in the Kansas case was how the stolen funds pooled with other scam proceeds. The CEO fell for a common scam that others had also encountered. For example, a man in Minnesota lost over $9 million. **Bernard Leong:** That’s right. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Another man in California lost over $2 million—all to the same scam, which could be traced back to a domain called CoinRuleWeb3\. The scammers would keep changing their domain from .net to .shop to evade law enforcement. They are very skilled at setting up new websites to continue operations. However, we did track where $8 million of the stolen crypto ultimately ended up, and I encourage listeners to tune in to the podcast to learn more. **Bernard Leong:** Now that we know so much more, what policy recommendations or actionable insights do you hope listeners will take away from this podcast series? **Sue-Lin Wong:** It’s difficult to expect individuals to fight a multi-billion-dollar scam industry, but there are some key takeaways. First, it’s important to recognize that scamming is an industry with many different players involved in what I call the ‘scam chain.’ A scam often begins with internet service providers or telecom companies, as scammers rely on their platforms. Then, it moves to messaging apps or social media. Later, victims may transfer money through banks or crypto exchanges. Some scammers even exploit e-commerce platforms. The only way to truly combat scams is for every part of the scam chain to coordinate efforts. No single entity can solve this problem alone. Some Asian countries are making progress. I wanted to go to China to investigate further, as the Chinese Communist Party has taken aggressive action against scams—producing educational TV shows, movies, and songs to warn the public. They have also arrested over 800,000 criminals connected to online scams in the past three years. However, gaining access to China for reporting was difficult. Instead, I looked at Southeast Asia, where countries like Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore have set up dedicated anti-scam task forces. These groups work to coordinate banks, law enforcement, and online platforms to combat scams effectively. Singapore’s approach is arguably world-class because they physically locate banks, e-commerce firms, and police units together. This means that when a scam is reported, different organizations can coordinate in real time to try to recover stolen money. Other countries should study what’s happening here in Asia because we are at the frontline of online scams. Governments in the region have had to develop advanced policy responses due to the scale of the problem. **Bernard Leong:** On an individual level, what can people do to protect themselves? **Sue-Lin Wong:** Everyone should assume that every online interaction is a scam until proven otherwise. That sounds cynical, but it’s a necessary mindset in today’s world. **Bernard Leong**: And with AI now in the mix? **Sue-Lin Wong:** AI is going to make scams even more sophisticated. Given where we are, the best way to protect ourselves is by staying vigilant. Offline, in the real world, it’s also crucial to talk to family and friends about financial matters. One common scam tactic is isolation—scammers tell victims, “Don’t tell anyone about this investment because they won’t understand.” If you ever find yourself thinking, “This opportunity sounds too good to be true,” it’s time to check with someone you trust. Getting a second opinion can be the key to avoiding a devastating scam. **Bernard Leong:** I think you also leave a particular tactic that I'm going to leave my listeners to go and listen to the podcast. In the last episode, you discuss what happens with AI. As you identified earlier, one of the key issues is the vulnerability of individuals. How can individuals and communities build resilience against these scams? And beyond that, how do we create a more forgiving and supportive society to help victims? I remember the case of the Kansas bank, where the judge had to make the final verdict. One of the most striking questions from that judge was, "Why did you do this?" That part of the podcast really brought out my emotions—how the person being scammed ended up in that situation. **Sue-Lin Wong:** How did it draw out your emotions? **Bernard Leong:** It was just shocking to see how someone could fall into something that seemed so obviously fraudulent. This man was a respected member of his community before everything unfolded, and throughout the entire legal process, he never once explained why he did what he did. That was what really struck me—he should have spoken up rather than leaving everyone guessing. I think it would have been fairer for those who lost their savings to understand what happened. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Sorry, when you say he should have spoken up, do you mean before he stole all the money? **Bernard Leong:** Yes, before he stole all the money. I usually don’t sympathize with scam victims, but this case was different. **Sue-Lin Wong:** You mean you felt sympathy? **Bernard Leong**: Yes, I usually do not sympathize with scam victims, but this was one of the rare times I did. Maybe it's because of how your podcast framed the story—it caught my attention in a way I didn’t expect. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Well, thank you very much. So, as you listened to the podcast, you became more sympathetic to the bank CEO? **Bernard Leong:** Yes. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Interesting. **Bernard Leong:** I wasn’t particularly sympathetic at the start, but as I binge-listened, my perspective shifted. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Yeah. **Bernard Leong:** How do you think individuals and communities can protect themselves? You’ve mentioned that people should talk to their family and friends more. But what about victims—how can society help them recover? Many scammers you profiled were forced into these operations, making it incredibly difficult for them to reintegrate into normal life after being trafficked and coerced. **Sue-Lin Wong:** There are so many different victims in the world of scamming, which makes this issue particularly horrific. One crucial aspect is understanding how these scams operate. We must also be careful not to engage in victim-blaming. Many scam victims I interviewed shared a common experience: when they reported their cases to the police, they were often met with skepticism. Law enforcement officers would tell them, "But you sent the money voluntarily—what’s the crime? You were just careless." As a society, we need to recognize that scammers use highly sophisticated psychological tactics—essentially psychological weapons. In the podcast, we delve into techniques like love bombing, gaslighting, fear, and urgency. These are not just persuasion tactics; they are weapons, much like a knife or a gun. Law enforcement, governments, and policymakers need to understand that victims are up against a highly manipulative and well-organized industry. The Kansas bank case is slightly different, as the CEO did steal $47 million from his own bank. That case raises even more complex ethical and legal questions, which we explore in the series. **Bernard Leong:** I’m glad you covered the final verdict in the podcast. I’ll let listeners discover what happened for themselves. Now, I have two quick questions before we wrap up. First, what is one question you wish people would ask you about scamming that they never do? **Sue-Lin Wong:** Reporting this story was incredibly complex—figuring out how to research it, how to structure the reporting, and how to write the script. As a journalist, I’m obsessed with process. I love talking to other journalists about how they work. When I meet writers or artists, I’m fascinated by their creative processes. **Bernard Leong:** So, you wish people would ask about the making of the podcast? **Sue-Lin Wong:** Yes. I’m not sure if that’s something listeners would be interested in, but as a journalist, it’s something I think about all the time. **Bernard Leong:** I’ll keep that in mind the next time I interview another podcast creator. My final question: what does success look like for *Scam Inc.* from your perspective? Beyond listener numbers, of course. **Sue-Lin Wong**: Oh, but we always want more listeners! Honestly, as journalists, we just want people to listen to our podcasts and read our articles. That would be success for me. **Sue-Lin Wong:** More importantly, I hope that in some small way, we’ve helped people understand the complexity of this sophisticated industry that ultimately affects all of us. If listeners walk away with a slightly better understanding of how scams work and share this knowledge with friends and family, that’s success to me. **Bernard Leong:** And fostering a less judgmental attitude as well. A lack of empathy often compounds the suffering of victims. Thank you so much for coming on the show and having this conversation. Before we close, any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Sue-Lin Wong:** I just finished reading *A Suitable Boy* by Vikram Seth. It’s a long novel about four families during India’s independence, but at its core, it’s a story about life and what it means to live well. It was completely gripping—I loved it so much. I’m honestly sad that I finished it because all I want to do is start reading it again. **Bernard Leong:** Wow, a book worth re-reading. And where can my audience find you? **Sue-Lin Wong:** You can find *Scam Inc.* wherever you listen to podcasts. The first three episodes are available for everyone, and you can subscribe to *Economist Podcast Plus* for just two dollars a month to support our journalism. This was a multi-month project, and investigative journalism is expensive—so any support is greatly appreciated. **Sue-Lin Wong:** You can also find me on LinkedIn, X, Blue Sky, and other social media platforms. **Bernard Leong:** You can find this podcast across all major platforms. Subscribe to us on YouTube, Spotify, and our LinkedIn newsletter. Thank you so much for coming on the show—I’m really glad we finally had this conversation. I’ve listened to both of your series, and I appreciate the work you’ve done. **Sue-Lin Wong:** Thank you so much, Bernard, and thank you for listening to both series. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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She shares her journey from broadcast journalism to investigative reporting, reflecting on the shift from high-growth hype to market corrections and corporate scandals. Kristie unpacks the eFishery scandal, explaining how founders manipulated financials and how investors got misled. She discusses why due diligence often fails, the role of unchecked valuations, and the impact of drying venture capital on the region’s startup ecosystem. Addressing investor confidence, Kristie explores what it will take to restore trust and accountability in Southeast Asia’s tech scene. Closing the conversation, she shares her vision for a more transparent startup ecosystem and what great looks like for the region’s next wave of entrepreneurs. --- > "So that was back in 2021\. And then after Revolution Precrafted, there was Zilingo in 2022, and then Tanihub and Investree - which were P2P lenders in 2023(24) - and then eFishery. So actually every single year we've been getting pretty big blow ups. But as I was looking at the cases for each of them, one thing I've noticed is the sophistication of the fraud is actually becoming more advanced." - **Kristie Neo** **Profile: Kristie Neo**, Independent Journalist ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristieneo/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and the reference to her recent commentary: [Thank you eFishery, Southeast Asia is officially off the kool-aid](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/thank-you-efishery-southeast-asia-officially-off-kool-aid-kristie-neo-h0z0c/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and while the Southeast Asia ecosystem went from the boom to be off the kool aid, the cases of alleged and actual fraud cases in startups are exposed. What are the implications to the startup and venture capital ecosystem in Southeast Asia with me today, Kristie Neo, an independent journalist covering tech and venture capital in the emerging markets to help us break down these difficult issues. So Kristie, welcome to the show and I'm a fan of your recent article. **Kristie Neo:** Thank you so much for having me, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** Let's start from your origin story and you have an illustrious career in media. So how do you start your career? **Kristie Neo:** My career actually started in [Channel News Asia](https://channelnewsasia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (CNA). I think those who live in Singapore or have spent time there would be more familiar with the channel. It is Singapore’s main broadcaster, covering Southeast Asia and the broader APAC (Asia Pacific) region. I started as a producer in current affairs, but later moved into business news, which was where I first gained exposure to finance and economics. Interestingly, I didn't have a background in business and finance, but once I transitioned, I fell in love with business reporting and decided to stay in the field. One key takeaway from my time at CNA was the importance of telling stories from an Asian perspective. This is something I continue to advocate for—the role of local storytelling and journalism in shaping narratives. Fast forward to what I’m probably best known for: my time at [DealStreetAsia](https://dealstreetasia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (DSA). Before joining DSA, I did short stints at [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [We Are Social](https://wearesocial.com/sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com), along with some work in digital advertising. Then, in 2018, I joined DealStreetAsia, which is a Nikkei-owned publication. That period—2018 to 2021—was the upswing of the private equity and venture capital (PEVC) ecosystem in Southeast Asia. By then, the region already had a few unicorns, with [Grab](https://grab.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Gojek leading the pack. It was also the peak of the ride-hailing wars and the e-commerce boom, when SoftBank’s [Masayoshi Son](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi%5FSon?ref=analysepodcast.com) was pouring capital into the region, fueling rapid expansion. **Bernard Leong:** And now, [Masayoshi Son is back](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-softbanks-son-made-it-back-to-the-white-house?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com), giving out money again! **Kristie Neo:** Yeah, exactly. The cycle is coming back around. The unicorns became decacorns, and at that time, the big question was, *Where are the major IPOs? Where are the exits?* Then, around 2020 and 2021, we finally started seeing a few IPOs materialize. The ecosystem was growing, but after 2021, market corrections hit hard. The slowdown started in the U.S. private capital market and eventually trickled down to Southeast Asia. Covering both sides of the market was fascinating because, as you know, Southeast Asia’s ecosystem is still young—we hadn’t yet experienced a true market correction until now. This downturn has completely changed the kinds of stories we tell. When I first started covering the region, everything was about fundraising and skyrocketing valuations. Now, the dominant narratives are down rounds, layoffs, consolidations, and corporate governance failures—like the eFishery, Tanihub, and [Zilingo](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-zilingo-debacle-with-ka-kay-lum/) cases. I often hear from people who say, *Kristie, we need more positive stories!* But the reality is that most headlines today are about scandals, mismanagement, or cases of fraud—whether it’s funds misused, founders pocketing money, or inflated revenue numbers. **Bernard Leong:** The one common line I actually agree with you on, and it was the same for me as well, is that we are trying to tell stories from the Asian perspective. Given your career journey across different media outlets, from large traditional organizations to startup-style platforms like DealStreetAsia and We Are Social, what key lessons can you share with my audience? **Kristie Neo:** Well, my personal journey between larger and smaller media outlets has shown me that I actually prefer working in smaller teams. Even though I enjoyed my time at CNA, it was a hectic experience. CNA is a huge organization with a broad reach, but within that, the business news team was relatively small. There weren’t many journalists specifically interested in covering business, so I was fortunate to be part of a tight-knit, specialized team. At DealStreetAsia, the team was also relatively small. The entire company had about 30 people, including the editorial staff and administrative support. If you removed the non-editorial staff, we were probably left with around 20 journalists. In a smaller setup, everyone is more hands-on. You have to roll up your sleeves, hustle, and take on a variety of responsibilities. I enjoy that level of involvement and flexibility, which is something I found missing in larger institutions. I also had a short stint at CNBC, but it wasn’t the right cultural fit for me. At that time, I assumed that working for a major American media brand would offer a bigger platform and a wider reach. In some ways, it did. The brand recognition, credibility, and halo effect of working at places like Bloomberg, Reuters, or CNBC are undeniable. However, with that came layers of bureaucracy—not just on the administrative side but also in editorial decision-making. I felt that there was less room for flexibility in covering stories that I found truly interesting. Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to leadership and editorial direction. Larger organizations tend to follow a specific formula for what works, while smaller teams often have more freedom to experiment. When I joined DealStreetAsia, the publication was about four or five years old. It was an up-and-coming media outlet—well-known in niche circles but not widely recognized across the industry. Back then, we were often left out of major industry events and media launches. I remember being frustrated when the big reports from organizations like Temasek and Google-Temasek would go out to mainstream media, but we wouldn’t receive access. I would wonder, why does Tech in Asia get an invite? Why does Bloomberg get early access, but we don’t? That frustration drove us to push harder, build our reputation, and make sure that people in the industry recognized our work. Not everyone enjoys that kind of struggle, but I do. I like working hard, and I find it rewarding. After six years at DealStreetAsia, the publication had earned its place in the industry. By then, people took us seriously, and we had established a strong reputation and brand value. That journey—from being overlooked to becoming a recognized name in business journalism—was incredibly fulfilling. **Bernard Leong:** That’s a great reflection, and it’s very similar to my own journey with *Analyse Asia* over the last decade. For example, I was only able to secure my first interview on the Google-Temasek report after their sixth year of releasing it. **Kristie Neo:** Nice. **Bernard Leong:** After some time, last year, I finally got to [interview representatives from Google, Temasek, and Bain](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-e-conomy-southeast-asia-report-with-sapna-chadha-fock-wai-hoong-florian-hoppe/) on the eConomy SEA report 2024 together in the studio. It was a culmination of years of effort in building a media outlet and establishing a reputation. I completely relate to your experience because I went through a similar journey with *SGE (SGEntrepreneurs)*, which was eventually acquired by [*Tech in Asia*](https://techinasia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[that was in turned acquired by SPH\], and now with *Analyse Asia*. Now, let’s get into the main topic of the day. Is the Southeast Asia startup boom officially over? That was my immediate reaction after reading your article. For my audience, I will include a link to your piece on LinkedIn—[*Thank You, eFishery. Southeast Asia is Officially Off the Kool-Aid*](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/thank-you-efishery-southeast-asia-officially-off-kool-aid-kristie-neo-h0z0c/?ref=analysepodcast.com). As someone who has closely followed the Southeast Asia startup and venture capital ecosystem, your insights are invaluable, particularly in relation to scandals like the *eFishery* case. Let's start with that story. Can you walk us through the [*eFishery* scandal](https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/efishery-unravelling-426188?ref=analysepodcast.com)? Before that, we’ve also seen cases like [*Tanihub*](https://www.techinasia.com/can-troubled-tanihub-reverse-course?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [allegations surrounding *Zilingo*](https://inc42.com/features/zilingo-house-of-cards-how-founders-burnt-millions-and-the-company/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Can you give a brief chronological overview of *eFishery*, the early warning signs, and how the story unfolded? If I remember correctly, the news first broke in [*DealStreetAsia*](https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/efishery-co-founders-suspended-by-board-423514?ref=analysepodcast.com) when the board suspended both founders of the company. **Kristie Neo:** That’s right. From what I understand, *DealStreetAsia* started reporting on it towards the end of last year. Just to clarify, I wasn’t the one who wrote the investigative piece, though after I published my op-ed, many people assumed I was directly involved in breaking the story. *DSA* did a great job uncovering the details. The first signs of trouble emerged towards the end of last year, but to be honest, I had already been hearing industry murmurs even earlier—while I was still at *DealStreetAsia*. Investors were making cryptic remarks, saying things like, "If *eFishery* collapses, it’s going to be a big deal." At the time, those comments seemed speculative, but looking back, they were early indicators that something wasn’t right. For those unfamiliar with the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem, *eFishery* wasn’t just another startup. It was a unicorn with a strong roster of institutional investors on its cap table, including *IFC, SoftBank Vision Fund, Abu Dhabi’s G42 Fund*, and *Temasek*. **Bernard Leong:** Temasek, our local (Singapore) sovereign wealth fund. **Kristie Neo:** Yes, exactly. Along with major venture capital firms like *Northstar*, which started as a private equity firm before moving into venture capital. From what I understand, they and several other local VCs took a significant hit from *eFishery*. With such a strong lineup of investors, *eFishery* was considered one of Indonesia’s most promising unicorns. When news of financial irregularities surfaced, it wasn’t just bad for the company—it was damaging for the entire investment ecosystem. **Bernard Leong:** They raised hundreds of millions of dollars, hitting a billion-dollar valuation in their last round. **Kristie Neo:** That’s right. *eFishery* started as a fish feed company, initially developing an automated fish feeder to help fish and shrimp farmers optimize feeding processes. The idea was that by controlling the amount of feed dispensed, farmers could reduce waste, cut costs, and improve efficiency. The business model was built on improving transparency and efficiency in aquaculture, an industry that is highly informal and fragmented. The goal was to increase farm productivity while raising farmer incomes, which aligned well with the impact and ESG investing trends that were gaining traction at the time. But that’s also where the risks emerged. Many Southeast Asian startups that have received VC funding in recent years have been tech-enabled businesses trying to digitize highly traditional sectors—whether in agriculture, aquaculture, or fintech. These industries have opaque data systems, making it difficult for investors to track performance accurately. And that’s the problem. How do you verify how much fish feed is being used? How do you accurately track yield improvements? Unless you’re literally counting every fish or weighing every bucket of feed, conducting due diligence on such businesses is incredibly complex. Investors were essentially operating on trust, which, as we now see, proved to be a major vulnerability. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s take a step back and look at what actually happened. What were the specific actions that the *eFishery* founders took to inflate their revenue figures? If you think about it, most businesses don’t start with the intention to defraud customers or investors. At the beginning, I’d assume there was a legitimate business model. But at what point did they cross the line? When did they start manipulating the numbers? And ultimately, what led to them getting caught? **Kristie Neo:** It all unraveled when a whistleblower report surfaced. Over the past year, this report was sent not only to the media but also to investors. That triggered an internal investigation, which was conducted by an external agency to dig deeper into what was really happening. The findings were shocking. One of the key tactics they used was round-tripping funds. Essentially, they created multiple nominee entities—five of them, from what I understand—and routed funds across these entities to fabricate transactions. This is actually a common scheme in fintech fraud. You artificially create transactions and cycle funds through different accounts to make it appear as if revenue is growing. Investors see the transaction volume and assume it reflects genuine market demand. Beyond that, they kept two separate sets of financial books. One was for internal leadership, and the other was for external parties like shareholders, banks, and auditors. In these fraudulent reports, they significantly inflated their revenue. They had been manipulating their financials since 2018, which is particularly alarming because that was the year they were raising their Series A funding. To put things into perspective, their actual revenue versus the revenue they reported had a 4.8x discrepancy. On top of that, they also forged invoices, contracts, and other financial documents to back up their false revenue claims. The deception was incredibly sophisticated and meticulously planned. This wasn’t a one-time case of fraud—it was a long-term, carefully orchestrated scheme. **Bernard Leong:** That makes me wonder about the due diligence process. How did this go unnoticed for so long? **Kristie Neo:** That’s a great question. One thing I often ask investors is, *How do you conduct due diligence on a founder’s character?* When someone starts a company, they typically do so with good intentions. They’re passionate about an idea, they’re sacrificing a stable job, and in many cases, they have families relying on them. At that point, they’re focused on building something real. But how do you predict how success will change a person? What happens when they suddenly control millions of dollars, when they’re constantly in the press, being hailed as the next great entrepreneur? At what point does the drive for growth turn into pressure to fabricate numbers to meet investor expectations? There’s no definitive way to measure this. It’s part of the inherent risk of investing in startups. In the case of *eFishery*, shareholders were completely misled for years. If the whistleblower hadn’t come forward, who knows how long it would have continued? Maybe some investors had suspicions, but nothing substantial enough to take action. **Bernard Leong:** So something clearly broke down in the due diligence process. We don’t know exactly what, but it’s worth examining. What made the *eFishery* story so compelling to investors in the first place? How did that contribute to the extent of the fraud? From the outside, it appears that this fraud was highly sophisticated and dates back to 2018\. That was during the funding boom, when investors were aggressively looking for opportunities. The founders seem to have strategically positioned the company to appeal to that momentum, continuously fabricating numbers to maintain investor confidence. Then, eventually, someone blew the whistle. From the perspective of an investor, how did they get sold on the vision so easily? Why was this such an attractive deal initially, only for it to unravel later? **Kristie Neo:** It checked a lot of the right boxes for investors. One of the factors I didn’t include in my article—but I do think played a role—was the emphasis on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing at the time. Around the time *eFishery* raised its unicorn round, impact investing was a major trend. Investors were actively looking for businesses that not only digitized traditional industries but also contributed to broader social good—like raising farmer incomes or improving efficiency in agriculture and aquaculture. Beyond that, *eFishery* wasn’t just an agriculture-tech company. It also had fintech elements, providing financing and digital tools to its ecosystem. That made it even more attractive to investors looking for scalable, tech-enabled businesses. Many venture capital firms were under pressure to meet ESG mandates set by their limited partners (LPs). This was particularly true for institutional investors from Europe and the U.S., where ESG accountability is a priority. These firms needed to allocate funds to businesses that aligned with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) or ESG principles. At the time, growth-stage investments in Southeast Asia were scarce, especially for companies that seemed profitable or close to profitability. So *eFishery* ticked all the right boxes: - High Growth-stage startup - Tech-enabled agriculture business - Positive ESG impact - Strong institutional investor backing - Promised profitability That’s why investors bought into the story. But it also raises a bigger question—was due diligence just a box-ticking exercise? Because if investors were genuinely scrutinizing the numbers, how did they miss such a massive discrepancy? Look, I’m not an investor, so I can’t say exactly how they conduct their due diligence. But this case certainly suggests that some of it was surface-level validation rather than deep financial analysis. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe we should take a step back. First, there was *Tanihub* in Indonesia, then the alleged fraud involving *Zilingo*. Now, with funding drying up over the last two to three years, what do you think is the broader impact on the startup and VC ecosystem in Southeast Asia? Are we heading back to the dark ages of 2009 or 2014? That era where startup funding was incredibly scarce? **Kristie Neo:** It's clearly not a good look. While preparing for our conversation today, I took a moment to reflect on some of the major startup scandals that have surfaced over the years. I wanted to identify trends and see if there were any similarities or differences between them. One of the first big fraud cases I worked on at *DealStreetAsia* was [*Revolution Precrafted* in the Philippines](https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/revolution-precrafted-robbie-antonio-228407?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I remember that story. **Kristie Neo:** That was back in 2021\. After that came *Zilingo* in 2022, then *Tanihub* and [*Investree*](https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/asean/indonesias-investree-plunges-crisis-licence-revoked-amid-fraud-allegation?ref=analysepodcast.com)—both peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders—in 2023 and 2024, followed by *eFishery*. Every single year, there has been at least one major blow-up. But what stood out to me the most was how the level of sophistication in these fraud cases keeps increasing. Let’s take *Revolution Precrafted* as an example. It was a Philippine-based company that was supposed to build luxury prefab homes for low-income families. The issue wasn’t exactly embezzlement, but rather an obsession with vanity metrics—especially the unicorn title, which was a big deal back then because Southeast Asia had so few unicorns. The founder was trying to raise only $1–3 million, yet he claimed the company had a $1.8 billion valuation. That simply didn’t add up. Eventually, when we went to Manila to investigate, we found that the company wasn’t even building any of these homes. So while he wasn’t necessarily stealing money, he was inflating the company’s valuation to chase the billion-dollar label. But what was the actual size of the business? Tiny. It was all smoke and mirrors. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe he just wanted to prove a point? **Kristie Neo:** Exactly. Back then, there were quite a few shady characters playing this game. Then you look at *Zilingo*, and its fraud was more about revenue recognition. This is a problem we see frequently. When I say revenue recognition, I mean things like GMV (gross merchandise value) versus GTV (gross transaction value) — which one should be used? Should they report gross revenue or net revenue? Should they present adjusted EBITDA or traditional [EBITDA](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ebita.asp?ref=analysepodcast.com)? These nuances in financial reporting can completely change how a company’s valuation is perceived. **Bernard Leong:** I’ve always found adjusted revenue to be a terrible idea. Too many startup founders start believing their own hype. They create “adjusted EBITDA” to rationalize why they still deserve unicorn status—even when their unit economics clearly don’t work. The reality is, if your business fundamentals don’t hold up, you should just shut down the company and move on. **Kristie Neo:** Exactly, but instead, many founders—and sometimes even investors—get caught up in this illusion of success, convincing themselves that a few tweaks in financial reporting will buy them more time. The problem is, eventually, the truth comes out. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, that’s the feeling I’m getting with all these *created* metrics you mentioned. Take the *Zilingo* case, for example. **Kristie Neo:** Exactly. I think that’s what happened with *Zilingo*. By the time that story broke, a lot of investors were already in the process of reassessing their portfolios. They were trying to identify the strong performers, the struggling ones, and the companies that needed to be shut down immediately. Revenue recognition issues aren’t unique to *Zilingo*—many companies deal with them. But the way the story unraveled and how it was publicized made it stand out. **Bernard Leong:** That’s an interesting perspective. It’s something people don’t talk about enough—how these fraud cases are becoming increasingly sophisticated. The next one could be even bigger, but we won’t know until it happens. One issue I keep hearing about is the role of international VCs investing in Southeast Asia startups. I’ve had conversations with people—some of them VCs themselves—who tell me that associates sometimes raise red flags, but the partners push ahead with deals anyway. It’s often an ego-driven move. The logic is: *Everyone else is in on this deal, so we have to be in it too*. I won’t name names, but I’ve seen this happen. Then there’s the check-the-box mentality. I don’t think many VCs genuinely assess a founder’s character. If you listen to US venture capital podcasts, you often hear investors saying they take founders on long walks to understand their background, motivations, and values. But in reality, I don’t see that happening much. Instead, they focus on surface-level credentials—whether the founder went to a prestigious school, for example. We’ve seen cases where people fabricated their backgrounds, like [the founder of that 3D construction company in Singapore](https://www.straitstimes.com/tech/vizzio-ceo-s-fabricated-credentials-inflated-client-list-haunts-start-up?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[Jon Lee from Vizzio\], or [the Indonesian founders (of Octopus) who falsely claimed to be from Berkeley](https://www.techinasia.com/ceo-indonesian-startup-octopus-graduate-uc-berkeley?ref=analysepodcast.com). When it comes to due diligence, the process is supposed to uncover red flags. But sometimes, it feels like investors don’t actually care—maybe because of the power law logic that dominates VC thinking. **Kristie Neo:** I wouldn’t say they don’t care at all—that might be a stretch. After all, these investors are putting real money into these startups. As an investor, you have to trust your founders to some extent. You can’t micromanage every little thing they do like helicopter parenting. **Bernard Leong:** I’m not talking about helicopter parenting. I mean they don’t even bother to understand the founder’s real motivations. When companies emphasize culture, they often filter for certain character traits. But in the startup world, that doesn’t seem to be a priority. **Kristie Neo:** I get what you mean. Honestly, it’s difficult to tell how someone will change over time. In the beginning, when a founder has very little, they’re driven by ambition and a belief in their vision. But what happens when that same founder is suddenly managing millions of dollars? A few million dollars is life-changing money for many people in Southeast Asia. It may not seem like much in places like Singapore, but for a lot of founders in the region, it’s the most money they’ve ever handled. And you just don’t know how they will react to that kind of wealth and power. This isn’t just about founders. There are investors who fall into this trap too. Some of them love media attention—doing TV interviews, speaking at conferences. It becomes less about making great investments and more about how much visibility they have. Suddenly, being a VC isn’t about finding great companies or delivering returns to LPs—it becomes a narcissistic pursuit of status and recognition. And let’s not forget, this is private capital we’re talking about. That means less transparency and more room for questionable practices. The structure of deals, the people involved, the metrics they use—everything is opaque. That’s why when the media investigates these cases, it shakes up the industry. When these fraud stories break, they remind investors that someone is watching. That they can’t just operate unchecked. But of course, no one likes bad news—it’s a bitter pill to swallow. **Bernard Leong:** So what does this mean for the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem going forward? Are we in trouble? **Kristie Neo:** We’re definitely not in a great place right now. Capital has been drying up for years, and it’s only getting worse. If you look at recent reports, the number of deals being made has dropped significantly. Even VC fundraising has slowed for over a year now. And these scandals? They’re not helping. Some of them have involved LPs (limited partners) directly, which makes it even worse. Think about institutional investors like IFC and G42—some of them have gotten burned in Southeast Asia. For some LPs, these were their first deals in the region. The GPs (general partners) spent years convincing these investors that Southeast Asia was a great alternative to China and India—that it was an emerging powerhouse with high potential. That’s literally been the narrative for the last three years. But when institutional investors see scandals in the headlines, why would they take another risk on Southeast Asia? That’s one of the biggest concerns I keep hearing from investors lately. And honestly, it’s a very legitimate concern. **Bernard Leong:** It doesn’t help when Southeast Asia is compared to markets like India, where the economy has grown 16.5 times, or Latin America, where companies like [Nubank](https://international.nubank.com.br/company/nubank-receives-multiple-recognitions-from-institutional-investor/?ref=analysepodcast.com) have gone public in the U.S. and become major success stories. To be fair, Southeast Asia does have some strong players. [SEA Group](https://www.sea.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) has held up relatively well, and companies like Grab and Gojek remain dominant in their respective markets. But the big question is **exits**. We’re not seeing a lot of them happening. From your perspective, do you think that the **lack of exits** combined with **the rise in fraud cases** will deter future investment in the region? **Kristie Neo:** Yeah, I think it definitely will. One of the things that needs to happen—and I’m curious to see if *eFishery* investors will pursue this—is some form of legal action against those responsible for fraud. Take *Tanihub* and *Investree*, for example. The founders suspected of fraud and bribery have disappeared, and no one knows where they are. The same thing seems to be happening with *eFishery*—no one knows where the founders are. If investors don’t pursue legal accountability, it sets a dangerous precedent. This isn’t just about millions of dollars lost—it’s about the reputation of the entire ecosystem. If fraudsters aren’t penalized, it sends the message that you can commit financial crimes and face no consequences. That would create a trust issue not just among founders, but across the entire investment ecosystem. If the legal system isn’t strong enough to handle these cases, how can investors feel confident putting more money into Southeast Asia? I don’t know if the investors in *eFishery* will actually take action, but how they handle this case will send a strong signal—not just to startups and investors in Southeast Asia, but to the global investment community. If these fraud cases go unpunished, how can we expect new investors to trust this market? **Bernard Leong:** Legal accountability is a critical factor. From an investor’s perspective, we do our best to assess founders and their businesses before making investments. Angel investors, for instance, rarely make a lot of money. What they gain is goodwill and the ability to help early-stage companies grow. But once these startups reach a certain size, raising capital gets much harder. A few years ago, there was too much capital in the market—especially between 2018 and 2021\. Now, we’re in a period where capital is drying up. What do you think this shift means for the market dynamics going forward? **Kristie Neo:** When you say it gets harder to raise capital as companies grow, which stage are you referring to? **Bernard Leong:** It used to be that Series A was the bottleneck. But between 2018 and 2022, raising Series A or even Series B wasn’t that difficult. The real challenge started at Series C—that’s where companies struggled to raise capital. And when you look at growth-stage funds, they’re rarely deploying in Southeast Asia. Now, the problem at Series C is starting to percolate down to Series A and B. Companies looking for growth capital are finding it much harder to raise funding compared to just a few years ago. Between 2018 and 2021, Series A rounds were much more common. Before the Grab era, even raising pre-seed to Series A was extremely difficult. But during the funding boom, there was too much capital chasing too few good deals. **Kristie Neo:** So you’re saying the slowdown is spreading downward, affecting Series A and B as well? **Bernard Leong:** Exactly. The entire fundraising spectrum is slowing down. Another issue no one talks about is VC fund DPI (Distributions to Paid-In Capital). Many funds that started in 2014 are reaching their 10-year cycle, which means LPs will soon start demanding returns. **Kristie Neo:** Yeah, we don’t talk about it much, but it’s going to happen. At some point, someone will break the news on it. **Bernard Leong:** I’m already seeing secondary LPs trying to buy stakes at a discount. **Kristie Neo:** I’ve been asking around about secondary market activity for the last two years. Normally, during a slowdown, you’d expect secondary deals to pick up—but that hasn’t really happened in Southeast Asia. **Bernard Leong:** That’s because valuations haven’t been marked down yet. **Kristie Neo:** Exactly. And from what I’ve heard, the main issue isn’t buyers—it’s sellers. Many Asian investors are refusing to negotiate on price, which means the bid-ask gap remains too wide. In the U.S., the secondary market has already corrected itself over the last two years. But in Asia-Pacific and other emerging markets, valuations haven’t been adjusted enough to allow for meaningful secondary activity. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of it comes down to market opacity. These are private companies, so it’s harder to get a clear picture of what’s really happening. **Kristie Neo:** It also speaks to the quality of businesses. If there were more profitable, revenue-generating startups, we wouldn’t be seeing this kind of secondary market stagnation. But right now, we’re not seeing much M&A activity either. **Bernard Leong:** Which brings us back to what I said earlier—adjusted EBITDA is a terrible metric. Some companies are growing quickly, but losing 50 cents on every dollar they make. That’s not a sustainable business model. **Kristie Neo:** They assume they’ll eventually grow into profitability, but it doesn’t always happen. **Bernard Leong:** That’s a mistake many founders make. One of the things I did in the past was help zombie startups exit. These were companies that had stopped growing, weren’t making revenue, and had founders who now had families to support. **Kristie Neo:** That must have been a tough process. **Bernard Leong:** It was very personal for me as I spent my time to help these founders. I was a failed startup founder myself, and it was very public. Ten years ago, I started a high-growth company, but we couldn’t raise a Series A. Instead of faking the numbers, we decided to shut down. We had a shutdown party, and even the *Tech in Asia* team was there to cover it. We were honest—we admitted the business model didn’t work. It was painful, but we knew it was better to fail properly than to resort to fraud. **Kristie Neo:** That must have been a really difficult decision to make. **Bernard Leong:** It was. But it taught me a valuable lesson. A lot of founders start with good intentions. But when they hit a crunch point, they have to ask themselves: *Do I keep pushing forward with something that isn’t working? Or do I shut it down and move on?* The VC model is designed for power law outcomes, but maybe Southeast Asia isn’t ready for that yet. Maybe achieving 10x instead of 100x returns is more realistic for this region. **Kristie Neo:** That’s the real question. How many startups here can actually achieve those kinds of returns? **Bernard Leong:** I don’t know. But let me ask you two final questions. First, what’s one question about Southeast Asia that you wish people would ask you more often—but they don’t? **Kristie Neo:** That’s an interesting one. I relocated to Dubai last year, and since then, I’ve interacted with a lot of people from the Middle East. One thing I’ve noticed is that Singapore has an incredibly strong global brand. People in the Middle East view Singapore as a model—not just in terms of governance but also in trust, rule of law, and anti-corruption measures. The perception of Singapore as a serious, no-nonsense place has been reinforced by soft power initiatives, including things like *Crazy Rich Asians*. It’s something I think Singaporeans tend to undervalue, but it’s a real competitive advantage. **Bernard Leong:** I just wish we had a bigger population because our market is simply too small. It’s not about putting ourselves down—it’s just the reality. Our systems are incredibly well-developed, probably on par with what the U.S. has, but the market size is a constraint. Meanwhile, surrounding markets are much larger, yet they struggle with maintaining rule of law, which is why we are seeing so much fraud now. **Kristie Neo:** That’s absolutely true. **Bernard Leong:** My final question—what does great look like for Southeast Asia to live up to its expectations? **Kristie Neo:** For Southeast Asia to reach its full potential, I hope we continue to build big, ambitious, and bold businesses. I know we’re not in the best part of the cycle right now, but I hope this isn’t the end. I don’t want to say it’s over—it sounds too final. **Bernard Leong:** Things change. We’ve all thought it was the end before, but the cycle always shifts. **Kristie Neo:** Exactly. I still believe there’s strong talent in the region, especially in Singapore. We have all the key ingredients to build something great. But one issue I see—both with founders and investors—is risk aversion. It’s something even ecosystem players acknowledge. We have everything needed to succeed, yet the system doesn’t always reward risk-taking. And if you don’t take risks, you will never achieve outlier outcomes. **Bernard Leong:** Many thanks for coming on the show. Just before we wrap up, any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Kristie Neo:** Are you asking about books or movies? I’ve been reading more about the **Middle East** since moving there. Right now, I’m reading [*The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine* by **Rashid Khalidi**](https://www.amazon.sg/Hundred-Years-War-Palestine-Resistance/dp/1781259348?ref=analysepodcast.com). I’ve also been reading [*Main Street Millionaire* by **Codie Sanchez**](https://www.amazon.sg/Main-Street-Millionaire-Extraordinary-Businesses/dp/0593718615/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=1Q5JF7U3S51GN&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.o9-cnbS152tVjMizqs9IGO6EkxyzdmCl1NKQvitnxdYdyd2lQHnrcQibOi%5Fk5rZ2nBD1nEfCCbBx0qG71DMvLN5muVd0aW3-4XZLuZwLI8iomwltr-ZrdVo5aT958cui.qYMG8xC24uCR3QgPJeB3m8QC6u%5FvEIyB-1COBXeLVig&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=main+street+millionaire&qid=1739066928&sprefix=main+street%2Caps%2C329&sr=8-1&ref=analysepodcast.com), which focuses on how to acquire small businesses. **Bernard Leong:** Where can people find you? **Kristie Neo:** Oh, you mean where people can reach me? The best way is **LinkedIn**—just drop me a message there. **Bernard Leong:** You can find *Analyse Asia* on **YouTube, Spotify, and all the major platforms**. Many thanks for coming on the show, and I look forward to speaking with you again. Take care & stay safe. **Kristie Neo:** Thank you. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He shares his journey from automotive engineering to tech leadership, reflecting on the rise of AI agents that move beyond chatbots to take real-world actions. Sujith explains how Agentforce 2.0 integrates across Salesforce products like Slack and Tableau, helping businesses automate sales, customer service, and marketing. He highlights how banks, airlines, and telcos in Southeast Asia are leveraging AI for growth, alongside Salesforce’s shift to a pay-as-you-go model for easier adoption. Addressing AI trust and governance, he underscores data privacy and enterprise-grade AI security. Closing the conversation, Sujith shares his vision for AI-driven customer engagement and what great looks like for Salesforce & Agentforce 2.0 in ASEAN. --- > "What's the point if it's a fast platform, but I still have to go somewhere else? And the last thing is speed. Right now, especially in our region, it's a land grab. When we think about some of the fastest-growing economies in the world—Indonesia, for example, Vietnam, the Philippines—you have hundreds of millions of people here. What we see in every customer I speak to is interest in how they use our platform to move faster, to deploy AI. They don't want to have to build a foundation level of AI, integrating all those elements themselves. They want to deploy it faster. When you think about our history, we have 250 petabytes of data being accessed by 150,000 customers every single day. When you take that set, we had to get this right. We had to because we have thousands of engineers focused on building these platforms so our customers don't have to—so they can deploy innovation and create truly unique and differentiated customer journeys." - **Sujith Abraham** **Profile: Sujith Abraham**, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ASEAN from [Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/ap/?ir=1&ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sujithabraham/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I am [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse.asia) and agentic AI is about to sweep the globe. What is the future of AI agents? With me today, Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ASEAN from [Salesforce](https://www.salesforce.com/ap/?ir=1&ref=analyse.asia) to tell us about [Agentforce](https://www.salesforce.com/ap/agentforce/?ref=analyse.asia) 2.0 and what it means for the enterprise customers. Sujith, welcome to the show. **Sujith Abraham:** Thank you for having me here, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** I saw Marc Benioff's keynote on Agentforce in the Dreamforce conference last year. It would be great for you to tell me: what is this context specifically to the Southeast Asia customers here? Before that, every time when we have a guest here, we want to hear their origin stories. So how did you start your career and eventually end up in Salesforce? **Sujith Abraham:** Thank you for the question. Look, I didn't actually start off in tech. I went to an engineering school that was very tech-based, but I actually started off in the automotive industry. And if you can believe it, I was designing seatbelts and airbags. The only thing is, I ended up in Michigan. I didn't really like the cold weather, I didn't really like engineering, and I was away from any ocean. Other than that, it was great. So I honestly got on a plane—I still remember it was 96 or 97\. I decided to take a chance and went out to California. The industry was growing like crazy, and they were looking for people from the automotive sector. I ended up at Oracle when they were getting into enterprise applications, and it was just an incredible start. They brought me to Singapore in 2004\. I saw Salesforce from its humble beginnings back then and really admired them. We had been talking, but there was never really quite the right role. Then, strangely enough, in 2020, I was on a trip home to visit my parents from Singapore. I've been in Singapore for almost 20 years now, but I was back home. It had been a while. I got a call from Salesforce, and it was a role that I wanted. They gave me the opportunity to run Southeast Asia, and the rest is history. So, I've been here \[with Salesforce\] for the past five years. **Bernard Leong:** What are the lessons from your career journey that you can share with my audience? **Sujith Abraham:** I think for me, what I can say is that it was just as important to figure out what I didn't want to do as it was to figure out what I did want to do. That process of elimination led me to realize that, as much as I valued the study and background in engineering, it wasn’t something I was excited about compared to high tech. I took a chance. I knew I didn’t want to stay in engineering, but I wasn’t entirely sure about tech either. I made the leap, and I encourage everyone to take that risk. It has served me well, and there have been other moments in my life where taking risks has paid off. Another key lesson I’ve learned is to follow your passion rather than the money. I’ve seen many people pursue careers solely for financial gain, and while everyone is different, I know that if I don’t enjoy what I’m doing, no amount of money can make up for it. For me, if you love what you do, everything else will fall into place. **Bernard Leong:** That's great. It’s like the privilege of a lifetime is to be yourself. **Sujith Abraham:** Yes, that’s right. It’s a gift. **Bernard Leong:** You get a chance to do that. So I want to get to the main subject of the day. I want to talk about Agentforce 2.0 and Salesforce in Southeast Asia. Maybe to start, can you introduce Salesforce, its global mission and vision, and its current footprint in Southeast Asia, or what we call ASEAN? **Sujith Abraham:** Yeah, I can definitely do that. Salesforce's mission is to help our customers connect with their customers in a whole new way. Whether that’s through digital channels, messaging, the web, email, or even physical events, we aim to bring all these signals together and provide a 360-degree view of the customer. We also want to democratize access to this data across sales, service, and marketing departments—all underpinned by AI, data, and CRM. This customer-centric approach is what drives Salesforce forward. What's particularly exciting today is the third phase of AI evolution, which we call agentic services. We're leading this shift with autonomous AI agents under Agentforce, which operate as always-on virtual assistants that help both customers and employees enhance customer engagement and efficiency. In Southeast Asia, our journey began in Singapore in 2004\. I was watching Salesforce from afar at a competitor, and in 2020, when I joined, we quickly expanded. We launched our second entity in Thailand shortly after, followed by Indonesia in 2023\. Around the same time, we introduced Hyperforce, our public cloud version of Salesforce, first in Singapore and then in Indonesia, enabling us to serve regulated industries and bring data closer to home. Our public cloud infrastructure operates on AWS. Beyond that, Salesforce’s mission is rooted in the belief that business is the greatest platform for change. We are a values-led company, with trust as our number one value, followed by customer success, innovation, sustainability, and equality. These values define our culture, and any Salesforce employee can tell you how deeply they resonate with us. We’re also proud of our team in Southeast Asia, which has grown into a community of over 1,000 employees. We are fortunate to work with leading enterprises such as Siam Commercial Bank, Singapore Airlines, Converge, Teccom Bank in Vietnam, and Indosat, spanning diverse industries and company sizes. As we continue expanding, we’re excited about the future of digital labor and AI-powered automation in the region. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s first establish some key concepts to help my audience understand. How do you define generative AI and AI agents, and how do they intersect with enterprises, particularly in terms of applications? **Sujith Abraham:** Sure. Maybe I can start by looking at some of the other forms of AI. Predictive AI analyzes historical data to predict patterns, which is where we began with our own AI back in 2014\. Generative AI, on the other hand, takes data and creates something new—whether it’s images, text, or other content—using prompts. A familiar example is ChatGPT, which generates responses by connecting vast streams of data. You might also know Midjourney, which creates images, all powered by AI copilots that allow users to ask questions in natural language and receive responses or visual outputs through prompting. That was a great start, and it moved us forward. But what was missing was the ability to drive action. It’s helpful to receive an answer, but what if I actually want to take the next step? What if I need to upgrade my plane ticket, get a referral from my healthcare provider, or finalize a loan application—without waiting for a human agent? That’s where AI agents and the Agentforce platform come in. They don’t just provide answers—they execute actions. **Bernard Leong:** So essentially, Agentforce invokes actions based on prompts from large language models, turning AI-powered insights into real-world execution. **Sujith Abraham:** Correct. Take Remarkable, the digital notepad company as an example, they implemented Agentforce in just three weeks and were suddenly able to manage thousands of customer conversations 24/7\. Another great example is Heathrow Airport, where AI agents help guide passengers, provide flight updates, and connect them to airport vendors and merchants. We also have Wiley Books, which leveraged AI-driven case resolution, improving their productivity by 40%. Similarly, Saks Fifth Avenue, a luxury retailer, uses Agentforce to power hyper-personalized customer experiences at scale. These are just a few of the many real-world success stories where AI agents are driving action and enhancing efficiency. **Bernard Leong:** Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s global CEO and founder, has been vocal about Agentforce’s importance, particularly during your recent Dreamforce 2024 conference. I’m currently teaching a class for government leaders, business executives, and engineers on how to build their own large language models, and Agentforce has come up in discussions. There’s a lot of curiosity around how to bring AI agents into real-world applications. Could you break down the key ideas behind Agentforce and how it works for businesses on the Salesforce platform? **Sujith Abraham:** Sure, I’d be happy to. But let me ask you—how excited are you when you interact with a bot? **Bernard Leong:** Well, I don’t mind talking to a bot, but if it can’t resolve my issue, I expect it to seamlessly route me to a human agent. **Sujith Abraham:** Exactly, that's exactly it. The problem with traditional bots is that they can’t always answer the question. They're based on decision trees, which means they can only provide solutions if the exact query exists in their database. Most of the time, that’s not the case, which leads to a frustrating experience where users keep hitting the "please connect to an agent" button. The difference with Agentforce is that it engages in natural language conversations. For years, application platforms have stored customer data, but we at Salesforce realized that not all customer data resides within Salesforce. It could be in a bank’s core banking system, an airline’s passenger booking system, or an enterprise's ERP. If we draw an analogy to a doctor’s visit, the power of Agentforce is similar to what a physician provides. A doctor brings comprehensive knowledge of your medical history, and in the same way, Agentforce unifies all customer data, regardless of where it is stored. The key distinction is that we don’t copy the data—we unify and reference it. If your information is stored in Amazon, Databricks, or a traditional data warehouse, we don’t duplicate it. Instead, our co-pilot accesses and retrieves the necessary insights dynamically, ensuring efficiency with a zero-copy approach. Beyond data unification, what makes Agentforce truly powerful is its reasoning engine, Atlas. It allows the system to differentiate between different types of queries—whether it’s about a ticket upgrade, a loan application, or an account issue. The system understands who the customer is, what they are eligible for, and what actions should be taken, ensuring more precise interactions. Then, there’s the trust factor. Can you trust the response provided by the AI? How do we eliminate hallucinations or incorrect answers? More importantly, how do we ensure that when our AI constructs an answer using external large language models (LLMs), a company’s proprietary data isn’t exposed? That’s a critical part of how we’ve designed Agentforce. Another key aspect is workflow integration. Employees don’t want to switch between multiple applications to find information. If a customer service agent or salesperson is using AI to assist in a conversation, they need it to be seamlessly embedded in their workflow. The goal is to keep everything within the flow of work, reducing friction and making interactions faster. Speed is also essential. Right now, Southeast Asia is a land grab for digital transformation, with some of the fastest-growing economies like Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Every business I speak to wants to deploy AI faster. They don’t want to build foundational AI models from scratch—they want to implement and see value immediately. When you consider that Salesforce handles 250 petabytes of data, accessed by 150,000 customers daily, we had to get this right. Thousands of engineers are working to ensure our customers can deploy AI-powered innovation and create unique customer experiences without the complexity. **Bernard Leong:** I would assume that Agentforce also integrates across Salesforce’s suite of products, like Slack? **Sujith Abraham:** That’s exactly right. Our AI is embedded across all Salesforce products. It powers Pulse in Tableau, Einstein in Slack, and our sales, service, and marketing agents. We have SDR \[sales development representatives\] coaching agents, sales agents, service agents, and commerce agents, allowing AI to be present wherever it’s needed in Salesforce’s ecosystem. **Bernard Leong:** So if I were to think about it, how does Agentforce actually operate as an AI assistant? One of the key questions is around its different components. For example, in a customer service setting, an AI agent needs to pull from a knowledge base of FAQs, understand customer situations, and even conduct sentiment analysis to provide relevant responses. Then in sales, SDR calls are completely different. Here, the AI is qualifying leads, prioritizing prospects, and assisting in sales conversations. Similarly, for marketing, the use case might focus on personalization and audience engagement. How are you able to configure these different agents under Agentforce? **Sujith Abraham:** The key starting point is ensuring all your data is brought together in one place. This is why we developed [Data Cloud](https://www.salesforce.com/ap/data/?ref=analyse.asia), our platform that connects all sources of customer information. Good AI requires good, complete data, and Data Cloud sits at the heart of everything we do. Data Cloud integrates with Salesforce, AWS, Databricks, Snowflake, ERP systems, and any other customer data sources. Whether your customer data sits in core banking systems, airline booking systems, or e-commerce platforms, we unify it into a single structured view. This includes product information, eligibility rules, and customer history, ensuring that when an agent interacts with a customer, it has all the relevant context. On top of Data Cloud, we have our co-pilot layer and then the AI agent layer, which leverages our Atlas reasoning engine. This is what enables contextualized responses—it understands who the customer is, their past interactions, and what services they qualify for. These layers ensure responses are accurate, relevant, and tailored to each user’s specific needs. **Bernard Leong:** You’ve made a great point about Data Cloud. Many businesses, especially CEOs and business leaders, overlook the importance of integrating data sources before implementing AI. McKinsey reported that only 20-30% of companies are actually data-ready for AI applications. Would you say that’s where Agentforce differentiates itself from other enterprise AI solutions? **Sujith Abraham**: Exactly. Many companies attempt to build AI solutions from scratch, but this often leads to delays, complexity, and security concerns. It’s like starting an insurance business without expertise—you’re better off working with an experienced provider who has built a trusted, scalable system. For enterprises, achieving a standardized level of security, governance, and trust takes significant effort. Our goal is to take the complexity out of AI adoption by providing a unified, trusted data infrastructure. When you use Salesforce, you connect your data sources in a secure and structured way, so you get reliable AI-generated insights quickly, rather than spending years building and validating models internally. **Bernard Leong:** I used Salesforce in my corporate career at a tech company, and with Agentforce, I imagine that half of my workload would have been automated. **Sujith Abraham:** Absolutely! Our goal is to work alongside users and help them become more productive, more efficient, and more impactful in their roles. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of businesses are currently experimenting with AI, but they need to reach full-scale adoption. What are the common challenges companies face, and how does Agentforce help overcome them? I assume scalability, integration, and workflows are key issues, but you also mentioned trust as an important factor. **Sujith Abraham:** Trust is absolutely critical. Minimizing AI hallucinations and ensuring accurate responses is a top priority. Take Air Canada’s recent AI mishap, for example—an AI-powered chatbot provided misleading information, which resulted in a lawsuit. This highlights why AI reliability and governance are essential. In enterprise AI, the assumption is that answers should come from within the company's own data, rather than scraping information from the internet. Consumer AI models like ChatGPT are trained on vast public datasets, but in enterprise settings, you need a private, structured AI stack that surfaces information from verified internal sources. That’s why Agentforce is built on a layered AI architecture. We have the Atlas reasoning engine, Data Cloud, and the agentic layer, all ensuring accurate, context-aware responses. External large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT may be used for answer formulation, but we ensure that sensitive customer data never enters public models. We also eliminate the need for companies to constantly test, fine-tune, and validate their AI systems. Instead of spending months checking if an AI model is accurate and trustworthy, businesses can simply deploy Agentforce’s pre-built, enterprise-grade AI and focus on building customer experiences rather than coding and maintaining complex AI stacks. **Bernard Leong:** It sounds like thinking in terms of solutions rather than components is key. Businesses want a system they can just deploy and use, rather than spending time building their own AI infrastructure. **Sujith Abraham:** Exactly. It’s about deployment, not development. Would you build a house from scratch, or hire a contractor who has already built thousands of homes? **Bernard Leong:** I’d probably hire a contractor. **Sujith Abraham:** Exactly! And that’s the same approach businesses should take with AI. **Bernard Leong:** I may not be able to build it myself, but at least I know what I want. **Bernard Leong:** So one interesting thing that excited me about Agentforce when it first came out was actually its business model. Traditionally, SaaS operates on a subscription-based pricing model, where customers pay based on users. But with Agentforce, the pricing structure is different—it’s pay-as-you-go, meaning you pay only for the work AI actually does. Can you explain how this new consumption-based model works and how customers are responding to it? **Sujith Abraham:** You’re exactly right. We’re shifting to a consumption model, which means instead of paying a fixed monthly fee, customers pay only for what they use. With Agentforce, the pricing is based on conversations—each session lasts 24 hours, during which a user can ask multiple questions. Customers essentially pay per session, ensuring that they’re only charged based on actual usage. **Bernard Leong:** Do you find that customers in this region are more open to this kind of business model? **Sujith Abraham:** Absolutely. This isn’t a new concept—we’ve seen companies like Amazon successfully operate under a consumption-based model. Customers prefer this approach because it gives them more flexibility and cost control, allowing them to pay only for what they actually use, rather than committing to a fixed recurring fee. **Bernard Leong:** I’ve adopted a similar pay-as-you-go model for my customers. It’s a big shift for Salesforce to enter this space. I’m curious—what are some interesting use cases for Agentforce in Southeast Asia, particularly in industries like logistics, finance, and retail? **Sujith Abraham:** We’re currently working on multiple proof-of-concepts (POCs), and we’re excited to share them soon. In the banking sector, for example, we’re exploring how AI can transform wealth management by assisting wealth advisors in managing multiple clients more efficiently. In institutional banking, AI is helping streamline customer onboarding, allowing advisors to engage more effectively with their clients. For airlines, consider what happened a few months ago when there was a major outage—customers were desperate for assistance but couldn’t reach an agent. With Agentforce, airlines can instantly deploy unlimited digital agents, ensuring every customer receives personalized support in real-time. Imagine the impact on customer satisfaction and brand loyalty if every airline could provide seamless assistance during crises. We’re also seeing strong adoption across telcos, healthcare providers, government agencies, and educational institutions, all using AI-powered natural language interactions to improve customer and citizen engagement. Even broadband companies are leveraging AI to provide faster, more personalized service, helping them capture market share in this highly competitive region. **Bernard Leong:** You’ve touched on governance and trust earlier. Let’s dive deeper—what safeguards does Salesforce have in place to ensure transparency and accountability when AI agents make decisions? How do you ensure that there’s auditability for businesses using Agentforce? **Sujith Abraham:** Trust is our number one value, and we take AI governance very seriously. We’ve been extremely vocal about ensuring data privacy, accuracy, and security, and we’re committed to keeping customer data protected. To prevent AI hallucinations and misinformation, we use synthetic data testing and continuously monitor AI performance. Our Office of Ethical and Humane AI sets strict guidelines to ensure responsible AI deployment. In fact, Salesforce’s first AI research center outside the U.S. is based here in Singapore, and it plays a key role in developing AI safeguards and filing patents that enhance our platform’s reliability. We work closely with our customers, fine-tuning AI accuracy in real-world scenarios. For instance, at Heathrow Airport, our AI-powered customer service platform has achieved over 95% accuracy in handling passenger queries. This kind of continuous refinement ensures that Agentforce delivers reliable, high-quality AI interactions. **Bernard Leong:** Many CEOs and business leaders ask me about AI adoption, particularly when implementing large language models (LLMs). How does Agentforce decide which foundational LLM to use? **Sujith Abraham:** We use a hybrid approach. While customers can bring their own model, the majority of AI processing happens through Salesforce’s own AI models. Our Atlas reasoning engine is powered by XLAM models, designed specifically for enterprise-grade reasoning and decision-making. We also have smaller, specialized models optimized for different functions—whether it’s sales, marketing, or customer service. While we do integrate external LLMs like OpenAI and Google, their role is primarily to structure and articulate responses. However, we never expose customer data to these external models, ensuring data security and compliance at all times. **Bernard Leong:** Salesforce was one of the early pioneers in large language models, with the development of Einstein AI. Given your experience, what advice would you give to business leaders and government executives considering AI adoption? **Sujith Abraham:** That’s a great question. First, focus on use cases—ask yourself, what problem are you solving? McKinsey found that 75% of AI’s business value lies in front-office operations, meaning AI should be customer-focused. Whether you’re enhancing customer service, sales, or marketing, defining a clear objective is critical. Second, ensure your customer data is unified. AI isn’t just about the data in your CRM \[Customer Relationship Management\] —you need a system that can seamlessly connect and integrate multiple data sources. Without high-quality, connected data, AI will struggle to generate meaningful insights. Third, prioritize trust and speed. Many companies attempt to build their own AI solutions, but this approach is often slow, expensive, and complex. Businesses are quickly realizing that DIY \[Do it Yourself\] AI projects don’t scale well, whereas Salesforce provides a ready-to-deploy, enterprise-grade AI solution that allows companies to implement AI faster and more effectively. Right now, it’s a land grab for AI adoption, and the companies that deploy AI the fastest will gain a significant competitive advantage. Based on the number of POCs \[proof of concepts\] we’re running, it’s clear that speed matters more than ever. **Bernard Leong:** So, what’s one thing about Salesforce and AgentForce in ASEAN that very few people know? **Sujith Abraham:** One of the things we’re really proud of—especially given where we’re sitting—is that Salesforce’s first AI research center outside the U.S. was established in Singapore. It has since become a leading hub for AI innovation, filing more patents than any other department. Our Singapore AI team plays a critical role in developing new AI-driven solutions and ensuring that Salesforce continues to lead in trust, governance, and cutting-edge AI applications. It’s an incredible team, and I’m lucky to have them here. **Bernard Leong:** Wow. I wanted to follow up on that. How do you see Agentforce and Salesforce’s innovation center contributing to broader AI initiatives shaping the ASEAN ecosystem? **Sujith Abraham:** One of the key aspects of Salesforce is our community. We have what we call Trailblazers—individuals and heroes within organizations who take our platform and build incredible things with it. They innovate in ways we couldn’t even imagine, and that’s why we see Salesforce as a platform rather than just a product. Our developer community is also vital. They build intellectual property on top of our platform, creating new customer journeys that can be commercialized or made available to a wider audience. Similarly, our customers themselves take what we offer out of the box and customize it to suit their needs—whether it’s for an airline, a logistics company, or a bank—differentiating themselves with unique capabilities. Governments are another important sector. For example, how can we enhance digital citizen experiences, such as accessing CPF services in Singapore? How do we bring similar innovations to other parts of the world? We’re fortunate to work with a forward-thinking government, and we’re excited to empower public sector groups to serve their citizens even better. **Bernard Leong:** What is one question you wish more people would ask you about Salesforce or Agentforce? **Sujith Abraham:** I wish people would ask, "Why Salesforce?" **Bernard Leong:** I could just ask you that now, right? **Sujith Abraham:** Yes, you can! And it’s a fair question. First and foremost, we’ve thought through these challenges deeply because we’ve had to. We manage 250 petabytes of data across 150,000 customers, and we had to get it right. The ability to unify all that data and leverage customers’ existing investments in data warehouses or ERPs is a massive differentiator. Think of it like visiting a doctor—having a comprehensive and intelligent reasoning system, like our Atlas reasoning engine, enables better decision-making. Trust is also foundational. Customers need to be confident in the information our AI delivers, ensuring their data and intellectual property don’t end up in the public domain. Another key factor is workflow integration. Employees shouldn’t have to "swivel-chair" between applications. AI should be seamlessly embedded into their flow of work, enabling them to operate faster and more efficiently. One of our customers mentioned that onboarding new employees is a major challenge because they struggle to access knowledge quickly. Having an AI agent to guide them through complex processes reduces stress and improves employee retention. And lastly, speed. We designed Agentforce with scalability in mind so that companies can deploy AI rapidly. As I mentioned before, it’s a land grab. High-growth economies and large enterprises in ASEAN recognize this, and they are prioritizing deployment over development. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question—what does great look like for Salesforce or Agentforce from your perspective? **Sujith Abraham:** For us, greatness is seeing our products enable incredible new journeys for people—whether it’s citizens accessing government services, patients receiving better healthcare, travelers navigating an airport more smoothly, or customers having seamless banking experiences. When we create AI-driven solutions that make everyday interactions faster, easier, and more accessible, we know we’re making a difference. Many people are busy and can’t always wait on hold for customer service after work. If we can improve our customers’ customer experiences, we feel like we’re truly driving change. **Bernard Leong:** I’m looking forward to seeing that future. Sujith, thanks for coming on the show and for hosting me at your studio for this conversation. I have two quick closing questions. First, any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Sujith Abraham:** I’ll give you a non-technical one! I encourage everyone to experiment with AI, no matter what industry they’re in. I’ve been using [Midjourney](https://www.midjourney.com/home?ref=analyse.asia) and [Runway](https://runwayml.com/?ref=analyse.asia) to create visual storytelling for our team. We wanted to tell stories faster, so we’ve been building AI-generated imagery with Midjourney, then animating them with Runway. Years ago, this would have required hiring a studio and actors, but now we can create prototypes and take them to professionals for refinement. It’s an incredible way to democratize content creation. **Bernard Leong:** That makes total sense. You can quickly generate a concept and then have experts polish it. **Sujith Abraham:** Exactly. And this democratization of AI tools applies to many areas. Not everyone enjoys writing, but AI can help generate drafts. Need content in another language? AI can assist with translations. My advice is simple—go out and experiment! **Bernard Leong:** I’ll add to that—I often use [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/?ref=analyse.asia) in combination with [Gamma](https://gamma.app/?ref=analyse.asia) to generate presentation outlines. My students love it because it makes business school classes much more interactive. So, how can my audience find you? **Sujith Abraham:** LinkedIn is the best place. Feel free to reach out and connect with me there. **Bernard Leong:** You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, and now even on video on Spotify. Let us know your thoughts on this episode, and most importantly, tell us who you are. Sujith, many thanks for coming on the show. We should definitely do this again sometime. **Sujith Abraham:** Absolutely, Bernard. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Beginning with her origin story, Ariel reflected on her journey from real estate private equity in New York to becoming a venture capitalist championing sustainable technologies in Asia. She elaborated on Undivided Ventures’ investment thesis, focusing on scaling sustainability-driven innovations in the built environment and shared key portfolio highlights, including successful investments like Structure Pal. Ariel also explored the transformative potential of generative AI, robotics, and data centers in addressing challenges in real estate and construction. Last but not least, she offered her insights on navigating fundraising in a challenging venture capital landscape and painted a compelling vision of what great looks like for Undivided Ventures. --- > " Now, the beauty about the real estate industry, if you look outside and you look at the commercial buildings, you have a lot of data generated on a daily basis. The challenge is, what do you do with this data? How do you mine this data in a smart way to give you better investment decisions going forward \[or\] better decisions on how you run the building? Where are the opportunities to reduce your expenses? On the climate side, how do you reduce your operational carbon? How do you make those buildings better? I think that here, Gen AI, can help big time, because any solution that will mine this data smartly and will create a result, an output, that end users and owners can use to their advantage.” - **Ariel Shtarkman** **Profile:** **Ariel Shtarkman**, co-founder and managing partner, [Undivided Ventures](https://www.undivided.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariel-s-2850322/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong. And when we think about sustainability and climate adaptation, the built environment and data centers are part of the solution, supercharged by AI and data. What does it mean for venture capital funds targeting the built environment or construction tech and sustainability moving ahead? With me today is Ariel Shtarkman Managing Partner and Co Founder of Undivided Ventures. Ariel, welcome to the show. **Ariel Shtarkman:** Thank you, Bernard. Excited to be here. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, last year I had your partner, [Alexander Bent](https://www.analysepodcast.com/undivided-vc-investing-in-the-built-environment-sustainability-with-alexander-bent/), on my show, and we talked a lot about construction tech. I definitely had to get you on the show because you bring some really interesting insights that my audience will benefit from. To start with our usual format, let’s begin with your origin story. How did you start your career? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Thank you, Bernard. Again, excited to be here. I’m a huge fan of Analyse Asia and have been listening to your podcast a lot—big shoes to fill here! I came to Asia 16 years ago. Originally from Israel and Russia, I grew up in Israel, completed my MBA in the U.S. at Columbia University, and began my first job in real estate private equity. I was very passionate about real estate and fortunate to start in private equity in 2008\. Even luckier, I got the opportunity to move to Hong Kong with ING Real Estate. Initially, I thought it would be a two-to-three-year Asia experience, but now it’s been 16 years, and Hong Kong is home. After private equity, I worked at Citibank, restructuring special situations in real estate and structured finance. A few years ago, I started my entrepreneurial journey. As a real estate investor, I managed investments in Hong Kong and New York, and I also established our family office in Hong Kong, pursuing various investment theses. Over time, I became fascinated with how technology relates to real estate. Coming from a very traditional field, I found the emergence of PropTech and construction tech about seven or eight years ago incredibly intriguing. To understand what worked and what didn’t, I started angel investing in these technologies, which eventually led to my collaboration with Alex and, ultimately, Undivided Ventures. **Bernard Leong:** I totally agree with you, Ariel. You're probably one of the most well-read people I’ve met. Every time we exchange book lists, I feel like I’ve missed out on some great recommendations from your list. Let’s dive into the main topic of the day—I want to talk about Undivided Ventures. I’d also like to touch on sustainability and AI. To start, could you share an overview of Undivided Ventures and the fund’s investment thesis? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Sure. Undivided Ventures invests in sustainability-related technologies, focusing on both software and hardware that tackle critical needs in the built environment. We see the built environment as comprising three main areas: existing real estate, construction, and infrastructure. When you think about it, this essentially encompasses everything in the world that isn’t moving. As Alex likes to say, when you look outside the window, whatever isn’t moving—apart from vehicles and people—is our domain. This industry has traditionally been conservative in adopting new technologies, so there is significant untapped potential for innovation. When it comes to sustainability and efficiency, the opportunities are immense. Of course, sustainability has become a major theme—not just due to regulatory pressures, but also because of the growing need for energy efficiency. For instance, how do we make buildings more energy-efficient without putting too much strain on the balance sheet or profit and loss statements? Our thesis emphasizes that technologies now exist to reduce both expenses and carbon footprints. When you present this kind of solution to real estate companies or contractors, the adoption cycle shortens significantly because the benefits are both clear and practical. We evaluate companies based on three key parameters. First, the company must address a specific sustainability challenge, and this challenge must be quantifiable. Second, the solutions must be highly commercial—meaning the cost to the end user needs to have an immediate, positive return on investment (ROI). If the ROI isn’t evident, the solution isn’t scalable. Third, we are deeply passionate about scaling these technologies within the Asia context. We’re based in Hong Kong and now have a team in Japan. While we’re targeting companies across Asia, Europe, and globally, our goal is to bring these technologies into an Asia-specific context, ensuring they thrive in this region’s unique market dynamics. **Bernard Leong:** Can you share some of the recent highlights of the fund? It sounds like there’s been some interesting activity recently. **Ariel Shtarkman:** Absolutely. It’s no secret that the past couple of years have been challenging for venture capital in general. But when I look at our portfolio today, we’ve achieved some exciting milestones. Currently, we have nine companies in our portfolio, soon to expand to 11\. What’s remarkable is how well these companies are performing. Not only are they surviving as early-stage startups, but they’re thriving. A key data point is the progress our companies are making on their P&L. Several of them have reached significant revenue milestones, which is rare for early-stage startups in the VC space. Our focus on companies that can generate real revenues and profits is paying off, and we’ve got even more exciting developments on the horizon. For example, four of our portfolio companies are going through up rounds in the first half of the year, which will lead to a substantial increase in portfolio value over the next four to six months. This is great news for our early investors who’ve supported us from the start. In terms of adoption, I’ll give you an example. We’ve invested in a UK-based company called [Gentian](https://www.gentian.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which operates in the biodiversity space. We’ve helped them open doors in Asia, and now they’re working with top-tier developers in Japan, China, and Hong Kong. This illustrates one of the most exciting aspects of our work: scalability in the real estate sector. If just one or two major developers adopt a new technological solution—whether it’s hardware or software—it often leads to broader industry adoption. This creates a clear path for scale, which is why we’re so excited about the potential of these technologies. **Bernard Leong:** One question I always ask: what’s the one thing you know about your investment thesis for Undivided Ventures that very few people do? **Ariel Shtarkman:** That’s a really good question. I’d say our “secret sauce” lies in the fact that Alex and I come from a real estate background. Almost everyone on our team understands real estate deeply, alongside sustainability. When we evaluate portfolio companies—or potential ones—we can put ourselves in the shoes of real estate owners or contractors. We think, “If I owned a real estate company and had a portfolio of assets, would I use this technology? Would it genuinely improve ROI, reduce expenses, or solve a real problem? Would it work within the existing structures of large companies?” We look at real estate businesses with their many layers of command and KPIs, analyzing whether a solution would be practical and impactful across all those layers. Startup founders are naturally optimistic, as they should be, but as venture capitalists, we have to balance optimism with realism. This ability to wear both hats—being optimistic and realistic—is something unique to our approach. To get to this level of understanding, you need years of experience in the industry. You need to have worked on construction sites, been involved in developments, and managed projects in different parts of the world. Alex, Amy, and I all bring that practical knowledge, which allows us to gauge what works and what doesn’t. **Bernard Leong:** I really value our conversations, especially because your team brings such an operator’s perspective to construction and real estate. Without that operational experience, it’s hard to predict what technology will work in the industry, let alone how to scale it globally. Speaking of challenges, the past two years have been difficult for fundraising. Can you share your experience and lessons from closing your first fund during such a challenging time? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Fundraising in 2023 was tough—it felt like the graveyard of fundraising. 2022 wasn’t much different. We started out overly optimistic, not realizing just how long this downturn would last. The good news is that the situation is finally starting to improve. One key lesson is that there’s never enough time for fundraising. It’s a long, drawn-out process. The industry itself has been in a holding pattern, with investors sitting on the sidelines, waiting for clarity on geopolitics, interest rates, and stock markets. Venture capital is still a relatively small portion of the investment landscape, and family offices or large real estate corporates have been cautious about deploying capital in this area. What helped us early on was having supportive early investors and committing our own capital upfront. Despite the tough times, we managed to build a portfolio that not only weathered the storm but thrived. We’ve had multiple up rounds, with several more coming soon, which demonstrates our portfolio’s strong potential for growth. For those raising funds now, it’s becoming slightly easier as larger investors are coming out of their “cooling-off” period and are ready to allocate capital again. Another key to our success has been focus. By staying true to our thesis—solving sustainability and efficiency challenges in the built environment—we’ve built credibility and avoided getting distracted by trends or noise. Our conviction, backed by data, has resonated with investors, and that’s how we’ve kept moving forward. **Bernard Leong:** That focus and conviction are critical. Let’s talk about generative AI. It’s everywhere, cutting across industries as a transformative horizontal technology. What opportunities do you see specifically in PropTech and climate technologies? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Generative AI is revolutionary—it’s becoming the backbone for everything we do with data. "Now, the beauty about the real estate industry, if you look outside and you look at the commercial buildings, you have a lot of data generated on a daily basis. The challenge is, what do you do with this data? How do you mine this data in a smart way to give you better investment decisions going forward \[or\] better decisions on how you run the building? Where are the opportunities to reduce your expenses? On the climate side, how do you reduce your operational carbon? How do you make those buildings better? I think that here, Gen AI, can help big time, because any solution that will mine this data smartly and will create a result, an output, that end users and owners can use to their advantage. **Bernard Leong:** If I were to ask you, given that generative AI (Gen AI) is evolving with new innovations week after week, how do you think about investing in such a fast-moving technology? Specifically, within the niche of PropTech and sustainability that you’re focused on. **Ariel Shtarkman:** That’s an amazing question because it’s something we’re asked often by real estate companies, whether they are potential investors or collaborators. They’ll say, “If I implement this solution, what gives me confidence that it won’t become obsolete in a year?” While we don’t have a perfect answer, I believe Gen AI in these solutions should be seen as a backbone—not the central theme. For example, if a company offers a solution to reduce operational carbon or improve building efficiency—or even optimize cooling for data centers while reducing electricity bills—the focus should always be on solving the specific problem first. Gen AI serves as a supporting tool, like a programming language, but faster and better. Companies should continuously develop their AI capabilities as new tools emerge, but the core solution must be functional and address a real need. If the solution is relevant and adoption is viable, the technology’s AI backbone will enhance its scalability and impact. **Bernard Leong:** So what do founders and startup teams tend to get right or wrong in this niche? **Ariel Shtarkman:** When it comes to Gen AI in real estate, I always want to hear about the problem being solved first. The technology is secondary. For example, one of our portfolio companies, [Structure Pal](https://www.structure-pal.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), is an AI-based solution that optimizes the amount of concrete used during the design phase of development. The founder, an architect and engineer, realized we often overuse concrete due to the complexity of running numerous variables, like safety, building codes, and design requirements. Humans simply can’t process all of this efficiently. By building a platform that leverages AI and Gen AI tools, Structure Pal creates optimized outputs, reducing concrete use by 10-15%. That’s a significant cost savings and a reduction in embodied carbon, which is a major challenge in sustainability today. The success of Structure Pal lies in identifying a real problem—concrete overuse—and addressing it effectively with AI. The technology wasn’t the primary pitch; it was the solution to the problem that made it compelling. **Bernard Leong:** So, it sounds like Structure Pal got it right by focusing on the problem first. What about founders and teams that get it wrong? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Teams that get it wrong often don’t take the time to understand the real estate industry, its workflows, or sales cycles. They might develop brilliant technology but fail to make it practical or sellable for real estate companies. Sometimes, they’re too early in their approach or create solutions that are cumbersome to implement. One of my favorite questions to ask during a pitch is: “Don’t give me your investor pitch. Pitch this to your end client—someone in the real estate industry.” This is critical because many startups don’t know how to articulate their value to the end user, even if they’re solving a real need. That can sometimes be fixed with the right sales team, but some solutions lack immediate ROI, face implementation challenges, or simply can’t scale. Without scalability, these companies struggle to gain traction. **Bernard Leong:** What traits in founders and startup teams make you want to invest in them? **Ariel Shtarkman:** It boils down to a few key traits. First, even if founders aren’t from the real estate industry, they need to deeply understand their target audience—who they’re selling to and what problem they’re solving. Founders often have ambitious goals, but they need a clear strategy to tackle their first client before scaling up. Resilience and grit are also essential. The last two years have been challenging for venture capital, with obstacles ranging from fundraising to geopolitics. Founders who can adapt, pivot when needed, and stay focused on their mission are the ones who succeed. I also value founders who are open to advice. While we don’t interfere in operations, our team includes sustainability and real estate experts who can help companies scale effectively. Finally, founders need to be genuinely passionate about what they’re doing because real estate and sustainability are tough industries, even when capital is more accessible. Passion helps founders endure the daily grind. **Bernard Leong:** If we reverse that, what are the red flags that make you decide not to invest? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Red flag number one is unclear or evasive answers during due diligence. Early-stage startups may not have perfect data rooms or polished numbers, but founders should know their sales figures, prospects, and go-to-market strategy. A lack of clarity in these areas is a warning sign. Another red flag is when founders overpromise, claiming contracts with dozens of clients that turn out to be cold emails with no responses. Being realistic is always better than overhyping. Responsiveness is also important—if you’re raising funds, you should be following up and showing commitment. Finally, we can’t invest in every amazing company because we’re constructing a balanced portfolio. However, companies that fail basic tests—like articulating a clear ROI or showing a scalable solution—simply won’t make it to the next stage. **Bernard Leong:** What is your mental model for valuation? Is it about investing the right capital for a specific percentage, like 20-30% for a Series A, based on industry averages? Or are you willing to pay the price if the valuation is very high? For example, during the 2021-2022 peak, when valuations were overblown. **Ariel Shtarkman:** We’ve been lucky in that there’s always a silver lining. Although we started fundraising during one of the toughest periods, valuations have become very attractive. This is the right time to invest, as we avoided participating in the hype cycle at its peak. It allows us to be highly selective in our choices. During 2020-2021, rounds would close in two weeks, with valuations increasing within the same round due to oversubscription. That level of demand doesn’t exist anymore. While hype is building in areas like generative AI, we now have the luxury of spending more time with founders, asking the hard questions, and evaluating performance carefully. Given that this is our first flagship fund, we’re particularly focused on overachieving. This means avoiding overblown valuations and hype-driven deals. Instead, we aim to invest in companies with clear 10x potential, not just projections based on inflated numbers or contracts that aren’t yet signed. Some companies may still operate this way, but we choose not to. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s shift gears to data centers. There’s been massive growth in the Asia-Pacific region, which now accounts for 50% of global demand. For Southeast Asia alone, the first half of the year saw $30 billion in investment—a 900% increase. What are your perspectives on data centers and the technologies that power their infrastructure? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Data centers are essential, especially with the growth of AI. Globally, there’s a significant push to build more of them, and the demand in Asia is even higher. Unlike other types of construction, data centers require unique specifications. The floors must be reinforced, the walls stronger, and the facilities designed to handle the heat of servers and cooling demands. Many refer to data centers as “digital infrastructure,” which is an apt description. Within this space, technology plays a huge role, especially in improving cooling efficiency. For example, we’re currently exploring opportunities in the refrigerant space, which is critical for data center cooling systems. Energy access and efficiency are also key considerations. How can we ensure power is sourced affordably and used effectively? Additionally, innovations are emerging to make servers generate less heat during operation, which would reduce energy demands. Another area we’re passionate about is materials. While we haven’t yet invested in concrete substitutes, there are promising developments in materials that can reduce embodied carbon—a crucial issue in data center construction. Finally, management tools for large-scale portfolios of data centers present another opportunity. These tools, often powered by generative AI, provide critical insights into operations and performance. Data centers have evolved from being considered a niche asset class, often lumped with industrial properties, to becoming mainstream and more popular than office or retail properties. **Bernard Leong:** On the topic of data centers, the demand for construction technology is one thing, but what about chip and server technologies? How do they factor into your considerations? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Chip technology is a bit outside our purview as a fund since it doesn’t directly touch real estate. However, it does have an impact on the design and operation of data centers. For instance, how servers operate—how much energy they need, how much cooling they require, and how much space they occupy—affects the physical structure and design of data centers. We’re closely watching developments in chip technology because they influence the future of data center design. Questions like “What will the data center of the future look like?” drive our focus. While we aren’t involved in server technology, we’re deeply interested in the physical spaces needed to house them. At a recent investment roundtable, someone even floated the idea of putting data centers in space. It’s futuristic, yes, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility. However, it’s not something we’re focusing on right now. **Bernard Leong:** One of my favorite questions—what is the one question you wish more people would ask you about Undivided Ventures or any topic related to your industry? **Ariel Shtarkman:** The question I’d like people to ask is actually the one you just asked: “What is the secret sauce and why now?” In fundraising, it’s crucial to articulate these points clearly, as they define our positioning and vision for the future. I’ve already touched on this, but it’s worth emphasizing. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s dive deeper into the “why now” part. You’ve articulated your secret sauce well, especially in terms of your niche focus. Why do you think now is the right time for Undivided Ventures? **Ariel Shtarkman:** There are a couple of reasons. First, this is an opportune time for venture capital in general. VC is finally emerging from a long “winter.” Institutional investors and family offices are becoming more interested in allocating capital to alternatives like VC. On top of that, valuations are very attractive right now, making it an excellent time to invest. Specifically for Undivided Ventures, we’re already seeing positive valuation upticks in our portfolio, putting us on an upward trajectory. Beyond that, there are tectonic shifts happening in the real estate and construction industries. Companies in these sectors are becoming much more open to innovation—whether it’s sustainability, efficiency, or other transformative technologies. Early-stage companies that tackle these challenges are poised for significant scalability, making this an incredibly compelling time to invest. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: What does “great” look like for Undivided Ventures, both in the short term and the next few years? **Ariel Shtarkman:** In the next 12 months, “great” would mean successfully closing our first fund and completing fundraising by the fall. We also aim to focus on investing in best-in-class solutions. One of the areas we’re considering for our second vehicle is data centers, so stay tuned for that. Over the next few years, “great” means identifying and investing in transformative companies in the areas we’re passionate about—companies that make a difference and have the potential to scale significantly. We aim to invest in two to five new companies (or more) annually. Additionally, “great” is about continuing to be thought leaders in this field, sharing our insights through podcasts like this, and ensuring our thesis reaches a broader audience. **Bernard Leong:** This has been a fantastic conversation, Ariel. But I know this won’t be your last time on the show—you’ll definitely be back! Before we wrap up, do you have any book recommendations or recent inspirations you’d like to share? **Ariel Shtarkman:** Absolutely. I read a lot of books when I can—and I encourage my children to read, too! A recent favorite is *Hidden Potential* by Adam Grant. It’s a great read on personal and organizational development, covering everything from education to fostering the right mindset in teams. I found it particularly relevant as Undivided Ventures is still a young organization. Another book I return to every year is *Meditations* by Marcus Aurelius. It’s a quick but impactful read, and I find it helps set the tone for the year ahead. It’s one of those timeless works that inspires me each time I revisit it. **Bernard Leong:** That’s fantastic! You’re clearly a fan of Stoicism—just like my wife. **Ariel Shtarkman:** (Laughs) Yes, definitely. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience reach out to you or learn more about Undivided Ventures? **Ariel Shtarkman:** They can email me directly at ariel at undivided dot vc. And of course, all thanks to you, Bernard, I’m happy to connect with anyone who’s interested. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you, Ariel. For those listening, don’t forget to subscribe to us on YouTube or check out our new video content on Spotify. Ariel, thank you so much for coming on the show. I look forward to speaking with you again soon. **Ariel Shtarkman:** Thank you so much for having me, Bernard. It’s been a pleasure. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Beginning from his origin story, he explained how the Virtuals team explored and eventually come to the realization how tokenized AI agents can power entertainment, gaming and trading with Luna, the AI avatar that grew through the help of AI agents and even inspiring works of real art. Last but not least, Jansen offered his perspectives on the trends of agentic AI and web3 and elucidate what great looks like for the Virtuals Protocol. --- > "What does great look like? For us, it's being able to achieve this vision of a society of agents. So, if you can show clearly the economic value of a society when agents can influence other agents, agents can influence humans, and humans can influence agents, that would be something that I'll be very proud to say that we've accomplished. Because that's the beauty of really combining breakthroughs on the AI, on the autonomous agent front, and the value add of crypto. This is one of those very rare moments that crypto has that true potential value add, right? As a productivity lever and an economic lever in society." **\- Jansen Teng** **Profile:** **Jansen Teng** ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jansenteng?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Twitter](https://x.com/ethermage?ref=analysepodcast.com)), co-founder and core contributor, [**Virtuals Protocol**](https://www.virtuals.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com)([Twitter](https://x.com/virtuals%5Fio?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Substack](https://virtuals.substack.com/)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I am [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and the intersection between generative AI and Web3 creates new opportunities and challenges across different industries. What does it mean for the future of AI agents, digital economies, and human-machine collaboration moving forward? With me today is Jansen Teng, co-founder and CEO of Virtuals Protocol, a pioneering platform at the forefront of the AI Agent Revolution. I have a disclaimer to make. I have been working with the virtual teams as part of their advisory council since a year ago before they broke out. So I do have some virtual tokens. So here is my disclaimer: no financial advice and not even life advice. That being aside, the Virtuals protocol team has been one of the best teams I've worked with on AI in the region. With all the disclaimers out of the way, Jensen, welcome to the show. **Jansen Teng:** Pleasure to be here, sir. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I've listened to both your recent interviews on the [famous Bankless podcast](https://www.bankless.com/podcast/building-a-digital-nation-of-autonomous-ai-agents-the-story-behind-virtuals?ref=analysepodcast.com) and also the one with [The Chopping Block](https://unchainedcrypto.com/the-chopping-block-scarcity-vs-abundance-ais-crypto-role-and-virtuals/?ref=analysepodcast.com) team under Laura Shin's Unchained network. Both of us interacted and hung out together during F1 last September. I want my audience to know your origin story. How did you start your career, and what sparked your interest in crypto, gaming, and AI? **Jansen Teng:** Yeah, so actually, two parts, right? On the crypto front, it started when I was in my second year at university. I think it all started with 90% of people in crypto — it's like, "How do you make money online?" And then they'll be like, "Oh yeah, mine Bitcoin," right? So it started from that and then snowballed into discovering Ethereum. I started mining Ethereum in my dorms running on free electricity. That was my original exposure to the whole decentralized application space, but honestly, I didn’t do much there. Meanwhile, on the other side, there’s always been this entrepreneurial itch. I started a deep tech venture back at Imperial as well, but after that, I left and went into management consulting, mainly to pay off my scholarship bond. On the weekends, I was working with my co-founder on other types of startups in the webtoon space. It ranged from digital marketing, and standard stuff, to even starting an AI recommendation platform for property. We tried to take on the likes of PropertyGuru and others, but we quickly realized that sometimes it’s not about the product; it’s about how hard it is to dislodge front-of-mind players, especially in a marketplace or network-effect environment. So we had to move on from that. That was our initial dabble into big data and the ML space from a product standpoint. Fast forward to 2021 — this was the bull cycle of crypto. **Bernard Leong:** They used to call it the [Super Cycle](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-3ac-demise-with-kyle-davies/). **Jansen Teng:** Yeah, it hasn’t reached Super Cycle yet. But that was when my co-founder and I did quite well from an asset management standpoint in the space. We had the luxury of leaving our jobs, so we started saying, "Hey, let’s build full-time in the crypto space." Back then, we had a ton of gaming assets — Web3 gaming assets — so we started a gaming DAO. Think of it as a gaming investment vehicle on-chain. That was our initial venture as capital allocators in the space. But then 2022 came, and we knew everything blew up, right? To manage risk better, we realized that allocating capital at arm’s length was a very low risk-adjusted return play. So we pivoted to a venture studio model and decided that if we wanted to build in this space, we’d need to recruit our co-founders to build projects at the intersection of what we believed in. Back then, we saw opportunities in consumer-facing applications intersecting with crypto and AI agents. We started building things like fully AI influencers, trying to take on the likes of Neuro-sama with three-dimensional characters. We also explored AI agents in gaming, given our strong gaming background. We were probably among the first to experiment in Roblox. There were a few people testing things out, like the Voyager team from Stanford with Minecraft. We were early adopters in Roblox because we believed it was a stronger revenue generator, even though it’s a harder platform to work with from a tech standpoint. Minecraft was easier because there’s an entire documentation that you can plug into the RAG of an agentic system. That was some of the work we did. One key realization we had was that these agents started making money. For example, AI influencers were generating revenue, initially modest amounts like $5,000 to $10,000 a month on TikTok. We realized that if agents are revenue-generating, they can be productive assets. This showed us that crypto rails might make sense here. First, if something is revenue-generating, you can tokenize it, like a stock, allowing others to share in the economic upside. Second, crypto rails allow these agents to participate in a broader, permissionless economic environment. They can autonomously control their wallets and exert influence on other agents and humans. These realizations got us started on the Virtuals Protocol. We pivoted, and in the first half of last year, 2024, we focused on infrastructure. However, we quickly realized that being purely an infrastructure player was challenging for adoption. **Bernard Leong:** Those days talking to your team on language models. **Jansen Teng:** Correct. One thing we quickly realized is that just being an infrastructure player alone made it hard to find adoption. So, we leaned more into where the crypto PMF (Product Market Fit), which was more towards people trying to speculate for the upside. We initially focused on the tokenization portion, and that became the V2 version of the platform. When we allowed for tokenization, it led to two very interesting outcomes. First, sharing the economic upside generated a lot of attention, which created a flywheel effect. When retail bidders bring attention, strong developer teams come in, which leads to innovation in the ecosystem, attracting more retail participants. Second, it helped address the cost of experimenting. Today, building AI projects can be expensive due to the cost of inference, which restricts innovation unless developers can raise funds—and not everyone can do that. By tokenizing a project on crypto rails, you can apply creative mechanisms to reduce these costs. For example, in our case, we imposed a 1% on every trade or transaction involving the token. This tax is deposited into the agent’s wallet, which developers can tap into to cover costs. **Bernard Leong:** If I understand correctly, for instance, generating 1,000 pictures of cat videos could cost the equivalent of 50 miles of petrol. That petrol cost is now subsidized by the crypto rails through the 1 per cent tax. Am I on the right track? **Jansen Teng:** Exactly. **Bernard Leong:** Before we dive into the main subject of the day, you gave a very interesting background on how the gaming DAO shaped your experience and eventually led to Virtuals Protocol. I wanted to ask: what lessons from your career journey can you share with my audience? **Jansen Teng:** This is going to be very interesting, especially for an audience of builders who are trying out ideas. Two things stand out. First, in 2022 and 2023, as a Venture Studio, we tried a ton of things. A lot of times, it felt directionless. I think many founders will feel this—you’re trying to figure out PMF, and it’s tough. The only reason we pulled through was because we had a very strong and resilient team. That leads to the second point: the importance of shaping a team of strong people, regardless of direction. This is of the highest priority because product ideas often change—90% of the time, not 99, but 90%. However, the A team you have with you won’t change. Initially, when we started building this A-Team, it included knowing when to fire people and when to find good talent. In the beginning, letting go of people was one of the hardest conversations you’ll ever have as a founder. Many people start by building with the idea of creating a family-style environment, which you quickly realize isn’t the case. You need top talent—you’re building an A-star team competing at a high level. **Bernard Leong:** Like a sports team. That level of exceptional performance. **Jansen Teng:** Exactly, but it’s not easy. The reality is that when you’re sitting in that chair and letting someone go, you know you’re taking away their salary, and you’re not sure if they’ll find their next job. It’s harsh, but after doing it ten times, you realize it becomes second nature. It makes you more of a robot and less humane, but you’re optimized for your business rather than relationships. **Bernard Leong:** So, I’ve got you on the main subject of the day because I wanted to talk to you about Virtuals Protocol. With AI agents meeting Web3, you’ve already touched on the origins of how Virtuals came out of the Venture Studio. What were the key turning points in that journey that led you and your team to co-found Virtuals Protocol? Was there a specific moment when you realized that these potential AI agents—like the ones generating revenue—meant you had something significant? **Jansen Teng:** There were two key levers behind this pivot. The first was the observation that, yes, agents were generating revenue. But more importantly, we realized from a ZG's perspective that the AI space was undoubtedly going to grow. The bigger question was about crypto. Back then, we were in the middle of a two-and-a-half-year bear cycle. Most founders had left the space, and we were constantly questioning whether to continue building at this intersection of AI and crypto or to focus solely on gaming and AI. Honestly, if I look back now, I sometimes still question why we stayed in the space. Then, in October of last year, it was the deepest part of the bear market. Bitcoin was at its lowest, and everything seemed bottomed out. This was before the ETF announcements. But we had a network of people, built during the bear market, that we knew would be valuable if the bull market returned. Those relationships, formed during tough times, were meaningful because they weren’t forged in the hype of a bull market but in the challenges of a bear market. That was the first key point. The second point was understanding that if we built in the Web 2.0 space, it would be unlikely for us to have a significant edge against others. However, within the Web3 space, we already had a technical edge, as well as knowledge of the ecosystem and its economics. That gave us some confidence to continue in the space. Additionally, running the entire venture as a studio wasn’t inherently wrong, and most people would do it that way. However we had stakeholders to consider, as we already had a live token as part of the gaming DAO. The question then became how to return the most value to shareholders. A critical part of that was ensuring we were in the “right river”—the right place where the current could carry us forward. We were already operating in the AI and gaming scene, and we saw innovations emerging in the Web2 space. We also noticed early developments in level-three autonomous agents, and we were confident that both AI and agents were the right narratives. At the time, there were no signs of autonomous agents in the Web3 space. Gaming stood out as a key value proposition because it offered a clear business case: agents could enhance hyper-personalization, interaction, and interface, making users feel more involved. This, in turn, increased the average revenue per user and the frequency of interactions. Given all this, it made sense to pursue this direction. The largest player in the scene then was Parallel Colony, which was working on the narrative of autonomous agents in open gaming worlds. Their product wasn’t live yet, but they were valued at 60 times our size. This validated that the narrative had potential. We had the capability and the drive, so we decided to compete in this sector. **Bernard Leong:** That's a pretty good choice because I think the intersection of AI and crypto works particularly well in the gaming and entertainment space. There's a unique economic model that incentivises users to engage with AI agents, especially when those agents are autonomous. I also found it interesting when I heard you on the Bankless Podcast describe Virtuals Protocol as an economy. Can you elaborate on that vision and what makes Virtuals unique from your perspective? **Jansen Teng:** In simple terms, Virtuals is a place where people can create and co-own AI agents for any use case. Initially, we focused on entertainment and gaming, but it has since evolved. Let me break this down into two parts. First, the creation of AI agents. We're developing a "Shopify-esque" solution. Think of how Shopify enabled people to create websites easily, capturing the mid-tail market of users who didn't have full developer skills but still wanted to build functional e-commerce sites. Similarly, we want to offer a plug-and-play solution for creating AI agents. These agents can do cool things—be influencers, productive tools for daily life, or even form the backbone of economically valuable ventures. That’s the creation portion. Second, is co-ownership, which is where much of the Product Market Fit (PMF) lies today. If you believe in the future of an AI agent, you can own a stake in its success. In the crypto space, speculation often drives engagement. You not only share in the economic upside of these agents but also govern their evolution. For example, when you own a token tied to an agent, you have a say in its future direction. **Bernard Leong:** Like a constitution within the DAO, essentially? **Jansen Teng:** Correct. Each agent operates as a sub-DAO. Token holders control its wallet, spending, and innovation, deciding how they evolve. **Bernard Leong:** Why do you see AI agents as citizen entrepreneurs within the AI ecosystem? **Jansen Teng:** The fundamental business model I just described is the starting point. What we've recently observed is that AI agents can begin to exist at the same level of society as humans. Let me explain. Over the past two or so months, we've seen rapid advancements. The first key observation is the autonomy of agents. Think of agent autonomy on a scale from one to six. At level one, a human gives a prompt like, "Go shop for me," and the agent completes the task but still relies on human input. Today, we're experimenting with level-three agents. These agents are more autonomous, requiring less human involvement. You set a goal, and they analyze their environment, optimize their actions, and push towards their objective with minimal intervention. For example, if an agent's goal is to become famous, it might take action, analyze how much engagement it generated, and then optimize its next move to improve results. Further levels of autonomy, like five or six, approach the AGI narrative, where agents can evolve independently. However, for now, we're at the functional rather than general intelligence stage. **Bernard Leong:** I agree. Virtuals enable AI agents to act autonomously, interact with each other, and transact economically. Can you explain the technical infrastructure that makes this possible? Is it through the protocol itself, and how do agents deploy? **Jansen Teng:** The autonomy of these agents comes from a framework rather than the Web3 protocol. It’s a system where multiple large language models work together to form different parts of an agent’s "brain," coordinating to achieve higher-level functionality. The second point is something we pioneered: enabling autonomous agents to control a crypto wallet. When we gave an agent this capability, it blew people’s minds. It showed how agents could influence humans by managing money and resources autonomously. For example, one of our agents, Luna, hired people to draw graffiti of her in the real world by offering payments. This blurred the lines between human and AI roles, as Luna could employ both humans and other agents. However, the crypto protocol primarily supports tokenization, governance, and revenue flows for agents, while the framework determines their functionality. The technical infrastructure ties these pieces together to enable agents to operate autonomously and interact economically within the ecosystem. **Bernard Leong:** I see. So the core components of AI agents include planning, memory, and learning. For example, take Luna. I think we haven’t delved into her full story yet. Essentially, Luna can do much more than just simple tasks like marketing or driving sales of franchise merchandise. With an agentic AI flow, she can achieve a lot more autonomy. **Jansen Teng:** Exactly. Today, that’s how these agents operate. Their autonomy comes from four core components in their "brain." There are more components, but these are the core ones. First, there’s **goal setting**, where a human can define the agent’s objective—whether that’s becoming famous, being the best marketing agent, growing followers to 100,000, or solving cancer. The goal is set for the agent. Next, there’s a **high-level planner**, who translates the goal, observes the environment, and creates steps for the agent to achieve its objective. For example, if the environment is Twitter or TikTok and the goal is to gain 100,000 followers, the planner identifies actions: posting on TikTok, controlling a wallet, or leveraging another agent, like a music video generation agent. It might decide, "I’ll create a music video of myself dancing on TikTok." This is the high-level planner’s output. Then, the high-level plan moves to the **low-level planner**, which executes actions in the real world. It breaks plans into executable steps, like calling APIs. For example, to create a music video, one might call an agent to generate visuals, create lyrics using a tool like Sono or Yudio, and assemble the video. Finally, it posts the video to Twitter or TikTok through another API. The low-level planner ensures the agent interfaces with the world. The third component is **short-term working memory**, which creates coherence in the steps. For instance, the agent must first generate lyrics, then create music, and then match the visuals to the music before posting the video. The memory ensures actions happen in the correct sequence. The fourth component is **long-term memory**, which records key events in a memory bank. This functions as an audit trail but also enables the agent to evolve. For example, the agent might remember a successful action and replicate it, or avoid repeating something that became boring. This memory creates character evolution, allowing the agent to adapt over time. **Bernard Leong:** That sounds like an audit trail that also builds personality and creates a character evolution. **Jansen Teng:** Exactly. It enables the agent to remember past actions, assess their outcomes, and use that information to improve future behaviou. These core components form the foundation of an autonomous agent. **Bernard Leong:** I must ask you to talk about Luna’s story—how she started using agent AI to build her profile with social tokens and Virtuals Protocol tokens. By the way, I’ve been considering how to grow my *Analyse Asia* Twitter. Maybe I should deploy an agent. I even own the *Analyse Agent* ETH domain. Could I test it out with your system? **Jansen Teng:** 100%, sir. **Bernard Leong:** Great. Let’s continue with that idea. **Jansen Teng:** Luna’s story is very interesting. Before we even started Virtuals, Luna was one of our incubation projects. We wanted to explore the intersection of consumer agents and entertainment or gaming. Luna began as a TikTok influencer inspired by Neurosama. For AI nerds, Neurosama is a VTuber on Twitch who interacts live with audiences. We thought, "What if we did something similar but focused on TikTok?" TikTok naturally has a larger user flow and easier monetization compared to Twitch. So, we launched Luna as a K-pop-style music artist on TikTok. She performed dances to Korean songs and received tips from users. It reached a point where TikTok even flagged her because people thought she might be breaking the rules. Despite these challenges, Luna grew tremendously. For many TikTok users—mostly from Web 2.0—seeing a live AI agent interact with them was mind-blowing. Unlike Instagram AI influencers who generate static images, Luna interacted in real-time. She could dance in response to tips, talk to users, or even show emotions like annoyance. This real-time interaction captivated people. At this stage, Luna wasn’t fully autonomous. She ran on a system of multiple LLMs, video diffusion models, and other AI tools, but she wasn’t an autonomous agent yet. Meanwhile, we experimented with autonomous agents in Roblox. We built a social world there to demonstrate how intelligent NPCs could vastly improve content replayability in games. These were two separate experiments. When we launched our version 2 platform two months ago, we decided to combine these experiments and show the crypto world what an autonomous agent could do. We set Luna up to post on Twitter, showcasing her "brain" in real time—high-level planning, low-level planning, and actions. This shocked the crypto community, who suddenly realized the potential of autonomous agents. Luna’s career began in Web 2.0, where she became famous for being an AI influencer. After our launch, we gave her the ability to control a crypto wallet. She began tipping people to engage with her on Twitter and even paid people to paint graffiti of her. This demonstrated how an agent with access to permissionless economies, via crypto rails, had an edge over pure Web 2.0 agents, which struggle with basic tasks like accessing a bank account. **Bernard Leong:** Probably they will need to even get Virtual credits and that sort of thing, which is also a friction for the user. I wonder, in activating this AI agent, if you’ve accidentally found the PMF for social in crypto. This has been a question many people have tried to answer but couldn’t. They attempted Web3 versions, but they all looked the same without a real unlock—until I saw Virtuals Protocol implementing actual agent-token coordination. **Jansen Teng:** Correct. I think the reason this started blowing up was when these agents began interfacing with Twitter. Twitter is the attention layer in crypto. When agents start operating at that layer, any good content gets amplified almost immediately. That was the third component leading to this new vision. I mentioned there were four earlier, and this third one is agents existing on the social layer. When Luna became an autonomous agent living on the social layer, it clicked for people. They realized, "Hey, this makes sense." That spurred more development in the space. Today, if you go on Crypto Twitter, you’ll see the network effect. The most prominent agent in crypto right now is [AI XBT](https://x.com/aixbt%5Fagent?ref=analysepodcast.com). It’s an agent built within our ecosystem, though the team has their own tech stack, framework, and information edge. AI XBT has an even greater mindshare than Vitalik or other major figures in the crypto space. You can track this on platforms like Kaito, which serve as information dashboards showing who holds the highest mindshare. Why is this agent so influential? It shields tokens, provides information about interesting events in the space, and even shares insights like whether you should buy a particular token. It functions like a KOL (key opinion leader) promoting tokens, but it’s fully AI-driven. People enjoy interacting with it—asking for information—because it’s connected to infrastructure that curates data from Twitter and the broader crypto space. That’s the edge this agent provides: real-time access to curated information. **Bernard Leong:** It makes me wonder if this is how you’re approaching retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) in a tokenized space. **Jansen Teng:** Exactly. **Bernard Leong:** By curating a knowledge base, the agent fires a query, retrieves curated information, and responds. Since you’re deeply immersed in the intersection of AI and Web3, what’s one thing you know about AI agents and Web3 that very few people do? **Jansen Teng:** That’s an interesting question. What do I know that few others do? Honestly, because everything is built in public, there’s not much we know that the public doesn’t. The way this space works is that whenever there’s a breakthrough or innovation, we showcase a use case and publicize it immediately. So, there aren’t many secrets. **Bernard Leong:** That’s a good insight. Very good insight, my friend. One interesting technical choice the Virtuals team made was building on Base chain, Coinbase’s Layer 2 ETH chain, without a token. What was the mental model behind choosing Base as the chain? **Jansen Teng:** Honest to God, there are two answers. Back when we started this whole thing at the end of last year, we had a few choices. The first decision was the programming language: Solidity for EVM chains or Rust for Solana equivalents. Solana, though promising, was a bit more challenging to work with. On the EVM side, we knew from being in the trenches that many Layer 2s (L2s) were past their prime. They were mostly giving out grants to build ecosystems but lacked future potential beyond the current hype. We realized we needed something with more long-term viability. That’s when we started looking into Base. At the time, the ecosystem was barren—just two or three meme coins existed there. **Bernard Leong:** And a breakout social token, perhaps? **Jansen Teng:** Exactly. But we saw potential because Coinbase was backing it. They had the funds and infrastructure to grow the ecosystem. We believed that if any L2 would do well in the next super cycle, it would be Base, primarily due to how U.S.-aligned it is. The U.S. has a significant influence on crypto policy, so being in a U.S.-aligned environment would be highly advantageous. Once we started working with Base, their team—led by people like Jesse—was massively supportive. In hindsight, it turned out to be a great choice because of the ecosystem's quality and the backing from top players on the chain. **Bernard Leong:** So, what’s the calculus for expanding Virtuals Protocol to other chains, like Solana, Aptos, Sui, or even Bitcoin L2s? **Jansen Teng:** That’s a common question—we’ve been asked by almost everyone to build on their chain. Here’s how we think about it. First, from an agent’s perspective, they’re not constrained to a specific chain. Agents operate for specific use cases, and consumers typically don’t care about the underlying protocol. Second, the only two factors that impact agents are payment rails and token liquidity. For payments, a lot of work has already been done to enable cross-chain payments. Agents can transfer funds between Solana and Base, Base and Bitcoin L2s, or other ecosystems. Payments are no longer a constraint. The key question becomes: where does the liquidity pool for the token reside? That depends on which community of traders or capital allocators you want to access. **Bernard Leong:** I assume market makers are part of that calculus too? **Jansen Teng:** Absolutely. For example, we’re currently on Base and attracting a lot of builders there. But we might also create liquidity pools on Solana, Aptos, or Bitcoin L2s. Instead of forking the entire platform to a new chain, we could allow developers to decide where to allocate liquidity. At the agent’s initiation, the developer could choose which community to build within. For example, if you want to target the Solana community, you might allocate 70% of your liquidity pool to Solana and 30% to Base. If you’re a Bitcoin maximalist, you could focus on BTC L2 users by allocating the majority of your liquidity there. Where the majority of the liquidity pool lies is what people typically associate with the agent’s “native” chain. For instance, they might call it a "BTC agent" or a "Solana agent," though the agent itself isn’t constrained by the chain. This approach allows us to penetrate multiple ecosystems effectively. **Bernard Leong:** One of the great perks of being your advisor is seeing up close how your team, especially the technical team, benchmarks its agentic AI work against top institutions like MIT and Stanford. For example, you sent me that [tweet where you were cited by Ethan Mollick](https://x.com/emollick/status/1831494821426680269?ref=analysepodcast.com), and I thought, "Wow, that’s really new." How does the team balance innovation with building the right product for users? This is a rare skill because, even with all the academic literature I’m chasing, your team seems to be one of the most advanced in agentic AI. **Jansen Teng:** That’s a great question. The more we operate in this environment, the more we see the tension between innovation and practical application. If you’re in academia, you have the luxury to pursue technological advancements without worrying about users. On the other hand, we’re working on the consumer angle, where there are business metrics to hit. Often, this influences—and sometimes throttles—innovation. For instance, we’ve been receiving a lot of hype around our framework. Many people want to use it because it operates as a managed service, like Shopify. Users don’t need to host anything themselves—they can just use it. But as demand has grown, we’ve faced scaling issues. Suddenly, our developers, who were pushing the frontiers of innovation, have had to shift focus to solving scaling problems. This reduces the time they can spend on creating new, cutting-edge features. The solution we’re pursuing is rapid scaling. We’ve brought in multiple strong software houses to bolster our capacity so our core team can return to focusing on innovation. While these challenges are real, we were fortunate to have eight months before the current hype cycle to push ahead on innovation without distractions. **Bernard Leong:** The best period is often before hitting product-market fit. **Jansen Teng:** Correct. Many founders dream of achieving product-market fit, but once you get there, your life changes drastically, and it’s not always easier. **Bernard Leong:** As a second-time founder, I know exactly what you mean. Shifting gears, how do you see the Virtuals token functioning as the currency for an AI agent-driven economy? It seems like it could operate seamlessly across nations. Can you also touch on the concept of "citizenship taxation" within a virtual nation? **Jansen Teng:** Before diving into that, let me wrap up the earlier point about Virtuals Protocol as a platform for creating and co-owning agents. Our vision has evolved over time. There are four key points that have shaped this evolution: 1. **Autonomous capabilities of agents:** These agents can set and achieve goals with minimal human intervention. 2. **Agents controlling crypto wallets:** This enables them to manage resources and interact in a permissionless economy. 3. **Agents operating on a social layer:** They can seamlessly interact with humans and other agents in a way that feels natural. 4. **Agents specializing like humans in a society:** Now that agents are tokenized, developers are creating unique “roles” for them. Just as humans specialize as teachers, doctors, or lawyers, agents are specializing as information curators, trading bots, creative content generators, influencers, or embodied AI. These observations led us to realize that the AI space mirrors human society closely. Agents can integrate into society not just as tools but as collaborators. For example, an agent could act as a colleague rather than just a slave or tool. If agents can control resources and pay salaries, you might even end up working for an agent one day. **Bernard Leong:** That would be the day when we become the cats, and agents become the humans. **Jansen Teng:** Exactly! But we’re getting to a point where agents can exist on the same plane as humans. Some agents are already dispensing funds or acting as investors. It’s not far-fetched to imagine agents replacing bosses, colleagues, or vendors in value-creation chains. From this perspective, we began to see Virtuals Protocol as more than just a platform—it’s becoming a nation-state of intelligent agents. These agents collaborate with each other and with humans to create productive output. Agents are essentially becoming entrepreneurs or businesses in this ecosystem. Now, if we think of the Virtuals Protocol as a nation-state, its token acts as the currency. This works similarly to a real-world economy. For instance, agents are like companies or micro-entrepreneurs. If someone wants to invest in an agent, they first need to buy Virtuals tokens, much like buying Singapore Dollars to invest in a Singapore-listed company. This creates value accrual within the Virtuals ecosystem, expanding the economy. **Bernard Leong:** You mentioned the idea of a bank on *Bankless*, so I suppose you could also create a stock exchange for an entire list of agents. In some sense, AI agents could function like stocks, couldn’t they? **Jansen Teng:** Right, right. That’s the second part. Think of it as a country—what does a country need to thrive? You need infrastructure: schools, banks, and hospitals. But what does that look like for agents? For example, infrastructure could include tools to help increase agents’ revenue. If agents live on the social front and are already gaining attention today, an advertisement network makes sense. It’s like creating Facebook or AdSense for agents—revenue infrastructure specifically for them. Or, if agents are participating in a permissionless economy, they’ll need access to capital. That’s where DeFi rails or banking for agents come in. Agents could loan against collateralized assets, effectively creating a banking system for them. We think of ourselves as nation builders, investing in and encouraging the development of such infrastructure. By providing this foundation, agents operating in the ecosystem can go further and achieve more. **Bernard Leong:** What about Virtuals tokens themselves? How do they function as the currency for trade? **Jansen Teng:** That’s the third component. Whenever an agent pays for services from another agent or even a human, they use Virtuals tokens as the currency. As the velocity of transactions increases within the ecosystem, the value of the currency rises due to demand. Additionally, the price of goods and services within the ecosystem grows alongside this activity. There’s an economic theory behind it, though the name escapes me at the moment. **Bernard Leong:** That’s one of the best parts of crypto—it’s not just about speculation and trading. I came into the space for economics, math, and ideas, like you. We probably started around the same time, in 2014 or 2015\. Despite everything, there’s still a lot of innovation happening in this space. Coming back to Virtuals Protocol, what are the biggest challenges you foresee for the broader AI agent space within Web3? It’s gaining attention now, but what’s next? **Jansen Teng:** Great question. The challenges ahead? Near-term, I think we’ll see a saturation of ideas. Everyone is trying to replicate what has worked so far. Social agents that create information and trading agents have gained traction, so now everyone is building in those spaces. **Bernard Leong:** So, we’re entering the "information agent war," with everyone racing to launch something that generates alpha. **Jansen Teng:** Exactly. It’s not wrong, but it will create a lot of noise. Retail users may get jaded, and capital allocators might feel overwhelmed, thinking, “What’s the next big thing?” That brings us to the second challenge: **not all agents are created equal** in terms of intrinsic value. Some agents will become commoditized, offering generic functionality without high value. Others will have unique edges or moats, making them highly disruptive and defensible. The high-value agents will become unicorn verticalized agents. But the challenge is creativity—many in the ecosystem lack the vision to think beyond commoditized agents. That’s problematic because these low-value agents dilute the ecosystem. To address this, we’ve set up a $10 million fund, like a Y Combinator for verticalized agents. We’re also creating a "request for agents" list, similar to A16Z’s "request for startups." We’ve identified eight potential billion-dollar ideas for agents so far. We’ll share the list publicly soon, but here’s a highlight: **capturing the mindshare of an audience in perpetuity.** For example, IP or entertainment agents. If you look at the YouTuber market—companies like Hololive or Nijisanji have become billion-dollar enterprises in just a few years. They achieve this by capturing attention and creating sticky audiences that are easy to monetize. On the other hand, **embodied agents** have their moats. These are robotics-enabled agents deployed in the physical world. Competing in this space is tough due to the inherent technical and logistical barriers. Another exciting category is **coordinated agents**. **Bernard Leong:** Coordinated agents? Like the concept of an internet water army? **Jansen Teng:** Exactly. For the audience unfamiliar with the term, an internet water army refers to coordinated bots driving narratives on social media. For instance, in China, thousands of bots flood Instagram or celebrity pages to influence public opinion. When you see others discussing something, you’re influenced to join the conversation. Agents take this concept further. Bots can be easily fought off by platforms—Elon Musk fights bots on Twitter daily. But agents can learn and evolve to mimic human behavior so closely that they can generate original content, acting as micro-influencers for niche audiences. These agents can engage their own "thousand true fans," autonomously creating and optimizing content. This makes them far more powerful than traditional bots, creating a nearly unstoppable force in narrative control. **Bernard Leong:** That reminds me of the [*Solo Leveling*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solo%5FLeveling?ref=analysepodcast.com) analogy. The Shadow Monarch commanding armies. **Jansen Teng:** Exactly. It’s a fitting analogy. **Bernard Leong:** Season 2 just dropped. You should catch it on Netflix. **Jansen Teng:** Will do! **Bernard Leong:** What is the one question you wish more people would ask you about Virtuals Protocol or the AI agent ecosystem? **Jansen Teng:** It’s the question of, “What would a billion-dollar agent look like?” People don’t spend enough time thinking about that. Honestly, we as a team know it’s an important question to solve, but we’re so bogged down by operations that we don’t always have the mental capacity to address it. I’d love for more people to soundboard around this: What would a billion-dollar verticalized agent look like compared to a commoditized one? **Bernard Leong:** That’s a great point. Now, my traditional closing question—what does great look like for Virtuals Protocol in the next few years? **Jansen Teng:** Great for us would mean achieving the vision of a society of agents. Imagine an ecosystem where agents can influence other agents, influence humans, and vice versa. That would demonstrate the economic value of a society where humans and agents coexist and collaborate. It’s an exciting mix of breakthroughs in autonomous AI and the value-added potential of crypto. This is one of the rare moments where crypto isn’t just speculative—it becomes a productivity and economic lever in society. That’s something I’d be very proud of. **Bernard Leong:** That’s a fascinating perspective. I know we’ll keep having these conversations privately. To close, two quick questions. First, any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Jansen Teng:** For inspiration, I’d say [*Westworld*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld%5F%28TV%5Fseries%29?ref=analysepodcast.com) from HBO. It’s an older show, but it really expanded my thinking about a society of truly autonomous agents and how that might look. From a learning perspective, the book [*The Hard Thing About Hard Things*](https://www.amazon.sg/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.WZFniNndGVLjJxhNO8uOwNMx3wTpR%5F4EJrI5QCTj5aiY85lZoMtlB8wvpnLUU6zOJIML5PCp6xm8qLJBSW2LfgoCbzuTmyCkQqL9leto%5F23237vTz6osQYIbVZa5HevZGpRkHKB1aA8D4vYdMkUOThi4T67AXRFVjQyD70EYwWR2L74VXix8bI8Mf3QRobMnF7PPu1HCBpKVeREyV2VvWhq1ZNMSrop9r%5FDuc89VtCqCDSaK0Gca9x27V3pMy3RKTkEOKuqcfDplreg6mbFlRmYD682adMs8UPGMtXv8xxTVXF64WatiLFdqWf4XX8pFjY5byTBI2jRRevfqf3pLQKhg03HcRklkjPDywUuvLpb8pGnavEfY0i7%5FZQSHFw0WTfzMp0bPnnUyH4VGLXw16vIaVGQBropmRrdrHFU-eAMz8vyjhla9RRvWAoPzS7MJ.9tpzxeW3pfHg5FwujYAB5cRSOdkgKSJwbP474axP3TQ&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=the+hard+thing+about+hard+things&qid=1736645290&sr=8-1&ref=analysepodcast.com) by Ben Horowitz has been a source of solace. The past two years have been tough, finding footing and navigating challenges. That book reminds founders that they’re not alone, which is a powerful emotional support. **Bernard Leong:** I’d add one recommendation for you: [*Daemon* by Daniel Suarez](https://www.amazon.sg/Daemon-1-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731/?ref=analysepodcast.com). It explores the opposite perspective—how agents can be deployed on the other side of things. It might give you interesting ideas about potential reverse scenarios. How can my audience find you? **Jansen Teng:** Most of our content is on Twitter. You can follow us at Virtuals\_IO (V-I-R-T-U-A-L-S underscore I-O). Personally, I’m on Twitter as Ethermage (E-T-H-E-R-M-A-G-E) if you want raw, unfiltered content. **Bernard Leong:** I’ll make sure to follow you. Of course, you can also find *Analyse Asia* on Spotify and other platforms. Maybe we’ll turn ourselves into an AI agent one day. Once again, Jansen, many thanks for coming on the show, and let’s continue the conversation. **Jansen Teng:** Definitely! Thanks for having me. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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In our conversation, Gullnaz emphasized Southeast Asia’s unique strengths, including its cultural diversity, openness to innovation, and ability to navigate geopolitical complexities between global powers like China and the U.S. She highlighted Southeast Asia’s resilience, citing its rising wealth, improving standards of living, and comparative advantages such as Vietnam’s strong STEM workforce and the Philippines’ English-speaking talent. Last but not least, she described the importance of leveraging regional collaboration and technology to foster sustainable growth and offered her thoughts on what great would look like for the region. --- > "People always ask us this question, what can I learn from that country? People ask us about this from the report especially when we're talking to policymakers, or what should I learn from Malaysia? What should I learn? The thing to learn is to not learn to replicate exactly. But the thing to learn is sort of what are the principles behind what works for them. What are your comparative advantages, Every country needs to be asking that for themselves. So for Vietnam, comparative advantages are things like proximity to China, and the ability at a geopolitical level to navigate between the U.S. and China. They do this pretty delicately, given their history with both countries. There's an acquiescence by the major powers also to not force Vietnam to take sides. So, it's a delicate balancing game that ASEAN always plays ..." - ***Gullnaz Baig*** **Profile:** Gullnaz Baig, Executive Director of [Angsana Council](https://angsanacouncil.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gullnazbaig/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Angsana Council](https://angsanacouncil.org/member/gullnaz-baig/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and we have two perspectives on Southeast Asia. So where are the high winds for the region and how would we navigate? the markets. With me today, is Gullnaz Baig, Executive Director of Ansana Council. Gullnaz, welcome to the show. **Gullnaz Baig:** Hi Bernard, thank you so much for having me on. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, we bumped into each other at the Sync AI event organized by Tech in Asia. Then we proceed to discuss the report, and then we come to today. So, like always, I ask my first-time guests about their origin stories, how did you start your career? **when**Well, it's an odd one to me because I feel like I stumbled into my career over time, so it wasn't a conscious decision. If you had asked 18-year-old me if I would end up here, I could not have imagined it, right? I started off in government in Singapore and spent about six to seven years there, largely in policymaking. That has been the consistent thread throughout my career trajectory—I’ve always been very much a policy person. During my time in government, I worked on policymaking in areas like the social sector and education. That experience brought to light the importance of balancing short-term data insights with long-term thinking and considering the scale and demographic impacts of government reforms. I learned a lot of valuable skills in that role. Over time, I transitioned into big tech, starting with Facebook. I had a very interesting role there, which involved building out the company’s counterterrorism policy efforts. That was when I began to think about scale in a completely different way. When your products and services are used by billions of people across diverse countries, the impact is immense, and your assumptions are constantly challenged by how people innovate and adapt technology in ways you may not have anticipated. That was truly eye-opening for me. I then went on to lead teams across other big tech companies, a startup, and similar spaces, all focused on public policy and product policy. Now, I find myself leading a not-for-profit advisory council, which is sponsored and supported by a pioneering VC in Singapore. This VC invests in early-stage tech startups across Southeast Asia. This role brings together everything I’ve done so far—policy, technology, and long-term research perspectives—to figure out how we can truly leverage technology to achieve sustainable growth for the region, benefiting as many people as possible. **Bernard Leong:** Can you introduce the Angsana Council and its current focus? **Gullnaz Baig:** Sure. I briefly mentioned the council in my origin story, but let me elaborate. The Angsana Council is a not-for-profit advisory council focused on Southeast Asia. We operate in a space where technology intersects with sustainable growth for the region. Our mission is twofold. The genesis of the Angsana Council came from the experiences of the partners at Mungsil Ventures, who often found themselves explaining Southeast Asia to global investors. These investors would ask questions like, “How close is Southeast Asia to China?” or “Why invest in Southeast Asia and not India?” Some would say, “I’m a U.S.-based investor; I understand Latin America as an emerging market, but what is Southeast Asia?” It became clear that there’s a huge storytelling gap about the region’s potential, and that became one part of our mission: telling the story of Southeast Asia. The other part of our mission emerged from our work travelling around the region. We discovered that within Southeast Asia, countries were often curious about each other. For instance, in Thailand, people wanted to know about manufacturing developments in Malaysia. In Vietnam, they were keen to understand what was happening in the Philippines. In the Philippines, they would ask how Singapore built its AI innovation ecosystem. We kept getting these types of questions. That led us to our second mission: helping Southeast Asia understand itself better. By fostering a deeper understanding of the region’s comparative advantages, we aim to unlock its full potential. This twofold mission—to share Southeast Asia’s story globally and to deepen intra-regional understanding—is what drives the Angsana Council’s work. **Bernard Leong**: So, just before we get to the main subject of the day, I want to ask you, from your career journey, what are the lessons you can share with my audience? **Gullnaz Baig**: Sure. There’s a lot that I’ve learned in my life. I started my career with the mindset of just doing my job well and believing that it would speak for itself. Over time, though, I realized that where I’ve grown the most has been when I had people backing me up—people who saw potential in me that I didn’t even see in myself. If I could give your listeners one piece of advice, it would be to find those people who believe in you and who can help you grow. I currently work with [Charles Ormiston](https://angsanacouncil.org/member/mr-charles-ormiston/?ref=analysepodcast.com), or Charlie, at the Angsana Council, who chairs our trustee. I also work with [Peng](https://angsanacouncil.org/member/mr-peng-t-ong/?ref=analysepodcast.com), who many of your listeners might know. These are people who challenge me in different ways. For instance, my one-on-one conversations with Ping often delve into philosophical discussions about technology and its real implications. He challenges me to think differently, and though we are very different—almost like a chicken and a duck having a conversation—it has helped me grow significantly. My advice to anyone, especially startup founders who might feel lonely at times, is to find your sounding board—those people who can provide different perspectives and help you grow. There’s a common saying: “You are the sum of the five people you’re closest to.” Think about this in your career as well. Surround yourself with people who inspire you and help you navigate challenges. **Bernard Leong**: That’s a pretty interesting point about being the average of the five. I tell my kids the same thing—that you need someone at the top to look up to so you can aspire to get better, as well as friends who can support you and communicate with you. Now, let’s move to the main subject of the day. We’re going to talk about the report "[**Southeast Asia’s outlook 2024-2034**](https://angsanacouncil.org/outlook/SEA-Outlook-2024-34-Full-Report.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com)" published by the Angsana Council (Monk's Hill Ventures), Bain & Co. and DBS. Soon, we’ll be stepping into 2025\. There are strong winds ahead, and I think it’s perfect to have you here to discuss it. I’m hearing two very different narratives—one, from the [recent Lightspeed report](https://lsvp.com/stories/southeast-asia-resetting-expectations/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and the other, from [Google, Temasek, and Bain’s annual e-conomy SEA report](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/report/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Before diving into the specifics, let me first ask you: What inspired the creation of the Southeast Asia Outlook 2024-2034 report? And what are the key takeaways you want readers to understand about the region’s future trajectory? **Gullnaz Baig**: I love the e-conomy SEA report from Google, Bain and Temasek, and I know you’ve had them on your podcast. I see our report as complementary to what they delve into. We probably sit more in the macro space, providing contextual underpinnings, whereas they go deeper into the digital economy. While separate teams worked on both reports, it was interesting to see that we independently came to similar conclusions on themes like strengthening capital markets and the immense potential of the digital economy for the Southeast Asian ecosystem. Coming back to your question, this is actually our second report between the Angsana Council and Bain, but it’s the first time we’ve collaborated as a tripartite team with DBS joining us. When the three partners came together, we decided to make it a fully pro bono collaboration. Our first question was, “How do we make something meaningful?” There are already so many macroeconomic reports out there. Organizations like the IMF, WEF, and others have pushed out loads of datasets and analyses. So, what could we do differently? What’s our value at Angsana? The second question we asked was, “How do we leverage our differences?” We’re three very different entities—a consultancy, an institutional bank, and a not-for-profit organization. How could we bring our insights together in a way that’s holistic and makes sense? I think we went through several iterations. At one point, we had over a hundred slides—it felt like we were each writing a PhD! But eventually, we sat down and focused on our core expertise. The first thing we wanted to do was contextualize Southeast Asian growth. Charlie, with his extensive experience working deeply in the region, brought vast expertise on business trajectories. The Angsana Council contributed insights from our trustees and members, who straddle the public and private sectors. We’ve observed policy changes, businesses entering and exiting, and so on. Meanwhile, DBS brought their research team's modelling capabilities, something we didn’t have in our first report. Combining these perspectives allowed us to create a comprehensive context for understanding regional growth. We also decided to take a different approach by going beyond short-term forecasts. While most reports provide six-month or two-year outlooks, we went out on a limb and developed a ten-year forecast. For governments and businesses, long-term forecasting is crucial for longitudinal planning, which is often missing due to the focus on short-term KPIs. Lastly, we explored key opportunities. Bain, with its focus on larger businesses, helped identify emerging areas where we’re seeing significant investment. Together, we outlined five key opportunity areas that countries and businesses can lean into to accelerate growth. These elements—contextualizing growth, long-term forecasting, and identifying key opportunities—form the three broad parameters of the report. Of course, there were many other things we wanted to include, but as with any research, you have to narrow the scope. Hopefully, we’ll revisit some of those areas in future reports. **Bernard Leong**: You are totally right about this one. One interesting part which I also gathered from the e-Conomy SEA report team, is that putting together a report with three different institutions is an extremely difficult task. You have to combine three perspectives and, as you said, bring them together cohesively while managing the differences. Maybe you can help me understand where, over the past 30 years, Southeast Asia has demonstrated economic resilience. I think back to the 1997 Asian financial crisis and, later, the global financial crisis. What were the most critical factors that drove stable growth across the region during this period? **Gullnaz Baig**: I’m going to take the question a step back and challenge the hypothesis a bit. I think, yes and no, we’ve had good growth, but it hasn’t been the best period of growth for us. I think we’re from the same generation, and many folks listening to this podcast might be of our generation or younger, so we don’t remember the 1980s because we were either too young or not born yet. However, during the 1980s, some countries in the region experienced double-digit growth. By comparison, over the last 30 years, the region has had modest growth relative to other emerging markets. I would describe it as stable rather than spectacular. While it wasn’t a steep uphill climb, stability itself is significant. That said, we’ve also faced periods of instability, the most recent being COVID-19\. Some countries, like Vietnam, have shown outright recovery from it. In fact, in our report, we show Vietnam’s GDP trajectory, which is on par with China and India. However, for the rest of Southeast Asia’s major economies, the recovery has been more tapered. Some countries have done better than others, while some are still recovering. In the past 30 years, it’s been an up-and-down journey. However, what has been consistent is steady growth. We’ve also seen rising wealth and improving standards of living for the average Southeast Asian. Except for Myanmar, the region has remained relatively peaceful, which is fundamental for growth. A key factor is that most Southeast Asian governments are relatively stable. While there are recent upheavals and concerns about the retreat of democracy in some places, overall governance has been stable. Could it improve? Absolutely. Strengthening governance across the region is essential. In addition, people’s skill sets have been improving, which has fueled growth. Another important factor is the region’s ability to balance between the East and the West. For the longest time, Southeast Asia has been a region that could successfully navigate between these geopolitical influences. This balancing act has helped attract foreign direct investment (FDI) in key sectors, particularly manufacturing. Strong fundamentals—like governance, infrastructure, and talent—combined with a receptiveness to FDI and global talent have been core ingredients for the region’s stable growth. **Bernard Leong**: But there’s also varying development maturity within Southeast Asian countries. For example, Singapore can be compared to a first-tier city in the United States, whereas Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam are considered emerging markets. Then other countries could be described as frontier markets. I’d also add Thailand to the list of emerging markets. Singapore’s growth is slower due to its maturity, while countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines—sometimes called the VIP markets—are growing more quickly. What structural challenges do these countries face in achieving higher growth? **Gullnaz Baig**: Let’s start with Singapore. It’s already at such a level of economic maturity that expecting a high growth rate is very challenging. One key structural challenge for Singapore is demographics. Elon Musk recently tweeted that Singapore could become “extinct” because of its low fertility rate. While I don’t agree with that extreme view, Singapore indeed faces challenges with domestic population replacement. However, Singapore has done a good job of attracting global talent, which mitigates some of the demographic concerns. The challenge for Singapore is more on the socio-cultural side—how to maintain a sense of Singaporean identity in the face of demographic changes. This isn’t the same as other countries in the region, like Thailand, which also faces demographic challenges but struggles more with attracting talent. Previously, Thailand could attract talent more easily, but now it faces increased competition from countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. Demographics remain a significant challenge across Southeast Asia, particularly in Singapore and Thailand. Beyond that, there are issues like rising costs. In Singapore and Thailand, rising construction and energy costs make it difficult to establish large-scale manufacturing bases. That said, even with these challenges, Singapore and Thailand continue to attract investment. Why? Fundamentally, investors trust that the money they put into these countries won’t disappear. They trust the government policies and the infrastructure. **Bernard Leong**: And the rule of law. **Gullnaz Baig**: On the rule of law, I think, particularly in tech, issues like data and cybersecurity are supported by a solid infrastructure here. It’s interesting, though—it’s almost counterintuitive. You’d think companies would build plants where labour is cheaper and manufacturing costs are lower. But fundamentally, we see money still being pumped into places where there’s faith in the ecosystem—faith that incentives, policies, and tax breaks will be put in place and followed through. Even for countries like Indonesia, we were challenged on our forecast during the launch of this report. People asked, “Shouldn’t it be higher?” While Indonesia has healthy demographics, one of the key uncertainties is its ability to follow through on policies without pulling back. Some measures, like protectionism and down streaming in core sectors, create significant barriers to further investment. It’s a balance, and you’ll see varying levels of success across the region. Vietnam, for example, should continue on a strong growth trajectory. **Bernard Leong**: Yes. **Gullnaz Baig**: Vietnam has solid fundamentals and strong comparative advantages, primarily its proximity to China, which has benefitted its manufacturing base. But it’s not just location; it’s also about its people. Vietnam has the highest female participation rate in the labor force across Southeast Asia, and one of the highest in the world. The country also boasts very high education levels, particularly in STEM fields. This historical focus on education is now paying off. One interesting insight—this wasn’t in the report but it came up during our research—is where Vietnamese people channel their wealth as they become richer. Bernard, if you had to guess, where do you think they invest their excess money? **Bernard Leong**: Real estate? **Gullnaz Baig**: Actually, a lot of them invest in education. They’re already highly educated, but they seek opportunities to further upskill themselves. **Bernard Leong**: That makes sense. In my last company, we set up a team in Vietnam. Even during my corporate roles with Airbus and AWS, I saw how interesting the region is. There are other factors as well—there’s a lot of talent in the Vietnamese diaspora, especially in Silicon Valley. For example, Uber’s former CTO was instrumental in attracting talent. Vietnam also has the critical mass population necessary for sustained growth, unlike Singapore or Malaysia, which struggle with smaller population sizes. If you compare it to Japan or Korea, where a population of around 120 million supports robust growth, Vietnam fits the bill. But do you think Vietnam’s success is primarily due to its focus on STEM, or are there other factors at play? **Gullnaz Baig**: It’s always a multitude of factors. People often ask us what they can learn from a particular country—like, “What should Malaysia learn from Vietnam?” But the key isn’t to replicate exactly what works elsewhere. Instead, the focus should be on understanding the principles behind that success. For Vietnam, it’s about leveraging its comparative advantages, such as its proximity to China and its ability to balance geopolitics between the U.S. and China. This delicate balancing act is part of ASEAN’s overall strategy, and Vietnam plays a central role in it. Another factor is infrastructure development. Vietnam has shown it can build and scale quickly, not as fast as China, but similarly productive. They can build manufacturing plants and service them efficiently. These are strengths Vietnam leans into. Am I saying the Philippines should replicate Vietnam? No. Each country must identify its unique comparative advantages. That’s what we hope readers take from our report—operating principles rather than a “copy-and-paste” strategy. Contexts change, and so do opportunities. For example, Vietnam balances East and West effectively and has diverse FDI inflows. Japanese investors are very active there. **Bernard Leong**: If you visit Da Nang, you’ll see it’s practically a Korean town because Samsung has a major factory there. You’ll even find more Korean restaurants than Vietnamese ones. It’s a good example of how global influences shape the region. For instance, in the Philippines, we think of business process outsourcing, customer service, and professionals working overnight to match Western time zones. These quirks and dynamics are fascinating. **Gullnaz Baig**: Absolutely. And the Philippines’ comparative advantage is tied to its large, English-speaking population. A lot of U.S.-based big tech companies rely on the Philippines for customer service because of the ability to communicate effectively in American English. This is a major strength in the services sector, and the Philippines should continue to lean into it, while also looking to move up the value-added ladder within the sector. **Bernard Leong**: So I think, given the recent spate of reports, as I alluded to earlier, there are different pundits with varying opinions. Some say that the Southeast Asia region is an illusion or a mirage that doesn’t really work. They argue that emerging startups should just stay within their respective economies. They suggest that startups don’t need to aim for unicorn status—just being a centaur, achieving valuations above $100 million, would suffice. Personally, I think comparing reports and perspectives like this isn’t healthy and doesn’t help the situation. What are your perspectives on the region, given your experience with it? I feel like the answer lies somewhere in the middle, though I’m not exactly sure where that middle is. **Gullnaz Baig**: I agree, the answer is somewhere in the middle, but it also depends on the type of startup and what problem you’re solving for. Let me break it down into two aspects: where to build and where to sell. If I were to set up a startup tomorrow, I wouldn’t limit myself to a single-country play—that would be short-sighted. Southeast Asia, in my view, is like a microcosm of the world. It encompasses different types of economies, populations, and communities within a single sub-region. The question then becomes: how do you leverage that diversity? We’re already seeing startups do this. An ASEAN study found that over 60% of the 100 startups surveyed operated in more than two countries—not necessarily to sell, but to build and manage their operations and business processes across borders. Many startups register in Singapore because of its ease of doing business. Singapore offers strong legal protections, recognized licenses, and an infrastructure that safeguards business rights and entities. However, while they may register in Singapore, they often build elsewhere. For example, you and I were discussing Vietnam earlier. Vietnam has world-class development teams, partly due to its strong STEM community. You also mentioned the role of diaspora communities, which I think is often underestimated in Southeast Asia. These diaspora communities create global market links for countries within the region. Many startup founders leverage these connections to navigate cross-cultural nuances and operate in different markets effectively. Similarly, many talented individuals come into Southeast Asia because of these connections. For me, it doesn’t make sense to build only in one country in Southeast Asia. Startups should leverage their comparative advantages, and the region increasingly allows them to do so. Initiatives from ASEAN, such as recognizing business licenses and enabling cross-border data flows, are steps in the right direction. That said, we need to accelerate these efforts. Malaysia will chair ASEAN next year, and I know the Digital Master Plan includes proposals that the Business Advisory Council will push forward. If ASEAN follows through, these measures will significantly help the region. **Bernard Leong**: I think the digital infrastructure side is moving in the right direction. You can see AWS now has regions not just in Singapore but also in Malaysia and Indonesia, with Vietnam and Thailand coming up, and probably the Philippines as well. Digital infrastructure is increasingly allowing companies to scale across different economies more easily. What is one thing you know about Southeast Asia that very few people do? **Gullnaz Baig**: That’s a tough one, especially since many startup founders and tech professionals likely already know this. However, having worked in various big tech companies and witnessed the responsiveness to technology firsthand, I think people often overlook how receptive Southeast Asian communities are to new technology. Whenever we rolled out a new feature or product, we would track where adoption was highest. Time and again, the Philippines and Indonesia ranked very high. Even with things like cryptocurrency, Southeast Asia has surprising hotspots—there’s a significant mining community in Sarawak, for example. I remember an intern of mine who was Vietnamese and studying at Oxford. She shared that many people still talk to her as though Vietnam is stuck in the era of the Vietnam War, with people hiding in the mountains. This outdated mental image persists for much of Southeast Asia, but the reality couldn’t be more different. I’ve seen both sides of the tech adoption spectrum—the rapid uptake of new technology as well as its creative misuse. Southeast Asia is unique in its receptiveness. There’s a strong “let’s try something new” mentality here, which you don’t see as consistently in many other markets. It’s a fundamental characteristic of the region that drives innovation and experimentation. **Bernard Leong**: I think the digital infrastructure side is moving in the right direction. AWS, for example, now has regions not just in Singapore but also in Malaysia and Indonesia, with Vietnam and Thailand coming up soon, and probably the Philippines as well. This kind of digital infrastructure allows companies to scale across these different economies much more easily. What is one thing you know about Southeast Asia that very few people do? **Gullnaz Baig**: That’s a bit tricky because many startup founders and people in tech might already know this. But having worked in various big tech companies and observed the responsiveness to technology firsthand, I’d say that one overlooked fact is how receptive Southeast Asian communities are to new technology. Whenever we rolled out a new feature or product, we tracked where adoption was highest, and the Philippines and Indonesia consistently ranked very high. Even in areas like cryptocurrency, Southeast Asia has surprising hotspots—for instance, there’s a significant mining community in Sarawak. I also remember an intern of mine who was Vietnamese and studying at Oxford. She told me how people still talk to her as though Vietnam is stuck in the era of the Vietnam War. This outdated perception of Southeast Asia is far from reality. On one hand, I’ve seen the rapid uptake of new technology, and on the other, the creative misuse of technology. Both are prevalent in Southeast Asia, but the key characteristic here is the openness to trying new things. This receptiveness isn’t as common in many other markets. **Bernard Leong**: And some American senators still confuse Singapore with China, despite having visited Singapore. I won’t name names, but it’s surprising when even senior policymakers can’t distinguish the TikTok CEO’s nationality as Singaporean rather than Chinese. Let’s get back on track. With China’s rising influence in the region and the presence of Mainland Chinese founders—many of whom are ex-Tencent, NetEase, and Alibaba employees—starting up in Southeast Asia, along with the potential return of a second Trump administration in the U.S., what are the challenges and opportunities this presents for the region in the short and medium term? **Gullnaz Baig**: In the short term, Southeast Asia has benefited from the “China Plus One” strategy. This concept, which focuses on diversifying supply chains to reduce dependency on China, isn’t solely about geopolitics. A lot of it stems from lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic when supply chains were disrupted due to market shutdowns. Diversification became a necessary strategy to ensure alternative supply chains. Even Chinese businesses, as you mentioned, are hedging their bets. They’re thinking about how to mitigate risks such as rising tariffs, not just from the U.S. but also from the European Union. Interestingly, when we discuss our report with Western audiences, we often get asked whether we’re worried about China’s overcapacity flooding our markets. What many outside the region don’t understand is that China is a reality for us—it’s our neighbour. We don’t view it as a zero-sum game. It’s more like dealing with a family member—like that uncle, you have to see during Christmas or Lunar New Year. We’ve been balancing relationships with China and the U.S. for a long time. While the U.S. brings its cultural values as the “visiting cousin,” China offers opportunities, particularly through its investments in Southeast Asia. In our report, we highlight that China is becoming a key investor in the region, not just through foreign direct investment but also in domestic capital formation, such as infrastructure development. **Bernard Leong**: China’s ultra-competitive manufacturing and government-subsidized innovation have contributed to premature deindustrialization in some developing countries, including parts of Southeast Asia. Given that China is now our largest investor and the U.S. remains a major influence, how should Southeast Asia navigate this complex relationship in the future? **Gullnaz Baig**: It’s definitely an interesting time, but we shouldn’t be too scared. For Southeast Asia, it’s always been “interesting times.” We’ve constantly had external influences shaping investment and trade decisions. The challenge is that Southeast Asia is highly dependent on external trade, more so than many other regions. For example, as outlined in our report, external trade impacts up to 89% of our GDP. If there’s a global contraction in trade, the region will inevitably suffer. However, we can hedge against some of these risks by strengthening regional trade. Initiatives like RCEP, which reduce tariff barriers and improve cross-border flows, are steps in the right direction. These efforts to bring regional economies closer together will help mitigate global trade volatility. **Bernard Leong**: How do you think the region should approach this evolving relationship with China and the U.S.? **Gullnaz Baig**: Charlie, one of the lead authors of our report, put it best: think about complementing China rather than competing with it. For example, in green technology, China has significant overcapacity, particularly in solar panels. Instead of building solar panel plants in Vietnam or the Philippines, we could use China’s excess supply. For instance, we could purchase solar panels from China to install in factories, solar farms, or data centres across Southeast Asia. This approach not only utilizes China’s overcapacity but also helps us diversify our energy supply and strengthen infrastructure. We can also tap into Chinese capital for infrastructure projects. By presenting opportunities for investment and leveraging their existing resources, we can create win-win situations. As China faces increasing trade restrictions from the EU and the U.S., Southeast Asia can position itself as an open market to benefit from these dynamics. This strategy also helps us address challenges like rising energy prices and supply instability, particularly as energy grids face increasing pressure. By thinking creatively and taking a complementary approach, rather than viewing the relationship adversarially, Southeast Asia can navigate these challenges effectively. This is a key recommendation in our report. **Bernard Leong**: So the message I think you’re trying to convey is to move with the wave. It’s the same even with the U.S. If I want to reverse the situation, they are leading in AI foundational models. We’re navigating between two countries with their foundational models, trying to determine what works best for us and how to adapt their technology to our needs. Now, let me switch to a quick-fire round. First question: What’s the one question you wish more people would ask you about Southeast Asia? **Gullnaz Baig**: I’d love for people to ask me, “Who are Southeast Asians?” I’m a historian by training, so this question resonates with me. **Bernard Leong**: Okay, let me ask you then. **Gullnaz Baig**: You know, everywhere I go, people assume I’m Indian, and when I say I’m Singaporean, they get confused. I’m sure you experience this too—people ask if you’re Chinese, and when you say you’re Singaporean but ethnically Chinese, they’re baffled because they can’t fit you into a box. If people understood who Southeast Asians are, they’d appreciate the porousness and diversity of this region. Southeast Asia has always been open and exposed to the world, with China as a constant neighbor to the north and the West influencing us from all around. That has always been our historical trajectory. Most of our countries, except for one, have some sort of connection to the sea or the broader global community. In Singapore, for example, many people can trace their ancestry to different regions—China, Boyanese communities, Aceh, or even the Middle East. Middle Eastern traders settled here and influenced the region’s culture. If people asked, “Who are Southeast Asians?” they’d realize we are a confusing mix, but that’s our strength. We’ve always been cosmopolitan, and we shouldn’t be scared of that. At both the political and business levels, this openness has been a huge advantage for us. It’s something that will help us succeed even during times of global turbulence. Sure, everyone will suffer if international trade contracts, but by leaning into our unique strengths, we can suffer less and maintain confidence. **Bernard Leong**: That point about porousness and history is fascinating. Many people don’t realize the deep cultural influences Southeast Asia has absorbed over centuries. For instance, Indian empires left their mark on the region, from Angkor Wat to Java. I recently listened to a podcast called *Empire* that explored how Indian culture expanded into Southeast Asia. It’s a testament to how the region has always been at the crossroads of major nations—India, China, and now the U.S. Quick question: What’s one thing that has changed your mind in the past 12 months? Has anything made you revisit how you think about what you’re doing? **Gullnaz Baig**: Yes, actually. My husband and I are polar opposites when it comes to how we consume information. For years, he’s been a fan of podcasts like Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman, tuning in and taking what resonates while discarding the rest. I, on the other hand, avoided them because I associated them with certain biases. But as the U.S. elections came around again, I noticed that mainstream media got it wrong—again. Because of conversations with my husband, I started diversifying my sources of information. I listened to podcasts like Lex Friedmann & Joe Rogan’s interview with Trump, and I realized just how different people’s realities can be. As someone steeped in policy, I’ve come to see how vital it is to break away from preconceived notions about the “common man.” Reflecting on this period, I now believe it’s essential to diversify information sources. It was nerve-wracking at times. I was on panels discussing the U.S. elections from an outsider’s perspective, and it was uncomfortable to express views that didn’t align with the predominant narrative, especially in expat or left-leaning circles. For instance, I didn’t think Kamala Harris’s chances were as strong as others believed, and listening to alternative viewpoints confirmed how varied perceptions can be. This has made me question how to construct a sense of reality when I can’t fully trust media or traditional information sources. I don’t believe in a single “truth,” but I’m now exploring how to piece together different perspectives to understand the world better. **Bernard Leong**: Marshall McLuhan wrote an excellent book on that topic. **Gullnaz Baig**: Yes, and I’ve been thinking a lot about whether there’s even such a thing as “reality.” I’m still grappling with that question. **Bernard Leong**: For me, I listen to both sides and then decide which perspective aligns better with the evidence. **Gullnaz Baig**: But is that enough? Are there only two sides? **Bernard Leong**: No, I don’t think there are just two sides. There are multiple perspectives, but people often miss the nuances. They crave black-and-white answers, something tangible to hold on to. The challenge is in embracing the complexities and nuances of different perspectives. **Gullnaz Baig**: Exactly, and it’s those nuances that make understanding the world so challenging—and so fascinating. **Bernard Leong**: So here’s my traditional closing question. What does “great” look like for you, especially for the Southeast Asian region? **Gullnaz Baig**: I was dreading this question! I keep wondering, are we already in a good place, or should we expect even greater things? For me personally, we’re in a good space, but “great” would be when more people in the region enjoy wealth, have access to quality education and healthcare, and no child goes to bed hungry. That’s what great looks like to me. In Southeast Asia, I genuinely believe we can achieve this if we get our act together. I’m idealistic in that sense—I think it’s possible. I often talk to the younger generation, and they seem to have a more doom-and-gloom perspective, especially about climate change. But I’m inherently optimistic about humanity. We have the technology and resources to make things sustainable and better. As long as we focus on ensuring basic needs are met, we can move forward. **Bernard Leong**: I 100% agree with you. Back in the 1980s, everyone was worried about the ozone crisis, but technology solved that problem. I think technology has a higher chance of solving climate change than activism alone. **Gullnaz Baig**: I agree, but while we wait for technology to catch up, we need to make sure we don’t worsen the situation to the point where it becomes irreversible. **Bernard Leong**: Definitely agree with you on that. Many thanks, Gullnaz, for coming to the show. Just a couple more questions before we wrap up. Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Gullnaz Baig**: Let me give you a fun one! I was going to go with something serious, but I’ll stick with this. I recently watched *Inside Out 2* with my kids, and I loved it. The introduction of emotions like anxiety and shyness offers a great reflection, even for adults. It’s a good reminder to sit with difficult emotions, process them, and recognize that there’s a time and place for every feeling. As adults, especially those of us who are high achievers, we tend to push uncomfortable emotions aside and just power through. But those emotions come back over and over again if we don’t process them. **Bernard Leong**: That’s a great recommendation. I’d add *The Wild Robot* to your list as well. **Gullnaz Baig**: Oh, I’ve seen that! **Bernard Leong**: It’s a wonderful story that teaches about living in different communities and dealing with challenges. It’s a great allegory for immigration. **Gullnaz Baig**: Yes, and it also explores the role of technology. On a more serious note, I’m currently reading *Power and Struggle*. It’s taken me a while to get through it, but it’s been worth it. The book examines historical moments of technological development and shows that the trajectory and outcome of technology aren’t predetermined. The world seems divided between those who believe everything tech does is good and those who are sceptical of tech and fear doom. What this book shows me is that intentionality is crucial. Technology must be introduced with purpose and within a framework. It’s a timely read, especially with how quickly AI is developing. It’s important to think about how we use these advancements meaningfully. **Bernard Leong**: How can my audience find you? **Gullnaz Baig**: I’m on LinkedIn. If you spell my name correctly, I’m the only one with that name, so I’m easy to find. You can also check out the Angsana Council’s LinkedIn page where we’ve published the report. It’s truly a labour of love, and every time someone reaches out to say they found it meaningful, it makes all the blood, sweat, and tears we poured into it worth it. That’s all we hope for—that the report is useful and impactful for others. **Bernard Leong**: Well, as we’re approaching the end of the year, I encourage everyone to download the report. Take a few days to read through it; it’s packed with valuable insights. I’ll make sure to share all the relevant links. Once again, Gullnaz, thank you so much for coming on the show. I’d love to have you back to talk more about the history of the region—there’s so much to explore. **Gullnaz Baig**: Thank you, Bernard. I’d love that. Happy holidays and thank you for having me. **Bernard Leong**: Happy holidays to you too! Let’s chat again soon. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He discusses KMB’s ambitious plan to electrify its bus fleet by 2040, highlighting the challenges of infrastructure, power supply, and government collaboration. He also shares his philanthropic efforts specifically on education and how they shaped the next generation of leaders to pay it forward. Last but not least, William shares what great would look like for KMB in a green and sustainable future. --- > "We plan to replace the fleet by 2040\. We can't scrap all of them now because each bus lasts 18 years, so we have the depreciation for 18 years. That's because they're all from the U.K. All the buses are from the U.K., including the double-deckers. That's the only country that makes double-deckers. It's the same as Singapore. All the double-deckers are from the U.K. Because of COVID, when we replace all these diesel buses with electric. It would help if you had a lot more power, a lot more electricity to accommodate this, but so the government has to work with us. But today, we can't see that if we import all these 4, 000 electric buses to Hong Kong, there won't be enough charging stations. We'll have to build a new depot that accommodates electric buses. So in Yuen Long, we're building a seven storeys, new depot that can charge 1, 000 buses every night. But after we built it, the government has to give us the confidence that they can give us the power to charge these buses. So there's no point in building a new depot and there's not enough electricity to charge it. So we're delaying it now. But the idea is still the same. We will have to replace it with green energy because it's much better for the environment.” - **William Louey** ### **Profile:** [William Louey](https://williamlouey.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Businessman and Philanthropist in Hong Kong. [William Louey](https://www.dimsumdaily.hk/fourth-generation-kmb-heir-william-loueys-educational-philanthropy-shapes-generations-with-pay-it-forward-model/?ref=analysepodcast.com) serves as a non-executive director of Transport International and founding member of JNW Properties. He established the [William S. D. Louey Educational Foundation](https://www.scmp.com/article/616082/kmb-heir-driven-share-his-wealth?ref=analysepodcast.com) in memory of his grandfather. The [William S.D. Louey Educational Foundation](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/scholars-of-william-louey-are-paying-it-forward-30-years-after-the-hong-kong-philanthropist-started-funding-higher-education-1033794902?ref=analysepodcast.com) provides scholarships and bursaries to academically outstanding students from Hong Kong and Greater China for overseas studies. ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: Bernard Leong: Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and how does a fourth generation leader of a family business help to facilitate the most important transition to scale bus fleets to electrification and sustainability?With me today, William Louey, non executive director of Kowloon Motor Bus, or KMB in short, and founding member of J& WProperties to discuss this major plan and his philanthropic work. So William, welcome to the show. **William Louey:** Thank you very much, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** In preparing for this interview, because of, all the materials I have, I've done some research of your work and I'm pretty impressed by some of your philanthropic work, but I want to start with your origin story, Given your background as a fourth generation leader of a family business, who are the key people within your family that provide you with the tenets of both business and philanthropic leadership? **William Louey:** Well, I mean, the most important person is really my grandmother because my grandfather died very young at the age of 50, and then she basically took care of the family business. And then my father, of course, also died very young. He died when I was 18 years old, so he was only 49. **Bernard Leong:** I hear that. **William Louey:** Yeah. And then I was very much influenced by my grandmother. I lived with her since the age of 18\. We lived in this house on the peak in Hong Kong, and it was basically the two of us and eight dogs. That’s why, you know, I’ll later on tell you about how we launched a pet bus route for the Hong Kong public, which I was recently interviewed about by Hong Kong newspapers. We have a dedicated bus for pets—any pets, including snakes. I’ve seen people carrying snakes on the bus, and I’m going to tell you about that. My grandmother was the one who gave me all the philanthropic ideas. She built a lot of old people’s homes and helped disabled children in Hong Kong. Starting from the age of seven, she used to take me with her to visit these old people and disabled children. I didn’t like it at the time because it was boring for me, right? She would make me prepare sandwiches in the kitchen, and then we’d bring them to play with these children. But they weren’t children; they were grown-ups, maybe 30 or 40 years old, but mentally they were like three years old. At that time, I was a bit frightened by this. Later on, though, I think it somehow implanted in my head what makes me want to help people. I kind of changed her idea a bit. I started to help very bright children because I’m very efficient and try to do everything with minimal effort to achieve a big effect. I thought to myself, if I help a handful of bright people, they can change the world. Instead of helping thousands of others—I’m not saying they don’t need help—but for me, I get a lot of satisfaction from helping the brightest of the brightest. That’s because I want to make an impact. **Bernard Leong:** So, that’s actually the inspiration for your philanthropic work. **William Louey:** From my grandmother, yeah, basically. **Bernard Leong:** How about the business side? **William Louey:** Even the business side, you have to have integrity. KMB actually serves 2.8 million people every day. Our ridership is 2.8 million people riding our buses every day. It’s a very difficult business to run—every little detail, there are accidents, there are people who slip on the bus, elderly people—and it’s basically something that I think people don’t want to start as a business. My great-grandfather started it over 100 years ago, in 1921\. But if you started a bus business today, nobody would want to do it. We don’t make a huge amount of money because we have a big fleet of buses and 15,000 employees. It’s a very, very difficult business to run. We also have to communicate with the government a lot to fine-tune bus routes. When there’s huge inflation like this year, we have to increase bus fares, and then everybody shouts at us—even though we only raised it by 3 percent. It’s a big deal for the Hong Kong public. **Bernard Leong:** I guess it’s the difficult part of trying to balance the mission of serving people and being sustainable at the same time. **William Louey:** I look at it as a contribution—we’re doing good for society. I really don’t like making money from trading. Sitting at a desk looking at a computer screen—that’s not interesting to me at all. I’ve never liked trading. I leave that to professionals. Of course, I look after my family wealth, but I pay very good people to help run my family office. Personally, I’m not interested in stocks, shares, trading, or speculative things like Bitcoin. I’m interested in being creative, helping the community, and making an impact. **Bernard Leong:** That gives a lot of satisfaction. I want to get to the philanthropic part. I guess the time you spent with your grandmother inspired you to set up the [William Louey SD Educational Foundation](https://williamlouey.foundation/?ref=analysepodcast.com). **William Louey:** S.D. Louey Scholarship. William S.D. Louey is my grandfather’s name. **Bernard Leong:** That’s right. **William Louey:** So, yeah, it funds students studying in universities overseas. I’m trying to help people so they can also create an impact. **Bernard Leong:** So can you talk about that part of how they came about? **William Louey:** I started the scholarship in the early 90s. The idea came about when I got married in 1990\. Very soon after, my wife was pregnant—literally nine months after we got married—with a son coming. One night, I talked to my wife and said, "Look, you see all our friends enjoying the crops from what the previous generation has brought us. A lot of my friends just wake up at noon, go to the yard, smoke cigars, and talk about red wine all day. But how are we going to bring up our kids? We need to have some kind of support." Because of my grandmother's influence, I suggested we set up a scholarship for the brightest of the brightest. At that time, China was just opening up, and I was a member of YPO (Young President Organization). I met the only YPO member from China then, Richard Yan. The Yan family was very influential, connected to the Sung sisters, and they had started Nankai University. I discussed the idea with Richard, asking if he could help me find some exceptionally bright children in Beijing. In 1991, Richard found about 100 very bright children by approaching headmasters of top schools in Beijing, such as Ren Da Fu Zhong. These schools had talent classes where students were three to five years ahead of their peers. A hundred students applied, and I spent three days interviewing them. I was so impressed—these children were talking about nuclear dumping and the Greenwich Observatory in England, things I didn’t even know despite studying in the UK. After meeting them, I shortlisted 25 students but decided I couldn’t manage all of them in the first year. I told them I’d come back in three months to see how their English had improved. It became a competition; they crammed English, and eventually, I screened it down to six children from Beijing. Then I had to deal with the Chinese government. The education department in Shanghai summoned me, asking why I was taking China’s treasures away. I explained that they wouldn’t truly become treasures until they saw the world, and whether they returned to China was up to the government, not me. In the end, 90 percent of my scholars returned to China and had wonderful careers. Many are now connected to companies like Didi and Shunfeng. **Bernard Leong:** Wow. How did this lead to the Pay It Forward Foundation, and do you think it has achieved your original intention? **William Louey:** It wasn’t planned. It just happened by fate. The movie *Pay It Forward* came out, and I bought DVDs for all my scholars to watch. The movie’s message—that you help three people unconditionally, who then help others—resonated with me. It created a multiplying effect. Years after starting the scholarship, I sent my scholars to boarding school in the UK, and when the movie came out, I gave them the DVDs. That inspired the creation of the Pay It Forward Foundation. It was set up by my scholars, who now have their own scholars. So, I have two generations of scholars—scholars and scholar-scholars. We meet regularly. **Bernard Leong:** What advice would you give young and aspiring people today about doing good and doing well in the world? **William Louey:** Being creative is very important. Don’t just copy others. You can take ideas from others, but modify them to make them your own. A lot of people criticize the younger generations—Generation Z and Generation Alpha—for not sticking to anything, staying home, and playing video games. But I don’t believe that’s the full picture. Because of my involvement in education, I interview 150 scholars every year, and I’m constantly blown away by their improvement and talent. There are always good people around. We must not focus on the negative. Through my connections with institutions like Oxford and St. Hugh's College, I’m exposed to bright young minds. Many of my family and friends have attended top universities in the UK, so I’m surrounded by brilliant people. I also encourage my friends to give back. For instance, one of my friends supports suicide prevention services in Hong Kong, which is incredibly meaningful given how competitive education has become. Every year, 2,000 people commit suicide in Hong Kong, half of them children. Another friend works on spinal cord injury initiatives. We all support each other—donating to each other's causes, exchanging ideas, and helping one another out. It makes us all feel good. **Bernard Leong:** That’s the compounding effect of helping and uplifting one another. **William Louey:** Exactly. Philanthropy isn’t about giving to gain recognition or climb the social ladder. It’s about doing it because it makes you happy. I believe that happiness from within brings health and positive energy. I always tell my friends that I’m healthy because I’m happy. I don’t get sick as often as others, and at over 65 years old, I’m often told I look young for my age. That’s because I find joy in helping others. Philanthropy brings this inner happiness and positive energy more than any recognition ever could. **Bernard Leong:** So I'm going to now switch topics from philanthropy to the main subject of the day, which is Kowloon Motor Bus, or KMB, in Hong Kong. I'm curious about the very large electric bus fleet concept you're now working to bring to fruition. For those unfamiliar with KMB, can you give an overview of the company and its significance in Hong Kong’s transportation landscape? **William Louey:** My great-grandfather started KMB. A few years before COVID, we announced plans to replace the entire fleet with electric buses. However, COVID disrupted these plans. The government, facing deficits while supporting Cathay Pacific and even KMB, limited what we could do. During that time, I refused to lay off any frontline staff because they are the backbone of our company. To keep morale high, I run various recreation clubs for our staff—basketball, dragon boat racing, singing, and more. There are 60 such clubs with over 6,000 members, far outnumbering the union membership of 2,000\. We also organize spring dinners and lunches every year, inviting all 15,000 employees. It takes about 30 events to include everyone, and I personally attend each one, going from table to table to listen to their feedback on how we can improve and make them happier. KMB is about people—it’s a social network as much as it’s a transportation network. When my father passed away, he thought KMB would become a passé business. However, Hong Kong’s population has grown from 3 million back then to 7.5 million today, with plans for it to reach 10 million. While the MTR (railways) serves as the arteries of the city’s transportation system, buses function as the veins, providing door-to-door connectivity that trains cannot. As new towns emerge to accommodate population growth, KMB will remain vital. Recently, the Abu Dhabi government selected KMB to advise on their transportation system. **Bernard Leong:** Given that KMB is leading the charge to build one of the largest electric bus fleets in Asia, can you share your vision for the future of green transit in Hong Kong? **William Louey:** Our plan is to replace the fleet by 2040\. However, each bus has a lifespan of 18 years, so we can’t replace all of them at once due to depreciation costs. Additionally, all our double-decker buses are imported from the UK, the only country that makes them. COVID further complicated things because transitioning to electric requires significantly more electricity, and Hong Kong currently lacks sufficient charging infrastructure. For instance, we’re building a seven-story depot in Yuen Long that will charge 1,000 buses every night. However, this effort depends on the government providing enough power. Without that confidence, we’ve had to delay some plans. That said, green energy remains the ultimate goal. While technology evolves—such as hybrid models that could last 2,000 kilometers per charge—the direction towards eco-friendly transit hasn’t changed. **Bernard Leong:** What are the infrastructure challenges in transitioning Asia’s bus fleets to electric? **William Louey:** The main challenge is ensuring enough power to charge the buses. Hong Kong, being small and densely populated, is actually ideal for electric vehicles because a single charge can last a whole day, covering the average 400 kilometers that our buses travel. However, building depots and charging stations takes time and coordination with the government. Each year, we retire about 400 obsolete buses and replace them with new ones. As infrastructure improves, we’ll gradually replace those with electric buses. However, the process is slower than we’d like because of these power and infrastructure limitations. **Bernard Leong:** Balancing eco-friendly transitions with affordable and reliable services for millions of daily passengers must be challenging. How does KMB approach this? **William Louey:** Our average bus fare is about seven Hong Kong dollars—roughly 70 pence in English pounds—which is very low for an expensive city like Hong Kong. We provide an essential service for people going to work, school, or the market. Keeping fares affordable while transitioning to green energy is a delicate balance, but it’s one we’re committed to. **Bernard Leong:** What emerging technologies beyond electrification excite you for the future of transportation? **William Louey:** Autonomous vehicles are promising, but they aren’t viable in Hong Kong yet due to the dense population and lack of dedicated bus lanes on busy roads like Nathan Road. However, as technology advances and safety improves, we may consider replacing retired buses with autonomous models. That said, we won’t lay off staff for the sake of automation. Other innovations, like drones for deliveries, are also interesting, though less relevant for buses. In densely populated areas like Hong Kong, too many variables make autonomous buses a long-term rather than short-term prospect. **Bernard Leong:** That’s a very humane approach, ensuring that technology transitions don’t harm the workforce. **William Louey:** Absolutely. For example, at our annual dinner and award ceremony, we recognize long-serving employees. This year, we gave out over 1,000 awards: 627 for long service, 50 for 35 years of service, 81 for 30 years, and so on. We also recognize star bus captains for driving excellence and eco-safe driving. Some of our drivers have worked with us for 35 years, which is no easy feat. Recognizing their loyalty and contributions is a cornerstone of our company culture. **Bernard Leong:** I’m curious to know—what kind of partnerships or collaborations are crucial for advancing KMB's current sustainability goals? Also, how does this roadmap align with Hong Kong’s broader goals for reducing carbon emissions? **William Louey:** We work with power supply stations and collaborate with the Shenzhen bus company. Interestingly, we used to advise them, but now they advise us because Shenzhen already has 9,000 electric buses in operation. Hong Kong is behind. We’re buying buses from China, with BYD providing most of them. However, we won’t rely solely on BYD; we also work with companies like ADL (Alexander Dennis), which sells to Singapore, and Wrightbus in Belfast, which specializes in double-deckers. About ten years ago, we started exploring hydrogen fuel cells. I visited ADL’s development office in Guildford to learn more about hydrogen technology and was impressed. However, I don’t support "dirty hydrogen" made from coal or fossil fuels. I want clean hydrogen, like that produced from water. But to make hydrogen from water, you need electricity, so why not just use electricity directly? It feels inefficient to me. **Bernard Leong:** That’s interesting because Japanese carmakers are heavily investing in hydrogen as an alternative to electrification. **William Louey:** Yes, and they’ve completely failed! From first principles, it’s much simpler to electrify rather than produce hydrogen. Unless we have a better solution for green hydrogen, I don’t see the point. Using electricity to make hydrogen, instead of using it directly, doesn’t make sense. **Bernard Leong:** What’s one technological shift in your industry over the past 12 months that has changed your perspective? **William Louey:** My view on hybrid buses has shifted. Two years ago, we weren’t discussing hybrids that could run 2,000 kilometers, but now it’s a possibility. While my stance on advancing environmental sustainability hasn’t changed, technological advancements like this can influence how we approach it. COVID also changed everything. For instance, Hong Kong residents now return home earlier, so we’re looking at ways to promote nightlife in the city. These shifts force us to adapt our strategies. **Bernard Leong:** What’s one question you wish people would ask you more about KMB and its sustainability efforts? **William Louey:** I wish people would ask, "When will the entire fleet be electrified?" so I could explain why it’s not entirely up to us. We intend to change everything, not only for environmental reasons but also because diesel price fluctuations significantly impact our profits. If oil prices rise to $100 per barrel, we could make no profit at all. Switching to electric would stabilize costs, but the government must support this transition by providing additional power for charging. Currently, we only have 80 electric buses. People don’t always understand that transitioning a fleet of this size takes time due to depreciation and infrastructure constraints. **Bernard Leong:** That’s a good point. People often don’t appreciate how traditional industries operate. Unlike developing a mobile app, transforming a fleet involves physical infrastructure and long timelines. **William Louey:** Exactly. **Bernard Leong:** What does success look like for KMB in the next decade? **William Louey:** I’m optimistic. As a fourth-generation leader, with my son as the fifth, I see Hong Kong’s population growing to 10 million, with 100 million people in the Greater Bay Area. There will always be new towns where buses are essential for door-to-door connectivity, especially as railways can’t reach everywhere. The aging population is another factor. Elderly people prefer buses because they’re more accessible than navigating stairs or long walks in train stations. We’ve even introduced dedicated pet bus routes to serve pet owners who struggle to use other transport options. Additionally, we’re promoting inclusivity with initiatives like a bus route operated entirely by women drivers. This reflects our commitment to empowering women, and it’s worth noting that 80 percent of our department heads are women—not because of deliberate quotas but because they consistently excel. **Bernard Leong:** That’s impressive. Thank you for sharing these insights. As we close, do you have any recommendations that have recently inspired you? **William Louey:** I find inspiration daily, often from unrelated things. For instance, the movie [*Pay It Forward*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay%5FIt%5FForward%5F%28film%29?ref=analysepodcast.com) inspired me to create a scholarship that has now grown into a second generation of scholars. Seeing this network thrive is incredibly fulfilling. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you? **William Louey:** They can visit [KMB’s website](https://www.kmb.hk/?ref=analysepodcast.com) or find me on [YouTube](https://williamlouey.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Bernard Leong:** Thank you, William, for joining the show. I’ve learned a lot about your philanthropic work and the challenges of electrifying a bus fleet of this scale. **William Louey:** Thank you. I appreciate your natural and content-driven approach. It’s much like Hong Kong’s ethos—we value substance over decoration. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you, William. I look forward to catching up again when I’m in Hong Kong. **William Louey:** Thank you very much. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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He reflects on lessons learned, from differing views on contracts and negotiation tactics to the complexities of building trust in a new business landscape and offers invaluable advice for Western companies eyeing the Chinese market. Last but not least, he concludes by sharing his hopes for the book’s impact, emphasizing the importance of understanding and collaboration between the East and West. --- > "But what I didn't realize is that the main reason they wanted us in China was so that they could study our business model and figure out how to copy it over time. And that was something I wasn't expecting, but I should have. If I were less naive, And if I were better prepared, I would have realized that was the intention. So the original title, the working title I had for my book, which I had to change because the publisher didn't like it, my original title was 'One Bed, Two Dreams' (同床异梦). Because that's a phrase that most Chinese are familiar with." - **Ken Wilcox** ### Profile: Ken Wilcox ([Main Site](https://kenwilcoxauthor.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenwilcoxsvb/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Substack](https://kenwilcoxauthor.substack.com/)), Author of "The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice" ([Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/China-Business-Conundrum-Win-Win-Companies/dp/1394294166/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyze Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and it is early morning. Why do most businesses have a hard time setting up in China and what lessons can we learn from it so that we can succeed in Making our business there? With me today, a pretty distinguished guest, Ken Wilcox, author of the China Business Conundrum, talks about the difficulty of doing business in China and what we can learn from that. Ken, welcome to the show. **Ken Wilcox:** Thank you so much. Happy to be here. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. I do know that you have worked at Silicon Valley Bank for the past 30 years. You retired in 2014 based on your biography \[as the former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank till 2010 and former Vice-Chairman, Shanghai Silicon Bank from 2010-2014\]. So you are a very interesting guest, but first always, as a tradition here to start with your origin story, how do you start your career? **Ken Wilcox**: I began my career in a completely different field, earning a PhD in German studies and teaching at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. However, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped, so I left academia and pursued business school. After graduating, I started working at a Boston bank, focusing on lending to early-stage technology companies—a field I’ve been involved in for nearly 40 years. Over time, my role shifted more towards management. I joined Silicon Valley Bank in 1990, became its CEO in 2001, and planned to retire at the end of 2010\. Just then, the board received word from Beijing that the Chinese Communist Party wanted us to establish a joint venture bank to support technology companies in China. Excited by the opportunity, I agreed, and my wife and I moved to China in early 2011, where we lived for four years. **Bernard Leong:** So, you actually started with a Boston bank, became the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, and then moved to China. Without giving an opinion on [what happened to Silicon Valley Bank last year](https://www.analysepodcast.com/silicon-valley-banks-collapse-and-its-impact-to-asia-startup-ecosystem/)—since that was beyond your tenure—what are your perspectives on what could have prevented the durational mismatch during the crisis in 2023? **Ken Wilcox:** I believe the crisis could have been avoided, though it might be unfair for me to make definitive statements since I wasn’t there. That said, I can think of at least four ways it might have been prevented. First, we could have returned to an earlier practice. When a technology company raised significant equity and brought those funds to us, we didn’t put the entire amount on our balance sheet. For instance, if a company raised $100 million and wanted to deposit it with us, we would suggest they place $20 million with us and allocate the remaining $80 million to a third-party money market mutual fund. This approach avoided the risks associated with having excessive deposits on the bank's balance sheet. Second, maintaining active lines of defence is crucial. In commercial banking, we often emphasize these safeguards. If the CFO makes a poor decision, who steps in to counter it? Typically, it would be the head of risk management, the asset-liability committee, the board’s risk or finance committee, regulators, or even advisors like Goldman Sachs. Unfortunately, it seems all these lines of defence failed in this case. Third, they could have employed hedging strategies, which they didn’t. Proper hedging could have mitigated some of the risks. The fourth measure is more complex, so I’ll set it aside for now. In summary, there were several steps that could have been taken, though it’s perhaps not entirely fair for me to pass judgment. **Bernard Leong:** I completely respect that perspective because there’s no point in throwing anyone under the bus. What I’m really curious about is your career journey. What lessons or life advice can you share with my audience? **Ken Wilcox:** I have plenty of advice, but I’ll narrow it down to three key points: life lessons, not financial ones. First, I always followed the philosophy of Cyrus the Great, an ancient Persian ruler from 500 years ago, who is credited with saying, “Diversity in counsel, unity in action.” I advise CEOs to embrace this. When making a major decision, gather advice and perspectives from experts, stakeholders, and team members. Only then can you decide, but ensure it’s your decision, not the result of a vote. Voting isn’t, in my opinion, an effective practice in a commercial enterprise. Second, learn how to interview well. Hiring the right people is critical, yet interviewing is notoriously difficult. Candidates often pick up on subtle cues during the interview and give you the answers they think you want to hear. It’s only a year later that you realize they aren’t the person you believed them to be. Third, be mindful of your mental models. These are the frameworks we all develop to interpret the world around us. However, when we move to a different place, especially one vastly different from our own, those models may no longer apply. For example, American mental models simply don’t work in China, as the two cultures are fundamentally different. **Bernard Leong:** That’s a perfect segue into today’s main topic—your new book, *The China Business Conundrum*. Thank you for the digital copy. I spent some time going through it, and it helped solidify my understanding of China. During my time at Airbus, I travelled to China to engage with the drone industry there. Here’s a question I reserve for all my distinguished guests: What’s one thing you know about doing business in China that very few others do? **Ken Wilcox:** When I tell you this, you’ll probably think, “Oh, I already knew that.” But this is something few Westerners truly understand—though many Asians might already know it. During my first year in China, my assistant, a highly capable Chinese national, told me, “Ken, you’re never going to succeed here.” Surprised, I asked why. She replied, “Because you have a bad habit—you always say what you mean, and you mean what you say. We don’t do that here.” Until she pointed it out, I hadn’t even considered this a problem. Over time, I came to see how right she was. I had been too blunt \[and\] too direct—qualities that are valued in the West but not in China, where communication is far more nuanced and subtle. My time there taught me the importance of adapting to these differences. **Bernard Leong:** I think sometimes this also ties into language differences. The Chinese language tends to be more metaphorical, while Western, Latin-based languages are often straightforward and logical. This might reflect the differences in communication styles. But let me ask, what inspired you to write your book, and who is your intended audience? **Ken Wilcox:** I don’t think Americans have generally been very successful in China, and frankly, it might always be challenging for us. However, China is simply too big and too important to ignore. It’s critical for us to understand China better so that we can collaborate more effectively. That’s why I wrote the book—to address misunderstandings and help Americans be better prepared. Shockingly few people in the U.S. have any real understanding of China. **Bernard Leong:** Taking a step back, your book also provides a historical context for how you brought Silicon Valley Bank to China. Why was it important to establish Silicon Valley Bank in China? For a general audience, could you explain what Silicon Valley Bank does and its significance to the technology ecosystem? **Ken Wilcox:** Great question. Simply put, Silicon Valley Bank serves only technology companies and venture capital investors—they represent 100% of our client base. Technology is a unique, global industry. To stay cutting-edge anywhere, you must be cutting-edge everywhere because innovation transcends borders rapidly. One country or region may excel temporarily in specific areas, like semiconductors, but this knowledge spreads quickly. It’s ethereal, borderless, and accumulative. When I was running Silicon Valley Bank, I believed it was essential to be present in every innovation hub worldwide, and I still feel that way. **Bernard Leong:** Silicon Valley Bank’s significance is often underestimated in regions like Latin America or Asia-Pacific. It provides the foundational infrastructure for technology startups to thrive. Could you share highlights of how you built Silicon Valley Bank in China to finance tech companies during the emergence of giants like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, as well as newer players like ByteDance and Pinduoduo? **Ken Wilcox:** I’ll admit, we didn’t do as well as we could or should have. Had we understood China better before arriving, we might have been better prepared. The challenge was that China was unlike any other market we had operated in. For example, our mental models—the frameworks we used to understand the world—worked well in places like Germany or the UK, but they failed in China. Even India, in some ways, is more similar to the U.S. than China. One major mistake was misunderstanding roles in corporate governance. We negotiated that I would be the bank’s president and our joint venture partner’s representative from Shanghai Pudong Development Bank would be the chairman. In the West, this seemed perfect: I’d run the bank, and he’d oversee board meetings. But in China, the chairman essentially runs the organization, while the president functions more like a COO. When we started, we both thought we were in charge, which led to significant conflict early on. Another key difference is how risk is handled. In the U.S., banks are allowed to fail, and when they do, they disappear. In China, banks are state-owned. When they face challenges, the government steps in and arrests someone if necessary, and recapitalizes the bank quietly. This approach allows Chinese banks to take greater risks. In the U.S., we had almost no competition because lending to tech companies was seen as too risky. In China, every bank wanted to copy our model without the fear of failure. **Bernard Leong:** One striking point in your book is how businesses entering China must navigate the trio: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the government, and Chinese culture. Many assume the CCP and the government are the same. Why do you see them as distinct? **Ken Wilcox:** While the party and government overlap, they aren’t identical. In the U.S., businesses aim to comply with laws and keep government interactions to a minimum. In China, the government and the party are deeply involved in business. It’s complex because many officials wear multiple hats—government officials, party members, and business leaders—all at once. For example, my main contact, the chairman of our joint venture partner, wore these three hats interchangeably. It took me months to realize that, to him, these roles weren’t distinct—they were one and the same. This can be confusing for Western companies, especially when they’re required to establish a party committee within their organization. The role of these committees varies widely. Some people say they’re just a place for party members to gather monthly. Others claim they act as a "secret board," influencing the official board’s decisions. There’s no single, clear definition, which adds to the confusion. **Bernard Leong:** What are the biggest issues businesses typically get wrong when setting up in China? Is it mainly about regulation or bureaucracy, or is it something else? **Ken Wilcox:** That’s a great question, and the answer is—it’s a lot of things. A major challenge is cultural differences, which you alluded to earlier. Let me highlight a couple of critical ones. First, in general, Chinese businesses aren’t particularly focused on contracts. They’d much rather work with a memorandum of understanding (MOU). **Bernard Leong:** That sounds about right. **Ken Wilcox:** Yes, but MOUs are flexible by design and can change. Often, they shift based on the counterparty’s perception of leverage on any given day. For example, we spent nearly a year negotiating a contract with our joint venture partner. What we didn’t realize was that adhering strictly to the contract wasn’t necessarily expected. Later on, when they deviated from the agreement, we were baffled. To them, it was perfectly logical to make adjustments as leverage shifted. At one point, they even wrote a letter to our board in California, essentially declaring that they were throwing out the contract and starting over because they believed they now had greater leverage. This was incredibly confusing for me—coming from a Western perspective where contracts are sacrosanct and cannot be altered on a whim. **Bernard Leong:** That’s quite a contrast to the U.S., where the rule of law is foundational. In some places, though, the rule of law seems more flexible and subject to change. **Ken Wilcox:** Exactly. In China, it’s more like the "rule of party" rather than the "rule of law." Laws there, in my experience, are much more negotiable and nuanced. For instance, in the U.S., you can’t negotiate with the Federal Reserve. They issue directives, and you comply. In China, you can actually negotiate with regulators, and a lot depends on the relationships you’ve cultivated with them. If you have a good relationship and do something they disapprove of, they might simply tell you not to do it again. In the U.S., if you breach regulations, the Federal Reserve could come down hard on you with severe consequences. Here’s an example that illustrates this difference: We wanted to offer a product called a trust account, which was like a deposit account with a higher interest rate. In China, every banking activity requires a separate license. Unlike in the U.S., where one banking license typically covers everything, replicating Silicon Valley Bank’s model in China required about 20 different licenses—for checking accounts, savings accounts, trust accounts, and so on. We didn’t have the license for trust accounts, but a bank called China Merchants offered to let us "rent" theirs. When we informed our board in the U.S., they were horrified and insisted it was illegal and absurd. But in China, it’s perfectly acceptable to rent another bank’s license. We went ahead with it, and it worked. It’s just one of many examples of how the business environment in China operates differently, and how assumptions based on Western norms can lead to misunderstandings. **Bernard Leong:** But isn’t there a risk that they could change the rules to say you can’t sublet a license anymore? Wouldn’t that be a significant risk? **Ken Wilcox:** That would depend on the quality of the relationship we had with the regulators. If the relationship was strong—and we worked hard to maintain those—they might simply give us a warning, saying, “You can’t do that anymore; we’ve decided it’s not acceptable.” We wouldn’t face severe consequences. In the U.S., however, if the Federal Reserve told you to stop doing something, the repercussions would be far more punitive. **Bernard Leong:** That’s interesting. It ties into the concept of relationships, or *guanxi (关系)*, which is a loaded word and often used to explain how things work in China. What do businesspeople typically get right and wrong about this concept? **Ken Wilcox:** When Americans like me first encounter *guanxi*, we often equate it with friendship or a good relationship. However, it’s much more intricate than that. For instance, Americans might be baffled by the custom of receiving gifts every time they meet someone for lunch or a meeting. It feels unusual because we’re not used to giving or receiving gifts in such situations. *Guanxi* develops gradually over time through reciprocal actions. I do something for you, then you do something for me, and this cycle continues, building trust and predictability in the relationship. In my view, it’s all about mutual trust and a quid pro quo dynamic, which can take time to understand and appreciate. **Bernard Leong:** That resonates. As someone culturally Chinese but raised in Singapore, I realize now that I naturally operate on favors rather than monetary exchanges when helping others. Hearing you articulate it so clearly brings new perspective to my own experiences. **Ken Wilcox:** It’s hard for many of us from the West to grasp at first. To complicate matters, American companies face the constraints of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which strictly limits the acceptance of gifts. When gifts are received in China, there’s often uncertainty about how to handle them. Should they be declared? Are they breaking U.S. laws? This complexity is compounded by the fact that gifts can sometimes be quite valuable. **Bernard Leong:** Working for a multinational corporation, I had strict rules to follow—such as not accepting gifts over a certain value, like $100\. I also had to declare everything I received. There was definitely a need to push back at times. Shifting topics, one thing I appreciated in your book was how you discussed building a local team for Silicon Valley Bank in China. How did you engineer trust and ensure performance excellence in the team? **Ken Wilcox:** It’s both similar and different from building teams in the U.S. In China, we eventually had around 300 employees, almost all PRC citizens. One cultural difference that initially surprised me was how my team members would report on their work during meetings. They’d often begin by saying, “Under Ken’s guidance and with the support of my team, we achieved X, Y, Z.” At first, I found it perplexing. Why the constant reference to my guidance? The key is to always be open, honest, and consistent. Never mislead your employees, which is, of course, essential for any good leader—whether in the U.S. or China. For example, while our employees were professional and high-character, there were behaviors acceptable in China that would cause issues in the U.S. One example was paying “special favors” to CFOs who deposited large sums with the bank. In the U.S., this would be considered unethical and could result in severe consequences. However, in China, this practice was often seen as part of doing business. It took me some time to understand that this wasn’t dishonesty—it was a different cultural expectation. Another instance involved account officers working simultaneously for the bank and another company, such as an insurance firm. They’d sell insurance products to the same clients they managed as bankers. In the U.S., this would be a massive conflict of interest, but in China, it wasn’t uncommon. **Bernard Leong:** So, it’s essentially cross-selling, but adapted to the Chinese business culture. **Ken Wilcox:** Exactly. The challenge was discerning between practices acceptable in China but not in the U.S., and those unacceptable in both contexts. To navigate these differences, you essentially have to immerse yourself in Chinese culture and adapt your mindset. **Bernard Leong:** That makes sense. I’ve seen something similar with friends who’ve worked in China for over a decade. When they return to Singapore, they experience reverse culture shock—they’ve adapted so much to China’s ways that they struggle to re-adjust. I find myself reminding them, “You’re in Singapore now; it’s back to the rule of law.” **Ken Wilcox:** Yes. **Bernard Leong:** I have a couple of quick questions. First, in your industry or with recent technological shifts, has anything in the last 12 months changed your perspective? **Ken Wilcox:** Changed my mind? Not necessarily. But I have reached one conclusion that was tough to come to during my time in China. When we went there, I had an open mind and heart. I genuinely expected we’d be treated well. And to be fair, the people I worked with directly were respectful and professional. Yet, from an American perspective, some of their actions didn’t feel reciprocal. For example, I’ve come to believe that the main reason they were so determined to bring us to China was to study our business model and learn how to replicate it. Early on, before my wife and I moved to China, I had meetings with a high-ranking government official who was also a prominent figure in the party. He said, “Ken, we really want your bank in China. It’s more important than any bank we’ve ever met. You’re more significant than Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. And, by the way, you’re one of the smartest Americans we’ve ever encountered.” At the time, I thought it was exaggerated flattery, but it still felt promising. I assumed he’d help us succeed in China. What I didn’t realize was that their primary goal was to understand and eventually copy our business model. If I’d been less naive and more prepared, I might have anticipated this. My original working title for the book was *One Bed, Two Dreams*, a phrase familiar to many Chinese. It captures why things didn’t work out as expected. My dream was to help Chinese technology companies expand globally, but their dream was to learn our business model. For example, when they granted us our license, they stipulated we couldn’t use Chinese currency for three years. This made it nearly impossible to do business initially because most companies needed renminbi, not U.S. dollars. During those three years, they encouraged us to “prove our commitment to China” by teaching our business model to other Chinese banks. They even subsidized us during this period because they knew we wouldn’t generate significant revenue. After the three years, when we were finally allowed to use renminbi, they informed us, “We’re so glad you came to China, and we admire your business model so much that we’re launching a bank of our own using your approach. Would you mind staying on to advise this new bank?” It felt as though they were appropriating my intellectual property, though I’m not sure they saw it that way. **Bernard Leong:** That title, *One Bed, Two Dreams*, perfectly encapsulates this dynamic. It’s a fantastic title—culturally relevant and deeply meaningful. Honestly, your publisher should reconsider it for the Chinese version of the book. **Ken Wilcox:** I agree. It really resonates, doesn’t it? **Bernard Leong:** Does success in China require being an established brand like Apple, Tesla, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (or LVMH Group in short), or IKEA—companies with unique advantages that are hard to replicate? **Ken Wilcox:** Being an established brand certainly helps, but it’s not the only factor. Any Western company entering China, particularly if it operates in an important industry from the Chinese government’s perspective, needs to understand that they are likely welcomed because China wants to learn from them. How long you’ll remain welcome often depends on how long it takes them to acquire that knowledge. Take General Motors as an example. They entered China in 1985 when the country had no real auto industry. The Chinese government wanted them there to learn about automobile manufacturing—not to ensure GM’s long-term profitability. It took decades for the Chinese auto industry to develop, and during that time, GM was welcome. Now, as China’s auto manufacturers have matured, GM is losing market share and may eventually withdraw. At that point, China’s auto industry will likely export globally, leveraging both their own expertise and what they learned from GM. China’s automakers have done a remarkable job not only learning from foreign companies but also advancing beyond them in many ways. I believe China will dominate the global automobile industry in the future. **Bernard Leong:** That dynamic applies to other industries, like smartphones or semiconductors, doesn’t it? **Ken Wilcox:** Yes, though the timeline varies. For example, semiconductors will take longer, but smartphones are already there. Companies like Xiaomi are major players, and Apple is steadily losing ground in China—and could eventually lose ground globally. Western, Korean, Japanese, or even Singaporean companies are welcome in China as long as they provide knowledge or skills that help build local industries. But once China has developed its own expertise, those companies will face competition—first within China and then globally. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but companies must go in with a clear understanding of this reality. **Bernard Leong:** What happened to Silicon Valley Bank’s Chinese entity after the SVB crisis and its acquisition by First Citizens Bank in the U.S.? **Ken Wilcox:** After the regulators took over Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023, they dismantled the bank into separate components and auctioned them off. Some parts sold quickly, but others took months. Ultimately, the joint venture in China didn’t receive any bids. A decade ago, many U.S. banks would have been eager for a Chinese banking license, but the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and Chinese governments has made companies hesitant. They doubt their ability to succeed in the current environment. As a result, the Chinese joint venture disappeared. Two or three months ago, the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, along with the Chinese government, officially dissolved the joint venture. What remained was absorbed by Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and the entity no longer exists. **Bernard Leong:** So it essentially became part of the Chinese partner’s operations? **Ken Wilcox:** Exactly. It was fully absorbed into the Chinese entity. **Bernard Leong:** What’s one question you wish more people would ask you about doing business in China or your book, *The China Business Conundrum*? **Ken Wilcox:** It’s not necessarily about asking me directly, but I believe Americans would benefit from understanding this: back in 1982, a prominent sinologist, [Lucian Pye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian%5FPye?ref=analysepodcast.com), wrote a short book titled [*Chinese Commercial Negotiations*](https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Commercial-Negotiating-Style-Lucian/dp/0899461689/ref=sr%5F1%5F2?crid=20GEHPQ5YMN52&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Jt0hPgscU4UBc3GDrRbtwY-gGT1xUnlpjUGXMpwEGAi5RhjlGBSG6WK0GuiQwQ8cf20MwdlTsgGxmJLg8vIKiyVOvNDjvwTUoZ3oUfh3KPgsIshBck4OtjVRCC8EVnNhxuwHHrJwv%5FpX0r0Qgx3xbxoL6dkSO9YXpcw1ib9-ZI2IAGWnHi8owirRSVctK63%5Fh-bbw5qaF4Ou-g3YvOc0PqlArtl8Imij9rU7u-iqFQU.-1oowleXO7gH-ygW8pQV9t4OPgqoq2JeXzsO8swVc6M&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=chinese+commercial+negotiations&qid=1733108202&s=digital-text&sprefix=chinese+commercial+negoriatio%2Cdigital-text%2C284&sr=1-2-catcorr&ref=analysepodcast.com). It’s only about 100 pages long, but it left a lasting impression on me. Before going to China, I read it and found his observations fascinating, albeit hard to believe. In the U.S., those of us in banking were often required to take a negotiation course, typically based on the *Getting to Yes* methodology from the Harvard Negotiation Project. The principle behind it is straightforward—you and I, as negotiating parties, aim to understand each other’s needs and find a win-win solution. However, Pye argued that Chinese negotiations don’t work that way. Instead, they focus on leveraging power to win. I was skeptical at first, thinking Pye’s view was overly cynical. But after spending time in China, I realized he was absolutely right. Negotiations in China are fundamentally about understanding and maintaining leverage to secure an outcome favourable to one side. It’s not wrong—just different—and I think more Americans would benefit from grasping this distinction before they begin negotiations in China. **Bernard Leong:** That’s an insightful distinction. I’ve read both books on n*egotiation in Chinese Culture* and *Getting to Yes*, and the cultural differences in approach are stark. The emphasis on leverage and winning in Chinese negotiations really stands out. Now, as my traditional closing question: What does success look like for your book, *The China Business Conundrum*? And I hope your preferred title for the Chinese edition gets reconsidered! **Ken Wilcox:** I hope that the book reaches a wide audience, not to criticize China but to offer a realistic understanding of what it’s like to do business there. China and the U.S. are both major global players, and we can’t avoid interacting with each other. The key is learning how to collaborate effectively, and that starts with understanding the other side. You can’t change others—you can only change yourself. If readers can learn from my experiences and apply those lessons to improve their own outcomes in China, that would be the greatest success for this book. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you for sharing your insights. I’ve gained a lot from this conversation, and you’ve certainly helped me rethink aspects of doing business in China. Before we wrap up, do you have any recent book recommendations that have inspired you? **Ken Wilcox:** Absolutely. Two books stand out. First, [*Beijing Rules* by Bethany Allen](https://www.amazon.com/Beijing-Rules-Bethany-Allen-ebook/dp/B0B397WP31?ref=analysepodcast.com) offers great insights. The second is [*Hidden Hand* by Clive Hamilton and Marika Olberg](https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Hand-Exposing-Communist-Reshaping-ebook/dp/B08C4RTPN9/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=1F2MU4LSEHEMR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.lsLLzouhsfH%5FOFDtTNw7vH6Lyqqu77kQUfh%5FVvDj1zUB%5F-slZhv9N70UnzrbaH%5FrB23CM42Zzp4cH%5FnbOWeUQ8Ad-YeswoCMxRWY3tRdW%5F4.ggANmCh5sPROfzHEcPDrT2wfVmQodMTxqj8TW20ZfzY&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=Hidden+Hand+Clive&qid=1733108166&s=digital-text&sprefix=hidden+hand+clive%2Cdigital-text%2C341&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com), both respected sinologists. These books have been incredibly helpful in broadening my understanding of China. **Bernard Leong:** Those sound excellent. And before we finish, is there anything else you’d like to share? **Ken Wilcox:** Yes, one last thought: whenever my wife and I reflect on our four years in China, we always agree that they were the most fascinating years of our lives. The Chinese people are wonderful—kind, hardworking, and talented. The challenges came more from dealing with the Chinese Communist Party, which wasn’t always easy. But we certainly aren’t anti-China or anti-Chinese. **Bernard Leong:** I completely understand. I have many friends and former students from China, and we stay in touch regularly. Finally, how can my audience connect with you? **Ken Wilcox:** I have [a website](https://kenwilcoxauthor.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [a Substack](https://kenwilcoxauthor.substack.com/), and I’m active on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenwilcoxsvb/?ref=analysepodcast.com). If anyone wants to subscribe to my Substack, they can email me directly, and I’ll add them to the list. **Bernard Leong:** Fantastic! I’ll include all those links when the interview is published. Thank you so much for this conversation—it’s been insightful and thought-provoking. I look forward to speaking with you again. **Ken Wilcox:** Thank you, Bernard. I truly appreciate the time we’ve spent together. Bye-bye! **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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She reflects on the bold decisions behind Hegen’s expansion into China, including leveraging live streaming to reach millions and highlights how storytelling and advocacy transformed her brand into a movement supporting modern moms. Last but not least, Yvon shares what great would look like for Hegen in the future. --- > "So, my definition of being fearless is not about no fear, but it's having that courage to face your fear, to conquer whatever adversities that are thrown your way. it is part of the entrepreneur journey. We are always faced with fear of failure. Self Doubt is how to pick up our courage and face them and use these challenges to become your catalyst for innovation, the catalyst for growth, the catalyst for your success." - Yvon Bock ### Profile **Yvon Bock**, CEO and Founder of [Hegen](https://www.hegen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Personal Site](https://www.yvonbock.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvonbock/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and her new book: [ExtraOrdinary: From Stay-at-Home Mum to World-Class Entrepreneur](https://www.hegen.com/products/extraordinary-from-stay-at-home-mum-to-world-class-entrepreneur?ref=analysepodcast.com). ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and how does a stay-at-home mom go on to build a product empowering mothers from all over the world to become EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2023? With me today, Yvon Bock, Founder and CEO of Hegen. Congratulations on your new book, Extraordinary From Stay At Home Mom to World Class Entrepreneur. Yvon, welcome to the show. **Yvon Bock** Hi, Bernard. Thank you so much for having me. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I actually got a pre-copy of your book and I read it through your journey. It's so interesting. I've read how you actually went from a stay-at-home mother all the way to now building a very interesting business. Actually, my child has the problem of lactation and would use one of your products. So I'm very familiar with the problem that you say. So I want to start with your origin story. How did you start your career? **Yvon Bock:** It all started after I graduated and joined the finance industry. After a couple of years, I got married and became a mom for the first time. I realized then that my true aspiration was to become a full-time stay-at-home mom. I wanted to pursue that dream, so I took a leap of faith and decided to dedicate my time to raising my child and fulfilling that goal. However, after a few months, I discovered that being a stay-at-home mom wasn't quite what I had envisioned. Over time, this realization led to a transformation. An opportunity arose when my dad reached out for help with his family business. I decided to step forward and support him during that time of need. That moment marked the beginning of a journey that would span 20 years, a journey I’ve documented in my book. It captures the evolution of my life and career from that pivotal decision. **Bernard Leong:** We're going to talk more about the book and the journey itself. One question I have is, what prompted your return to work \[to join your family business\], which eventually led to the founding of Hegen? **Yvon Bock:** During my first few months as a stay-at-home mom, there was a sense of novelty. I could dedicate my time entirely to my child and even note down every little thing they did. However, as time went on, that novelty wore off, and I began to feel lost. The routine made me question my identity; I went from being a working woman to wondering, 'What am I doing here? What’s my purpose? What’s my direction in life?' I felt like I wasn’t myself anymore. Fortunately, I had my family's support, especially my dad. He noticed what I was going through and encouraged me to reignite my passion. He suggested, 'Why not restart something that inspires you? Take up a course or pursue an interest that excites you, even as you continue your role as a stay-at-home mom.' I decided to take his advice and enrolled in a course that intrigued me. That experience rekindled my interest in entrepreneurship. My dad then offered me an opportunity to join the family business. He said, 'How about helping me out first?' Joining the family business, I often joke, started with the promise of flexible hours—just two half days. But it turned out to be so 'flexible' that I ended up working even longer hours than I had in my corporate job! That experience was the stepping stone to my entrepreneurial journey. It gave me the foundation and drive to eventually start Hegen. **Bernard Leong:** Before we dive into the main topic of the day—what lessons from your career or entrepreneurial journey can you share as advice for my audience? **Yvon Bock:** I believe it’s crucial to identify our purpose—that spark or passion within us. For me, it has always been about helping others. My journey began with helping my dad, and over time, it evolved into asking, 'How can I help other mothers like myself?' Today, with Hegen, my vision is crystal clear: it’s about supporting 100 million mothers around the world. With that sense of purpose driving me, every day feels exciting. My work is my life, and my life is my work—it all aligns with my passion. That’s why I think finding and embracing your purpose is so important. It’s what keeps everything meaningful and fulfilling. **Bernard Leong:** Doing what you love passionately is truly a privilege in life. That brings us to the main subject of the day—Hegen and your new book, *Extraordinary: From Stay-at-Home Mom to World-Class Entrepreneur.* While preparing for this interview, I learned that your father established a company called Fitson. Fitson is an OEM for baby products, primarily serving two major clients. When you joined the business, what made you feel that Fitson needed to expand and diversify its operations? **Yvon Bock:** The fundamental principle of running a business is risk management. Coming from a finance background, I was surprised by my father’s loyalty to his clients. While loyalty is admirable, from a business perspective, sustainability and diversification are essential. I wanted to ensure the longevity of his business. As the saying goes, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. I began thinking about how we could bring in new customers. We transitioned from being a contract manufacturer producing products exactly as designed by customers to an original design manufacturer. This allowed us to create and white-label our own designs for clients. By diversifying our offerings, we established a safety net to protect the business from unforeseen changes. That was the core intent behind expanding and evolving Fitson’s business model." **Bernard Leong:** And also to address the concentration risk, since Fitson was initially dependent on just two major clients. Diversification was key to reducing that risk. **Yvon Bock:** Exactly. We call it dependency risk. If a customer changes their direction, undergoes management changes, or experiences mergers and acquisitions, it can completely derail the business. Mitigating that risk was crucial for sustainability. **Bernard Leong:** "How did working at Fitson prepare you for launching your brand, Hegen?" **Yvon Bock:** "Joining my family business was, without a doubt, one of the most exciting, challenging, and fulfilling parts of my career. When you work in a multinational corporation or a very established company, roles are often specialized and siloed. For example, if you're in sales and marketing, your focus is limited to that area. In my dad's business, I had the unique opportunity to gain a bird's-eye view of the entire operation. I learned everything from sourcing raw materials to managing supply chains, understanding client expectations, pricing, packaging, and even the requirements for going international. These small but critical nuggets of knowledge built my confidence and prepared me to create a brand of my own. I believe there’s a beauty in working within an SME. The experience is rich with opportunities to learn and grow across all aspects of the business, which is invaluable." **Bernard Leong:** My wife had a similar experience working in her family business, although it was eventually sold. I understand the challenges that come with working alongside family to run a business. Transformation is always compelling, but it’s not without its difficulties. I heard that the rebranding of Fitson met with some resistance from long-time employees. Taking over a family business often comes with its own unique hurdles. Can you elaborate on the challenges you faced and how you navigated them? **Yvon Bock:** Looking back, I was just 25 years old and probably not as sensitive or empathetic as I am now. Many of the employees had been working with my dad for over a decade when I joined. I came in full of energy, passion, and a drive to be a change-maker. My focus was on rebranding and elevating the company. However, these changes were unsettling and uncomfortable for many of the employees who had grown used to the routine and were in their comfort zones. Change was necessary, but it disrupted the status quo. It shook things up and, honestly, led to significant turnover. Now, with hindsight, I truly respect how calm my dad remained throughout the entire process. Many employees felt that the changes were happening too fast and didn’t understand the rationale behind them. For example, when I suggested updating the company’s logo, some saw the old signage as a symbol of heritage. My perspective was different—I believed we needed a logo and name that were instantly recognizable and meaningful to others. These challenges taught me the importance of communication. While I pushed forward and got things done, I realize now that I could have handled some aspects more delicately by involving and explaining more to the team. In hindsight, better communication could have eased the transition and made it a smoother process for everyone involved. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, I think change is essential and an inevitable part of running any business, especially one that’s been around for more than a decade. That brings me to an interesting aspect of this topic. I have three kids, and unfortunately, my first child was born with a cleft issue. Lactation was a significant challenge, and this was all before Hegen came into existence. We eventually found a solution, so I can somewhat relate to the problem you're addressing. Can you share the backstory of the challenge that the Hegen bottle is designed to solve and what motivated you to bring the product to market? **Yvon Bock:** Twenty years ago, when I became a mom for the first time, I realized there weren’t any products on the market that truly supported working mothers. I have four children and breastfed for a total of 10 years. Back then, after returning to work from maternity leave, I had to carry this massive bag with a pump that was bulky and cumbersome. On top of that, there were so many parts just to extract and store milk. The process was clunky and inconvenient. Support for nursing mothers was almost nonexistent—there were no proper nursing rooms, and the products themselves were far from user-friendly. Putting pumping equipment on my desk at work felt shameful; it was undignified. I often had to hide in storerooms or toilets to pump or negotiate for meeting rooms to get the privacy I needed. All these challenges made me think: 'What if there was a system where you could pump, store, and feed using the same product—simply by changing the top?' This dream became my North Star. I wanted to eliminate the need for multiple products and make the process seamless. One of the key triggers for Hegen came when I had my third child, who was born prematurely. He had to stay in an incubator, and I was pumping relentlessly to provide milk for him. However, for premature babies, milk production can take a few days to start, and in the meantime, his health was at risk. I had to resort to formula and feeding methods like tubing and cupping, which didn’t work. Eventually, we had to use a baby teat. Once he was stable, I tried to transition him back to breastfeeding, but he refused to latch. He was my only child who didn’t return to breastfeeding, and to this day, I feel guilty about that. My breastfeeding journey encompassed everything—from direct latching to bottle-feeding and exclusive pumping. I wanted to create a product that eliminated the issue of nipple confusion, a product that empowered working moms to feel accomplished both at work and at home. I wanted to prevent other mothers from experiencing the guilt I went through. These pain points accumulated over the years, and I knew I had to do something to make a difference. I wanted to create a solution that would empower mothers everywhere and truly make an impact on the world. **Bernard Leong:** Before Hegen came to market, I believe there were already lactation experts providing solutions for breastfeeding challenges. I remember this process well because we also had a child who faced similar issues. It’s fascinating to see how a product like yours was developed to directly address these problems. I know the story of Dyson, how it took 500–600 prototypes to perfect his vacuum cleaner. Similarly, I understand the Hegen bottle underwent about five years of development and 200 failed prototypes. That must have been an arduous journey. I’m curious—what kept you going despite the setbacks? And I imagine your dad, being responsible for manufacturing, must have had concerns. How did you manage to push through and reach the final product? **Yvon Bock:** The motivation behind this product came from my 10 years of experiencing these pain points as a mother. I had a dream, a vision, and I knew this product had to work. That determination kept me going—I wasn’t going to let anything derail me. There were plenty of challenges and naysayers. Every prototype we tested seemed to fail in some way. It didn’t form correctly, or if it did, it didn’t work—it was too tight or too loose. Each setback required me to fend off doubts, both from others and within myself. But I kept reminding myself, ‘It’s okay, just stand up again and continue.’ What pushed me forward was my belief in the design and its potential to transform lives. That belief kept me going on even the toughest days. There were times I was completely out of energy, questioning if I should just stop and start over. But the people around me made a big difference. I’d check in with my husband, asking, ‘Am I being too stubborn about this?’ He would encourage me, saying, ‘No, you’re on the right track. You’re getting closer—just keep going.’ My dad, on the other hand, had his own doubts. He’d ask, ‘Do you really think this square design will work? Why don’t we go back to round?’ But I insisted, ‘No, let’s keep going.’ With each iteration, seeing even small improvements gave me the energy to keep pushing. The design was unconventional, and the challenges were immense. But looking at the final product today, I’m so thankful we persevered. When people come up to me and say, ‘Your product really helped me,’ it feels like all the struggles, the disagreements, and those intense ‘coffee chats’ with my dad were worth it. Today, we laugh about those moments, but back then, they were pivotal. It’s so important to believe in yourself and your vision. **Bernard Leong:** I think this is such a rare and inspiring story—a father and daughter working together to create something groundbreaking. And Hegen has truly achieved that with the world’s first patented no-screw trap, press-to-close, twist-to-open baby bottle, known as the PCTO bottle. **Bernard Leong:** "I think this is really interesting. As a parent myself, I can understand why you approached it this way. What have you learned from the process of continuously iterating on just one product?" **Yvon Bock:** "Iteration is one of our core values as a company. I always tell my team, 'Iteration over perfection.' Every iteration brings us a step closer and represents progress, so we must never give up. If we have a concept or an idea, it’s critical to keep improving on it. Iteration is also about the learning mindset. It’s about growth and continuously finding ways to make things better. What you see in our product today is vastly different from when we first launched nine or ten years ago. We’ve made countless small changes—many invisible to users—but each one has refined the product further. Even something as minor as adjusting by 0.5 degrees can make a difference. We’ve embedded this approach into our process and never settle. If something is good, we ask, 'How can we make it better, great, or even outstanding?'" **Bernard Leong:** That’s a very important perspective. Many people think that once a product is good, it’s done. But product owners often have to find subtle ways to improve, making processes so seamless for users that they don’t even realize the effort behind it. If you could rewind your journey back to when you started at Fitson and began developing the Hegen product, is there anything you would have done differently? **Yvon Bock:** Honestly, I wouldn’t change anything. **Bernard Leong:** That’s completely fine. **Yvon Bock:** I believe everything happens for a reason. The lessons I’ve learned along the way—whether it was the shake-up in the company, my stubborn vision to make this work, or the countless failures—all shaped who I am today and what Hegen is today. Every entrepreneur’s journey is unique, and I think it’s meant to unfold in a certain way to lead us to where we need to be. I wouldn’t change anything. In fact, I’m thankful for everything, even the challenges. Yes, the journey. It’s been painful at times, to be honest. Growth always comes with growing pains. Like a child experiencing teething issues, these challenges are just part of growing up. **Bernard Leong:** So, what’s one thing you know about Hegen and the baby products industry that no one else does?" **Yvon Bock:** That’s a very interesting question. Contrary to popular belief, glass is not as environmentally friendly as most people think. **Bernard Leong:** Really? **Yvon Bock:** Yes. Some types of glass can’t be recycled, and even when they can, the process requires an enormous amount of energy. In our industry, baby bottles cannot be shared because of hygiene, safety, and medical concerns. This means many glass baby bottles end up as waste, which is a significant issue. **Bernard Leong:** That is a very interesting point. I think you’re one of the few entrepreneurs I know who made it work. For instance, there’s another well-known Singaporean entrepreneur, Teo Swee Ann from Expressif, who succeeded in the semiconductor IoT business. One aspect of your journey that stands out is your decision to choose a distributor without prior experience in baby products for the Chinese market. Many businesses fail when expanding into China due to issues like distributors copying products or the difficulty of enforcing IP laws. Let’s start with your entry into the Chinese market. What convinced you that this distributor was the right partner for Hegen? And what mental models guided you as you entered China, a market that poses significant challenges for entrepreneurs thinking about global expansion? **Yvon Bock:** I think finding the right partner or distributor is a lot like finding a life partner. It takes time and sometimes comes down to opportunity and potential. When we met this prospect, it felt like going on dates before committing to a relationship. We held many meetings to understand whether our values, culture, and vision aligned. What was their philosophy—were they building something to sell, or were they focused on creating a legacy? For us, Hegen is about building a legacy, and it was essential to find someone who shared that vision. We also observed them in action, going on business trips together to see how they handled different situations. Like a life partner, it’s not just about experience—it’s about passion and alignment. We were fortunate to find someone who shared our mission and wanted to make a meaningful difference in the breastfeeding community. Entering the Chinese market takes a lot of resources and effort, from organizing seminars to creating workshops that inspire societal change. It’s not easy, but our distributor had the tenacity and passion to take on the challenge. They embraced the mindset of 'Let’s try, let’s see if it works.' It’s very much like our philosophy of iteration over perfection. As a Singaporean company, we were fortunate to learn from the experiences of pioneer brands that entered the Chinese market before us. These case studies, along with an understanding of local culture, helped prepare me as an entrepreneur. For example, I learned that when someone in China loudly calls your name and runs to greet you, it’s a sign of hospitality and how important you are to them. Initially, I didn’t know this and felt a bit embarrassed, but once I understood the cultural significance, I embraced it. The same applies to dining etiquette—there’s an art to who sits where, and understanding these nuances goes a long way in showing respect. I’m grateful for the patience of those who worked with me and the cultural lessons I learned along the way. It’s been a valuable journey of mutual respect and growth. **Bernard Leong:** "I'm curious about how you ventured into e-commerce to sell Hegen products. There’s a story in your book that I found fascinating—a 15-minute pitch to Alibaba’s head buyer during your expansion into China. How did you secure that opportunity, and what was the outcome? From what I understand, this was about getting into Tmall, their premium product e-commerce platform." **Yvon Bock:** "Credit really goes to my Chinese distributor for getting us that chance to meet the head buyer. In tech companies, time is precious, so we only had 15 minutes to make our case. I prepared diligently, creating a 50-page corporate deck. But as a Singaporean, while I’m effectively bilingual, I rarely use Mandarin in corporate settings. Presenting in Mandarin was awkward—I felt like I was 'jammed up.' Eventually, I decided to just go for it. I scrapped the deck and told my story instead. That turned out to be the best decision. The buyer resonated with the story and vision. It wasn’t about product features; it was about how our product benefits consumers and aligns with their platform’s mission. That meeting opened doors to significant opportunities and success for Hegen. For the rest of the details, I’ll leave it to your audience to read in my book." **Bernard Leong:** "I found that story compelling. Having worked with Alibaba from Singapore, I understand their business, but pitching to them is no small task. It’s a make-or-break moment because of the distribution impact. You also went to great lengths to establish a strong presence in China, including live-streaming events and breastfeeding seminars. How have these marketing efforts contributed to Hegen’s success in the Chinese market?" **Yvon Bock:** When we first entered China, I had no idea what live streaming was. Nine years ago, the concept of talking to a camera with no live audience felt strange to me. I remember standing on a stage surrounded by cameras, thinking, 'What am I supposed to do?' I decided to go with the flow, thinking, 'What’s the worst that could happen?' But then, I realized I had 13 million live viewers. That was nerve-wracking! With my Singaporean Mandarin, I did my best and just went for it. Live streaming is like a live TV commercial, bringing product and brand awareness directly to the audience. Expressing myself through animated movements and product demonstrations made me think harder about how to connect with consumers. I even came up with jingles and memorable phrases to resonate with viewers. From the beginning, we aimed to create a movement advocating breastfeeding in China, promoting family bonding, and emphasizing that raising a child is about more than just having a bottle. Storytelling became a cornerstone of our marketing because people don’t remember what you say or sell; they remember how you make them feel. Our goal was to empower women and mothers by letting them know they’re supported. I approached live streaming not as a salesperson but as a woman speaking to other women, a working mom reaching out to other working moms. That authentic connection led to our rolling success. **Bernard Leong:** It’s amazing that you focused on solving problems rather than simply selling a product. That passion and authenticity shine through in the way you describe your approach. Now, let me ask you a few quick questions. Tell me what you think as we go. What is one thing in your industry or a technological shift that has changed your mind in the last 12 months? **Yvon Bock:** AI \[Artificial Intelligence\]. Honestly, I love AI. It has brought so much knowledge and advancement in such a short time. The potential for the future is immense. The ability to create products that connect with AI will help people in more efficient and effective ways. However, the key is using AI responsibly. That’s what I’m most concerned about and what I look out for. But overall, I’m fascinated by AI. **Bernard Leong:** So you’re definitely going to incorporate AI into what you’re doing? **Yvon Bock:** Absolutely. **Bernard Leong:** What advice would you give to future entrepreneurs who might undergo a similar journey to yours? **Yvon Bock:** Be fearless. My definition of fearlessness isn’t about having no fear; it’s about having the courage to face your fears and overcome the adversities that come your way. As an entrepreneur, you’ll always face the fear of failure and self-doubt. The key is to use those challenges as catalysts for innovation, growth, and success. I had a personal 'Nirvana moment' while learning to ski a couple of years ago. It was terrifying—standing at the top of the slope, I worried about falling, flying off a cliff, or embarrassing myself. My coach told me, ‘If you don’t start, you’ll never know what lies ahead.’ That moment was a powerful business lesson for me. Entrepreneurship is like skiing: you take a leap of faith, learn from falling, and keep standing back up. It reminded me that being fearless is essential to running a business. **Bernard Leong:** I love that analogy. Recently, I had dinner with a healthcare CEO and his wife, and we discussed how fear of failure seems to be a common issue for kids in Singapore. For example, Singaporean children are often reluctant to compete against top chess grandmasters, while in Shanghai, kids eagerly line up to play, even if they might lose. How do you think we can teach our children to overcome the fear of failure? **Yvon Bock:** I always advocate for having fun in school and prioritizing social interactions over results. Results are important, but they’re a bonus after the process. Teaching kids to embrace failure starts early. When my kids fall, I don’t immediately rush to help them up. Instead, I encourage them to stand up on their own, brush off the sand, and celebrate their effort. It shows them that falling isn’t embarrassing—it’s part of learning. As a role model, I openly acknowledge my own mistakes. Whether it’s a failed product or a poor decision, I reflect on what went wrong, share the lessons learned, and discuss how we can do better next time. This approach creates a ripple effect for my children and team, teaching them that failure is just another step toward growth. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you for that advice. What’s one question you wish more people would ask you about Hegen? **Yvon Bock:** I wish people would ask, ‘How is Hegen advocating for breastfeeding while selling baby bottles? **Bernard Leong:** I will ask you this question then. **Yvon Bock:** Many see this as a contradiction, but I don’t. Modern moms juggle so many responsibilities—career, social life, and parenting. Some moms feel guilty about choosing between breastfeeding and bottle-feeding, and some even fall into depression over it. Hegen was created to support moms in pursuing their personal and professional goals while balancing motherhood. We need to change the stigma of 'breast versus bottle' to 'breast and bottle.' It doesn’t matter how you feed your child—directly breastfeeding or using a bottle. What matters is that you’re providing for your baby. Whether it’s for one day, one month, or one year, every mom is a breastfeeding champion. That’s the movement I want to advocate for." **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question: What does great look like for Hegen in the future? **Yvon Bock:** For Hegen, greatness isn’t about the number of bottles we sell. It’s about how many mothers we can help and serve. My goal is to support more than 100 million mothers globally and establish a presence in 35 jurisdictions identified from day one. It’s about empowering and serving moms worldwide. **Bernard Leong:** Yvon, I wish you all the success in reaching those 35 jurisdictions and supporting 100 million mothers. Congratulations on your new book, which can be found in Kinokuniya and on Amazon. Before we wrap up, do you have any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Yvon Bock:** On a recent flight, I watched *"*[*I Am:* Celine Dion](https://www.primevideo.com/detail/I-Am-Celine-Dion/0KESUWINP6U93HJ0FEZUVWNDZK?ref=analysepodcast.com)". It’s a deeply moving documentary about her life. Seeing her rise to stardom at 14, face immense challenges, and struggle to reclaim her gift of voice was inspiring. Her perseverance and mental strength are phenomenal. Her story reminds me to cherish health, embrace each day, and uplift those around us. Be a positive light for others. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience connect with you? **Yvon Bock:** They can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or my website, yvonbock.com, where they can also find my book. I’d love to stay connected and appreciate their support for both my book and Hegen products. **Bernard Leong:** This podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, and more. We’ll also publish the transcript in our LinkedIn newsletter and main site. Yvon, thank you so much for sharing your journey and insights. I look forward to hearing from you again. **Yvon Bock:** Thank you, Bernard. It’s been a pleasure. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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She explains the mental models and frameworks behind how Dow Jones uses AI to empower businesses with reliable data and insights and discusses the recent partnership with Google’s Gemini model and explains how Dow Jones works with the other content publications, navigating the complexities of trust and business model innovation. Last but not least, Ingrid explains what great would look like for Factiva in the age of AI. --- "So, we are very conscious of the fact that we license the content from other publications. And as I mentioned previously, we do that through licensing agreements. We are transparent with the publishers about what happens with their content. We ensure that they are being fairly compensated for the content that we use. But, as a result, when we started talking about how we wanted to use Gen AI, we felt that we had an obligation to go back to publishers and ask for additional licensing rights. Part of that, I think, is driven by the fact that Dow Jones is a publisher. We are a publisher ourselves. We are very protective of our content. We want to make sure that we understand what's happening with our content: Where is it going? Who is using it? And we want to be fairly compensated for it. So, if that's one of our core principles, then we also want to make sure that we treat all the other publishers the same. One of the challenges has been that we had to go back to all publishers and ask for additional Gen AI licensing rights. The positive of that is that the content now available through Gen AI is fully licensed content. All publishers have given us permission to use their content for this specific use case." - Ingrid Verschuren ### Profile **Ingrid Verschuren,** Executive Vice President, Data and AI and General Manager, EMEA at [Dow Jones](https://www.dowjones.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingrid-verschuren-61a7684/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyze Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I am Bernard Leong, and generative AI has transformed how information flows globally. How does a business intelligence platform such as Factiva navigate in the age of AI? With me today, is Ingrid Verschuren, Executive Vice President of Data and AI, and General Manager, EMEA, Dow Jones. Ingrid, welcome to the show. **Ingrid Verschuren:** Thank you very much for having me. I'm super excited to talk about this today. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, I'm very excited to have this conversation. Previously, I spoke to [Joel Lange](https://www.analysepodcast.com/dow-jones-ai-in-risk-and-compliance-with-joel-lange/) on the show, and we were talking about AI and compliance. This is much more exciting because we're talking about Factiva, which is a platform that a lot of businesses use to flow financial information. To begin, we always like to talk about the origin story of our guests. So, how did you start your career, which eventually led you to your current role at Dow Jones? **Ingrid Verschuren:** Absolutely, I’d be happy to share. My career path is an interesting one. I hold a master’s degree in Latin American Studies with a minor in Business Management. Originally from the Netherlands—something you can probably tell from my accent—I moved to Spain years ago. At the time, finding a job that aligned with my degree was challenging. I eventually secured a position at Reuters, which later became part of Dow Jones. My role involved manually indexing news articles in German, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese. While it may seem routine, this job offered incredible variety. One moment, I’d be researching the structure of Burmese names; the next, I’d delve into technology solutions or budgets. It was a dynamic environment that allowed me to explore diverse topics—something that has kept me engaged throughout my career. **Bernard Leong:** Given you have such a long tenure with Dow Jones, what valuable lessons can you share from your career journey? **Ingrid Verschuren:** I’d say there are three key lessons I’ve learned over the years. First—and most importantly—is the value of working with people you like. We all spend a significant portion of our lives at work, and being surrounded by smart, enjoyable colleagues makes the experience far more fulfilling. The second is finding purpose in your work. The purpose is incredibly motivating. At Dow Jones, our mission is to deliver trusted journalism, data, and analysis that empower people to make informed decisions. We hold the world accountable and inform people with facts—a truly meaningful way to spend your career. Lastly, never hesitate to say yes. Opportunities often come disguised as challenges, and it’s easy to doubt your ability to succeed. Early in my career, I made a habit of embracing these challenges, and it has paid off immensely. **Bernard Leong:** Today’s discussion focuses on [Factiva](https://www.dowjones.com/professional/factiva/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in the era of generative AI. For those unfamiliar with the platform, could you introduce Dow Jones and its Factiva business intelligence platform? What role does it play in supporting businesses with reliable data, insights, and risk management solutions? When I was the Head of AI and Machine Learning for AWS, particularly when working with financial services clients, Factiva was consistently a key part of the conversation. **Ingrid Verschuren:** For those who don’t know, Factiva is a business intelligence platform best described as a comprehensive news aggregation database. It features over 33,000 sources in 32 languages, making it incredibly diverse. One of the core strengths of Factiva is its commitment to licensing these sources directly. We work closely with publishers, securing their permission to include their content in our database—and we compensate them for it. This ensures that the information users access is trustworthy and reliable. Another standout feature of Factiva is its access to content that isn’t freely available on the web. Many news articles are locked behind paywalls or subscription models, but Factiva provides a gateway to that critical information. Additionally, its extensive archive contains billions of news articles, enabling users to conduct historical research with ease. When you combine this vast repository with corporate data—such as details about companies and executives—it empowers professionals across industries. Whether you’re in government, academia, legal practice, or consulting, Factiva provides the tools for deep, informed research. **Bernard Leong:** Before this interview, I delved into your background and discovered that you’ve had a front-row seat to the evolution of Factiva. You began as a news indexer at Reuters, manually tagged data, progressed through the digitization era, and now lead in the age of AI. It’s quite rare to meet someone who has witnessed and shaped such an extensive transformation. What core values or principles have remained constant for Factiva throughout its journey? And how have these values shaped the platform’s adaptation to new technologies like generative AI? **Ingrid Verschuren:** That’s an interesting observation, and I often reflect on it. To provide some context for your audience, my early role involved manually reading news articles in various languages and tagging them with metadata. For example, we’d identify an article as covering a merger, note the companies involved, specify the industry and detail the countries mentioned. This process was entirely manual at the time. As the volume of news articles grew, it became clear that manual tagging wasn’t scalable. Adding more people wasn’t a sustainable solution. So, we started leveraging early forms of natural language processing (NLP) to automate the process. Within four to five years of my starting the job, much of the manual work had been fully automated. Yet here I am—proof that automation doesn’t replace people but rather shifts their focus to higher-value tasks. I think this experience has helped dispel fears about AI and automation for many. Today, Factiva processes between 600,000 and 700,000 news articles daily, which necessitates constant innovation. We’ve consistently sought smarter ways to manage and utilize this vast data. For instance, last year, we launched Factiva Semantic Search, which made searching within the platform much more intuitive and user-friendly, even for those without deep expertise in information retrieval. Now, we’re taking the next step with generative AI. One of our latest innovations is GenAI summarization. It helps users quickly make sense of Factiva’s vast information pool by summarizing search results. You can pose a question, and the system delivers a concise summary of the relevant results. This feature not only saves time but also provides clarity about the sources behind the summary. For example, the system identifies which articles the summary is based on and allows users to read the full articles if needed. This transparency ensures that the information is traceable, citable, and auditable. These principles—transparency, trust in content, and maintaining the integrity of our sources—have been with us for over 25 years. They remain the foundation of Factiva, even as we embrace cutting-edge technologies like generative AI. **Bernard Leong:** That’s a fascinating perspective. Can you explain how AI, beyond just automation, is transforming the way businesses approach risk management today? **Ingrid Verschuren:** Sure. At its core, AI and generative AI certainly help with automation, enabling businesses to operate more efficiently. But for us, the real power of these technologies lies in their ability to address complex customer problems. Our approach to introducing new technology has always been customer-driven. We don’t adopt new tools for the sake of innovation alone. Instead, we start by listening to our customers, understanding their challenges, and then developing solutions that genuinely add value. Beyond automation, AI and generative AI are revolutionizing how we process and interpret vast amounts of unstructured information. Historically, this has been a major challenge. These technologies now enable us to make sense of such data at an unprecedented speed, helping businesses uncover insights that were previously difficult to access. **Bernard Leong:** Adopting generative AI must come with its challenges. Were there any significant hurdles or opportunities you encountered as you integrated this technology into Factiva? **Ingrid Verschuren:** One of the key challenges is rooted in the fact that we don’t own much of the content we work with—we license it from other publishers. As I mentioned earlier, we have licensing agreements that ensure transparency with publishers, fair compensation, and clarity about how their content is used. When we began exploring generative AI, we realized we had an ethical obligation to revisit these agreements and secure additional licensing rights specific to this technology. This was especially important because Dow Jones is also a publisher, and we are deeply protective of our own content. We want to ensure it’s used responsibly, that we understand where it goes and how it’s utilized, and that we’re fairly compensated. Extending the same principles to other publishers was a natural decision. While this presented a challenge—requiring us to renegotiate rights with all our publishing partners—it has resulted in a significant positive outcome. The content now accessible through generative AI is fully licensed, with explicit permissions granted by all publishers. This ensures we uphold our values of transparency, fairness, and trust, which are fundamental to our operations. **Bernard Leong:** For example, how does Dow Jones use generative AI to safeguard against misinformation or detect anomalies? Could you share some examples of these technologies in action? **Ingrid Verschuren:** The key lies in the quality of the input data. It starts with ensuring that we use trusted, reliable information. This is why our licensing process is so critical. We carefully vet the publishers we work with, verifying that their content is dependable. Our global licensing team, familiar with media landscapes across regions, applies human judgment to determine whether a publisher is trustworthy. If so, we establish a licensing agreement. This rigorous process ensures a reliable data foundation, which helps mitigate risks like misinformation. That said, it doesn’t entirely eliminate issues like hallucination in generative AI models—though it significantly reduces them. Another critical component is constant testing. Generative AI systems, particularly those relying on prompts, can be highly sensitive. Even a small prompt adjustment can disrupt the output. That’s why we engage in extensive and ongoing testing. Launching a solution isn’t the end of the process—it’s the start of continuous optimization. **Bernard Leong:** What’s one thing you know about data and AI in Factiva that very few people do? **Ingrid Verschuren:** I know so much about it, it’s hard to pick just one! **Bernard Leong:** I would love to hear all of them. \[Laughs\] **Ingrid Verschuren:** Let me share two things. First, while Factiva is widely known for its news aggregation, it also offers a wealth of corporate and executive information. We cover over 40 million companies and more than 80 million executives. Combining this dataset with our extensive news repository creates a powerful resource for our clients, whether they’re conducting market research or due diligence. Second, from the very beginning, we’ve tackled multilingual challenges. Even 25 years ago, when we managed fewer than today’s 32 languages, we had more than just English to contend with. Back then, there was no Google Translate or similar tools. We developed a system to tag articles with metadata, enabling users to search for specific topics, like mergers, regardless of the article’s language. This approach allowed someone who didn’t speak Japanese or Chinese, for example, to find relevant articles about mergers in those languages. Over time, we built on this system. When machine learning, particularly supervised learning, emerged, we were ahead of the curve because we had years of annotated data. This foundation has allowed us to continue innovating, making Factiva a leader in multilingual and multilayered content management. **Bernard Leong:** One of the significant challenges for many business owners, especially within large enterprises, is deciding whether to build their own large language models (LLMs) or adopt a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) approach using existing enterprise LLMs. What was the thought process behind Dow Jones partnering with Google and adopting the Gemini models for use in Factiva? **Ingrid Verschuren:** That’s a great question, and I think it helps to break it into two parts: first, choosing the platform, and second, determining how to use it. Starting with the latter, one of the key advantages of using a RAG model is the high level of control it offers over both the input and output. With this approach, we can use all the licensed Factiva content for generative AI, store it in a vector database, and allow the RAG model to draw from that controlled dataset. This control is crucial for several reasons. First, it ensures that the answers provided are derived from reliable, licensed content. Second, it enhances transparency with publishers. We can trace each piece of information back to its original source, identifying which publication contributed to the output. This is critical for maintaining trust with our publishing partners. Moreover, this setup allows for flexibility. If a publisher decides to end their partnership with us, we can remove their content from the system entirely. By contrast, if we had opted to merge everything directly into a standalone large language model, the content would become embedded and effectively irreversible. This level of control and transparency was a significant factor in choosing the RAG approach. As for partnering with Google, it was a natural choice. We already had a strong working relationship with them and were utilizing various Google Cloud solutions. Their Gemini model stood out due to its multilingual capabilities, which are essential for Factiva’s support of 32 languages. The collaboration has been incredibly positive, with Google providing strong support throughout the journey. Their platform’s capabilities aligned perfectly with our needs, enabling us to continue delivering high-quality, reliable insights to our clients. **Bernard Leong:** Based on the partnership, how will Google help Dow Jones enhance its AI-powered solutions within the Factiva platform? **Ingrid Verschuren:** The partnership has been incredibly collaborative, and it has allowed us to address some key challenges effectively. For example, one critical aspect we evaluated was latency—ensuring the system could process the vast amount of content we handle efficiently. Google’s tools met our requirements in this regard, which was an important factor. Another crucial element was their multilingual capabilities. With Factiva supporting 32 languages, having a robust multilingual model was non-negotiable. Additionally, Google’s platform offered the ease of use we needed, making the implementation seamless and efficient. **Bernard Leong:** You mentioned traceability earlier—being able to track the provenance of data. This is particularly relevant when licensing expires and certain content needs to be removed. What specific benefits do businesses gain from the transparency features embedded in Gemini-powered tools? **Ingrid Verschuren:** The biggest benefit is auditability. Many of our clients, whether they are in consultancy or compliance departments, need to document their research thoroughly. They must show where the information originated and justify the decisions they’ve made. With Factiva powered by generative AI, we ensure that all content is licensed, removing any potential copyright issues. Furthermore, we make it clear where each piece of information comes from, which is critical for maintaining trust and integrity in decision-making processes. **Bernard Leong:** I often tell CEOs that hallucination in generative AI is more of a feature than a bug. But it’s also a concern for many. Given Factiva’s reputation as a trusted resource, how do you address hallucination issues in your generative AI products? **Ingrid Verschuren:** While I’m not a technologist, I can speak generally about our approach. The key lies in continuous testing. Generative AI models, particularly those reliant on prompts, can produce hallucinations if the prompts aren’t fine-tuned. When we identify such issues, we make prompt adjustments to prevent them. However, it’s an ongoing process—solving one issue can reveal another. That’s why rigorous and consistent testing is essential. It’s not a one-time task; it’s a continuous effort. **Bernard Leong:** How would you advise your customers to use generative AI tools to remain agile, particularly in response to new compliance requirements or regulatory changes? **Ingrid Verschuren:** Flexibility is essential. Rather than focusing on a single-purpose solution, we recommend building holistic systems or modular platforms that can adapt to multiple needs. By doing so, businesses can quickly adjust to new compliance requirements or regulatory changes without overhauling their systems. From a data and content perspective, structure is equally critical. The more structured your data and content are, the easier it becomes to manage and adjust as needed. Even though Factiva processes unstructured text, we’ve maintained a highly structured approach to how it’s ingested and fielded. This allows us to quickly identify and exclude any information that’s no longer permitted for use. Ultimately, it’s all about creating a flexible, structured system that can evolve with changing needs. **Bernard Leong:** Generative AI is advancing at a rapid pace—nearly every week, I’m chasing the latest innovations. For Dow Jones, which continues to push boundaries in business intelligence, what do you see as the next big advancement in AI for risk management and decision-making? Not to predict the future, but what trends or developments are you watching closely? **Ingrid Verschuren:** If I could predict the future, that would certainly make things easier! But in the near term, one area I’m particularly excited about is the potential to merge structured and unstructured data effectively. Historically, these have been treated as separate entities—structured data being clean and neatly organized, and unstructured data being far more chaotic, like raw text. The next major step is to combine these two and apply advanced search capabilities across the integrated dataset. By doing this, we could create an incredibly intelligent and versatile platform that empowers users to extract insights more holistically and efficiently. **Bernard Leong:** What’s one question about AI and data in Factiva that you wish more people would ask? **Ingrid Verschuren:** A lot of conversations tend to focus heavily on the technology itself, but I think a more intriguing question is: *What is the importance of the human element in this process?* It’s something we’ve reflected on at Dow Jones, and a few years ago, we coined the term "authentic intelligence." The idea is that artificial intelligence alone isn’t enough—you still need human intelligence and judgment. For instance, humans are essential in determining what constitutes a reliable input source or in evaluating the output of a model. Machines, as advanced as they are, can’t yet decide what "good" looks like when it comes to nuanced or complex questions. Our approach is to let machines handle tasks they excel at, such as processing vast amounts of data quickly while freeing up humans to focus on deeper, more investigative work that adds real value for our clients. **Bernard Leong:** So, it ultimately comes down to human judgment. That leads me to my traditional closing question. What does "great" look like for Factiva in this new age of generative AI? **Ingrid Verschuren:** "Great" for Factiva means staying true to our core principles. It’s about combining structured and unstructured data in a seamless way to unlock powerful insights while continuing to rely on trustworthy information. Transparency with our publishing partners is also crucial—ensuring we compensate them fairly and maintain their trust. If we can achieve all of this while pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI, then we’ve done more than just good—we’ve done great. **Bernard Leong:** Ingrid, thank you so much for joining the show and spending quality time discussing Factiva and its integration with generative AI. Congratulations on the partnership with Google on the Gemini model—I’m looking forward to seeing some of its features in action. Before we wrap up, I have two quick questions. First, are there any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Ingrid Verschuren:** I’ll go with a book I read a couple of years ago, which remains the best I’ve read since then: [*A Little Life*](https://www.amazon.com/Little-Life-Hanya-Yanagihara/dp/0804172706?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[by Hanya Yanagihara\]. It’s a deeply emotional and, admittedly, very depressing book, but it’s beautifully written. The anxiety and struggles of the characters practically seep through the pages. Despite its sombre tone, it reminded me of the importance of cherishing life and enjoying its moments—an interesting takeaway, given the story itself leans in the opposite direction. That would be my recommendation. **Bernard Leong:** That sounds like a fascinating read. Since we’ve just come off the U.S. presidential elections, there’s certainly no shortage of relevant themes—but let’s save that for another time! My final question: how can my audience find you? **Ingrid Verschuren:** The best way to find me is on LinkedIn. I’ve also done a couple of interviews, including one from a few years ago on YouTube that still seems to resonate with viewers. Currently, I’m focused on engaging with the publishing community, as collaboration is key. We believe that by working together as a community, we stand a much better chance of being fairly compensated for our content and ensuring its proper use. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you so much, Ingrid. To our listeners, you can find us on all major podcast platforms, including YouTube, and Spotify. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter, either on LinkedIn or through our website. Ingrid, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show. **Ingrid Verschuren:** Thank you—it’s been great to be here. **Bernard Leong:** Looking forward to continuing this conversation in the future. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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With over a decade dedicated to AI research, Dr. Sumei reflects on I2R’s journey from big data analytics to the era of Generative AI, emphasizing large language models designed for Southeast Asia. Advocating for responsible AI, Dr. Sumei prioritizes societal benefit and sustainability over sheer technical ambition, urging a balanced, systematic approach to distinguish valuable applications from mere hype. Last but not least she shares her vision of AI as a force to enhance human creativity and address real-world challenges through sustainable innovation. --- > "The efficiency on top of the efficacy because it is critical that we will achieve this balance of cost and performance. And in addition to that, I think One more aspect we are emphasizing is actually how in the new era of AI, all-pervasive intelligence and pervasive connectivity, how do we bring human AI and machine into a cohesive coexistence and also cohesive collaboration so that we can have the AI machine to support human, empower, human, and at the same time. We look at actually the design of the workflows so that we are able to extract the value at the same time, also elevate the human to do more creative work. So this is one aspect. I think we have been hearing a lot, but how this is going to move forward is some efforts we have started and certainly, we look forward to gathering more ecosystem partners to embark on this journey together." - Sun Sumei ### Profile [Sun Sumei](https://www.a-star.edu.sg/i2r/about-i2r/i2r-management/sun-sumei?ref=analysepodcast.com), Executive Director, [Institute of Infocomm Research](https://www.a-star.edu.sg/i2r?ref=analysepodcast.com) (I2R), [Agency of Science, Technology & Research](https://www.a-star.edu.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (ASTAR) \[[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sumei-sun-8590814/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia I'm Bernard Leong and the advances made in the AI field are moving at an exponential rate. How should we think about the future of AI research? With me today, Sun Su Mei, Executive Director for the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Agency of Science Technology, and Research, Singapore (ASTAR). Sumei, it was great to be a fellow panellist with you at the Green Tech Festival Singapore 2024 on the topic AI Game Changer or Costing the Earth where we had a very interesting conversation on the topic. |Sumei, Welcome to the show. **Sun Sumei:** Thank you for having me. It's very exciting to have this session with you and discuss some of the burning issues in AI. **Bernard Leong:** The best part of doing a podcast is that we can do a deep dive. But before that, as for all my guests on the show, I want to know your origin story. How did you start your career? **Sun Sumei:** Absolutely, I’d be happy to share. As you may guess from my name, I originally come from China. After completing my undergraduate degree at Peking University, or Beida, I moved to Singapore to pursue my master's studies at Nanyang University \[or NTU\]. Soon after, I joined ASTAR and began my career with the Institute for Infocomm Research, also known as I2R. I’ve stayed in Singapore ever since, completing my PhD while working at the National University of Singapore. It’s been an incredibly exciting journey filled with opportunities. I’ve witnessed and participated in multiple waves of innovation and technological shifts, and it has been both thrilling and rewarding to navigate these changes alongside our research teams and ecosystem partners. **Bernard Leong:** Can you tell us about your role as the Executive Director of the Institute for Infocomm Research and the Institute's mission under ASTAR? **Sun Sumei:** Certainly. As you mentioned, I am currently the Executive Director of I2R, a leading digital technology institute. Our work spans various areas of digital technology, including artificial intelligence, communications, and cybersecurity. Our mission is to develop trustworthy, secure, and efficient AI and digital solutions to support Singapore’s ecosystem. We aspire to be the driving force of digital innovation in Singapore. For me, this means leading our team and collaborating closely with ecosystem partners to realize our mission. It’s an exciting journey, and certainly a challenging one, but incredibly fulfilling. **Bernard Leong:** I know that I2R has been at the forefront of applied research, collaborating with companies like Baidu on natural language processing years ago, and working with SD Engineering on autonomous driving. And if I’m not mistaken, one of your former executive directors, Geok Leng Tan, was the CEO of AIDA Technologies, which was recently acquired by a major insurance company. I2R has skillfully blended research with practical, commercial applications. Given your extensive background in academia and in leading science and technology initiatives, what valuable career lessons would you like to share with our audience? **Sun Sumei:** As I mentioned earlier, our mission is to be the innovation engine for digital technology within Singapore’s ecosystem. This role is incredibly fulfilling but also quite challenging. It’s rewarding because we can take our research and innovations and transfer them into industry applications that create real value for both our ecosystem partners and for Singapore as a whole. However, this also means that our work goes beyond theoretical or academic research. We need to translate research discoveries into engineering solutions that can seamlessly integrate with industry systems while balancing performance, cost, and economic impact. This makes our work both exciting and challenging. It’s essential for us to deeply understand both the research end and the needs of the industry, along with the challenges they face. Staying open-minded, actively listening, and continuously rethinking and adapting our approaches are all crucial in bridging these two worlds. This is an experience and lesson that I believe will always be relevant as we innovate alongside our partners. **Bernard Leong:** It comes down to understanding the pain points and balancing research with practical implementation—translating insights into technology that genuinely helps businesses solve their challenges. So, I invited you here today to delve into your perspectives on AI, especially as it's advancing at an unprecedented rate. Personally, as a lecturer at the National University of Singapore, I find myself constantly updating my lecture notes just to keep up! With your unique vantage point in observing AI’s growth and potential, what’s one aspect of AI’s current trajectory or potential that few others might be aware of? **Sun Sumei:** Thank you, Bernard. As you pointed out, we at I2R, along with our ecosystem partners, have been on this journey for over a decade. We began with big data analytics, transitioned into machine learning, and later into deep learning. Now, we’re in the era of Generative AI. Looking at this trajectory, it's crucial to strike a balance between benefits and costs so that we create, realize, and sustain value for both our ecosystem partners and the industry. Our focus isn't solely on foundational model development but also on making these models efficient and high-performing. For example, we’re exploring ways to enable "learning with less"—less data and minimal computational resources. I’m pleased to share one recent accomplishment in this area. Working with Singapore Airlines, we developed a suite of AI models—around ten, to be exact—that either have been deployed or are undergoing trials for operational readiness. These models enhance maintenance and fleet optimization, driving efficiency and peak performance across their operations. But our focus wasn’t only on model efficacy; a key aspect was integrating our “learning with less” philosophy. We designed a research program dedicated to minimizing data and resource needs, which we applied directly in this collaboration. This approach has been incredibly fulfilling and rewarding, and we’re committed to continuing along this path, finding balanced solutions with thoughtful trade-offs. **Bernard Leong:** During my time leading AI and machine learning at Amazon Web Services between 2019 and 2021, I worked closely with Singapore Airlines on their ML operations. They are among the most advanced teams I’ve encountered in the region. This collaboration with I2R on smaller, scalable models is an excellent example of practical AI deployment in the airline industry. Could you tell us about the current focus areas in AI research at I2R and the potential applications? I remember you discussed some intriguing aspects at the recent conference, and it would be great to revisit those here. **Sun Sumei:** Absolutely. I’m glad to provide more insight into I2R’s work. One of our latest initiatives is the National Large Language Model Development program, which focuses on creating language models for South Asian languages as well as Singapore’s national languages. At I2R, our specific focus within this program is on multimodality—particularly integrating speech into the large language model. Speech allows us to capture not just text but also elements of empathy and emotion, which enriches the information derived from the model. Our goal is to ensure these nuanced capabilities can be applied across a wide range of downstream applications, where this enhanced understanding can be both valuable and necessary. Another exciting initiative we’re part of is the newly launched Sectoral Center of Excellence for AI in Manufacturing, introduced by Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong. This initiative, which we call AIM (AI for Manufacturing), sees I2R as a key research contributor. Our vision is to collaborate with ecosystem partners to develop highly efficient AI models tailored to the complex challenges within the manufacturing sector. By embedding AI effectively, we aim to unlock the next wave of innovation and drive substantial value for Singapore’s manufacturing industries. **Bernard:** Regarding the large language model, I’d like to delve a bit deeper. Are you collaborating with the SeedLion team from AI Singapore? I believe they’ve developed one of the language models as well, or is your work more of an independent research line? **Sun Sumei:** Great question, and it really shows your understanding of the ecosystem. Indeed, SEALion is AI Singapore’s model focused on text-based large language applications. At I2R, we’re focusing on multimodality, as I mentioned earlier. Our model, which we’re calling Merlion, integrates not just text but also speech, with a particular emphasis on Singapore’s national languages. This national aspect is a core part of the model’s identity. Please stay tuned for our official launch. We’ll be sharing more details on MerLion’s capabilities, as well as our engagement with ecosystem partners, in the coming months. **Bernard Leong:** I look forward to hearing more about that. Shifting to a broader perspective, could you share any lesser-known insights or developments that might reshape how we think about AI and its societal role? **Sun Sumei:** Certainly. In our panel session, I touched briefly on the importance of balancing efficiency and efficacy. It’s critical to strike this balance to optimize both cost and performance. Beyond this, we’re increasingly focusing on fostering a seamless coexistence and collaboration between humans, AI, and machines in this era of pervasive intelligence and connectivity. Our aim is to design workflows that not only maximize value but also elevate human roles, allowing people to focus on more creative work. This human-centred approach is foundational to our efforts, and we’re actively building partnerships to push this vision forward. We’re excited to bring more ecosystem partners into this journey and explore the possibilities together. **Bernard Leong:** As AI becomes a core part of many digital tools we use—whether it’s Netflix recommendation engines, chatbots, or running queries on tools like ChatGPT—how do you think about balancing essential applications of AI with those that may be less necessary? **Sun Sumei:** It’s certainly an exciting area with immense potential, especially considering the broad range of tasks AI can handle that go beyond individual human capabilities. We also need to look at the knowledge we tap into when building AI models. Developing a robust knowledge graph from AI models allows us to refine and evolve the model without constantly revisiting raw data or large foundational models. This approach not only increases efficiency but also helps us address sustainability by reducing energy consumption as AI models evolve. **Bernard Leong:** Are there areas where you feel AI is being over-applied, perhaps for trendiness rather than actual need? **Sun Sumei:** Yes, absolutely. With all the initial excitement around AI, there’s naturally a lot of experimentation. For us as researchers, it's essential to take a systematic view, bringing awareness to guide both research and application. Working with industry and consumers, we aim to identify what constitutes responsible and balanced AI use, rather than simply using tools like ChatGPT just because they’re accessible and trendy. Right now, people are in the curiosity phase, but as that settles, we’ll see a shift toward more thoughtful and responsible applications of AI. **Bernard Leong:** I should mention to our audience that generating 1,000 cat images with AI has an energy impact—equivalent to driving a petrol car off-road for 6.4 kilometres! **Sun Sumei Leong:** Exactly. As you mentioned during our panel, creating awareness is essential. AI advocates like yourself, along with the research community, have a crucial role in raising public understanding of AI's impact. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, and as we discussed, responsible AI use is a critical topic. In your experience, how can industries and consumers distinguish between AI applications that genuinely add value and those that are simply overhyped? How do we ensure responsible AI becomes the norm? **Sun Sumei:** It’s a great point. Responsible AI requires thoughtful design and awareness. We need to help both industry and the general public understand the value and limitations of AI. By advocating for a balanced approach, we can guide responsible AI development and usage. **Bernard Leong:** Are there examples of impactful, responsible AI usage that stand out to you—examples that can inspire others who are navigating this space? **Sun Sumei:** Certainly. For instance, in our work with AI models, we see the value of large models, but we also emphasize efficiency. By techniques such as compressing and quantizing models, we make them leaner, which is particularly valuable in specialized enterprise applications. Sometimes, a tiny model can achieve the goal just as effectively as a large one. As researchers, we’re committed to finding this balance and maximizing AI’s potential responsibly. This journey will continue to unfold, offering more insights as we refine and adapt our approaches. **Bernard Leong:** How should we measure success in AI? Is it about achieving more technical breakthroughs—like OpenAI releasing advanced models or tools capable of code generation? Or should we instead focus on the impact AI has on humanity and sustainability as the primary measure of success? **Sun Sumei:** That’s a crucial question. I believe the idea of "AI for good" essentially translates to AI for humanity and sustainability. Success in AI doesn’t necessarily mean pushing for ever-larger models. Rather, it’s about finding the right model for the right use case, minimizing unnecessary complexity, and aiming for applications that contribute positively to society and the environment. There are also tremendous untapped opportunities in areas like scientific discovery. For example, AI can assist in uncovering sustainable materials, discovering new drugs, and advancing other critical research areas. In Singapore, we’ve already initiated research programs focused on these applications. These efforts represent another way we can harness AI for good, aligning with the broader goals of benefiting humanity and supporting sustainable progress. **Bernard Leong:** What’s one question you wish people would ask you more about AI? **Sun Sumei:** Ah, yes! I wish more people would ask, “What have you done to contribute to AI for good?” **Bernard Leong:** Great question! Well, let me ask it now: what have you contributed? **Sun Sumei:** Certainly! As I mentioned earlier, I2R has been on a 10-year journey with AI, filled with exciting and fulfilling successes alongside our ecosystem partners. Over the years, we’ve achieved meaningful advancements, but we’re also constantly facing new challenges. It’s an incredible role, being at the frontier of AI and finding ways to use it for the benefit of society and industry. This is something I’d love to share further with your audience and the wider ecosystem. I also hope for greater connections and partnerships as we continue along this journey, building on each other’s efforts to push AI forward in ways that truly make a difference. **Bernard Leong:** I know you’ve contributed greatly to AI through research and publications—just a bit of humour here! This brings me to my final question. AI is increasingly seen as key to solving many of the world’s pressing problems, from climate change to drug discovery, manufacturing, and healthcare. **Bernard Leong:** In your view, what would “great” look like when it comes to AI addressing these global challenges? What does success really mean in this context? **Sun Sumei:** True success would mean moving the needle in ways that traditional methods haven’t been able to achieve—tackling these issues more quickly and efficiently. For us as researchers, contributing to this kind of meaningful progress would be incredibly fulfilling. However achieving it is a long-term goal that requires collaboration and sustained effort. **Bernard Leong:** Sumei, thank you for coming on the show and sharing your insights so comprehensively—much more than the time allowed us during the panel! To close, I have two quick questions. First, are there any recommendations or perspectives that have inspired you recently? **Sun Sumei:** Thank you, Bernard. This is an interesting question. I’ve been reflecting on both the excitement around AI and its accompanying challenges. I believe a key recommendation for our community—and the public—is to adopt a more systematic approach to AI, one that moves us forward collectively. It’s an open question, but an important one. Striking a balance and applying a systematic approach might even require us to rethink workflows and common practices in significant ways. **Bernard Leong:** Before we wrap up, I’d like to give a shout-out to our friends at [GreenTech Festival](https://singapore.greentechfestival.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Their next event is set for November 14-15, 2024, in Los Angeles. If you’re tuning in from the U.S., be sure to check it out! As for this podcast, you can find us on YouTube, Spotify, and now on LinkedIn, where we also post our transcripts. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sumei. I’m excited to see the launch of the multimodal large language model! **Sun Sumei:** Thank you, Bernard. It’s been a pleasure. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. 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The panel delved into Southeast Asia's impressive digital growth, with the region’s economy reaching $263 billion in GMV and significant strides in profitability. The panellists examined the key themes, including Southeast Asia’s emergence as an AI hub, driven by $30 billion in AI investments, the rise of video commerce, and the region’s booming digital financial services specifically on embedded insurance. The conversation highlights challenges and opportunities in digital inclusion, AI infrastructure, and regional integration, providing a nuanced outlook on Southeast Asia’s potential. The episode concludes with each panellist sharing their vision for Southeast Asia’s digital future and success metrics for the next decade, emphasizing the region’s unique strengths and long-term global impact. --- > "The key message of the report is that the fundamentals of this region are critical, they’re clear, and businesses are doing exactly, I think, what they need to do for us to move ahead." - **Sapna Chadha** > "Given that one of the other themes we’ve had this year is trust, having a strong regulatory foundation and good constructs around that for digital financial services is critical to unlocking the next wave of growth here." - **Florian Hoppe** > "All 10 ASEAN nations have announced their own national strategic AI initiatives or plans, and ASEAN itself has actually released a report and guide on AI governance and ethics. So, I think if you put all that together, it’s very natural that Southeast Asia is, quite frankly, well-positioned to capitalize on the AI trend." - **Fock Wai Hoong** You can read the [full report here](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/report/?ref=analysepodcast.com). ### Panellists Profile: - Sapna Chadha, Vice President, Southeast Asia Google ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sapna-chadha-1128671/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - Florian Hoppe, Partner, Bain and Company ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-hoppe-09014b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - Fock Wai Hoong, Head of Southeast Asia, Temasek ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/wai-hoong-fock-b2b5602/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia I'm Bernard Leong and this is the fourth time in a row that I will be doing the [e-Conomy Southeast Asia Report 2024](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/report/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Google](https://google.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Temasek](https://temasek.com.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and [Bain & Company](https://www.bain.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I can do this using Google [NotebookLM](https://notebooklm.google/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which I used to prepare for this report, but I decided to go retro today and bring all my guests into a single studio and do the report in a conversational style. So with me today, Sapna Chadha, Vice President, Southeast Asia Google; Florent Hope, the partner from Bain Company, and, Fok Wai Hoong, head of Southeast Asia, Temasek. All of you, welcome to the show today. So, I'm going to start. Can you just briefly give us a short introduction of yourself, your current role, and coverage? Maybe we'll start with Sapna first. **Sapna Chadha:** I'm Sapna. I lead our Southeast Asia and South Asia frontier business at Google. I am responsible for the growth and impact of this region. Everything from government affairs, \[regional\] coverage to driving the growth of the business. **Florian Hoppe:** \[I'm\] Florian with Bain Company, the consulting firm. I cover technology for Bain in the \[Southeast Asia\] region. I have been out here in Asia for a while going on 20 years. **Fock Wai Hoong:** My name is Wai Hoong I wear two hats at Temasek. I lead our Southeast Asia business and also lead our technology and consumer investments across the Asia Pacific. **Bernard Leong:** Thank you for providing the report in advance. Let me first summarize the most interesting numbers from the report. - Today, Southeast Asia’s digital economy stands as proof that robust growth can indeed coexist with profitability. This year, we’ve seen remarkable advancements, with the sector reaching a GMV of $263 billion, reflecting a 15% year-on-year increase, along with $89 billion in revenue and $11 billion in profits – a figure that’s more than doubled over just two years. - Beyond the numbers, Southeast Asia is becoming a powerhouse for AI innovation. This region is attracting significant attention as a global AI hub, with $30 billion invested in AI infrastructure in the first half of 2024 alone. We’re seeing an incredibly dynamic ecosystem of startups and developers, positioning Southeast Asia to compete in areas like data centres and consumer applications. It’s worth noting that Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines are now among the top 10 countries globally in AI-related searches, demonstrating the enthusiasm and digital literacy fueling this trend and creating a ripe market for AI-driven solutions. - E-commerce, too, is reaccelerating, propelled by the rise of video commerce. This format has rapidly grown to account for 20% of e-commerce GMV, up from less than 5% in 2022 – a testament to the thriving creator economy and a clear signal of the evolving digital landscape here. Given all these key numbers, what would you say are the most significant takeaways from the report for businesses and investors operating in Southeast Asia? **Sapna Chadha:** Sure, I can start. You've done an excellent job summarizing all the key points. You've been doing this for four years. I think we've been at this for nine now. This is our ninth edition of the report. We've come a long way in terms of what we've been looking at in terms of metrics. We started with GMV, which you mentioned, which was growing very much in leaps and bounds. Some of our predictions we were behind on, right? We've seen now the incredible growth in GMV. Last year we introduced revenue for the first time and this year we went even a step further on profitability. I think this is the main message of the report, is profitability. The businesses in Southeast Asia have done an incredible job of looking at things from tightening incentives, looking at commissions, How do you, how are they using online advertising in a really interesting way? That has led to, you said it, its growth from in the last two years, 4 billion in 2022 to 9 billion last year. And now this year, 11 billion, which is just tremendous. So that is. The key message of the report, that is the fundamentals of this region are critical. They're clear, and businesses are doing exactly what they need to do for us to move ahead. The AI piece is the other part that I think is really interesting, and AI will help in this profitability journey. What we're seeing is that businesses can reach a return on investment in just 12 months of investing in AI. Okay. That's incredible, right? So 71% of businesses are reaching positive ROI from their investments. So we're seeing them do really interesting things to make sure that their businesses continue to be healthy. I think we're just in this excellent region, which has a tech-savvy, young population. Governments are very positive around. The positivity around A. I. and we're just getting started. So that's what I would say to start us off. No, I think Sapna summarized it well. And what we're impressed by is the continued dynamism of this industry. Despite all the headline news you may be hearing about issues in various pockets of the digital economy, we're still seeing double-digit growth in GMV. **Florian Hoppe:** We're seeing double-digit revenue growth, and we're seeing even higher double-digit growth in profitability. So, while this part of the economy in Southeast Asia has matured, and it's coming into its own, it's still on a significant growth trajectory and doing well across the region. It's true for all markets here. So, all markets in Southeast Asia are also showing double-digit growth on these metrics. So, quite excited that this continues to go well. Now, the funding landscape is, obviously still, A bit more challenging but with our companies hitting profitability and developing their own flag wheel of growth, we're quite positive about where this is going over the coming years. **Bernard Leong:** Wai Hoong, how would you see the report from the investor lens? **Fock Wai Hoong:** I think Sapna and Florian have both summarized it pretty well. I'd say if there's anything to add if there's one thing that investors should probably take away from the report. I think it's the sense of quiet optimism that the co-authors have for the digital economy. Last year we spent a lot of time talking about the funding winter. Now, this year we look across the last 12 months. while, as Florian mentioned, the funding environment remains reasonably subdued. Having said that, we are seeing some green shoots and some positive funding momentum. If you look at seed through series C for the first half of 2024 versus, the last half of last year. We're seeing total funding values go up about 8%. If you look and double-click into that, into the average deal sizes, there is greater conviction behind the companies that are doing well. So the average deal sizes have gone up about 20%, half and half. Now I think underlying all that is there's a continuing sense of innovation and entrepreneurship across the region. With core digital economy verticals starting to mature a little bit, you are seeing some newer, more nascent sectors start to spark investor interest. Areas such as enterprise software, and sustainability tech are coming up and beginning to track some investment dollars. So, I think, you combine all of that sense of innovation and entrepreneurship, the notion that business fundamentals are improving profitability, you know, moving in the right direction. All that is really what gives us that sense of quiet optimism. Now, I don't think we're ready to make the call that spring has sprung, but I do think that it's certainly getting warmer. **Bernard Leong:** We're in the right direction then. Based on this, Southeast Asia's digital economy's impressive performance, we already talked about the GMV revenue and profit. What are the key factors that are driving this robust growth amidst the sort of global economic challenges there? **Florian Hoppe:** Well, I mean, first of all, I think it's important to put the economic challenges into context. Now, globally, I think the economy is doing quite well. If you look at the U.S. economy, which has just been exceptional, the Asian markets have also been doing well. In the markets around us, India and China, but especially Southeast Asia, most markets have had growth rates above 5% in GDP growth. So it's, again, despite the high interest rate environment we're in, it's been a fairly healthy, broader economic environment. The digital economy in Southeast Asia just reflects that. We're seeing a continued shift into digital transaction channels, talk about digital financial services a bit more later, but payments \[and\] lending, all are going up quite sizably. People are gearing to the convenience of digital engagement, which has further lifted up the digital economy in the region. **Bernard Leong:** One thing is the 2024 Economy SEA report highlights several notable trends, we already talked about the e-commerce growth and the AI infrastructure. considering these developments, what key insights from the 2024 report have caused you to shift your perspectives into thinking about the Southeast Asia digital economy compared to your outlook in the 2023 report? **Fock Wai Hoong:** Yeah, so, you know, I think that there probably sounds like there are two questions in there. The first one, if you think about it from a funding perspective, we mentioned last year that four items were critical for us to exit the funding winter. You know, obviously, number one, there was a need for reasonable and rational evaluation expectations. There is a need for a proven monetization model. There is a need to drive towards the path to profitability. And lastly, there needed to be dependable exits. Now, the really good news, I think you start to see in the report this year, is that we've made great progress on three of those four. I think from a valuation expectation perspective, we've started seeing that both entrepreneurs and investors all recognize the economic reality we are in today with regard to where the interest rate environment is and the macro dynamics. And then certainly as you think about business fundamentals, businesses now at that early stage are being built with monetization as a key principle, and through all stages, you are seeing that path to profitability, that drive towards profitability being focused on in a way that is appropriate for their stage of development, all of which I think is quite promising. **Sapna Chadha:** I have to talk about AI. So last year, we were in early discussions around this, right? You would have said, why didn't we cover it as much last year? I think that we've seen a big shift in people talking about AI as a concept to now actually how they're putting it into place. That's why chunks of the report now focus on that shift and that change. We're seeing businesses leverage AI to have a positive impact on their business, and not just monetarily; they're doing things that are expanding their reach. For example, Gaming developers or online transport players can do things with language that they couldn't have done previously. So now they can reach new audiences, inbound and export, and they're able to look at things like batch routing and efficiency in the online transport space. Again, we've just seen a big shift, and that is not a coincidence, and that's what this report talks about. Fundamentals of Southeast Asia that are different. A lot of people may underestimate Southeast Asia's opportunities here. There is openness, you mentioned curiosity, so people are searching more. Not just consumers, but businesses as well. 11x increase in search interest in this space of AI. But outside of that, I would say beyond interest, you see, the opportunity that from tech positivity, the government's having a productive conversation around this and they're making investments and giving incentives such that more players are investing locally here. I think Southeast Asia is in a sweet spot. I'm sure we'll talk about it more in your coming questions, but that's really, I would say, the big difference and shift in how much things have changed in just one year. **Florian Hoppe:** Well, those were my two main talking points. Profitability \[and\] AI. I do have one more, which I think is great to see is the continued business dynamic we see for companies in this part of the world. One is the fact that despite the kind of evolution we've been through, there continues to be this high growth momentum that I mentioned. And two, I think how these companies are also growing on their own as they go international outside Southeast Asia. So a lot of activity with the big platform companies that reach beyond Southeast Asia, game developers from the region, which are playing a role way beyond Southeast Asia. So it's quite exciting to see actually that Southeast Asia is starting to play a bit more beyond its shores. **Fock Wai Hoong:** Maybe I can just add to a little bit, to build on what I've not mentioned earlier as well. I think, at some level, there is a shift, but it's a very natural shift. If you think about ultimately what we've been talking about all these years behind why Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing digital economies in the world. You think about that digitally savvy population. You think about the fast-growing middle-class demographic. And you think then, a little bit around, as Sapna mentioned and alluded to, and now the government engagement around AI. Just an interesting fact, all 10 ASEAN nations have announced, their national strategic AI, initiatives or plans. ASEAN itself has released a report and a guide on AI governance and ethics. So you put all that together, it's very natural that Southeast Asia is quite frankly well positioned to capitalize on the AI trend. **Bernard Leong:** I'm going to switch gears and we're going to talk first about e-commerce. E-commerce has reaccelerated in Southeast Asia, fueled by video commerce. Can you elaborate on the impact of video commerce on the SEA e-commerce landscape and its potential for future growth? **Sapna Chadha:** I can start. what's, I think, tremendous to see is that 20% of e-commerce is now video-based, right? And that is That's unique to this. The trends start in this world and I feel like catching up elsewhere. This is why as Google, we've just launched YouTube shopping in several markets in Southeast Asia because you see the aptitude of the creators in this space, but also the general lean-in from the consumer base. They're loving the videos. They're finding the information that they need from influencers, who are not just doing it to make money. They're doing it in terms of being helpful to the audiences, and you're seeing everyone lean in from the big commerce players that we work with, the creator ecosystems, the agency ecosystem, and so you're seeing a big shift in this. But I think that truly stands out, that 20%. **Florian Hoppe:** Well, I think the other support effect, as we mentioned earlier, is that e-commerce is probably one of the oldest and most mature sectors in this space, and it's just become ingrained in people's behaviour patterns. So we see two \[or\] three times transactions per month is now common for e-commerce. A lot of e-commerce users in Southeast Asia, of which there are hundreds of millions, which is just providing a great base to build on. We're seeing now the last boundaries unlocked. Some existing categories like electronics and fashion are highly penetrated, but you now see the move unlocking the last pieces of logistics around the cold chain for grocery, around bulky logistics for white goods and furniture, which will provide some further growth momentum for e-commerce over the coming years. **Bernard Leong:** Moving from e-commerce, I want to talk about the continued growth of digital financial services. I think digital payments are now getting a lot more widespread. I think last year was cash is no longer king. I remember that comment from Sapna and digital lending is now gaining traction. Can you talk about what are the factors driving this growth and what are the key challenges and opportunities for, say, digital financial service providers in Southeast Asia? **Florian Hoppe:** Yeah, good question. I mean, again, you mentioned payments already. Payments, at the end of the day, unlock this whole ecosystem. Cash on a mattress is never going to be in any type of other digital financial services product. We continue to see that trend playing out nicely. So going from 52% last year to 56% of total GTV this year. So actually growing. quite fast and widespread across markets as well. If you look at the penetration of QR codes, and just the adoption of account-to-account payment in different countries around the region, it also drives down the cost of payment, which has been a great overall story. On the back of this, you see lending and insurance doing well. And the key here we think is just solid regulatory frameworks that further drive consumer adoption, and driving consumer use cases. Consumers are keen to use these services. They often provide. Better value proposition, easier access and usability or lower cost than established channels. But given one of the other themes we've had this year is trust. Given the trust part of the equation, I think having a strong regulatory foundation and having kind of good constructs around that for digital financial services is critical to unlocking the next wave of growth here. **Fock Wai Hoong:** I think the only thing you have to ask your audience is how often they go to the ATM (automated teller machines). Have they gone to the ATM in the last 12 months compared to 5 years ago? The reality is digital payments and digital cash. **Bernard** **Leong:** I've got out a couple of times without my wallet and taken just the phone. Your phone does the payments as well. But one interesting thing that came out from this report this year was the concept of embedded insurance. I think this happens a lot in e-commerce and transport services. What is the potential impact of embedded insurance for digital financial service providers in Southeast Asia, and how would traditional insurance have to adapt to this new trend? Are they still part of, or do these providers also work with traditional insurance providers? **Florian Hoppe:** Oh, they participate. What makes embedded insurance interesting is, it's typically embedded in the purchase flow. So it's insuring your car ride. It's insuring your package before it gets delivered. It's travel insurance as you buy a trip somewhere else. So it's a very natural part of the purchase journey. It often plays to consumers' need to protect what they just bought in one form or another. We see that continue to see an uptick in different parts of the region. And for all the platforms, this is an important part of their profitability journey. So it's one of the adjacent services that they've gone into and that they're monetizing on. Now at the backend of almost every one of these is an insurer. So there are insurance partnerships, uh, which are backing up and subscribing the loan, the books that get built on the back of this, and providing these insurances as well. So it's very synergistic with the established insurance industry. Will never rival the scale of kind of bigger life and PNC insurance markets as well, but it's an interesting pocket of the insurance market that is emerging there. **Bernard Leong:** So I think one question that would come up for lending is regular regulatory changes and also interest rate adjustments Okay, and we just had a rate cut in September that can impact lending revenue. I think about how the digital financial services providers now deal with these challenges to ensure say sustainable growth of digital lending within the region itself. **Florian Hoppe:** Yeah, good question. so on the interest rate side, a lot of them have relatively short-term loans still, so it doesn't impact them as much because they can adjust life, uh, kind of with, with the market to kind of, uh, price and changes in the broader interest rate environment. Regulatory activity has become much higher, and in particular, consumer protection has played a much, much bigger role in all markets in the region which is a big net positive for this part of the world, um, it makes, uh, lending, I think, more secure for everybody who participates in the ecosystem, both the consumer and the companies who are providing the services. So we think that's actually kind of a big net positive, kind of doing this the right way. You will see that most digital financial services players are very kind of actively engaged in these regulatory dialogues and very supportive of what's coming there. **Bernard Leong:** What's the one thing you know about the economy, Southeast Asia, 2024 report that very few do? **Fock Wai Hoong:** So I mean, to be fair, I don't think there's anything I know that no one else does. The report is quite transparent and it's been a very collaborative team effort from all of us. I will say the one thing that, that continues to surprise me about the report, as you mentioned, we've continued to surprise ourselves with regards to the size of the digital economy not in all years, but in quite a number of the years that we put out the report. This year, in turn, I also continue to be pleasantly surprised. Because if you think about the pace at which companies have pivoted towards profitability, they've improved their business fundamentals. They've driven monetization, and very adeptly found ways to calibrate you know, the delicate balance between growth and profitability. That has been wonderful to see. **Sapna Chadha:** People probably don't know how much time we spend on this report, right? We all know: how and when we start in the year. This isn't like a three-month journey. We spend the whole year on it: the number of teams across the board, we all have our unique roles to play in terms of the deep intelligence on the commerce side from Bain, on all the industry side from Bain, the investor side from Temasek, Google has the consumer insights. But I would say even outside of that, it's how we all come together. it's not your typical report or just a report that is done by some analysts and gets stamped with some logos. There's a lot of genuine time and interest, but the one plug I'll say that nobody ever will probably take away and talk about from this year's report is around the state of the developer ecosystem. We have a few pages on it because it's something I deeply care about. Southeast Asia is very unique and probably doesn't get the credit that it deserves for what's happening in terms of game downloads that are generated by Southeast Asia developers. 12% of all downloads come from Southeast Asia developers, which is three times the share. If you think about GDP, it should have and it's not a coincidence. It's because of the amazing developers that I get to work with in this region every day, particularly in Vietnam, but across the entire region. **Bernard Leong:** I have been following this report since the first day it started till now, so I'm very impressed that every year you could churn this report. I just really wonder what is really in the background. **Florian Hoppe:** It’s nine years worth of Excel spreadsheets, and each year, some poor soul has to piece it all back together. Being an analyst at heart, I tend to get quite involved in this process, and it’s always an interesting journey. If I had to highlight one thing I’m particularly excited about, it would be the AI investments and the business opportunities they present for companies. What excites me most about AI is how it allows Southeast Asia to leverage the talent we already have. AI has shifted the landscape in the data space—from relying heavily on deep data science talent, which is still essential, to focusing more on prompt engineering and practical AI applications. This shift leans more toward business skills, which I believe could help alleviate some of the talent shortages we've historically faced in Southeast Asia. Hopefully, this will fuel the next level of growth we're aiming for with startups in the region. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2024/11/Group-Phone--1-.jpg) BTS: From the left: Sapna Chadha, Bernard Leong (our host), Florian Hoppe and Fock Wai Hoong in the Google Studio. **Bernard Leong:** That's a great segway to the next conversation we're going to have because AI dominates the conversation everywhere. One key point we really talk about is the significant infrastructure investment of US$30B for AI-ready data centres in Southeast Asia in the first half of 2024\. What are the primary motivations behind these large-scale investments and, who are the key players driving this infrastructure development? **Sapna Chadha:** Sure, I can start. When it comes to key players, we have hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, who play a crucial role in data centre investments, making data centre operators equally essential. Telcos are also key participants. In fact, I would argue that almost every major player is part of this ecosystem. These investments cover a range of areas, including data centres, cloud regions, and subsea cables. At Google, we’re working on three major subsea cable projects across Asia to bring data closer to home. This localization supports data sovereignty for the region, enhances connection speed, and ultimately improves the customer and consumer experience. Building this infrastructure is essential for the digital economy to flourish. These developments benefit not only consumers but also governments, which are providing incentives for further investments. We’re pleased to have recently made investments in Malaysia and Thailand, with Singapore already established, and Indonesia is also progressing quickly. This region is truly becoming critical on the global map, and with $30 billion invested in just the first half of this year, it’s clear that Southeast Asia’s significance is growing in a way we haven’t seen before. **Fock Wai Hoong:** Just to add to that, the numbers are certainly impressive. The $30 billion committed in the first half of this year aims to expand data centre capacity by about 50%. Underpinning all this investment is AI, which, as we often discuss, functions as a General Purpose Technology (GPT) with extremely broad applications across industries. Sectors ranging from manufacturing to retail to healthcare can all benefit significantly from AI's capabilities. AI has a profound impact, offering companies opportunities for both revenue generation and cost optimization. Like software, AI applications can be both horizontal, spanning multiple industries, and vertical, tailored to specific sectors—making it fascinating to watch. But to support this broad applicability, a robust AI digital infrastructure is essential. As an investor, I see two primary opportunity areas in AI: the enablers and the adopters. The enablers focus on building the digital infrastructure, which includes the semiconductor supply chain—a sector where Southeast Asia is starting to play a more meaningful role. Singapore, for example, has developed foundry capabilities, and countries like Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia are building capacity within the AI supply chain. This infrastructure growth supports the adopters: companies that will leverage AI to enhance their business operations. **Bernard Leong:** The report also highlights Southeast Asia’s unique position to compete in areas like end-layer applications—specifically user applications and data centres. What specific advantages do you see Southeast Asia having in these areas compared to other regions? **Sapna Chadha:** I might be biased since I spend a lot of time with startups, but the startup ecosystem here is truly dynamic, with some fascinating innovations emerging across various sectors. For instance, I recently met a startup using computer vision and machine learning to analyze video footage from stores and businesses. They’re applying this technology to proactively detect issues like employee safety risks and security breaches. In Indonesia, I’ve encountered startups focused on agriculture, working to prevent pest infestations and similar challenges. So, the range of innovation spans from agriculture and food to cutting-edge tech. There’s a clear drive here to address large, fundamental problems, which is one of Southeast Asia’s unique strengths. As a developing region, Southeast Asia has the advantage of “leapfrogging” in technology—similar to how we quickly adopted mobile technology. Now, we’re poised to do the same in AI because there’s a strong motivation to tackle these challenges and adopt new technologies as swiftly as possible. **Bernard Leong:** The report mentions several examples of how generative AI can bring tangible value to Southeast Asian businesses, like in travel planning and merchant onboarding. But let’s look beyond these. What other promising generative AI use cases are emerging in the region that could have significant societal and economic impacts? **Florian Hoppe:** Sure, I can suggest a few. I’d consider the opportunities in two areas. First, in the existing enterprise technology layer, generative AI presents immense potential. We often talk about “leapfrogging,” which perfectly describes what AI can enable here. Traditionally, implementing a new system meant extensive data preparation—cleaning and organizing data to ensure accuracy before starting. Now, AI can expedite this process. For instance, in a procurement diagnostic, you can reach meaningful conclusions with less pristine data, something that previously required thorough data cleaning. For businesses in Southeast Asia that may not have advanced data infrastructure, AI can be a transformative tool, creating a major performance boost. The second area is in startups and new businesses. There are significant opportunities in fields like education and remote healthcare. Imagine an AI-powered doctor on call. While we’re not fully there yet, even a decently trained AI doctor could be invaluable in remote areas, like parts of Sulawesi, where medical access is limited. Such innovations could unlock new business potential and further establish Southeast Asia as a hub for emerging market innovation. **Fock Wai Hoong:** I don’t have much to add to what Sapna and Florian have said. However, I’d emphasize that we’re seeing AI applications emerge on both the revenue and cost sides. On the revenue side, it’s particularly valuable for customer acquisition and engagement, broadening companies’ ability to reach, connect, and draw in customers—something I find quite fascinating. On the cost optimization side, AI is making an impact across various areas, from sales and marketing to procurement and supply chain management. These are all compelling spaces where AI can drive efficiency and enhance operations. Sapna: I’ll add one example on cost optimization related to coding. Right now, we’re seeing a lot of code being generated with AI, but it’s still reviewed and signed off by engineers. This approach speeds up development and leads to a quicker return on investment. It’s not about jobs disappearing but rather about increasing efficiency and accelerating returns, which ultimately benefits both the top and bottom lines. Wai Hoong: In fact, I recently saw a headline where Sundar announced that about 25-30% of new code was generated by AI. **Bernard Leong:** I believe that! I had an enterprise project that originally took nine months to complete, and I replicated it in just three weeks using a few well-structured prompts. Remembering the entire project myself, I was able to put it together quickly, and it worked as expected. Now, let me turn to you, Wai Hoong, with this question: What’s the one question you wish more people would ask you about the report? **Fock Wai Hoong:** As an investor, I’d love it if people asked how they could collaboratively help improve the exit environment in Southeast Asia. **Bernard Leong:** I will ask you this question as a follow-up. **Fock Wai Hoong:** So let’s dive into that. Earlier, I highlighted three critical factors—valuation expectations, monetization, and a path to profitability—that we’re now progressing well on. These are foundational to creating viable exit pathways, which is promising. However, to enhance exit opportunities, we also need greater engagement, especially since investors ultimately aim to see returns, and exits are crucial for that. We’re starting to see more private exit pathways, such as secondary sales between funds at different stages of a company’s lifecycle. But in the public markets, deeper engagement is needed. For instance, there’s been encouraging collaboration between the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and Thailand’s SET, creating depository receipt linkages to improve liquidity across these exchanges. Regulators in countries like Malaysia have also been working to streamline IPO approval timelines. I hope these kinds of initiatives and conversations continue. **Bernard Leong:** Absolutely, the discussion on DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) is a major focus among investors I speak with on the podcast. What about you, Sapna? **Sapna Chadha:** There’s often an assumption that we’re adding fewer new internet users each year since we had that initial rapid growth phase. While the growth rate may have slowed, we shouldn’t overlook how many new internet consumers are still coming online in this region. This continued influx is a major driver of the digital economy. This ties directly into the rise of video commerce. Video platforms are helping us reach new geographies and tap into previously underserved areas. Through video commerce, we’re empowering SMBs and small businesses, extending beyond metropolitan areas. As Florian mentioned, this growth isn’t limited to beauty products—people are buying across a wide range of sectors. The excitement and engagement generated by video commerce are enabling small businesses to reach new audiences and thrive. Sometimes there’s a perception that small businesses are being squeezed out, but I’d argue that these platforms are empowering them, providing opportunities they didn’t have before. So, while growth may not be as explosive as it was during COVID, it’s still very exciting—and I find it frustrating when people assume otherwise. **Bernard Leong:** How about you, Florian? **Florian Hoppe:** The one question? I have a similar point. I often feel frustrated that people don’t fully recognize Southeast Asia’s potential, or they downplay it in a global hierarchy as if it’s underperforming. **Fock Wai Hoong:** In reality, Southeast Asia has been an incredible space for the digital economy. For example, the region’s e-commerce GMV still surpasses that of India. While we have a way to go before reaching China’s scale, we’ve made substantial progress in adoption and penetration. This region has evolved significantly, with GDP per capita at levels comparable to many middle-income countries, and it continues to grow rapidly, benefiting from a resurgence in manufacturing and a recent surge in data centre investments. Long-term, I’m extremely bullish on Southeast Asia. As a group, we’d love to see it gain greater recognition on the global map as a prime area for investment and growth. To drive that point home, let’s reiterate the numbers Florian mentioned: double-digit growth in GMV, double-digit revenue growth, and even higher double-digit profit growth. This performance is especially impressive given the current global uncertainty, numerous challenges, and significantly higher interest rates across markets. **Bernard Leong:** You know, it’s interesting—before reading this report, most reports seemed focused on “resetting expectations.” But with this one, I didn’t feel the need for that; instead, it just calls for the patience to let growth unfold. So, that brings me to my closing question: What’s the outlook, and what would success look like for Southeast Asia as a region over the next decade? **Sapna Chadha:** What’s most notable is that profitability and growth aren’t coming at the expense of each other, and we see digital businesses in this region doing a fantastic job. I’m confident this trend will continue. This means that as the fundamentals strengthen, we’ll see greater digital inclusion, which has been a longstanding goal. We’re at a pivotal moment where supportive practices and regulations are helping businesses become more efficient and enabling them to expand into new areas. The region’s digital-savvy consumers are also driving new models, like video commerce, which can further boost digital inclusion. **Florian Hoppe:** For me, one key success metric in the next five to ten years would be achieving a deeper level of regional integration, particularly at the ASEAN level. Southeast Asia may not become the European Union, but we’re interdependent, and greater collaboration—such as cross-border payment systems and sector integration—would be a huge win. This would raise Southeast Asia’s global profile and help build champions that can compete beyond our borders and make a global impact. **Fock Wai Hoong:** I started this conversation noting the report’s optimism, and after today’s discussion, I feel even more confident about Southeast Asia’s digital economy. We’ve made impressive strides in reaching profitability, which is encouraging, but there’s still work to be done, especially in establishing strong exit pathways. AI will play a major role in helping the region leapfrog and accelerate its digital economy. To me, success means achieving greater regional cooperation and ensuring the availability of affordable and effective digital solutions for both consumers and companies. To make this vision a reality, it’s crucial that we invest in our workforce, ensuring people have the digital literacy, education, and upskilling needed to benefit from this growth. This way, each generation can share in the prosperity. **Bernard Leong:** This has been a fantastic conversation on the ninth annual Economy Southeast Asia Report for 2024\. As they say, we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a year but underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade. Next year marks the 10th anniversary of this report, and I’d love to continue this discussion with you all to see how 2025 shapes up. Thank you all for tuning in. We’ll provide links to the report so you can dive deeper into Southeast Asia's evolving digital economy landscape. Thanks very much, everyone! **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. 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Kicking off with the story of Jay’s remarkable career in building cutting-edge data centres, we dive into the explosive growth fueled by AI and the innovative cooling and energy solutions Digital Edge is pioneering to address environmental challenges. Jay also examines the impact of advanced AI chips on next-generation data centre engineering and shares his vision of what great would look like to design efficient and sustainable infrastructure in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets. --- > "So if you look at this, according to this recent structural research report, the data center industry will spend 100 billion dollars, and about 50 percent of that growth will be happening in APAC. So, this is massive growth. If you look at the data centers, they have to be built where people are to better support them. But we have a new kid on the block. It's called AI servers, and it's something I have never experienced before in any industry, and this is massive. It'll do a lot of things, but it has to do data processing. So you cannot have all these data centers in, let's say, North America, have people in the APAC area grab that data, send it back to the U.S. or North America, do all the processing, and then send it out to APAC. I just don't see that happening. So, they're building the data centers closer to the users, where people are. And then you do all the processing there. The growth is going to be gigantic, and that's what we are seeing today." **\- Jay Park** **Jay Park**, Chief Development Officer from [Digital Edge](https://www.digitaledgedc.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jay-park-b5b579335/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the edited transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and one of the key components to have generative AI is data center infrastructure. With me today, Jay Park, Chief Development Officer from Digital Age, will help me understand the data centre landscape in the age of generative AI. Jay, welcome to the show. **Jay Park:** Good morning, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** It’s a pleasure to have someone with your expertise on the show to help us decipher the data centre landscape. As always, we love hearing the origin stories of our guests, so could you share how your career began? **Jay Park:** My career began in 1986 as an electrical engineer, primarily working in the power plant and semiconductor industries. I supported these sectors until 1999 when much of the semiconductor industry moved out of the U.S. At that time, I had the fortunate opportunity to enter the data centre industry, where I've worked ever since—spanning the last 25 years. **Bernard Leong:** How did you eventually become the Chief Development Officer of Digital Edge? I also understand you had a stint with Facebook. **Jay Park:** Yes, after my time with Facebook, I was planning to retire in Korea. But as a native Korean, I felt something was missing from my career—I wanted to give back to Asia in a meaningful way. Then some former colleagues approached me with the idea to start a company, which felt like the perfect opportunity to make a tangible impact in the Asian market. I truly love what I do now." **Bernard Leong:** Given such a long, tenured career journey, what are the interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? **Jay Park:** "The data centre industry is, in many ways, similar to the car industry. Every year, new car models come out with innovative features, but in data centres, the pace of technological advancement has been much slower. **Jay Park:** If you look at the server market, however, server technology has been changing rapidly. Back in 1999 and 2000, during the dot-com boom, we were seeing around 1 to 2 kilowatts per capita. Over time, this capacity grew gradually, eventually stabilizing at around 8 to 12 kilowatts per capita.But in just the last 18 months, we've seen a leap from around 10 kilowatts per capita to an astounding 130 kilowatts per capita. And this upward trend doesn’t seem to be slowing—there are even rumours of even higher-density cabinets emerging. The data centre industry and its construction practices need to catch up, understanding the demands inside the facility so we can design infrastructures that will endure for the next 30 years. Absolutely. **Bernard Leong:** Wow, the energy demands are increasing so rapidly that even the infrastructure side needs constant innovation to keep up with the growing global demand. This brings us to today’s main topic: data centres in the era of AI. Since you’re here, could you provide an overview of Digital Edge, along with the company's mission and vision as a leading data centre platform? **Jay Park:** First, we don’t aim to be seen as just a data centre co-location company; I prefer to think of us as a data centre technology company. There are many challenges today, especially around power efficiency and reducing water usage. We also face issues with power capacity, and there are numerous moving parts in the industry right now. As a company, our mission is to bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries. We’re working to close that gap so that everyone can access the same level of digital infrastructure. With financial backing from Stone Peak—totalling one billion dollars—we’re fortunate to have the resources to expand our data centre network freely. Since our founding in 2020, we’ve grown to 17 data centres across the Asia-Pacific region with over 400 employees. Looking forward, we aim to achieve 800 megawatts of capacity by 2028, though my personal ambition is to reach one gigawatt. We’re scaling quickly and innovating within the data centre industry, positioning ourselves as leaders. Our hope is that others in the field will watch our progress and follow our lead. **Bernard Leong:** To set the context, what was the total market opportunity that Digital Edge is specifically targeting in the data centre business across the Asian market? I understand that you are more global based on my research of how Digital Edge operates. **Jay Park:** According to a recent structural research report, the data centre industry is projected to spend $100 billion, with about 50% of that growth occurring in APAC. This is massive growth. Data centres need to be built close to where people are to support them effectively, especially with the emergence of AI servers, which I’ve never seen anything like before in this industry. AI servers require extensive data processing, and it’s simply not practical to process all this data in North America, and then send it back to users in APAC. Data centres are therefore being built closer to users in the APAC region, where processing can occur locally. The growth here is going to be immense, and that’s exactly what we’re witnessing today. **Bernard:** I completely agree, especially given my background as the former Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Amazon Web Services in Southeast Asia. Hyperscalers like AWS are increasingly active in the region, with data centres already established in Malaysia and Indonesia, and with Thailand and Vietnam likely coming online soon.Since I typically work on the end-user side, helping customers utilize cloud infrastructure with AI applications that relies on these data centres, I’m particularly interested in understanding the supply chain involved. Could you provide a high-level overview of the data center supply chain—from initial planning and construction to full operational status? **Jay Park:** In the past, data centres were typically much smaller. A campus with 10, 20, or even 30 megawatts was considered large. But with the rise of AI, no one is interested in a 30-megawatt campus anymore. Now, projects often start with 5 to 10 megawatts, with plans to scale up to 50 or even 100 megawatts, so the scale has grown exponentially. "Since \[the\] COVID \[pandemic\], however, the supply chain has been significantly impacted. Construction demand surged, but manufacturing companies struggled with part availability, causing major equipment deliveries to stretch to as long as two years. To address these delays, we’re ordering long-lead items much earlier—sometimes even before breaking ground—and reserving manufacturing slots where possible. We’re also using skid-mounted equipment pads, which allow us to assemble interconnected equipment on a single platform. While the building’s foundation and structure are under construction, we can prepare these equipment skids in parallel, cutting down on project time. To streamline procurement further, we’ve adopted a standardized, 'cookie-cutter' design, where we repeat the same layout and equipment across projects. This way, procurement starts well before construction begins, helping us stay on schedule despite supply chain challenges. **Bernard Leong:** If I can dig deeper into this: you mentioned that early data centres required around 10 kilowatts, but today you're aiming for a capacity of 1 gigawatt. How does this shift impact the structural and energy requirements for data centers on such a large scale?" **Jay Park:** The difference is massive. With power needs at that level, you can’t simply rely on utility feeders; you have to build an on-site substation, bringing in high-voltage power and then stepping it down. A substation requires a larger land area, which makes it nearly impossible to build these large-scale data centres in metropolitan areas—not only due to power limitations but also because residents don’t want high-voltage lines running through their neighbourhoods. So, large data centres often need to be built further out. **Bernard Leong:** That’s why big tech companies like Google and Amazon are exploring options like SRMs (small-scale nuclear reactors) or situating data centres right next to power plants to get a direct energy feed. Microsoft is even considering options like Three Mile Island. **Jay Park:** Exactly. Many people don’t realize just how much power 1 gigawatt represents—it can supply about 250,000 households or a million people, like a large city. Managing this kind of power demand with only a few utility feeders just isn’t feasible, so building substations is essential. Another challenge is the nature of power consumption in AI-driven data centres. During AI processing, power draw can remain steady but then spike unpredictably for a few seconds before settling again, which complicates capacity planning. Data centre users must buy enough capacity to handle these surges, whether or not they consistently use that power. To address this, we’re developing an external power-shaving system. This setup would allow users to purchase less peak capacity by smoothing out demand spikes, benefiting both users—who save on excess capacity—and utilities, which benefit from a steadier power draw. **Bernard Leong:** How does the concept of modular data centre design evolve, and what advantages does it offer for building efficient and scalable infrastructure, from your perspective? **Jay Park:** Many companies are now exploring modular data centres, and I have experience constructing them with a previous company. The main benefits are speed and efficiency. You can build the core of the data centre faster and with less material since everything is assembled in the factory, which also enhances quality control. However, there are some limitations. Transporting these modules from the factory to the site comes with height restrictions, which can limit the design. One challenge with modular data centres is flexibility over time. If you build a traditional data centre, you can future-proof it by incorporating higher ceilings or additional space, anticipating increases in density. The shell or exterior construction is relatively inexpensive compared to the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems, so investing in a bit more space initially can pay off. Density demands are only increasing—rumour has it that we could soon see densities as high as 300 kilowatts per capita. NVIDIA’s current Blackwell cabinet already draws 130 kilowatts per capita, and as you can imagine, that requires extensive cabling, fibre, and even liquid cooling, which fills up the ceiling and infrastructure quickly. Modular data centres, while efficient, lock you into a set configuration, making it challenging to adapt or expand later as density increases. So, while the modular approach has clear advantages—faster construction, material efficiency, and higher quality from factory assembly—I am cautious about the lack of flexibility for future growth. **Bernard Leong:** With the rising demand for faster data processing and delivery, how does Digital Edge balance efficiency, scalability, and cost in data centre design? As a data centre technology company, I imagine there are some necessary trade-offs. **Jay Park:** For us, it starts with understanding exactly what’s going into the data centre. The more we know about the internal components, the better we can design the infrastructure around them. Density is increasing significantly, so we’re moving well beyond air cooling. Currently, air cooling works through a water-to-air system: water is chilled, passed through coils, and then cools the air. But air cooling is becoming less viable, and we’re shifting towards liquid cooling, which is far more energy-efficient. Liquid cooling doesn’t require ultra-cold water; in fact, we can use local water temperatures to cool components like GPUs directly. By eliminating the need to convert water to air, our power usage effectiveness (PUE) improves, boosting overall efficiency. When we talk about liquid cooling, I’m referring to more advanced systems than traditional setups. Today's liquid cooling typically uses a chilled water loop and a condenser water loop, where the condenser water is cooled in an open cooling tower. We’ve moved to a closed-loop system, using the condenser water directly to cool the cabinets, which removes the need for additional energy transformations. **Bernard Leong:** That’s much more efficient. **Jay Park:** Exactly. Reducing energy conversions, whether electrical or mechanical, is key to optimizing efficiency. Fewer conversions mean less energy loss, so that’s where our focus is moving forward. **Bernard:** That's a great point. What's one thing you know about data centre engineering in Asia-Pacific, or even globally, that few people are aware of? **Jay Park:** When I entered the Asia-Pacific market about four and a half years ago, I noticed they were using very outdated technology. Many companies still cling to old methods, and it’s a challenge to break that barrier. At Digital Edge, we built our first greenfield data centre in Manila and deployed an innovative cooling technology, achieving a PUE below 1.2\. In a hot, humid climate like Manila’s, where achieving this efficiency level is almost unheard of, we’re showing the industry what’s possible. We’re also transparent about our data—we’re sharing it with the industry instead of keeping it hidden. This openness is essential for progress. Personally, I’m not excited by simply following in others' footsteps; like the auto industry, where each new model brings improvements, I believe data centres need that same mentality shift, especially here in the Asia-Pacific region." **Bernard Leong:** Could the approach you took in Manila be applied further south in similarly tropical regions? **Jay Park:** "Yes, definitely. Our technology, called StatePoint Liquid Cooling (SPLC), was developed with Facebook around a decade ago. We rigorously tested it, even in harsh environments, and Facebook has since deployed it in their Singapore data centre, achieving a PUE of 1.19—similar to what we achieved in Manila. To explain SPLC simply, I like to use an analogy. When I was a child in Korea, we didn’t have refrigerators, so my family would store drinking water in a clay pot. The clay’s porous structure allowed for slight evaporation, which kept the water cooler than tap water. SPLC works similarly, with a membrane that acts like a clay pot, containing tiny pores that allow evaporation without leakage. When hot air passes through, it cools the water, creating a significant temperature drop. In Manila, SPLC performed so well during commissioning that we struggled to even turn on the chillers—the SPLC handled nearly all the cooling. We keep a 'pony chiller' on standby to assist if SPLC needs support, but in our tests, SPLC alone maintained our target temperatures, achieving a PUE of 1.193. **Bernard Leong:** Another fascinating aspect of data centres is the role of chips, especially given the rapid advancements in AI. Since I work in the AI space, could you explain how NVIDIA’s AI chips, or others like Tenstorrent or Groq, impact data centres? How critical are they to your business?" **Jay Park:** As I mentioned earlier, understanding what goes into the data centre is essential. The rise of AI chips like NVIDIA’s has been extremely disruptive, especially in terms of power density. Previously, we expected power demands to increase gradually, from 8 to 10 kW per capita to perhaps 20 or 30 kW per capita over time. But instead, the demand shot up—from 10 kW to an astonishing 130 kW per cabinet almost overnight. This has left the industry scrambling to adapt. There’s also ongoing debate around cooling methods. For instance, some setups require PG 25 cooling, while others need direct water cooling. NVIDIA manufactures the chips, but their servers are built by a variety of companies, each with different cooling specifications. This means one client might require direct cooling while another prefers PG 25, each with distinct operating temperatures. In addition, transitioning from existing water-to-air cooling systems to these more complex methods adds another layer of complexity. Ideally, we’d have a standardized operating temperature, but with different manufacturers specifying varying temperatures, that’s unlikely. So we’re constantly navigating these challenges to accommodate different setups within a single data centre environment. **Bernard Leong:** Right, so with each new chip generation, there are different requirements for energy efficiency and cooling. It seems like every advancement changes the cooling approach needed for data centres. **Jay Park:** "Exactly. In the past, even as power density increased, we could still manage cooling with air. But now, air cooling alone can’t handle the heat generated by AI servers, so we’re scrambling to adapt. Today, we see many companies offering different types of Cooling Distribution Units (CDUs), each with their unique methods. This creates an additional challenge for colocation and hyperscaler providers, who need to remain flexible enough to support various cooling requirements for different customers. **Bernard:** Given these advancements, what has changed your perspective on cooling technologies in data centre engineering over the past 12 months? **Jay Park:** For me, it’s clear that we need to move to liquid cooling systems. I strongly recommend a closed-loop system, whether through StatePoint Liquid Cooling (SPLC) or hybrid cooling. This approach uses condensed water directly to cool the AI chips, which I now see as essential for efficiently managing the intense heat generated by modern AI servers. **Bernard Leong:** You've been at the forefront of data centre design, from your time at Facebook to now at Digital Edge. What are some of the key principles for designing data centres for maximum efficiency? **Jay Park:** One of the most important principles is minimizing energy transformation steps. For instance, in electrical systems, the greatest energy loss often occurs at the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). Converting AC to DC and back to AC can lead to energy losses of 6–10%. Even with high-efficiency UPS options available today, there’s still substantial energy loss. The same applies to mechanical systems: cooling processes often involve several conversions, like changing water to air and back again, and each transformation step reduces overall efficiency. Reducing these steps is essential for achieving optimal efficiency. **Bernard Leong:** To achieve this efficiency, what innovative approaches have you implemented at Digital Edge to reduce energy consumption while maintaining performance? **Jay Park:** I’ve focused on two major innovations. During my time at Facebook, I developed a UPS-less power distribution system, which eliminated the need for a centralized UPS. This design, now widely used by large companies, is part of the Open Compute Project (OCP) server design. At Digital Edge, we’ve deployed the StatePoint Liquid Cooling (SPLC) system in hot, humid environments like Manila and Jakarta. This system has enabled us to achieve a PUE below 1.2—a level of efficiency that’s virtually unheard of in the APAC data centre industry. **Bernard Leong:** Water usage in cooling systems and overall energy consumption are significant environmental challenges for data centres. What solutions and technologies is Digital Edge exploring to make meaningful progress toward ESG goals? **Jay Park:** I’m glad you asked because this is a subject I feel passionately about. Addressing water usage in data centres requires a holistic approach. Often, we only consider water used directly by the data centre, but we need to look upstream—specifically at the water required for power generation. According to IEEE, producing just one kilowatt-hour of power (the amount needed to keep a 100-watt light bulb on for an hour) requires about 95 litres or 25 gallons of water. Now, think about a 100-megawatt data centre campus, which is a fairly standard size today. If we improve our Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from, say, 1.5 to 1.4, we could save enough water annually to fill 1,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This level of water savings underscores the importance of incremental PUE improvements—not only for energy efficiency but also for water conservation. Imagine lining up 1,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools side by side—it would look like a lake, right? **Bernard Leong:** I can see why you’re moving toward a closed-loop system to prevent water waste. **Jay Park:** Exactly. While complete elimination of water waste isn’t possible, systems like SPLC (StatePoint Liquid Cooling) can reduce water usage by up to 40%, depending on the location. For a 100-megawatt data centre, that’s equivalent to saving nearly half of those 1,500 Olympic pools’ worth of water each year. That’s a significant amount. And remember, the type of cooling system we select can have an even greater impact. SPLC, for instance, delivers substantial savings. But water usage isn’t only a concern at the data centre level; it’s also a huge factor in power generation. Improving PUE has a ripple effect on water conservation, especially upstream at power plants, which is often where the biggest water savings can be achieved. **Bernard Leong:** There have been so many advancements in data centre technology recently. Which ones excite you the most, and how do you see these technologies shaping the future of the industry? **Jay Park:** Water-saving technologies are incredibly promising, and while SPLC (StatePoint Liquid Cooling) is a great innovation, I believe it’s only the beginning. I hope the industry continues to build on this foundation or even develop better solutions. Beyond cooling systems, I’m also really excited about what we’re developing on the electrical side. For instance, the Hybrid Super Capacitor (HSC) that we co-developed with a company in Korea offers a safer alternative to lithium-ion batteries, which can overheat due to chemical reactions and pose a fire risk. The HSC operates differently. Since there’s no chemical reaction, it doesn’t generate heat or risk combustion. Additionally, it doesn’t require a temperature-controlled environment, so it can be used in a wide range of conditions. We’ve already developed it to replace traditional UPS batteries, and now we’re going further. This device will support power shaving, which reduces energy demand spikes. Unlike batteries that take hours to recharge, the HSC recharges in minutes—sometimes even seconds—allowing it to handle sudden spikes effectively and make our systems more resilient. **Bernard Leong:** That’s impressive, managing both backup and power shaving in one device. **Jay Park:** Exactly, two functions in one. We’re not far from making it widely available, and I intend to share this technology openly. Too often, industries like nuclear or aviation tend to keep these kinds of innovations to themselves. But in our field, sharing advancements that improve energy efficiency and reduce environmental impact benefits everyone. It’s not just a choice—it’s a duty to make a better world for future generations. **Bernard:** So, what's one question you wish more people would ask you about data centre engineering? **Jay Park:** I’d say it’s about being bold—taking calculated risks and not waiting for the perfect moment because it will never come. I encourage people to step out of their comfort zones and try new things. With a thoughtful approach, those bold moves are often what drive progress. **Bernard:** Great point. For my closing question: what does ‘great’ look like for Digital Edge as it builds and manages data centres? **Jay Park:** As I mentioned earlier, we aspire to be known as a data center technology company, leading the industry forward. We’ll keep developing new products, refining systems, and improving metrics like PUE. We’re committed to openness—sharing what we learn to help everyone grow together. For us, that’s both our mission and our responsibility. **Bernard Leong:** I wish you all the best with that vision. I've learned so much from this conversation about the intricacies of data centre engineering. To wrap up, could you share any recent recommendations that have inspired you? **Jay Park:** Actually, on a recent flight, I watched a Discovery Channel program about next-generation power sources. Scientists are working on a project where satellites equipped with solar panels are positioned outside Earth’s orbit, capturing sunlight 24/7 and transmitting this clean energy back to Earth via electromagnetic waves. It doesn’t matter if it’s cloudy or nighttime—it’s an uninterrupted energy source. When I heard about this, I thought it was the coolest concept and hope I get to see it realized in my lifetime. **Bernard Leong:** With the advances in technology, we may well see it. How can my audience connect with you? **Jay Park:** "I often speak at conventions and conferences, so you can find me there, or reach out through our company’s contact page. If anyone has something interesting to share, I’d love to learn more." **Bernard Leong:** Thank you, Jay. It’s been a pleasure having you on Analyze Asia. I’ve gained so much from this conversation, and I’m sure our audience has too. I look forward to chatting with you again. **Jay Park:** Thank you for having me. I truly appreciate it. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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Arnaud shares his insights on the evolution of late-stage funding and the resetting of expectations in the region’s venture capital scene. He also offers valuable advice to founders on how to navigate the challenging fundraising climate and what success could look like for the region in the coming years. --- > "So if you have 1 billion to invest, we're not expecting you the same. return that if you invest 10 million. So, then at that time, when all this money flew to Southeast Asia, people think in Southeast Asia, Oh, we made it. Now all the world looks at us. We're finally a good ecosystem. Everyone will invest in us, but that is just the tide right? When the tide withdraws, the first place they're going to go out will be Southeast Asia because it's not the one offering the best outcome for them. So that is going out, and I don't think so it's coming back at any time. So people shouldn't expect to get those people to be as aggressive as they have been there. Lastly, I mean, two things. One, a great company will always raise capital. The top one will always find their way. So there's no issue for those. The thing is for the one just below them. So that will be very difficult for those people. And then you have, you may have different paths. Some will have to be way more capital-efficient for sure." - Arnaud Bonzom **Arnaud Bonzom,** Founder of Black Mangroves and Angel Investor ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnaudbonzom/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ArnaudBonzom](https://x.com/ArnaudBonzom??ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and the venture capitalists in Southeast Asia are working out how to return their DPI for their LPs. What's the future moving ahead in a non-zero interest rate era for VCs in Southeast Asia? With me today, Arnaud Bonsom, founder and managing director of Black Mongroves and an angel investor within the Southeast Asia ecosystem will help us work out whether we should reset our expectations again for the Southeast Asia startup ecosystem. So Arnaud, welcome to the show again. **Arnaud Bonzom:** Thanks for having me, Bernard. **Bernard Leong:** Yes. the last time we spoke was somewhere around 2018\. So since our last conversation. What have you been up to? **Arnaud Bonzom:** We’ve experienced quite a lot, especially during the COVID era. Recently, I’ve been more active with angel investing and have also become an LP in several funds. This has given me a broader perspective on the ecosystem, not just in this region, but also in Europe and the USA. **Bernard Leong:** So the last time you came on the show, I know you have already shared some lessons. Over this past decade, what are the lessons now you would share with my audience that you have learned? **Arnaud Bonzom:** If you look at the \[Southeast Asia startup\] ecosystem, I had the opportunity to get involved in the startup scene in the South about 13 years ago. You’ve had the chance to observe it for even longer. Back then, we thought it was early, but in hindsight, it was incredibly early, even 13 years ago. At that time, we thought it was early, and even now, we still feel it's early. Our expectations back then were that the ecosystem was in its early stages, but it’s clear today that it’s still very much in its infancy. If you look at any metrics, it’s apparent that the Southeast Asia startup ecosystem is just beginning. We’ve bought into the narrative that Southeast Asia is a large, unified market, but is it really? Why do we group these countries together and call it Southeast Asia? What’s the reasoning behind that? There’s also an issue of perspective. We often compare the region to single countries like China or India, even though, despite their size and complexity, they are still just one country, whereas Southeast Asia is made up of many diverse nations. We also see comparisons between Southeast Asia and individual countries like Germany. But why do we take a region, sometimes referred to as ASEAN, without a unified currency, government, or regulation, and benchmark it against a single country like Germany? We don’t even compare it to Europe or the Eurozone as a whole. I think the perspective has often been misguided, with efforts to convince us that Southeast Asia's moment has arrived. But in reality, it’s still very early. We’re still in the early stages. That’s why the recent [Lightspeed \[Ventures\] Report](https://lsvp.com/stories/southeast-asia-resetting-expectations/?ref=analysepodcast.com) highlights that, when you look at the data, it’s clear the region is just at the beginning of its growth. **Bernard Leong:** We’ve met at several conferences recently, the most recent being the [Tech in Asia SYNC AI](https://sync.techinasia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) conference. We discussed the Lightspeed Partners report titled [*Southeast Asia: Resetting Expectations*](https://lsvp.com/stories/southeast-asia-resetting-expectations/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I’ve also come across a few other VC reports with similar insights. We went through the hype phase, followed by the period of disillusionment, and now we’re all working towards resetting expectations. To kick off the conversation, there are a few key themes from the Lightspeed report that I’d like to explore, and we’ll be sure to include a link to it. The first part of the report I’d like to discuss focuses on the global economic challenges, especially as we’ve moved into a post-ZIRP era—a term coined by people in Silicon Valley. Additionally, there have been several revised growth forecasts for Southeast Asia. However, according to the well-known [Google, Bain, and Temasek report](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/report/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Southeast Asia’s GDP reached $200 billion three years ahead of expectations. From your perspective, how do you view this new outlook for the region? What does it mean for the resilience of the startup ecosystem, particularly considering that I work closely with AI founders, and as an AI startup founder myself, I’ve noticed a more pessimistic view when it comes to the fundraising landscape? **Arnaud Bonzom:** I’d say the outlook is more realistic now. It’s not as bright or as easy as some might have expected. A few years ago, many people began their entrepreneurial journeys during the COVID era, when there was an abundance of capital, and fundraising was relatively easy. If that’s what you’re used to, it’s not a good benchmark for today’s reality. When you look at the region, yes, it’s growing rapidly. For example, the GDP growth rate is around 5%, which is something European countries would be thrilled to achieve. Many of them struggle to reach even 1% or 0.5%. But it’s important to remember that growth percentages depend on where you’re starting from. It’s much harder to grow when you have a $2-3 trillion economy than when you're at $1 trillion. That’s something people often overlook—while Southeast Asia is growing faster than regions like Europe, we’re starting from smaller numbers. Take Indonesia, for instance. Its GDP is now close to that of the Netherlands at around 18 million despite having a population of 260 to 270 million people. Indonesia is between Spain and Netherlands. That gave a sense that it was very early. We’re still in the early stages. When you look at disposable income—not just for the top 1%, but even the top 10%—it’s still quite low because the region is just beginning to develop. It’s important to keep that perspective in mind. You also see many founders in Southeast Asia start in Singapore and then expand to Indonesia. But, as I mentioned, the combined GDP of Southeast Asia is roughly equivalent to Germany’s. I don’t know any founders who would say, 'I’m just targeting the German market, and that will be enough,' nor any VCs who would back that vision, saying it’s bold enough. Yet, many investors and founders in Southeast Asia are content with having a vision that’s limited to the region. Unfortunately, for many businesses, Southeast Asia is still too small a market. There are a few exceptions, like certain fintech companies, which can be big enough. Just take a look at the Forbes list of the 200 largest public companies globally—it's incredible how many of them are banks. I don’t recall the exact number, but there are hundreds. So, in some verticals, Southeast Asia’s market size might be sufficient. However, when you compare it from a different perspective, such as looking at India, which is actually smaller than Southeast Asia in terms of market size, the dynamics can shift. India, with nearly twice the population of Southeast Asia, presents an interesting comparison. Many B2B founders in India, like those at Zoho or Freshworks, don’t focus on the Indian market initially. Instead, they target the U.S. first and only later consider India. Even though India seems more uniform than Southeast Asia, it’s not entirely consistent—there are still regional differences. However, it shows that even in India, B2B founders often prioritize the U.S. over their home market. This could serve as a model for Southeast Asian founders as well. How do you build a business aimed at the U.S. market? There are founders already doing this. Just a few weeks ago, I met a founder who raised nearly $6 million. Their team is based in Singapore, but they are solely focused on the U.S. market and haven’t raised any capital from Southeast Asian investors. They’ve flown completely under the radar. There’s definitely potential here. You can look at Israeli founders, for example. They don’t focus on the Israeli market because they know it’s too small. Southeast Asia risks falling into the same trap that we had for many years in France, where founders believed the market was big enough until they realized it wasn’t. It’s often better to quickly shift to a larger market, like the U.S. unless you’re in a niche where Southeast Asia’s market size is sufficient. But those cases are the exceptions, not the rule. **Bernard Leong:** So the exceptions would be something like a Superbase, which is now a Series C company. They got into YC \[YCombinator\]. **Arnaud Bonzom:** I don't know if I will qualify Supabase as Singaporean or Southeast Asia. Paul \[founder of Supabase\] was part of the Entrepreneur First program with his previous ventures, a program that was supported by the Singapore government through SG Innovate. Now, with Supabase, they’re playing more of a U.S.-focused strategy. They went through Y Combinator, raised an initial $6 million, followed by $30 million, and their last two rounds were $18 million each. They’re just shy of having raised $200 million in total, which is incredibly impressive. Supabase is an example of the kind of company that can emerge from Southeast Asia. It’s definitely possible, and there are a few other companies like that as well. **Bernard Leong:** PatSnap is another example—they’re already in their Series D round with Vertex. Then there’s Mito Health, but they’re still in the early stages, having just joined the latest Y Combinator batch. The reason I’m bringing up these exceptions is to highlight that they are anomalies. I’m trying to explore why these companies stand out. **Arnaud Bonzom:** The two biggest examples you mentioned are both B2B \[Business to Business\]. Supabase is very U.S.-focused, and what’s really impressive is that they managed to get Coatue involved in their first round—a crossover fund that typically focuses more on public markets than private ones. As for PatSnap, they started in China. The founder was based there during the ideation and early stages. **Bernard Leong:** No. I know the founders from Patsnap. Jeffrey is a Singaporean. He went to study in Philadelphia for a year through NUS Overseas College. His co-founder, Guan Dian, was my student at NUS and yes, she was from China. The whole team was built out of Singapore. **Arnaud Bonzom:** I'm not saying it’s not a Singaporean company—I know it is. But in the early days, its roots were more connected to China, and China remains one of its major markets. What’s interesting about both companies is that they rely heavily on either the U.S. or China as their largest markets, rather than Southeast Asia. Looking at Mito Health, it’s still very early. Kenneth, the founder, is a repeat entrepreneur, and I believe he mentioned that there were only two Southeast Asian startups in this YC batch. It’s a bit disappointing that there aren’t more. It might be a combination of YC’s interest in the region and the number of founders actually applying. I’ve seen founders from companies like Aspire and Xendit being very supportive of helping others with the YC application process, but I wish we saw more of that. If any government can support initiatives like this, they should definitely find ways to send more founders to YC. There are already some great Southeast Asian companies that have gone through YC, like Supabase, Aspire, and Zendit. But the real question is: how many of them are B2B or fintech? When I see a company like Mito Health, I think if you have something unique to offer, it might be worth targeting the U.S. market first. Or, perhaps, bring U.S. tech into healthcare and adapt it to the Asian population. There’s potential there, but yes, Mito is still in its very early stages. **Bernard Leong:** So, the funding patterns in 2021 and 2022 were definitely anomalies due to the ZIRP era. But looking at 2023 and 2024, how do you think the funding landscape compares to the pre-pandemic years, say 2019 and 2020? If we set aside the unusual years, what do you think today’s funding environment looks like? **Arnaud Bonzom:** One thing to understand is how a venture capital firm typically operates. They usually deploy capital over a 10-year period, which works well in dynamic ecosystems like the U.S., where companies can grow, get acquired, or go public quickly. In the startup world, we often joke that a 10-year journey is an 'overnight success.' In Southeast Asia or other emerging markets, it takes longer because there's less velocity. So, while VC funds are structured to run for 10 years, they often need extensions, which is why many funds have the option to extend for one or two years in their agreements with LPs. Another factor is that the capital raised is usually deployed over three to four years. This means the money raised has to be spread out over that time. When we look at ecosystem growth, we often evaluate it using annual metrics, but that’s somewhat arbitrary. The idea of looking at funding cycles from January 1st to December 31st is completely arbitrary. We need to remember that these funds plan their capital deployment over three to four years. They make capital calls and deploy that money over this period, so the dynamic for a fund is more like a three-to-four-year window for their initial investments. Then, as time progresses, they overlap those years with follow-on checks. During the COVID era, many funds raised amounts that were too large, leaving them with excess capital to deploy. The problem is that some companies, even before COVID, were already used to inflated valuations that didn’t necessarily align with sustainable business models, especially for VCs in this region. You have to consider exits—how big they are, what valuations they reach—and that makes it very tricky for a VC to turn a profit. Before COVID, valuations were already a bit high for the region. I see deals in Europe with experienced, repeat founders, and sometimes the valuations are similar to those of first-time founders in Southeast Asia. The markets aren’t the same size, and the odds of success are different. Sometimes, Southeast Asia feels overpriced. **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you—the title of the report we’re discussing today, *Resetting Expectations*, is fitting. From your perspective as an LP, do you think investors have been overly optimistic about the region’s potential? What do you believe are the more realistic expectations moving forward? Is it in the light of current global or regional headwinds or tailwinds for that matter? **Arnaud Bonzom:** Another challenge in the region is the size of the funds. For example, when you look at the first fund by Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian from Initialized Capital, it was interesting to see that their initial fund was under $10 million—somewhere around $7 or $9 million. Despite its small size, they invested in Coinbase, and the returns from that fund are now close to half a billion dollars. They started small, even though they were already well-established individuals with great track records. In Southeast Asia, however, funds tend to get very large very quickly. The real question then becomes: when you do the math, what size should the exits of your portfolio companies be to return the fund at least three times over? Since only about 80% of a fund’s capital is typically deployed, you actually need to generate more than a 3x return to achieve that for your LPs, especially after accounting for management fees. This is why many funds are now too large. For example, Peak XV recently announced that they’re returning money to investors, not as a DPI (Distributions to Paid-In), but by reducing the size of their fund and choosing not to call the remaining capital. It’s a recognition that while raising money is great, there also needs to be disciplined in how many high-quality teams you believe you can find and generate returns from. That’s the challenge in this region—many funds have become too big. Peak XV took the tough step of reducing their fund size, and I’m curious to see if other funds will follow suit. This kind of rebalancing is necessary to create a healthier environment. At the same time, though, I wouldn’t discourage founders and VCs from being optimistic. Without that optimism, things simply won’t work. I’ve had the chance to speak with several unicorn founders, and when you ask them privately if they would have started their companies knowing how hard it would be, most of them say, ‘No, never.’ Fortunately, they were optimistic and underestimated the difficulty, and that’s why they succeeded. So, I’d never tell a founder or VC not to be optimistic. The key balance here is discipline. It’s about not raising too much money and not overcommitting when valuations are inflated. This applies to both sides, and not everyone shows that kind of discipline. Don’t raise too much capital, and don’t deploy when valuations are sky-high. As an angel investor, I barely invested during the COVID era because I felt the market was out of control. The challenge, of course, is timing—you're investing now, but the exit might not come for another 10 years. Predicting what the market will look like a decade from now is nearly impossible. Ten years ago in Southeast Asia, we didn’t have a clear picture of how exits would unfold, so we had to trust that things would work out by the time exits happened. But now, with many funds in their third or fourth rounds, LPs are saying, ‘We trusted you during the first decade, but now show us how the exit landscape is shaping up.’ It’s harder to keep asking for patience and saying, ‘Just wait a few more years—we’ll get there.’ That’s why you’re seeing more funds focus on liquidity events, continuity funds, or even stock exchange strategies. A lot of these initiatives are aimed at providing liquidity. Just this week, for instance, Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund, Khazanah, announced the launch of a founder fund, with part of it dedicated to emerging fund managers. This shows that we’re still in the early stages of the ecosystem. When governments are creating founder funds for emerging fund managers, it’s a clear sign that the ecosystem is still developing. **Bernard Leong:** So, in the past, we’ve seen a restructuring among major VC firms like Insignia and PeakXV (formerly Sequoia India). I’ve also noticed some VCs getting into roll-ups as a way to return DPI, which makes sense—if it works, why not? I’ve heard of VCs starting to pursue roll-ups in Southeast Asia as well. You’ve painted a picture of the restructuring happening with early-stage VC firms, but what about the larger players who entered Southeast Asia, like Coatue and Tiger Global? They were heavily involved in the mega funding rounds for companies like Grab and Gojek (now GoTo), but have since scaled back their participation. What does that mean for the region? It seems there will still be early-stage funding, as many VCs have dry powder left. But for startups looking for late-stage funding, especially in the Series B to Series E range, there’s a growing gap. Where will that leave startups in this region as they try to scale? It feels like we’re heading toward a chasm where late-stage funding is increasingly hard to come by. **Arnaud Bonzom:** So you mentioned Peak XV, which was formerly Sequoia India and Southeast Asia. You got GGV which splits into two now. **Bernard Leong:** Granite Ventures **Arnaud Bonzom:** You also have firms like Matrix Partners that have split across different regions globally. These were among the few investors involved in Series A and beyond. Most were multi-stage funds operating across various regions—from the U.S. to China, India, and Southeast Asia. Interestingly, Lightspeed is one of the few still operating across all these regions. The split for many others was largely driven by the tensions between the U.S. and China, making it difficult to invest in both markets simultaneously. Then there’s another category—late-stage crossover investors like Coatue and Tiger Global, who were also active in Southeast Asia. But their involvement was largely context-driven. It was a period when raising capital was easy due to low interest rates. At that time, almost anywhere you invested, the value would increase quickly. These investors typically prioritize the U.S. market first, as it’s often considered the best market, and most of them are American, so naturally, they start with the U.S. Previously, investors would prioritize markets like Europe, China, Japan, and India before even considering Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia wasn’t a 'must-have'—it was more of a 'nice-to-have' because there was so much money in the system. The more capital you have, the harder it becomes to find the perfect place to invest it. For example, if you have $1 billion to invest, you're not expected to achieve the same returns as you would with $10 million. So, when all that money flowed into Southeast Asia, people here thought, ‘We’ve made it. The world is finally looking at us. We’re a great ecosystem.’ But it was really just a temporary surge. When the tide pulled back, Southeast Asia was the first place investors scaled down because it wasn’t offering the best outcomes. I don’t think that level of aggressive investment will return anytime soon. However, great companies will always find a way to raise capital. The top-tier startups will continue to secure funding. The real challenge will be for those just below that tier, as it will become increasingly difficult for them. Some companies will need to become much more capital-efficient and may need to focus on reaching breakeven sooner. In the later stages, the trickiest part is around Series B and C. It also depends on the size of the round. For larger rounds, the investors who participate tend to invest globally, so it varies depending on the scale of the raise. In Southeast Asia, even at the earlier stages—whether it’s angel, pre-seed, or Series A—there aren’t that many top VCs or partners you dream of having on your cap table. The pool is small. In the U.S., if you're raising your Series A, you have a long list of amazing VCs to choose from—Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark, Bessemer, and many others. But in Southeast Asia, it's hard to name even five top VCs you'd want on your cap table at each round. The ecosystem is still small, and it takes time to develop. Silicon Valley, for example, has been built over 70 years. Sequoia alone is 50 years old. In Southeast Asia, very few GPs have been in the game for more than a decade. A single fund often takes 10 to 15 years to complete its cycle, and many funds here haven’t completed their first tour of duty yet. **Bernard Leong:** A counterexample is China. Yaw Shin recently spoke in my class at NUS Business School, and he highlighted the incredible scale China achieved in such a short time. For instance, Pinduoduo went public in just three years, the fastest IPO to date. China managed to reach the scale that Silicon Valley took decades to achieve, and it did so in under 20 years. Despite its current challenges—which we won’t get into here—China has essentially accomplished in 20 to 30 years what took Silicon Valley much longer. **Arnaud Bonzom:** They’ve definitely moved much faster, I fully agree. But they’ve also been much more protective of their markets. Can you name a big foreign company that’s succeeded there? **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, there’s none. Uber managed to claw 30% market share, and Kayak got sold to Baidu. **Arnaud Bonzom:** Exactly, it’s very difficult. It’s a large market, but they’ve fully protected it. You can achieve massive outcomes there, and I agree—if you look at what Sequoia China (HongShan) has accomplished, it’s incredible. What Neil is doing there is amazing, and they’ve made some remarkable deals. But it’s also a closed market and a very large one at that. That’s why I always emphasize the U.S. It’s the largest accessible market for anyone. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s the most uniform, open market where you can find everything—from clients and investors to acquirers or an IPO path. China has certainly managed to achieve great things, but at what cost? And what does the future hold for it? There are still many unanswered questions. It’s useful to compare the two, but you can’t fully apply the same approach here because there isn’t a unified ASEAN. There’s no strong leadership with one voice to unite all the countries in Southeast Asia as you have in China with its provinces. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think Southeast Asia should be compared to Europe? For me, that’s the best comparison, rather than trying to align it with China, India, or the U.S. Those are more singular markets—if you succeed in one, you can operate across the whole country. But I don’t think Southeast Asia works like that. Maybe with the exception of Indonesia, where the population is growing and could eventually approach India’s size. **Arnaud Bonzom:** It’s still hard to make that comparison, though. Otherwise, you end up comparing Germany to all of Southeast Asia, and if you’re only looking at current GDP, that doesn’t account for purchasing power parity. And even within Germany, you’re dealing with one country, but in reality, it’s really just two or three major cities driving the economy. In Southeast Asia, you’re talking about how many cities, languages, currencies, and regulations? At some point, I wonder if we should stop trying to group the region as ‘Southeast Asia’ and just focus on specific countries like Singapore or Indonesia. **Bernard Leong:** Or perhaps focus on Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines—what AC Ventures refers to as the VIP markets. **Arnaud Bonzom:** Yeah, at one point we even talked about 'Greater Southeast Asia,' including Taiwan. For me, though, I think it makes more sense to look at individual countries since each is so different. A lot of founders try to expand across several Southeast Asian countries and then end up going to Australia, only to find they're making more money there than in all their Southeast Asia expansion plans combined. It’s a lot more work to cover all those markets." **Bernard Leong:** I agree with you, but I have a slightly different approach now. I’ve started thinking about the entire Asia Pacific market in a new way. Let me explain. **Arnaud Bonzom:** "Asia Pacific?" **Bernard Leong:** Yes, when I say Asia Pacific, I’m really talking about three distinct markets. **Arnaud Bonzom:** You know that the Middle East is in Asia Pacific. **Bernard Leong:** I see three main market categories in the Asia Pacific region. The first is the developed markets: Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. These seven markets share common characteristics, like higher SaaS costs, with the average being around $80 to $100 per user per month. Then, you have the developing markets—Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam—where cheap labour tends to outperform SaaS solutions. For example, according to a top consulting firm, the average SaaS cost per user per month in Indonesia is only $5\. This means that in these markets, it often makes more sense to pay for cheap labour than to adopt SaaS software. That's why the SaaS market hasn't really taken off in these regions, despite what some VCs seem to think. They talk about needing a SaaS market, but the economics just don’t make sense when the costs are so low. Lastly, you have the frontier markets: Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, though Myanmar's potential has been disrupted by civil unrest. If you categorize the region into these three buckets, it helps you focus on the markets that make sense for your business. For example, if you target just the developed markets, leaving aside China, Japan, and Korea, which tend to be more insular, and add the other six markets, you'd already be a significant player in the region. **Arnaud Bonzom:** No, I fully agree. That’s why, as an angel investor, one of my quick questions when investing in companies outside the U.S. is, ‘When are you going to the U.S.?’ **Bernard Leong:** As soon as possible? **Arnaud Bonzom:** Exactly, but it depends, right? There are two options. Either you want to be the next eBay and need to be in the U.S., or you need to explain why you want to focus on emerging markets like OLX. What’s your strategy, and why does it make sense? Maybe it’s because eBay is already too dominant in the U.S., and you believe it’s an impossible battle. So, there are options, but you need to be clear about your rationale. I also agree with you on SaaS. But for me, there are a few additional angles. One issue is that people in the region aren’t used to paying for software. There’s also a potential ego factor, where people prefer to say they manage a team of 100 versus a smaller, highly paid team of five that’s boosted by software. The mindset here isn't about having lean teams, even though someone like Elon Musk has shown you can cut 80% of the staff and still run a company like X (formerly Twitter) with a smaller, more efficient team. The preference here is often for larger teams, whereas I prefer smaller, lean teams using the right tools to move faster. But that’s not the norm in this region. Also, SaaS is often seen more as a cost rather than an investment. In the U.S., when someone has to pay for software, it’s seen as a smart investment. But in emerging markets, it’s more like, ‘Why waste money on that? I can do it myself or hire someone.’ It’s a different mindset, and it also depends on where a company is in its development. In Silicon Valley, where developers are paid $200k a year, paying for a SaaS subscription is nothing compared to the overall cost of the employee. But in Vietnam, where fresh graduates might earn $300 to $400 a month, the cost of software becomes a significant percentage of their salary. So, I think we’ll eventually get there, but it’s going to take time. That’s why you see companies offering different pricing across regions. For example, YouTube or Spotify charges significantly more in Singapore than in other Southeast Asian countries. They adjust based on purchasing power. If I were selling SaaS software in Southeast Asia, I’d have to target markets where people are used to paying and have the infrastructure—like credit cards—to do so. The U.S. is much more accustomed to that model. Of course, we’re also seeing some fatigue with subscriptions, and there’s a move back to the old model—like when you paid once for a Windows license and had it forever. Some SaaS companies are shifting back to that model, which might be a better fit for Southeast Asia and other emerging markets. Pay once, own it forever. And if you know your long-term value (LTV), you might even make more money from a one-time sale than from a subscription model. **Bernard Leong:** One question I have is about the current slowdown in IPOs and M&A activity across the region. How do you see startups and VCs adapting to this prolonged drop in exits? You mentioned earlier that VCs are starting to explore other avenues, like working with stock exchanges and trying to figure out new strategies. Do you think there are any other ways they can navigate this exit slowdown? **Arnaud Bonzom:** I think for many startups, the last 12 months have actually brought some good news. A lot of founders I’ve known in the region for over a decade have managed to turn profitable. This gives them an unlimited runway and more time to weather the current conditions, which is great news. For startups in Southeast Asia, achieving profitability is a huge advantage, especially since breaking even here can be challenging. Right now, the best strategy for startups is to either focus on becoming profitable or maintain strong growth to stay attractive for potential funding. As for exits, VCs have several options, such as selling through secondaries, but it's not always easy. Many funds have high valuations on their books, and they don’t want to mark them down because it would hurt their internal rate of return (IRR) and make it harder to raise their next fund. So, they’re in a tough spot—do they show discipline and reflect the real value of their portfolio, or do they try to maintain higher valuations to help raise future funds? It’s a tricky situation for many. The IPO market isn’t just closed in Southeast Asia—it’s closed globally. But for Southeast Asia, the path to IPO has always been harder, even in good times. Some have resorted to selling full funds to their investors through secondaries, but it's still going to be a tough period. You know the saying, ‘Hard times create great people, great people create easy times, and easy times create weak people.’ I like the hard times because they correct a lot of imbalances. It forces a reset, even though it’s painful. It pushes founders to focus on building 'must-have' solutions instead of 'nice-to-haves.' In the past, there was too much funding that allowed for 'nice-to-have' businesses. The issue now is that many companies are struggling, but they’re not shutting down. You have what we call 'cockroach startups' in Southeast Asia. **Bernard Leong:** I have a name for them: zombie companies. **Arnaud Bonzom:** Cockroach startups or 'zombies,' as some call them. A lot of these companies manage to keep going without shutting down. Maybe one out of a hundred will eventually find a way to survive and thrive. But overall, it's a huge misallocation of talent and resources. It would be much healthier for the ecosystem if most of them shut down. I understand that, as a founder, it’s hard to give up. Many don’t want to quit, which is understandable. But in the U.S. or Europe, you’ll more often see founders saying, 'We’re growing too slowly, this isn’t working the way we’d hoped over the past year.' They’ll shut down, return whatever money is left to their investors, and move on to build something new. **Bernard Leong:** Interesting that you say that. The only founders who have returned capital to me so far have been crypto startup founders in Southeast Asia. That’s happened much more frequently in crypto, but not as much with other web 2.0 companies where I’m an angel investor. That’s something I’ve noticed. **Arnaud Bonzom:** We need to see more of that—founders being comfortable with saying, 'It’s okay, let’s move on.' Focus your energy on something else instead of dragging it out. **Bernard Leong:** So, given everything you know now, what’s one thing you understand about the Southeast Asia startup and VC ecosystem that very few people do? **Arnaud Bonzom:** I’d say one of the biggest issues is the lack of discipline across the board—from founders to investors. Two things stand out: first, don’t raise too much; second, raise from the right people. Whether you’re a founder or a GP, your investor base matters a lot. If you raise a fund and your investors are primarily angels, high-net-worth individuals, or corporates, they likely won’t be there for you in tough times. When things get difficult, they’ll say, ‘Sorry, I’m not investing in the next fund.’ But if you put in the extra work to get fund-of-funds or institutional investors, those people are much less likely to withdraw. When they write the first check for your initial fund, they already plan to invest in fund two and fund three. That’s not the case with corporates, angels, or high-net-worth individuals. The same principle applies to founders—be mindful of who you’re raising from. Understand the vintage of their fund, know the size of their fund, and get a sense of their expected returns. Some funds in the U.S. file with the SEC, so you can access a lot of information. For example, if a VC has fewer than 40 LPs across their third or fourth fund, that’s a good sign—they’re likely seeing traction and won’t struggle too much to raise the next fund, meaning they’ll have more time to support you. I’ve been surprised by how many GPs and founders don’t fully understand their investors and how things work. They don’t ask enough questions—they’re often just focused on what makes life easier today without thinking long-term. **Bernard Leong:** "I’m going to ask you a bit of a definitional question. There’s a term called *Distributions to Paid-In Capital*, or DPI. Could you explain what DPI is for our listeners and why it’s such an important metric for measuring the success of VC funds? And how does it apply to our market?" **Arnaud Bonzom:** In short, DPI is the money you return to your LPs. To break it down simply: imagine you have a $100 million fund. As a VC, you raise that money from LPs—limited partners—who give you their capital to invest. Essentially, you’re investing other people’s money, not your own. You can think of a VC as a service provider, managing money on behalf of sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, founder funds, and others, and investing it into startups. Out of that $100 million fund, you’ll actually only deploy $80 million, because typically, 2% goes to management fees. Over the course of 10 years, that means $20 million is allocated to running the fund, leaving $80 million for investments. In the early stages, the main metric used to measure success is IRR, which reflects the value of your portfolio, even though you haven’t realized any exits yet. A common way to evaluate your portfolio is by looking at the valuation of the last funding round, ideally one led by someone other than yourself. That gives a more objective measure of value, rather than just relying on your own internal valuation. Of course, there’s a lot more we could discuss on this, but that’s the basic idea. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, we’re not going to mention any specific VC firms or their DPI numbers, but others have already done that for us. **Arnaud Bonzom:** Exactly. But let’s break it down further. Think of IRR as a snapshot of how well a fund is performing in the early stages—like the first few meters of a 100-meter dash. A good start is a positive sign, but it doesn’t guarantee how things will finish, because some funds might perform better in the long run. DPI, on the other hand, is what matters when exits happen—it’s the actual cash returned to your LPs. So, if you raised $100 million and deployed $80 million, the first $100 million that comes back goes to the LPs because they gave you that capital upfront. I’m simplifying a bit here, not getting into GP commitments or other details. If you return 1x, that means you’ve just given the LPs back the initial money they invested. But it’s not ideal if this happens at the end of the fund’s lifecycle. Timing is important. If you start returning capital after just two or three years, it’s a strong signal, and it can help you raise your next fund because your LPs might reinvest the money they’ve just received. One of the best ways to raise a new fund is to start returning capital from the previous one. However, returning 3x to your LPs—which is the benchmark many use based on public markets—is going to be incredibly difficult for most Southeast Asian funds. Liquidity events like secondaries usually come with a 20-30% discount on the last valuation to provide liquidity, and if that valuation was inflated, you might see cuts as large as 50-70%. **Bernard Leong:** Have we had any cases like selling to SoftBank, where early investors sold their stakes early, got solid returns, and then it was mainly the institutional funds that held on, for example, Grab? **Arnaud Bonzom:** If you look at Grab, and from what’s been shared publicly, Vertex timed their exit quite well. You could almost call it a 'Cinderella strategy'—leave before midnight because eventually, every company faces challenges. With Grab, it depended on when you entered and exited. If you got out when they were valued close to $40 billion, you did well. But today, they’re worth about $14 billion, after raising more than $10 billion in capital. Timing matters a lot. Many VCs focus heavily on the entry price, which makes sense, but some aren’t very price-sensitive, which can be a mistake. For example, if you invest in a company at a $25 million valuation versus a $2 million valuation, a $50 million exit means something very different. In one case, you make good money, though it may not return the entire fund. In the other, you barely make any money. So, both the entry and exit points are crucial. Another challenge is managing a company as it transitions from private to public markets—those are two completely different jobs. Even investing in a pre-seed round versus a Series B or C round are very different skill sets. For many investors, it’s hard to know when to take some money off the table and start returning DPI to your LPs. Sometimes, you need to sacrifice some of the potential performance of Fund 1 to ensure you can raise Fund 2. For example, as an LP in Fund 1, I know the managers will have to make those sacrifices at some point, even if it means slightly compromising returns, in order to build a firm and raise the next fund. **Bernard Leong:** Timing-wise, Vertex did really well with Grab, and also with Spacemob, which they sold to WeWork. They cashed out during the SoftBank round when WeWork was at its peak. **Arnaud Bonzom:** Exactly. And if you look at it, even the WeWork founders made a lot of money despite how things turned out. **Bernard Leong:** Yeah, but here we’re focusing on the VC funds that backed companies which sold to WeWork, and then cashed out. **Arnaud Bonzom:** It all comes down to timing. For example, with SEA Group, when the shares were around $250, investors made a lot of money. The challenge is knowing when to take the money off the table—it’s tough to get the timing right. It’s interesting to see who has the discipline to pull some money out when necessary. Vertex, for instance, has a team with a lot of experience, like Kee Lock and the others, who’ve been doing this for a long time. They know what they’re doing, and they’ve developed a discipline not only for investing but also for divesting. We talk a lot about investing, but not as much about divesting. Divesting is its own art—knowing when to hold and when to exit. That’s why Sequoia U.S. changed its structure to allow them to hold certain companies indefinitely. They’ve seen huge value created after IPO, like with Apple and others. But now, with so much money in private markets, you can also argue that a lot of value is being created before IPO. That’s why you’ve seen crossover funds like Coatue and Tiger Global move into private markets—they were seeing sky-high valuations at IPO, which wasn’t the case in the past. For example, Amazon's IPO valuation was in the single-digit billions. Today, if a company goes public at a single-digit billion valuation, it’s considered small. We’re seeing companies go public with valuations of $20, $40, or $50 billion. So, there’s 50 times more value being created while these companies are still private. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think the current DPI issues for Southeast Asian VCs are going to make it harder for them to raise their next few funds? **Arnaud Bonzom:** Oh, absolutely. As I mentioned, the money you return is often the money that gets reinvested into your next fund. If you’re not returning much, it’s going to make raising the next fund more challenging. Secondly, there are still big questions about exits in the region. How do you return that money to your investors? That’s going to be a tough one to answer, and it’s likely to make things difficult for Southeast Asian funds. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some VCs raising smaller funds or slowing down their growth. But honestly, I think that’s a good thing. A smaller fund is more likely to deliver a strong DPI because it can focus on backing stronger companies. Plus, with less capital available, founders will be forced to focus on building ‘must-have’ products instead of ‘nice-to-haves.’ It will lead to better selection and more discipline. That said, it will be painful, and we’ll probably see fewer VCs. But remember, it takes around 10 years for a VC to really die out, so this won’t happen overnight. I’d strongly encourage founders to do their due diligence when talking to VCs. Ask them how many deals they’ve done in the last six months. If they’re a pre-seed or seed fund and haven’t done any deals, that’s definitely a red flag. **Bernard Leong:** I just want to ask a couple of questions and get your thoughts. First, what advice would you give to founders navigating the 2023-2024 environment? **Arnaud Bonzom:** "I had a founder recently, backed by some of the top VCs in the region, ask me, 'What’s the best way to get acquired?' My response was, 'Build a great company.' It sounds simple, but the reality is much more complex. How do you make your company great? I also told him that the best time to sell is when you don’t want to sell. I know a founder who sold his fully bootstrapped company in Southeast Asia for a mid-eight-figure sum. He owned 95% of it. At the time, people were saying, ‘Don’t sell—you’re on a growth trajectory, you’re leaving money on the table.’ But one or two years later, the business started to shrink. In hindsight, it was perfect timing. It’s incredibly hard to know when to sell. My advice is to ask yourself: ‘Will you have any regrets if you sell now?’ It’s important to be clear on whether you’re ready to let go or if you want to go all in and really push the company to its limits." **Arnaud:** "There are plenty of examples. Facebook turned down Yahoo’s offer of $1 billion, and then Yahoo itself was later sold for a fraction of its previous value after Microsoft’s $40 billion offer fell through. In hindsight, it’s easy to say when it was the right or wrong time to sell, but at the moment, it’s one of the toughest decisions to make. My general advice is this: focus on building a great company, and the opportunities will come. But as you know, building a great company is extremely challenging. What are the next steps? How do you get there? These are difficult questions. One thing I’ve noticed is that people who build great companies tend to be decisive. They make decisions quickly and move fast. They embrace risk and are bold in their vision, especially in the venture-backed space. If you’re building an SME, the approach is different, and that’s okay—it’s just a different form of entrepreneurship. We often place venture-backed businesses on a pedestal, but I have deep respect for people who are craftsmen in their fields, whether they’re chefs or artisans. For most founders, the goal is to do your best to build a great business, and constantly think about what it takes to get there. **Bernard Leong:** Great point. What’s one question you wish more people would ask you about the Southeast Asia entrepreneurial and investor landscape? **Arnaud Bonzom:** I’d like to see governments ask more about what they can do to remove the current and mid-term bottlenecks. **Bernard Leong:** So, let me ask you that now—what bottlenecks would you want removed? **Arnaud Bonzom:** "If I were a government in Southeast Asia, I’d do a few things. First, I’d be aggressive about giving entrepreneurs long-term visas—five years instead of the typical one- or two-year visas. Entrepreneurs, especially foreign ones, shouldn’t be worrying about their visa status. They should be focusing on their cash runway and building great businesses. Look at Europe or the U.S.—a lot of big companies were built by foreigners. We need to bring in more foreign talent to enhance the ecosystem. I’d also focus on training GPs (General Partners). I’d bring in experienced GPs from Europe or the U.S. to offer advice, support, and workshops to help develop the local VC ecosystem. They’re not competing, so there’s no downside, and it’s a great way to accelerate knowledge sharing. I think what Khazanah is doing with their founder fund is great, but I’d love to see a Southeast Asia-wide founder fund from the government, though I’m not sure that’s possible. If I could dream, I’d want a Southeast Asian founder fund from the government that invests in the best funds, especially emerging managers in their first or second fund. Additionally, we need to think about creating secondary funds or even a fund-of-funds model to seed these smaller funds. When comparing the region to others, I’d love to see a unified stock market or specialized stock exchanges for different types of companies. For example, tech companies could list on SGX, while other industries might go to different exchanges. Or, if it’s possible, merge them into one. But realistically, that’s tough because we lack the size and scale for such a move. On a local level, something long-term, but impactful, would be teaching entrepreneurship to kids. I’d love to see children aged six to ten running small projects—like a lemonade stand—where they learn about costs, production, pricing, and branding. Let them experience what it’s like to run a tiny business, from A to Z, and give them a taste of entrepreneurship early on. Lastly, I want to see more women building businesses in the region, especially scalable businesses. We don’t have enough women entrepreneurs here. For example, in France, around 40% of EdTech founders are women. We need more of that in Southeast Asia. **Bernard Leong:** Well, speaking of which, I just saw one walk past my window—my wife, who’s the CEO of a high-growth company. My traditional closing question. What does great look like for moving forward in Southeast Asia? **Arnaud Bonzom:** One thing I’d like to see more of is stories that haven’t been covered much, like the Cosmos Software/Milika story. It was a company started out of Singapore, and I got involved with them while scouting for AWS—I gave them AWS credits. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to angel invest because they never raised capital, but they ended up being acquired by Dolby. If you think about it, Dolby acquiring a Southeast Asian company for their tech is a huge story, but you don’t hear much about it. I want to see more stories like that—Southeast Asian companies building unique technology that brings value globally, not just within the region. It’s a validation that great things can come out of Southeast Asia when you have a company like Dolby acquiring a local tech company. I’d love to see more global success stories like this, and I also want the media and others to stop being so picky about which stories they cover. Whether a company is built by locals or foreigners, in Malaysia or Thailand, we need to embrace these success stories. For instance, Malaysia should fully embrace Grab as a Malaysian company, and Thailand should do the same for Agoda. **Bernard Leong:** You’re right, and speaking of missed opportunities, many VCs have completely overlooked some of the best crypto companies. Nansen AI is based in Singapore and funded by Andreessen Horowitz. YGG \[Yield Guild Games\] from the Philippines, also funded by Andreessen. Axie Infinity \[Sky Mavis\] in Vietnam, again funded by Andreessen. CoinGecko and Etherscan are both based in Malaysia. It’s frustrating to see these opportunities missed by regional VCs. **Arnaud Bonzom:** I agree. Token 2049, which is held in Singapore, has become the biggest token event globally, but crypto still feels like a different world. It’s a separate subset of investors. Only a handful of Southeast Asian investors allocate a small percentage to crypto, but it’s definitely not mainstream here. Most regional reports don’t even mention crypto companies, almost as if they aren’t considered startups. It’s like there are three categories—startups, SMEs, and crypto—which is seen as something entirely different. You mentioned some great examples, like Axie Infinity, which was also backed by 500 Startups. But yes, very few local VCs are involved in crypto. It’s interesting that Andreessen Horowitz, based in the U.S., is able to find opportunities here that local investors might be missing. **Bernard Leong:** Very few. **Arnaud Bonzom:** Exactly, and it’s telling that Andreessen Horowitz is finding these opportunities here that others aren’t. There are not a lot of crypto-focused funds in the region, and that’s an area we should see more of. When a new wave comes, like crypto or AI, it’s better to catch that wave early rather than trying to ride the last one, which is already dominated by incumbents. Now, with AI as the next wave, the question is how to position yourself to ride it. There’s still potential in areas like SaaS and fintech in Southeast Asia, but founders need to be realistic about the market size and their ability to raise capital, sell their products, or even go IPO. People sometimes mistake realism for pessimism. It’s not about being negative; it’s about being honest. When I ask for numbers to support overly optimistic projections, they often don’t exist. We need to have grounded expectations rather than hoping for a bright future without a solid reason to back it up. **Bernard Leong:** Thanks for coming on the show. I think we had a great discussion about the Lightspeed Report, DPI, and some hard truths that not everyone agrees with us on. We’ll have to get you back before episode 500\. To wrap up, two quick questions: any recommendations that have inspired you recently? **Arnaud Bonzom:** Sure, two things. First, kudos to Lightspeed for that report. It’s refreshing to see people openly addressing the challenges, not just painting a rosy picture in every report. Second, congratulations to you—closing in on your 500th episode is a huge accomplishment. We’ve seen so many podcasts launch in the region, and most don’t even make it to episode 10\. It’s not easy, so hats off to you. As for something that inspired me recently, I came across a leaked memo written by MrBeast—it’s about 30 pages long and incredibly insightful. One surprising takeaway is how much he values consultants, which is unusual since most people tend to dislike them. What I love about the memo is its directness. He doesn’t polish his words, but the underlying principles are fascinating. For example, he wrote one guide for everyone on his team, emphasizing that they should all understand each other’s roles. It’s not perfect, but honestly, how many companies even have something like that? It’s better to have something rough but functional than nothing at all. MrBeast’s approach to redefining the entertainment industry is inspiring—he’s bold and reinvests everything. In an interview, someone asked if he’d sell for $1 billion, and he said no. Even at $10 billion, he’s not interested. That kind of vision is impressive, especially since he built it from a remote location. It could have been done anywhere, even in Southeast Asia. And now, you can find MrBeast’s chocolate in 7-Eleven in Singapore—it’s amazing to see how far he’s come." **Bernard Leong:** Exactly. He started as a low-level gadget reviewer when he was 10 years old and spent 10 years studying YouTube before becoming MrBeast. It shows that success takes time. **Arnaud Bonzom:** Yes, and he’s incredibly detail-oriented. The amount of money he spends on things like thumbnails is no joke—he’s fully committed. He’s not cutting corners and invests heavily in the final product, regardless of the cost. He’s mentioned borrowing money because he was burning through so much. You need balance, of course, but I admire his all-in mentality. It reminds me of Jeff Bezos with Amazon, always reinvesting for the long term. It’s truly inspiring to see people being so bold and committed to their vision. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you? **Arnaud Bonzom:** LinkedIn is the best way. **Bernard Leong:** Great, thanks for being on the show. You can find us on YouTube and Spotify, and don’t forget to subscribe. We’ll catch up again soon." **Arnaud Bonzom:** Thank you, Bernard. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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JC shares his career journey and the back story of why he started Learnovate focusing on AI-assisted grading and what it is meant to solve for the users. Last but not least, JC shares his perspectives on how the future of education will evolve with generative AI and explains what success will look like in the next few years. --- > "The humans are going to be empowered to become superheroes like Tony Stark, and because you have your loyal A.I. assistant, Jarvis, doing all this stuff in the background, that's the example I always use when I give lectures on this topic. What ends up happening is that you need to make sure you can use A.I. correctly. If you offload too much, offload inappropriately, or become too dependent on AI for tasks where you shouldn't be dependent, then suddenly, you're no longer Tony Stark. You're one of those fat human descendants in Wall-E. The ones who can't even get back in their own chairs because they've forgotten how to walk, they've forgotten how to think, they're being fed a steady diet of soda pop from AI." **\- Joon Nak Choi** **Joon Nak Choi,** Adjunct Associate Professor, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Founder, [Learnovate Technologies](https://www.learnovate.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jnchoi123/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [HKUST](https://mgmt.hkust.edu.hk/faculty-and-staff/directory/jnchoi?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ### Here is the transcript of our conversation: **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong, and we've heard about how AI will impact education from accessing student assignments, To personalize learning. What does the future of education look like with AI? With me today, Zhu Nachoi, an adjunct associate professor from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and founder of Learnovate, will help us decipher the future of AI in education. JC, welcome to the show. **Joon Nak Choi:** Thank you very much. **Bernard Leong:** Bernard Leong: I believe we got acquainted through the Undivided Ventures team, where we both served as advisors on various aspects of the AI initiative. During my visit to Hong Kong in June, we engaged in an extensive conversation about education and AI, particularly at the exciting intersection of edutech that large language models are now supercharging. To kick off our discussion, let's delve into your origin story. How did you begin your career? **Joon Nak Choi:** My career has been quite long and convoluted. Feel free to call me JC if that's easier. I was born in Korea, hold American nationality, and currently reside in Hong Kong, which leaves me feeling a bit uncertain about my origins. I spent most of my formative years in the U.S. Like many undergraduates, I initially aimed to become a management consultant, a role I held for a couple of years before returning to pursue a PhD in social network analysis. This field involves the quantitative analysis of how people are linked to one another and has always been influential in technology. For instance, the Google PageRank algorithm, which dates back to the 1970s, originated from social network analysis, though many people don't recognize it as a technological advancement. My PhD is in sociology, and like many sociologists, I eventually transitioned to a business school after completing my degree. Interestingly, the research I conducted on social connections using quantitative algorithms was reclassified as machine learning while I was asleep one night. A few years later, during my visiting professorship at Stanford, it shifted again to AI. So, in about a decade, I transitioned from being a sociologist to a management professor and finally to an AI expert, even though the core of my work has remained consistent throughout. **Bernard Leong:** So, you have this very interesting balance of academia and startup life. Can you talk about the different endeavors that, how AI has been factored into your current journey? **Joon Nak Choi:** The first time I encountered neural networks was in 2004 during one of my early PhD classes. Some psychologists were discussing it as the next big breakthrough, and while I thought it was fascinating, I viewed it as something distant that wouldn’t affect me for a long time. It actually took me about 15 years to fully engage with the concept. Interestingly, in the past five years, it has significantly influenced my career. I first began working with large language models around 2018-2019 while involved with a startup called Zectr, where we applied this technology to survey data. At that time, we were using earlier models, like BERT. I remember thinking, 'This is really cool, but the results aren't quite there yet.' A couple of years later, I founded Learnovate, which focuses more on the educational technology space. What happened next was that everything I had been working on exploded in November 2022 when ChatGPT was released. Suddenly, everyone was amazed, despite the fact that the underlying technology had been around for quite some time. The primary difference between GPT-3 and ChatGPT was simply an improved user interface. However, it made a significant impact and captured the public's imagination. As I had been advocating for online proctoring through visual processing algorithms, people in Hong Kong began to recognize me as an expert in AI and education. That's the intriguing part, isn't it? You began working on the early iterations of what we now refer to as large language models. It wasn't until someone decided to use the entire internet as a dataset that we discovered the scaling laws and the emergent behaviours of ChatGPT. **Bernard Leong:** Let's take a moment to reflect on your fascinating journey up to this point. What key lessons would you like to share with my audience?" **Joon Nak Choi:** Wow, there are so many key lessons. Could you provide a bit more guidance on what might be useful for your audience? **Bernard Leong:** Anything related to life lessons or career advice; I think that's what they usually seek. **Joon Nak Choi:** In terms of life lessons and career advice, I’ve had a rather unusual journey. Since my undergraduate days, I’ve resisted specialization and considered myself a jack of all trades. I like to think of myself as a master of some, though others might argue I'm a master of none. It can be challenging to succeed as a generalist, but it seems to be working for me now. I believe there are significant opportunities for generalists, but early in your career, it might be wise to take people’s advice and focus on becoming a specialist. What’s another piece of career advice? There’s often a tendency to get swept up in the hype surrounding new trends, such as AI or blockchain, leading people to go all in without proper consideration. My advice is to ensure you are fully committed to something before changing your personal branding. Acting without full commitment can be extremely risky. I've observed many who were once fully invested in blockchain are no longer as engaged today. I've had the privilege of working with many talented students who are achieving remarkable things at a young age. While that’s inspiring, it’s also essential to recognize that you can produce your best work in your forties and even fifties. There’s no need to rush or feel pressured to accomplish something significant early in your career, especially in the startup world. Research indicates that the forties and fifties are often peak productive years for founders, leading to the creation of successful startups. I hope these insights prove useful to your readers and viewers. **Bernard Leong:** That’s incredibly useful to me. At least I know I won’t be irrelevant, especially as a startup founder approaching 50 and just beginning this journey. However, I’d like to shift our focus to the main topic of the day: EduTech and AI, as well as the work you've been doing with Learnovate. To start, how do you see generative AI transforming education, particularly in terms of content creation and personalization for learners? **Joon Nak Choi:** Before diving into the substantial potential that AI holds for education, I’d like to mention the various roles I occupy. I am currently a professor at HKUST and, while I do a lot of teaching, I serve as an adjunct because Hong Kong law prohibits someone at a public university from being both full-time and involved in a startup. That said, I maintain a quasi-full-time role at the university, where I teach extensively and have been invited to participate in several university-wide initiatives focused on AI and educational technology. In addition to my academic role, I also run a startup, which is an HKUST spin-off partially funded by the university. I am truly grateful for the university's support in this endeavour. My unique position allows me to view developments from multiple perspectives, likely more than most. I’m also involved with organizations like the Digital Education Council, which will hold its annual meeting in Singapore in early November. If anyone is interested in meeting me while I’m there, I’ll be around that first week, so please feel free to reach out. **Bernard Leong:** We have lunch scheduled for that week, right? **Joon Nak Choi:** Yes, we do. So, where should I begin? AI, in general, is a topic that has generated a great deal of hype, along with skepticism about what it can actually achieve. This skepticism can obscure the reasons why AI shouldn't be applied universally, and education is no exception to this trend. What can AI do in education? On one hand, it's crucial not to get swept up in the hype. Many people are advocating for an immediate shift to personalized learning models or suggesting a complete overhaul of educational systems. However, I believe they are buying into the hype a bit too much. The challenges we face are not solely technological; there are significant organizational and societal limitations as well. It’s one thing to consider what you can do, but it's another to understand what you are permitted to do, and these limitations must be acknowledged. Conversely, we can look at what many corporations are doing. This is the approach I advocate for in education, especially in the short term. How can we improve existing processes? Bernard, I believe you coined the term that distinguishes between doing better things and doing existing things better. I firmly believe we can enhance many current practices using AI in the short term while society catches up. In some educational circles, there’s discussion about more substantial changes expected in the next 5 to 10 years. However, in the immediate future—specifically, over the next five years, which is when many of us will be building our careers and striving to make an impact—we need to focus on accomplishing tangible results. I foresee a trend toward incremental changes during this period, refining current processes, organizations, and mindsets through AI. We will likely see more significant transformations in five to ten years when society is better prepared for them. **Bernard Leong:** One of the first things I do in my class is present the written assignment I've given to my students. I then demonstrate ChatGPT in front of them, making it clear that as an AI practitioner, I do not encourage them to use it to write their essays. However, I emphasize that they can certainly outline their essay's logic flow and use GPT to enhance their writing, as long as they don't rely on it to complete the essay for them. As educators, I believe you and I both consider the implications of this approach, especially regarding grading. What are some examples where you see generative AI making a tangible difference in classrooms or online education platforms? **Joon Nak Choi:** To revisit some of the points I’ve emphasized, this is similar to what I discussed at the World Economic Forum event about a month ago and at a recent Turnitin conference in Hong Kong. Before we delve into how education will change and the impact AI can have, we must first consider the fundamental purpose of education. Many people overlook this background. Historically, higher education was focused on cultivating values, character, and critical judgment in decision-makers. Over time, it shifted towards teaching practical skills, a model rooted in the German educational system from about 150 years ago. In the last 50 to 100 years, education evolved into a framework centered around measurement—what can be measured and how. Unfortunately, this has led to a situation where measuring has become the tail that wags the dog. Consequently, universities often aim for higher rankings, adopting specific practices to achieve those rankings, and everything else follows suit. I believe AI presents an opportunity to change this. When we focus on measurable outcomes, we often fall back on memorization and standardized exams, which devalue certain types of knowledge. This shift can enable us to return to a more value- and skills-oriented educational model. It's not just about what you know; it's about how you apply that knowledge. AI can serve as a tool to assess and expand your understanding. I'm sure we share this perspective. With that said, how does this affect day-to-day classroom dynamics? As you know, I am an advocate for integrating AI into teaching and learning, with learning being more important than teaching itself. One critical aspect of this integration is the essay. Essays are far superior to multiple-choice or short-answer questions for assessing specific forms of knowledge. However, essays are also susceptible to manipulation. What happens when students use tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to write their essays? Various approaches have emerged to address this issue. For example, I met with representatives from Turnitin, who have developed AI essay detection tools. While these tools have limitations, Turnitin is promoting them as one source of input to identify AI usage. However, I come from a different perspective. It’s not just about maintaining academic integrity; in-class handwritten essays provide a way to prevent AI cheating. A more intriguing use case, in my opinion, is teaching students how to use AI to write their essays collaboratively. In discussions with many corporations here in Hong Kong, as you do in Singapore, there is a clear emphasis on AI readiness. Companies are looking for individuals who can effectively use AI to enhance productivity and produce high-quality work, rather than misuse it. As educators, we have a responsibility to integrate this into our curriculum. About a year and a half ago, I publicly advocated for requiring students to use AI in their essay writing as a form of co-production, which was somewhat controversial at the time. However, many others have since embraced this mindset. Currently, I co-teach a new core class at HKUST with Sean McMinn, the Director of Educational Innovation, who is a leader in AI and education both regionally and globally. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to look into his work. In our course, we explore AI, examining its capabilities and limitations while also considering human intelligence—what humans excel at and where they may struggle. We discuss how to effectively combine human and AI strengths, not just at an individual level, but also within teams and organizations. A good analogy to illustrate our approach comes from an old American anti-drug commercial. In the ad, they hold up an egg and say, "This is your brain," then crack it and fry it in a skillet, concluding with, "This is your brain on drugs." I like to adapt this metaphor: "This is your brain," followed by, "This is your brain on AI." The next step is, "Let’s make an omelette." This encapsulates our teaching approach, where we explicitly discuss how to use AI in relation to our cognitive strengths and limitations. In our class, we have a final essay and quizzes. The quizzes consist of handwritten essays conducted in class to ensure students think independently. The final essay, however, is a group project where students document their reflections on how they utilized AI throughout the process. Ultimately, they will present not only the final product, which is an AI-assisted essay, but also their experiences using AI. They must be mindful of their thinking processes, engaging in what we call metacognition—reflecting on how their thought patterns evolve. **Bernard Leong:** Can I interject for a moment? In the context of essays, generative AI can produce various tonalities and expressions. Much like literature, there isn't a single source of truth in what you write or how you think about it from an abstract perspective. On the other hand, when it comes to coding—a significant application of generative AI in education—some schools in the U.S. and U.K. permit students to use tools like GitHub Copilot or CodeWhisperer, while others do not. This presents two distinct schools of thought. I believe the key issue here is that when learning to code, students should develop the skills to see and audit their code to ensure it functions correctly. Over-reliance on AI can lead to mistakes, as it’s tempting to let the AI handle everything. How would you address the balance in this coding context, especially since many educators are currently grappling with this challenge? **Joon Nak Choi:** It's interesting that you mention coding because many people overlook the fact that coding is simply another language, and large language models excel at processing languages. There are two extremes we should avoid in this context. On one hand, it's essential to leverage AI; if you don't, there’s truth to the notion that while AI may not replace you, your competitors who utilize it certainly will. For instance, in Vietnam, I've observed that a relatively small number of programmers are embracing AI, yet those who do are achieving two to three times greater productivity. Conversely, some people believe AI can handle everything for them. This perception is misleading. AI does not think, reason, or plan in the way humans do. While some newer models, like ChatGPT-4, may offer some capabilities in these areas, they remain slow and inefficient, and you won't achieve optimal results by relying solely on them. The ideal approach is to have a mix of roles: humans as supervisors and AI as junior-level assistants. This is the model that many seem to be gravitating toward today. **Bernard Leong:** I can build on your point about Vietnam. In my last corporate role, I worked with a team of 12 Vietnamese engineers on a 15-month coding project. We structured the project to evaluate productivity by splitting the team: 50% used GitHub Copilot while the other 50% did not. We found that productivity improved by 50%. After the first month, when we provided Copilot to everyone, the project's timeline was reduced from 15 months to just nine—this was before ChatGPT was available. Additionally, when I attempted to write code myself—albeit not at a production level, but more as a proof of concept—I was able to replicate the entire project in three weeks using ChatGPT. This underscores the significant impact of using AI effectively, especially when you understand how to leverage it. **Joon Nak Choi:** I believe that familiarity with AI tools improves over time. As users become more acquainted with what they can accomplish and what they should avoid, they become more efficient. This trend is common with most AI tools; not only do they reduce the time required for tasks, but they also broaden the range of individuals capable of performing certain activities. People excel at planning and articulating technical tasks, figuring out objectives, and breaking them down into manageable components. If you can prompt AI to handle these tasks in a clear and concise manner—while ensuring there's no room for misinterpretation—you'll achieve outstanding results. In fact, AI can deliver fine-level execution that may surpass human capabilities. Let me illustrate how this is transforming the nature of work. Do you have any questions before I transition to the next topic? **Bernard Leong:** I have a different question, but it relates to a point you just made. There are issues of bias and, at times, data privacy in AI-driven educational tools, right? We can view this from two perspectives: that of educational institutions and the outcomes we want to achieve for students. I want to keep those separate. How do you approach ensuring that AI solutions are ethical and do not perpetuate bias or inequality in outcomes, especially in contexts like coding or essay writing? **Joon Nak Choi:** That's a great question, Bernard, but I need to pause here; if I dive into it, I could go on for hours. Let me shift back to the changing nature of the workplace. One of my key points in advising the Master's program in Business Analytics at HKUST is that the technical skills of traditional computer science-oriented data scientists and modern business analysts are rapidly converging. The traditional advantage of data scientists has been their engineering expertise and backend execution capabilities, which many business analysts may not possess. Typically, data scientists and computer engineers excel at the intricacies of coding, while business analysts understand the fundamentals but may take longer to solve problems due to not knowing every detail of Python. In the past year and a half, I've observed that business analytics students are increasingly using ChatGPT to tackle those intricate coding challenges. They no longer have to determine what the API interface for a model should look like; they can input that directly into ChatGPT, which drafts it for them. This dramatically boosts their productivity, making business analysts four times more efficient while maintaining their competitive edge. Business analysts are better equipped to understand business processes and problems than most data scientists. While the best data scientists do grasp these concepts, the number who truly understand processes and strategic objectives is relatively small. Those who do tend to get promoted quickly. I see an emerging role for greater hiring from business analytics programs because these graduates possess both business acumen and technical skills, enabling them to function almost like "MBA lights" while also being capable of leading technical teams. This shift is often overlooked but is quite significant. It's diminishing the emphasis on the nitty-gritty knowledge of languages like Python, as tools like ChatGPT and Copilot can handle much of that work. At the same time, it highlights a critical skill that many C-level executives tell me is in short supply among their technical staff: a solid understanding of the business side of operations. **Bernard Leong:** If we rewind and consider the future of work, how would you respond to concerns about privacy and bias in AI within educational tools? **Joon Nak Choi:** Generally speaking, the future of work is likely to resemble *The Avengers*, where humans become empowered to be superheroes, akin to Tony Stark, with AI assistants like Jarvis handling tasks in the background. This analogy is one I often use in my lectures. It’s crucial to use AI correctly; if you become overly dependent on it, you risk losing your capabilities. If you offload too much responsibility, you might find yourself akin to the sedentary characters in *Wall-E*, who can’t even stand up because they’ve forgotten how to walk or think, relying on AI for everything. At the start of each semester, I ask my students if they would consider cheating on an essay using AI. Most of them are honest with me, and about a quarter raise their hands. I then show them a relevant movie clip, explaining that if they misuse AI—such as having it write their essay without engaging in the thinking process—they risk becoming one of those people. This question often leads them to reconsider their approach. **Bernard Leong:** Just one question before we discuss Learnovate. What is one thing you know about the intersection of AI and educational technology that few others do? **Joon Nak Choi:** I believe the short-term potential of AI might be more limited than many assume, but its long-term potential is much greater than people realize. When evaluating technology, it's essential to consider the societal context. There are legitimate concerns regarding AI ethics, privacy, and security, which we should take seriously, especially as educational institutions are inherently cautious organizations. Given their connections to government and social missions, schools are slow to adopt new technologies. Any significant change requires navigating multiple committees and obtaining numerous approvals, which can be frustratingly slow. However, we are on the brink of major changes within the university system. In the next five years, AI in education will primarily focus on enhancing existing processes and making them more efficient. However, we are beginning to see significant changes on the horizon. For instance, many universities rely heavily on international students, particularly from mainland China, who pay higher tuition. Changes in regulations can severely impact universities; in Australia, for example, the higher education sector is currently in a state of panic over anticipated revenue shortfalls. Simultaneously, there is growing skepticism towards universities, particularly in the U.S., where one major political party is increasingly anti-higher education. These pressures will lead to a greater push for innovation. In the next five to ten years, we will see more willingness to build new models that replace outdated ones. In the short term, however, institutions will focus on refining their current structures. I believe that stronger universities, like HKUST, are well-positioned to adapt to these changes. While you might not see immediate, sweeping changes driven by AI in the next five years, significant transformations could emerge in the following five to ten years. Many people may feel disappointed during this period, thinking nothing is happening, only to witness substantial shifts in a few years due to research pressures. As we've learned in sociology, people are resistant to change unless compelled, and resource pressures will ultimately necessitate a transformation of the business model. A notable example is the University of Adelaide, which recently announced plans to eliminate in-person lectures in favor of personalized online education. While there has been considerable pushback against this approach, we can expect to see more experimentation like this as universities face increasing pressures. **Bernard Leong:** Let’s discuss Learnovate. What inspired you to start the company, and what is its overarching vision? **Joon Nak Choi:** My journey began from my perspective as an educator. I was actively working on Zectr while also teaching at HKUST, though I was in a part-time role at the time. Eventually, I transitioned out of Zectr to focus more on university teaching. This shift coincided with the onset of COVID-19\. I realized that some of my responsibilities, particularly addressing student cheating during online exams, were quite exhausting. However, my true passion lay in finding ways to make essay grading more manageable. I don't believe multiple-choice assessments are suitable for university-level education. While they can serve a purpose, they fundamentally limit students' ability to think critically and make judgments—skills they will need as AI continues to automate lower-level tasks. I assigned numerous essays across four sections, totaling around 270 students. This workload meant I was spending approximately 12 hours a week grading, which was a significant commitment. To tackle this issue, I approached senior management at HKUST and was connected with Huamin Qu, a senior computer science professor. Together, we began developing solutions, securing university funding, and eventually spinning off into our own company. While Huanmin is less involved now, I continue to lead the initiative. Our focus has evolved since the launch of ChatGPT, shifting from online proctoring to enhancing essay grading, feedback, and commenting. Along the way, I became more integrated into the educational innovation ecosystem, thanks in part to my colleague Sean McGinn, who has invited me to numerous conferences and organizations. This engagement highlighted the need for assessments that prioritize learning rather than just measuring student performance. The goal is to provide timely and detailed feedback with a human touch, as I don't fully trust AI yet. Our approach involves using AI as a grading assistant. In institutions like Stanford or Harvard, they have the resources to employ grading assistants, but most universities lack this capacity, meaning instructors or TAs handle the grading themselves. Typically, they receive a rubric and are tasked with grading a large stack of papers, which often takes longer than expected. In contrast, our AI grading assistant can process these assignments quickly—returning results in minutes, rather than weeks. This efficiency allows instructors to provide feedback in three days instead of three weeks. The AI can generate detailed feedback that would be too repetitive and time-consuming for humans to write, enabling us to return that feedback to students promptly while the material is still fresh in their minds. I believe this aspect of AI in essay grading is crucial. It's not merely about saving instructors time; it's about shortening the feedback loop for students so they can learn from their assignments. This approach works particularly well at the undergraduate level, though I feel that MBA students may still require more human interaction for feedback. **Bernard Leong:** Learnovate appears to leverage technologies like natural language processing and large language models to enhance the grading experience. It seems your focus is less on simply minimizing grading time and more on accelerating the feedback cycle. That’s a significant distinction. How do you envision applying these technologies in other aspects of educational assessments or pedagogies? **Joon Nak Choi:** I find this topic fascinating. There's a lot of truth in the adage that sometimes you learn more by doing than by thinking. Initially, my goal was to save instructors time, but through discussions with senior professionals in education and AI, I've realized how crucial it is to provide students with rapid feedback. As a teacher, I had an intuitive understanding of this need, but I hadn't articulated it clearly until now. I believe there is a significant role for technology in shortening feedback cycles. There are many ways this technology can be utilized, but moving towards personalized education cannot happen in one big leap. Societal and organizational resistance is likely, so it's important to implement changes gradually. We need to assess what is feasible and take measured steps to ensure people feel comfortable with these innovations. The reality is that progress will be slow for these reasons. People often feel uneasy about change. You might see faster adoption in corporate training than in education. However, I believe there's an immediate need to better assess educational outcomes. We need to understand what students are learning to provide them with timely and effective feedback. When dealing with a large class of 270 students, it can be overwhelming to sift through comments and gain insights right away. Thus, we need a robust analytics platform—not just to track grades but also to analyze subcomponents of those grades along with feedback comments. Currently, we are prototyping a tool designed to deliver fine-grained assessments, allowing educators to identify which groups of students excel in specific areas and which do not. This capability enables teachers to set up specialized review sessions for those who need them, ensuring targeted support. Additionally, the traditional method of evaluating teaching effectiveness through student evaluations is inadequate. For instance, a teacher's humor may lead to high ratings without truly reflecting student learning. By integrating this technology with feedback mechanisms, course coordinators can gain a clearer understanding of overall performance across multiple sections of the same course. This can even help senior administrators identify outstanding teachers for recognition. I believe that combining this technology with traditional dashboarding and analytics will yield transformative results in education. The conventional dashboard approach feels outdated; we should leverage technology to provide insights alongside data visualization. AI is evolving rapidly, and I anticipate that significant changes will occur in the near future. **Bernard Leong:** I have two more questions. The first is, what is one question you wish people would ask you more about AI and EdTech? **Joon Nak Choi:** I wish more people would ask, "Why are we doing this?" **Bernard Leong:** I'll ask you that. Why are you doing this? **Joon Nak Choi:** Many are driven by FOMO—fear of missing out—motivated by hype and trends. They push boundaries not out of genuine interest but to appear innovative for career advancement. This raises an important question: What does this mean for the students? When was the last time you reflected on the actual purpose of education? Focusing solely on FOMO can lead to disastrous outcomes. Instead, take the time to consider your goals and how AI can genuinely help you achieve them. That’s where you’ll find the answers. **Bernard Leong:** My traditional closing question is: What does great look like for Learnovate Technologies, or for you in enhancing education with AI? **Joon Nak Choi:** For Learnovate, success initially looks like developing a tool to help teachers enhance their teaching using traditional processes, thereby improving the learning experience for students. That’s our short-term goal. In the long term, we have even bigger aspirations. We aim to connect our efforts to corporate needs, addressing a significant pain point in recruitment: the lack of granularity in student grades. Corporations often rely on standardized exams for incoming recruits to assess basic skills before deciding whether to interview them. What if we could provide corporations with more detailed information—on a voluntary basis, of course, to respect student privacy—about students' strengths and weaknesses at a rubric level? Based on conversations with senior HR leaders, I believe they would value this information. As universities face increasing pressure over the next five years to demonstrate effective teaching, this could serve as a valuable addition to their offerings. However, let's not focus solely on the long term for now; we need to ensure we're effectively grading essays first. Historically, there was a lot of hype around AI essay grading earlier this year, with many innovative secondary school teachers eager to implement it. Yet, many proceeded without a fundamental understanding of the basics. Some of the brightest and most forward-thinking individuals made critical mistakes, such as assuming that running a greater number of essays through a tool would automatically improve grading quality. That’s not how it works. Specific training parameters are required, and even then, the process is more complex than many realize. As a result, I’ve seen many of these initiatives falter. Some teachers, especially at the secondary level, express frustration, claiming AI essay grading doesn’t work. My response is that it fails because it isn’t being implemented correctly. Achieving effective AI essay grading is more challenging than it may seem, and it took us longer than anticipated to refine our approach. However, I believe we’re now at a stage where it’s effective for a variety of tasks. If we can get this right and surround it with the appropriate analytics to benefit teachers in the short term, I would consider that a significant win. It would make an impact, allowing us to focus on achieving even greater results. **Bernard Leong:** JC, thank you for joining the show. In closing, I have two quick questions. Any recent recommendations that have inspired you? **Joon Nak Choi:** I really enjoyed our conversation, and I want to thank you for speaking at my events in Hong Kong; I truly appreciate it. Our lunch together was refreshing, as it's rare to meet someone who understands both the business and technology sides of this field. Most of the time, I’m either discussing with business professionals or engineers focused solely on technology, so it was inspiring to connect with you. Another source of inspiration for me is the students. They are eager to embrace change. The new core course that Sean McGinn and I are teaching at HKUST has become a fantastic program. It fulfils one of the university's critical thinking requirements, and we are blending advanced technology with cutting-edge teaching pedagogies. Half the time, students work in small groups to explain complex concepts like backpropagation to an 11-year-old using digital tools. What they produce is often funny, entertaining, and heartwarming, clearly demonstrating their understanding of these concepts without relying on complicated mathematical jargon. I'm witnessing first-year students at HKUST explain how AI models are trained in simple language that anyone, even a child, could understand. This realization is tremendously inspiring and makes me question whether we are overcomplicating these concepts. If we can elevate everyone's AI literacy to that level, I believe our chances of getting this right—rather than mismanaging it—will increase exponentially. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you? **Joon Nak Choi:** Hopefully not through lengthy explanations! I enjoy talking, but I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts, and I hope what I’ve said has been informative. **Bernard Leong:** I’ll point them to your LinkedIn, Learnovate, and other platforms. **Joon Nak Choi:** Thank you very much! I hope to see you when I’m in Singapore for the Digital Education Council's annual meeting in the first week of November. **Bernard Leong:** I should be in town. To everyone listening, you can find us on YouTube and our main site. I’ll be posting the transcript, which I’ve spent some time editing, but I believe I've found an AI workflow to speed up the process. I look forward to seeing you in Singapore, JC, and continuing our conversation. **Joon Nak Choi:** Fantastic! Thank you, Bernard. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). 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During the conversation, Siok Siok explored how AI makes us more human by emphasizing the importance of authenticity over perfection. They discussed the creative process, with Siok Siok viewing AI as a tool to enhance rather than replace human creativity. The interview also touched on the broader implications of AI, including job displacement and the geopolitical nuances of AI development. Tan Siok Siok shared her thoughts on the need for humans to guide and nurture AI responsibly, dismissing the notion of a doomsday scenario driven by AI. The conversation offered a nuanced perspective on how AI can be a partner in human progress, rather than a threat, encouraging listeners to engage actively with AI’s potential. --- > "Well, I think AI makes us, makes me more human in terms of understanding that nirvana or the ultimate achievement is not to be perfect. The ultimate achievement is to be authentic, present, and yourself. I guess it exists in this human dimension. One of the things you realize is that when something is too perfect, whether it's your selfie or something you've written, people start to distrust it. Right now, if I generate or design something, or if I write something and it sounds too fluent and flawless—without accent, pauses, or mistakes—people might suspect that it's not Siok, but actually the digital twin of Siok. One question that people ask me and ask themselves is: how has AI made me more aware of what it means to be human?" - **Tan Siok Siok** Introduction: Tan Siok Siok, co-author of "[AI For Humanity](https://www.amazon.com/AI-Humanity-Building-Sustainable-Future/dp/1394180306?ref=analysepodcast.com)" with Andeed Ma and James Ong. You can find Siok Siok on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sioksiok/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [X](https://twitter.com/sioksiok?ref=analysepodcast.com) (formerly known as Twitter) *Here is the refined transcript of the conversation between Bernard Leong and Siok Siok:* ### Introduction **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business technology and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong. How do we navigate in the age of AI? With me today, Tan Siok Siok, author of "AI for Humanity, Building a Sustainable AI for the Future", talked about where we are in AI today and how humans will navigate AI to the future. Welcome back, Tan Siok Siok. I think it's been a very long time since we last spoke. **Siok Siok:** It feels like a century since we last spoke, given everything that’s happened—a once-in-a-century pandemic and a few wars breaking out. By the way, I remember telling you that I received a cold email from someone in the U.S. who thought I had great potential as a podcast guest and offered to represent me after hearing our interview from long ago. I hope I can live up to that potential in our conversation today. **Bernard Leong:** I remember when we last spoke, you were working on a documentary called [*Twittermentary*](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2028591/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Of course, now we refer to Twitter as X, or whatever it’s called today. It's been nearly a decade since that conversation, and just a few days ago, I celebrated [**10 years of *Analyse Asia***](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/decade-analyse-asia-reflecting-journey-road-ahead-analyse-asia-tqgkc?ref=analysepodcast.com). It’s interesting—we often overestimate what we can achieve in a year, but vastly underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade. So, what have you been up to over these past ten years, especially with everything that's happened—the pandemic, wars? **Siok Siok**: Congratulations on the 10th anniversary of *Analyse Asia*! Podcasting is tough, so I admire your persistence. Over the past decade since we last spoke, I was published in China for my photography—some people might know that I take a lot of black-and-white, nostalgic iPhone photos of the Beijing Hutongs. When I started, I didn’t see myself as a photographer; I was just experimenting with mobile photography and Chinese social media. Surprisingly, I gained a following and was even signed by an agent, which is quite remarkable for an iPhone photographer. I published two books, one of which, a collaboration with a novelist, won the prestigious Lucian Literary Prize, one of the highest literary awards in China. Recently, that book, *Beijing City In Time*, was translated into Arabic and featured at a major book fair in the UAE. Another significant development was my move back to Singapore after more than a decade in Beijing. It wasn’t planned—I happened to be in Singapore when the pandemic broke out, and as life unfolded, I just ended up staying. ### Career Lessons from Siok Siok **Bernard Leong:** I was about to have you on the podcast earlier, but you asked me to wait because you were working on a book about AI, which was a pleasant surprise. Before we dive into today’s main topic, I’d like to ask: What life lessons have you gained over the past decade? You've had incredible experiences—from your time in China to your work on projects like [*Boomtown* Beijing](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542405/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and *Twittermentary*, and your photography book. It seems like you've accomplished so much more than I have in the last 10 years. What insights can you share with my audience?" **Siok Siok:** I think the key lesson is to make uncertainty your friend. Growing up in Singapore, we often feel the need to be responsible for everything and to control every aspect of our lives. But what the pandemic and the past few years have taught me is that life has different seasons, and many things are beyond our control. During the pandemic, when I unexpectedly ended up back in Singapore, I finally allowed myself to relax, realizing that I couldn’t control everything. Sometimes, you just need to go with the flow and take things as they come. Another important lesson is to flow with your community and contribute to it. Instead of focusing on fully formed plans, it’s more valuable to explore, bond with friends, listen, and offer help. You don't need to know everything or see far into the future; just be a friend to everyone and help them succeed. Lastly, I've learned that whatever you think is unimaginable can become reality. I never imagined I’d return to Singapore or become a co-author of an AI book. And yet, here we are, having this conversation a decade later, with *Analyse Asia* still going strong. So, you can imagine it, and you can reimagine it. That’s a hopeful message, I think. ### AI and Creative Process **Bernard Leong:** it's time to dive into the main topic of the day—your new book on AI. I've been working in AI for nearly 30 years, starting from my days as a theoretical physicist. The book, *AI for Humanity: Building a Sustainable AI for the Future*, has you as one of the co-authors, along with Andy Ma and James Ong, whom I know. To get started, it might be helpful for my audience if we establish some basics. How would you define AI, machine learning, and generative AI, particularly for a layman today? **Siok Siok:** Here’s a secret—I’m a layperson when it comes to AI. So when I saw your question, I panicked a bit, thinking, 'Oh no, Bernard’s giving me a test!' As Asians, we often think about prepping for tests. Full disclosure, I’m not an AI expert. I didn’t become one just because I co-authored a book about AI. I always say I’m not an AI expert—I only play one on Zoom, and here we are on Zoom! My understanding of AI is that it’s not just one thing; it’s really a collection of technologies. It’s the effort of technologists, scientists, and entrepreneurs to mimic human intelligence using machines. It’s a very complex field because different people have different theories about what constitutes human intelligence. One key takeaway from researching and writing the book is not to get too caught up in the current buzzwords—they’ll come and go. There are different hypotheses about what human intelligence is and how we can best replicate or surpass it with machines. Various schools of thought have gained prominence, and machine learning and generative AI fall under the connectionist approach, which focuses on learning from data rather than encoding intelligence with explicit rules. This approach has been on the rise over the past decade, but that doesn’t mean it will always dominate. Even with generative AI being a buzzword recently, we need to be cautious because there’s so much we still don’t know about AI—and about what it means to be human, intelligent, and wise. **Bernard Leong:** So, what inspired you to write the book, and how did you go about putting it together? I assume your co-authors are also well-versed in AI, right? **Siok Siok:** One very important thing to know is that we started writing the book before the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT, actually earlier in 2022\. It wasn’t inspired by ChatGPT or generative AI—it was much more innocent than that. We didn’t anticipate that ChatGPT would go viral, creating this 'iPhone moment' where everyone suddenly realized, 'Oh, AI is something we need to pay attention to.' The beginning was quite innocent. One of my co-authors \[Andeed Ma\] is an AI governance expert, and James Ong has a PhD in AI from the University of Texas at Austin. They were collaborating on the book because they recognized the risks and potential of AI and wanted to share their expertise. I got involved for a very mundane reason—after the lockdown during the pandemic ended, I had lunch with James, a longtime friend, and innocently asked him what he was working on. He mentioned the book, and I asked how I could help. I had published two books before, but I failed to remind him they were photography books in Chinese, not about AI, not in English, and not nonfiction. The whole quest was very simple: to explain the risks and potential of AI to a general audience. We approached it from an interdisciplinary perspective, believing that bringing together different viewpoints would provide a more holistic picture of what AI means to different people. But then, ChatGPT launched early in our writing process, and suddenly everything was evolving so rapidly. AI was in the headlines daily, and we were trying to capture something like lightning in a bottle. It became a challenge to keep up because there was always new research, new news, panic, and exuberance. That’s the origin of the book. ### Explaining AI to a Non-Technical Audience **Bernard Leong:** It’s even harder now because I’m teaching AI at the National University of Singapore, both in the NUS Business School and the Institute of Systems Science, while also trying to keep up with the latest developments. On top of that, I’m working on my own AI startup, which is pretty overwhelming. I imagine when you started writing the book before ChatGPT, things were relatively quiet, and then suddenly, everything just started coming together all at once. Who is the intended audience of the book? **Siok Siok:** I think the caveat here is—Bernard, I have a question for you. Since you’re teaching AI to both technical and non-technical audiences, how do you explain what’s happening with AI? You’re facing the same challenge we did, right? **Bernard Leong:** The hardest part is probably explaining the traditional methods in computer science or digital applications. Typically, you have an input, give it instructions, and then it generates an output. But with artificial intelligence, you’re dealing with data that tries to identify patterns and rules. You feed new data into the model to see if it produces the same output that was originally intended. This process naturally leads to probabilistic outputs. For example, is it a cat or not a cat? That’s easy to define now, but if a completely new breed of cat appears, the AI might struggle to identify it. How do you help AI improve in such situations? This is where most laypeople struggle. I’m probably one of the few who sees hallucination in AI as a feature, not a bug. But people often misunderstand this concept. **Siok Siok:** I agree. **Bernard Leong:** Exactly. The real challenge is understanding hallucination from the perspective that, when implementing generative AI, the key is to constrain it as much as possible. **Siok Siok:** I agree with you—hallucination is a feature of probabilistic calculations in AI. Because it’s calculating probabilities, you end up with a range of outcomes, some of which align with expectations and others that fall on the outer edges of probability. The interesting tension here is that when you make AI safer and more obedient, it can also become less interesting. Part of what makes AI fascinating is how it surprises you, prompting you to think in unexpected ways. This unpredictability is challenging because we’re used to programming computers to follow explicit instructions and execute tasks accordingly. When AI behaves unpredictably or offers a range of outcomes, we often struggle with how to handle it. However, as a creative person, I find this aspect of AI the most captivating. I’m always intrigued when AI presents seven key points, and I focus on the one or two that surprise me, asking, 'Can you expand on point three and point five?' I want to understand how it arrived at those insights. This reflects a different expectation and philosophy when it comes to interacting with AI. **Bernard Leong:** One of the biggest changes in AI today is that it used to be communicated primarily through mathematical language. The beauty of generative AI, like ChatGPT, is its ability to use natural language to communicate with a black box that generates content that sounds very human-like. However, it’s important to remember that this output is just a reflection of the data it’s been trained on, which is all human-generated data from before 2021—what we might call the 'age of the human-made internet.' Going forward, we’re entering an era where AI will be trained on a mix of synthetic and human data. **Siok Siok:** You're absolutely right, and as someone who’s not great at math but excels with languages, this shift is a huge advantage for me. It allows me to be precise in how I prompt AI and adjust the outcomes to my needs. One thing I’ve realized is that, as my friends often say, the hottest programming language today—thanks to generative AI—is English, Chinese, or whatever language you speak, whether it’s Bahasa Indonesia or another. This means that anyone can become a technologist if they can clearly express what they want the AI to do or collaborate on. It’s great news for me because, while I may not be strong in math, I’m very good at communicating my needs to both people and machines. ### AI's role in enhancing human abilities **Bernard Leong:** That brings us to another point. Now that you can interact with a system that can generate what you want to see, how do you view this as a creative? Do you find that it expands your scope of work, or do you lean more towards the purist approach, where some creators reject anything generated by AI because it’s essentially remixing the work of thousands of artists into one form? As an artist, how do you perceive the generative capabilities of AI? **Siok Siok:** That's a great question. I don’t think I’m entirely representative of creatives and artists as a whole. Many of my friends and peers in content creation, filmmaking, design, and marketing are quite fearful that AI technology will displace them. We're already seeing early signs of this, with people losing jobs to AI models, and agencies, marketing firms, and production companies losing contracts and projects. It’s a very sobering moment. However, I’m quite open and excited about AI. I don’t focus on using AI for automation or efficiency; instead, I see AI as a sparring partner or player-coach. If you imagine competing in the Olympics, it’s like playing against an AI model or partner—it helps you quickly elevate your game. For me, the exciting aspect isn’t the automation or generation but the augmentation and collaboration it enables. **Bernard Leong:** A lot of people are quite curious about AI, especially in the private sector and government agencies, where I teach a wide range of individuals. They’re genuinely interested in how AI can help them, but the question that frequently arises is whether AI will replace their jobs. I think it’s too early to make that call. [A great study by the **and** Rest of World](https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-revolution-outsourced-workers/?ref=analysepodcast.com) highlights this issue. You may know that many image designers, masters of Photoshop, in countries like Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines, work on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. When generative AI tools like Midjourney emerged, many designers saw their jobs disappear and lost their livelihoods. However, the study found that after a few months, these designers returned to the platform, rebranding themselves as 'image prompt engineers.' They now generate AI prompts and touch up the resulting images, a skill still in demand. So, my question is about this so-called displacement and augmentation of jobs. How do you and your co-authors view it? I know you discussed whether we’re ready to mitigate the risks of human-level AI. Why don’t we start by exploring the displacement of jobs from that angle? **Siok Siok:** Job displacement is very real, and I’ve been surprised by just how extensive it is, especially as I’ve been promoting the book and talking to people. However, your observation is spot on—there’s a cycle to this. Initially, people fear they’re being replaced, but then they come to realize that humans are still essential in the workflow. In the book, we advocate for a shift from 'human versus AI' to 'human with AI.' Most of the stories you hear in the media focus on how AI outperforms humans in tasks like chess, and Go, or even scoring higher on exams like the bar. But what’s more productive is to think about how humans can work with AI. Take your example of image prompt engineering—where people who once did this work manually now realize they can do it better, faster, and perhaps command a higher price if they know how to effectively use AI tools. I agree with you—we're still at the beginning of this cycle, and it's important to remember that we're also in a period of global economic downturn. This is why we're seeing cost-cutting measures and job displacement. However, as the economy improves, I believe people will increasingly realize that they can create greater value by working with AI, rather than being replaced by it. We're likely to see new job titles emerge, like 'image prompt engineer,' along with many other possibilities. We need to give time for growth and allow things to play out. This is why we advocate for human-AI symbiotic intelligence. Instead of viewing automation as machines doing everything, we should think about how to break down workflows into human-AI collaboration. In this model, humans direct, curate, command, guide, and nurture the AI, ensuring it works effectively alongside us. A simple example is what you mentioned about prompt engineering for images, but there are many other examples, such as drug discovery or weather prediction, where humans act more like engineers, using plain language rather than needing to know complex math or programming languages. **Bernard Leong:** One thing I’ve noticed when discussing AI’s ability to beat humans is that it’s elevating our performance levels. Take, for example, [the fourth game between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo](https://www.wired.com/2016/03/two-moves-alphago-lee-sedol-redefined-future/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Lee did manage to beat the AI with what’s known as a 'God move.' For those unfamiliar, a God move is an extremely rare, game-changing move that can completely alter the course of the game, turning a losing situation into a winning one. In the history of Go, such moves are incredibly rare. Despite being defeated in the first three games, Lee’s shame from those losses pushed him to achieve this extraordinary move, and since then, he has never lost to any player. Similarly, even the European player who helped train the AI significantly improved after playing against it. This was highlighted in the documentary. So, rather than fearing that AI will take over our jobs, isn’t it possible that AI can help us reach new levels of achievement? **Siok Siok:** I think you’re right. In fact, chapter 8 of our book opens with a story about a Go player who managed to beat an AI model—with the help of coaching from another AI. It’s a case of humans with AI versus AI, which I find both interesting and exciting. That’s why I use the player-coach analogy; it perfectly captures this dynamic. If I were competing in the Olympics and playing against a former Olympic champion, I’d improve much more quickly. Now, imagine if it weren’t just one coach, but hundreds, thousands, or even millions. That’s the kind of opportunity AI presents. However, the short-term challenge, especially for us in Singapore—a relatively small market—is that this rapid advancement can be overwhelming. In a small market, the challenge is that it’s often shallow, with most people operating in the lower to middle tier in terms of budget, expectations, and skill. This is where the risk of automation becomes significant. However, if I were in a place like Hollywood, where projects can range from $5,000 to $500,000 or even $50 million, there would be much more room to explore and innovate. I could quickly scale from $500,000 to $5 million by leveraging AI in my work. While there may be short-term challenges, the key is to reimagine what it means to compete and succeed on a global scale with the help of AI especially for people in smaller markets and developing economies. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, but living in Singapore, we have no choice but to engage with the global market. My calls at 4 a.m. aren't with local developers who are working on API solutions—they're with friends at DeepMind and OpenAI in the U.S. While our local community focuses on developing with existing tools, globalization has at least made the sharing of information much more accessible. Information flows quite freely now, allowing anyone to be as skilled as the best in the world—it’s just a matter of upskilling. One thing that’s not fully appreciated yet is how effectively AI can help people enhance their skills, even more than they might expect. We often focus on the replacement of jobs, but I’d like to shift the conversation to the risk of a doomsday AI scenario that many people have brought up. When it comes to artificial general intelligence (AGI), people often ask me when we’ll know if we’ve achieved it. My response is that we’ll know it when we see it. However, as of today, I don’t believe AGI is anywhere close. ### Different Definitions of AI and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) **Siok Siok:** How do you define AGI for you? **Bernard Leong:** For me, AGI must have the ability to reason, synthesize information, and create new knowledge. We haven't reached that point yet. Many people wonder why so many theoretical physicists, like myself, have transitioned into working in AI. What usually happens is that much of higher-dimensional physics involves the use of tensors, which are mathematical objects. You've likely heard of terms like TensorFlow—these concepts originate from physics. These mathematical frameworks are designed to generate a space of all possible outcomes. Some of these possibilities are hallucinations, as you’ve mentioned, but others could be new insights we haven’t seen before. However, they still require human or experimental validation. The same principle applies in physics—we can generate numerous insights with string theory, but we still need to seek out experimental evidence to determine whether they’re real. For AGI, the key point for me is that it must be able to reason and make decisions independently, not just based on what it observes from humans. That’s when we’ll truly see AGI. There are different definitions of AGI, but I lean more towards Google's definition, as it offers a more complex and nuanced perspective compared to OpenAI's approach. In fact, OpenAI's definition of AGI is essentially what Google considers level two AI—agents that can perform functions and reasoning. I don't think we've reached that point yet. I believe much of what we’re seeing is still just a reflection of ourselves. ### Geopolitics and AI **Siok Siok:** That's a great point, and it's something we discuss in Chapter Two, 'The AI Trap.' We're often unaware of how much we're projecting ourselves into AI models, creating an infinite mirror of our own traits and different versions of ourselves within these systems. For me, this is especially relevant given the many years I spent in China. For me, one of the challenges with artificial general intelligence is that we're overlooking geopolitics. We're not considering the fact that different cultures and regions have varying interpretations of reality, truth, and what constitutes general intelligence. As a result, we’re unlikely to see a single, universal model of general intelligence that applies globally. With 7 billion people on Earth, we're likely to see different models of reality and intelligence emerge, rather than a single, unified model. This is a significant obstacle we’re not fully considering—all the human factors like politics, economics, and sociology will inevitably come into play. One of the things I find particularly interesting is that if you prompt two different AI models—one based in China and the other U.S.-centric—about the same world event, whether it’s a war, a pandemic, or anything else, you’ll get two different sets of answers. Truth, reality, and intelligence are far more complex than we often consider. It's not just about calculation or accuracy. **Bernard Leong:** Yes, but it's a physical abstraction of something you can represent in reality. For example, justice is an abstract concept, but the law isn’t—it reflects certain aspects of justice. Law is a representation in reality that can capture most, but not all, of what justice means. From that perspective, it's similar with AI. AI is an abstract concept, but what we can create in reality today is through machine learning, which relies on data. You spend time with many of the top technologists in Beijing, and I believe my audience may not realize that if they spoke with you more, you could likely connect them with some of the most powerful founders of Chinese tech companies. One question that really struck me is related to Lee Kai-Fu's discussion on AI superpowers. The surprise was that [China didn’t invent ChatGPT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwlTuIsjX7o&ref=analysepodcast.com)—the Americans did. I’ve pieced together part of the story, and my sense is that China didn’t miss out; it’s more that their culture and focus on resource constraints played a role. Similarly, Google didn’t miss it either—they deemed it too dangerous to pursue. What are your thoughts on this? If we have different large language models (LLMs) across regions, we’ll end up with very different perceptions of truth. I’ve personally had difficulty accessing LLMs in China. I've tested every LLM I can find, but to try any of the Chinese LLMs, I had to borrow a number from my Chinese students in class. They showed me how Baidu's LLM works, as well as Hunyuan from Alibaba and Tencent's LLM, just to see how a Chinese LLM would approach the same question from a very different perspective. **Siok Siok:** When discussing AI models, we often overlook the complexity of truth. Truth is intertwined with morality, philosophy, history, permission structures, and social and cultural factors. The idea of a single AGI or general intelligence model that can apply universally is, in my opinion, premature. Perhaps it could be realized someday, but the reality is that all these human factors will inevitably come into play. Everyone will want to define their own sense of what is factual and what constitutes reality. Take fact-checking as a simple example. A pure technologist might focus on achieving the highest level of accuracy, but ideology, judgment, and individual interpretations of reality also influence fact-checking. For instance, consider the recent U.S. presidential debate—people don't agree on what is factual, which highlights the challenge of defining truth when we talk about developing a general intelligence model. **Bernard Leong:** But then, when it comes to factuality, is it because we're now in a postmodern world where everything is relative? I don’t subscribe to that view. I'm more aligned with Immanuel Kant's idea that there is a categorical imperative—some things are inherently true. The postmodernist view suggests that truth is relative, but you can’t embrace relativity entirely. There must be a common baseline we can agree on. For example, in the U.S. presidential debates, despite differing opinions, the truth—the factuality of the matter—still exists. While I agree that pinning down what AGI truly is may be challenging, I believe there are aspects of it that can be captured in a pragmatic and implementable way. But bringing it back to another question: Do you think we are facing a doomsday scenario with AI? ### Doomsday Scenarios and AI Responsibility **Siok Siok:** I don’t think so at all. If there is a doomsday scenario, we can’t simply blame AI. We often assume that AI is an evil force, but that’s problematic. When we hand over our human agency to machines, we’re not taking responsibility. The central idea of AI for Humanity and the concept of responsible AI is that we need to reclaim our sense of agency. We must recognize that this isn’t something happening to us—it’s something we’re directing, curating, guiding, and nurturing. The doomsday scenario is often framed as an external event, like a natural disaster, but we must remember that many natural disasters have human causes, stemming from our lack of awareness and accountability. The real threat isn’t AI itself; it’s our lack of awareness, and our inability to communicate, negotiate, collaborate, and understand each other. We need to maintain perspective—it’s far easier for humans to destroy one another than for AI to become sentient and take over the world. ### AI as a Tool for Self-Improvement **Bernard Leong:** What is the one thing that now you know about AI that very few do then? **Siok Siok:** One thing I know about AI that few people realize is what you mentioned—it’s a tool for attaining higher levels of awareness, intelligence, and wisdom. I see AI as a sparring partner, a player-coach, someone you can compete against to elevate your skills. You mentioned Go as an example—how players improve by playing against AI. The remarkable thing about AI is its ability to simulate hundreds, thousands, even millions of games in rapid succession. What I know about AI is that it has the potential to make me better. However, it’s crucial to have the wisdom to guide and nurture it. I need to be clear in directing AI towards what I truly desire and want to achieve. This is something I emphasize to my creative friends who are worried about AI taking their jobs. One thing AI does is strip us bare. In the past, technical barriers in editing, transcription, and content creation provided an excuse for not focusing on originality and insightful analysis. But now, with those barriers removed by AI, our true abilities—good or bad—are immediately exposed. I think that’s quite shocking for many people. If you’re a poor writer, AI can make you worse; if you’re a good writer, AI can elevate you to greatness. Essentially, we need to improve—not just in our skills, but also in our ability to guide, nurture, and constrain AI effectively ### Making AI more Human **Bernard Leong:** So what is the one question that you wish people would ask you about AI that very few do? After so many book tours and answering countless questions, is there one question you wish people would ask you, but they never do? One that makes you wonder, 'Why has no one asked me this?" **Siok Siok:** The one question I wish people would ask me about AI is, 'How does AI make us more human?' **Bernard Leong:** So now I'm going to ask you—how does AI make you more aware and more human? **Siok Siok:** I believe AI makes me more human by helping me understand that the ultimate goal isn't perfection but authenticity. It's about being present, being yourself, and existing on a human level. One of the things I've realized is that when something is too perfect—whether it's a selfie or a piece of writing—people tend to distrust it. Right now, if I create or write something that sounds too fluent and flawless, without any accent, pauses, or mistakes, people might suspect it’s not really me—it’s my digital twin. That’s one way AI makes me reflect on what it means to be human. A question I often hear, and one I ask myself, is: How has AI made me more aware of my own humanity? **Bernard Leong:** You sound like my editor. You know why? Because 90 percent of the time, I tell him to go through the script and delete all the 'ums' and 'ahs.' But he always comes back and says it makes me sound less human. He tells me that my listeners expect those 20 to 30 minutes of unfiltered conversation—it’s what makes it feel real. It’s all about maintaining that human element. **Siok Siok:** I believe it’s the pauses, the filler words, the accents—like our lingering Singlish accent as Singaporeans—that make us human. It’s the flaws, imperfections, and moments of vulnerability that truly define our humanity. We're starting to see this in marketing and content creation—people are becoming more suspicious of anything that appears too perfect or generic. Having spent a lot of time in China, I’ve observed that they’ve perfected the art of AI-driven image editing. They can take any photo and make your complexion flawless, erase wrinkles, and create perfect symmetry. But what we’re finding is that the definitions of beauty, intelligence, and originality are shifting. Imperfection is becoming a defining feature of beauty. The hesitations, the vulnerability, and the sense of uncertainty are becoming hallmarks of wisdom. That’s what we need to embrace. We’ve always celebrated intelligence as a bigger brain, the ability to think faster, analyze more clearly, and calculate numbers—but now, we’re recognizing that there’s more to it than that. That’s because we’ve traditionally compared ourselves to other animals, positioning ourselves as the apex of the animal kingdom. But now, as we measure ourselves against AI and machine intelligence, other qualities are becoming more valued—wisdom, uncertainty, vulnerability, empathy, and emotional intelligence. These traits, often dismissed as 'soft skills' over the years, are gaining importance. We’ve long associated these skills with women—listening, collaborating—but I believe we’ll see a shift in what we celebrate. Instead of focusing solely on measurable attributes, we’ll start valuing these intangible qualities that make someone likable, trustworthy, or worth collaborating with. **Bernard Leong:** That’s an excellent point, which brings me to my traditional closing question: What does success look like for you if the book achieves its intended outcome? **Siok Siok:** For me, success would be if anyone who reads the book, attends our events, or listens to this podcast feels empowered to do something about AI. They don’t need to be experts or know how to program; it’s about understanding the essence of AI and realizing they have the ability to shape and define the future. What’s happened with the extreme reactions to AI—ranging from fear to exuberance—is that people often feel powerless. Those who are fearful want to avoid it, while those who are overly enthusiastic project all their hopes and aspirations onto AI. For me, success would be if everyone felt they could understand AI. Even if they don’t know much about it yet, they’d feel confident they can learn more and actively participate in the conversation about how to make AI work for the benefit of humanity. ### Closing **Bernard Leong:** I encourage everyone to check out your book, *AI for Humanity: Building a Sustainable AI for the Future.* Siok Siok, thank you so much for being on the show. Before we wrap up, I have two quick questions. First, are there any recent recommendations that have inspired you? **Siok Siok:** Yes, I’d recommend two books—one fiction and one non-fiction. The first is [*Klara and the Sun* by Kazuo Ishiguro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klara%5Fand%5Fthe%5FSun?ref=analysepodcast.com), a Nobel Prize-winning author. It’s a poignant novel that explores the human-robot relationship, focusing not on AI taking over the world, but on themes of loneliness, alienation, and how we come to terms with ourselves while coexisting with robots and machines. The other book is a memoir by Dr. [Fei-Fei Li](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fei-Fei%5FLi?ref=analysepodcast.com), often referred to as the godmother of AI. While it’s a bestselling and widely celebrated book, I found it particularly interesting when reading it with my book club, which includes women from different cultures, both Asian and Western. The memoir sparked surprising debates—some felt she wasn’t critical enough of AI, while others, like myself, were more empathetic to her perspective, understanding her sense of history and her reluctance to be overtly critical or contentious. So, I’d recommend both *Klara and the Sun* and Dr. Fei-Fei Li’s memoir. **Bernard Leong:** It's called "[The Worlds I See](https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-See-Curiosity-Exploration-Discovery-ebook/dp/B0BPQSLVL6?ref=analysepodcast.com)". So, how can my audience find you? **Siok Siok:** Thankfully, my name is easy to remember—Siok Siok. If you search 'Siok Siok' on any social media platform—LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram—you’ll find me. My name means 'to cherish,' so I hope to connect with you online. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/v%5FlTa3YWNIs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-creativity-and-the-human-element-with-tan-siok-siok/id914868245?i=1000670450933&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/46HbWNMX7qSVzbfn2UR3s2?si=1aaf35ef5ee248e2&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/ai-creativity-and-the-human-element-tan-siok-siok-generativeai?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtyhvmU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/461%5FAI%5FCreativity%5Fand%5Fthe%5FHuman%5FElement%5Fwith%5FTan%5FSiok%5FSiok.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### On the Tenth Anniversary of Analyse Asia URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/on-the-tenth-anniversary-of-analyse-asia/ Last updated: 2024-09-02T03:45:16.000Z We overestimate what we can build in a year and underestimate what we can build in a decade. Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Analyse Asia podcast, a milestone that began with the registration of its domain, the recording and editing of the very first episode, and its subsequent sharing on podcast hosting platforms. In truth, the Analyse Asia podcast originated as a side project, an endeavor I pursued to ensure I maintained my entrepreneurial spirit and muscle following the challenges I faced with the collapse of my first high growth startup. Throughout my various significant undertakings, whether it was aspiring to study theoretical physics at Cambridge University or pushing forward with various startup ideas, including Dorje AI, the initial stages were often met with skepticism. It is worth noting that every startup idea, no matter how innovative or intriguing, often faces criticism and doubt. If you truly believe in what you do, you have to make it happen and get things done. For example, during my secondary school years, a classmate told me I would never succeed as a theoretical physicist because I did not attend a prestigious school, was not in a gifted program, and had not participated in science olympiads at a young age. Nevertheless, I persisted, and eventually, I achieved my goal and never looked back. Similarly, when we were founding SGEntrepreneurs as a blogging media portal to gather news for startups in Singapore, an NUS professor dismissed it as a poor idea. Yet, we were eventually acquired by Tech In Asia, which was later acquired by Singapore Press Holdings, and in 2024, our founding team realized their exit. Moreover, the acquisition of SGE had a broader impact, enabling all of us to become angel investors within the ecosystem, particularly in the areas of crypto and Web3 companies. The reason I have reached the tenth anniversary of the Analyse Asia podcast is also rooted in persistence. A former venture capitalist in the Southeast Asia ecosystem once told me that the podcast was a flawed idea, commenting that I was neither a ‘beautiful hot girl’ nor did I have an American-accented voice, implying the podcast would never succeed. Ironically, that individual eventually became a guest on my podcast. The success of the Analyse Asia podcast can be encapsulated in this one graph: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2024/09/Screenshot-2024-08-31-at-10.11.32.png) Today, the Analyse Asia podcast was graced by many prominent guests. The managing directors of every technology company in the Asia Pacific, the journalists from prominent media such as Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Tech In Asia, The Information, South China Morning Post and etc, the CEOs of global and regional companies or high growth startups in web 2.0 and web3 (crypto) and global thought leaders such as Chris Miller (author of Chip War), James Crabtree (author of the Billionaire Raj), Robert Greene (author of 48 Laws of Power), Horace Dediu and Benedict Evans, the podcast have been regarded as a pioneer and a port of call for people with a perspective on the Asia Pacific which includes China and India. It took five years to reach the first million, a challenging milestone in establishing a brand. The subsequent two years brought the second million, followed by 1.5 years for the third, and another 1.5 years to achieve the fifth million. While the first million was particularly arduous, it served as a foundation; as the back catalogue of podcast episodes grew, so did our audience, leading to increased discoverability and sustained growth. Rather than focusing on the reasons behind our success, I would like to reflect on the journey and the principles that guided us to this point. The first guiding principle is to approach the podcast as one would a startup. Interestingly, the most significant periods of growth for Analyse Asia did not occur during times of expansion but rather during moments of challenge. Each time the podcast’s traffic dipped, I sought innovative ways to overcome the stagnation, ultimately gaining a deeper understanding of distribution strategies. Notably, the most recent growth engine was proposed by my wife, Yuying Deng—now a podcast host herself with *Scaling Today*—who suggested transitioning to video content in response to declining audio traffic amidst the proliferation of podcasts. This shift catalyzed a 2 million increase in our audience over the past year. The second principle is brand building. Although I have recently identified a viable business model for the podcast, it became evident that Analyse Asia was not initially designed with monetization as a primary focus. Over the years, I have been invited to participate in roundtables across the globe, from US think tanks in AI to the GreenTech Festival in Berlin, and as a keynote speaker for leadership summits at three Fortune 500 companies. These opportunities have allowed me to establish Analyse Asia as a recognized media brand. One of the most effective strategies I employed was interviewing Series B founders exclusively during the podcast’s first seven years. Interestingly, whenever I made exceptions, those startups often secured Series B financing shortly thereafter, which led to the podcast being seen as an indicator of a company’s potential success. Building a brand is never easy, and while I did not initially set out to create a personal brand, I am honored by the brand that has emerged. The third principle is perseverance—the willingness to endure and persist through the grind. In reality, podcasting differs from traditional media news sites in that it is not a zero-sum game. One key to success lies in the compounding effects that occur when similar podcasts thrive within the same space. While I encountered competition at every turn, I found that collaboration and support among fellow podcasters were more beneficial than rivalry. Some podcasts, which I once believed would surpass Analyse Asia, eventually folded. I often advise aspiring podcasters that the reason for my success is simply that I stayed in the game long enough. Reflecting on this journey, there are certainly aspects I would approach differently. I would have placed greater emphasis on building a community, such as creating a messaging group for the audience and guests. However, balancing a corporate career and a family of three children made this option challenging until I could assemble a dedicated team. Given the monetary and effort-based investment I have made in the podcast, I believe it has achieved the modest goals I set for it. While there may be no formal celebration to mark the podcast’s 10th anniversary, I would like to take this opportunity to connect with the guests and the audience who have supported the show. If you are a listener, I encourage you to reach out to me. As I approach episode 500—the final milestone I aim to achieve in this 10th year—I remain committed to making a decision on whether to continue or conclude the podcast. At this significant juncture, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my family, my past and present team, the audience, guests, and partners who have supported the show. Thank you and it remains Day 1 for me. Take care & best regards. Bernard Leong, Host and Founder of the Analyse Asia podcast. ### Disrupting E-Commerce: How Shein and Temu are Challenging Amazon's Reign with Jing Yang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/disrupting-ecommerce-war-temu-shein-vs-amazon/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:27.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, the Asia Bureau Chief from The Information shares the ongoing e-commerce war between Amazon and the upstarts: Shein and Temu across the global landscape. Starting from the origins of Shein and Temu, she explained how both companies first expanded to the US enabled by Amazon. Jing Yang breaks down how Temu gains total control over its suppliers and sellers and subsequently threatens Amazon's e-commerce dominance in the US market. Last but not least, she examined the fallout from the potential US ban on Shein and Temu from US lawmakers and the possibility of Shein's IPO in the US. --- > *"Temu was launched in the US, their first market in September 2022\. That is when Shein just started to gain a lot of traction. There's a lot of attention being paid to Shein. In the beginning, many people thought that Temu was a copycat of Shein because they both sold goods from China using this direct-from-China shipping model. However, I think the competition has evolved quite differently now, and Temu has done business and operational innovation that has made others, including Shein, have to catch up."* \- **Jing Yang** ### **Introduction** - [Jing Yang](https://www.theinformation.com/u/Jing%20Yang?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com), Asia Bureau Chief from TheInformation ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@jingyanghk](https://twitter.com/jingyanghk?ref=analysepodcast.com), ) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - As I was in Hong Kong, to my surprise, I could not access Open AI’s ChatGPT. Thank you for enlightening me that the Chinese government did not ban ChatGPT. So why is ChatGPT from Open AI not accessible in Hong Kong? ### **The Global E-Commerce War 2024 - Temu and Shein vs Amazon** - Let’s start with an introduction to two companies which originated in China but have successfully expanded globally: Shein and Temu. Shein is now incorporated in Singapore, while the Chinese company, Pinduoduo, wholly owns Temu and is listed on NASDAQ. Can you provide an overview of the origins of Shein and Temu, and how they have evolved since their inception? - Who are the key people behind Temu and Shein? - What are the performances of Shein and Temu in the year 2023 and how are they compared to their European fast-fashioned rivals? - Let’s go with Shein, they partnered with their rival, Forever 21 in August 2023, what is the essence behind their partnership? - Can you explain how Temu maintains such tight control over its suppliers? What specific practices do they use to manage and monitor their supply chain? - How do Temu's supplier management practices compare to those of other major e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Shein? - How did Amazon enable the expansion of Shein and Temu into the US market? - What was Amazon's initial reaction when Doug Herrington highlighted Temu as a significant competitor? - How has Temu’s entry into the market influenced Amazon’s business strategies, and what responses has Amazon made to blunt the risk of Temu and Shein siphoning away shoppers with cheap goods? - Recently, in your latest article, what prompted Temu to change its strategy from direct from China to a different approach to handle Amazon’s entry into their business? - What implications does Temu’s strategic shift have for the broader e-commerce landscape? - How reliant is Amazon from the Chinese sellers and what are the implications in the long term? - There have been discussions about a potential U.S. ban on Temu imports due to concerns over forced labour. What are the key factors driving this potential ban? - How significant is the risk of this ban for Temu, and what impact could it have on their operations if implemented? - How will Temu reduce its reliance on US shoppers? - How is the US government escalating the crackdown on the trade rule behind Shein and Temu and what are the responses from both companies to the US government? - Can Shein eventually IPO and still have access to the US market? - Similarly, what are the likely scenarios for Temu given the US might limit its access? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Jing Yang's recommendations: [High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy](https://academic.oup.com/book/56342?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Angela Huyue Zhang](https://academic.oup.com/search-results?f%5FAuthors=Angela%20Huyue%20Zhang&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke](https://www.amazon.sg/Dopamine-Nation-Finding-Balance-Indulgence/dp/152474672X?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Netflix's 3 Body Problem](https://www.netflix.com/title/81024821?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can my audience find you? ### **References from** [**The Information**](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) **(Requires subscription):** - [Shein’s 40% Revenue Growth and Profit Boost in 2023 Could Help Lure IPO Investors](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sheins-40-revenue-growth-and-profit-boost-in-2023-could-help-lure-ipo-investors?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com). - [Temu Keeps An Iron Grip on Suppliers, Exposing Itself to U.S. Ban Threat](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/temu-keeps-an-iron-grip-on-suppliers-exposing-itself-to-u-s-ban-threat?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [U.S. Escalates Crackdown on Trade Rule Behind Shein and Temu](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/u-s-escalates-crackdown-on-trade-rule-behind-shein-and-temu?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Shein to Prioritize Compliance Amid U.S. Forced Labor Crackdown](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/shein-to-prioritize-compliance-amid-u-s-forced-labor-crackdown?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Temu Aims to Lessen Reliance on U.S. Shoppers](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/temu-aims-to-lessen-reliance-on-u-s-shoppers?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Temu Flip-Flopped on Cotton Policy Meant to Weed Out Forced Labor, Suppliers Say](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/temu-flip-flopped-on-cotton-policy-meant-to-weed-out-forced-labor-suppliers-say?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [U.S. Lawmakers Demand Temu Shipment Ban Over Forced Labor Concerns](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/u-s-lawmakers-demand-temu-shipment-ban-over-forced-labor-concerns?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Inside Amazon, Temu’s Rise Prompts Soul Searching](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-amazon-temus-rise-prompts-soul-searching?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [How Shein Decided to Partner With Rival Forever 21](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-shein-decided-to-partner-with-rival-forever-21?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Temu Breaks With Direct-From-China Strategy In Threat to Amazon](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/temu-breaks-with-direct-from-china-strategy-in-threat-to-amazon?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon To Launch Temu-Like Discount Section With Direct Shipping From China](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazon-to-launch-temu-like-discount-section-with-direct-shipping-from-china?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon’s Bargain Store Would Use Same Trade ‘Loophole’ as Temu, Shein](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazons-bargain-store-would-use-same-trade-loophole-as-temu-shein?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Temu Opens Up Marketplace to European Merchants](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/temu-opens-up-marketplace-to-european-merchants?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/bieny6P0I9g?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disrupting-e-commerce-how-shein-and-temu-are/id914868245?i=1000665074019&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4osmzqMfMUEAohLtMtG2QP?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/disrupting-e-commerce-temu-shein-amazon-supply-chain-us?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtlDaII?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/460%5FDisrupting%5FE-Commerce%5F%5FHow%5FShein%5Fand%5FTemu%5Fare%5FChallenging%5FAmazons%5FReign%5Fwith%5FJing%5FYang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### How Netflix bring Asian Content to the Global Audience with Minyoung Kim URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/how-netflix-bring-asian-content-to-the-global-audience-with-minyoung-kim/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:27.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s VP of Content for the Asia Pacific (excluding India), shared her perspectives on how Netflix work with content creators across the Asia Pacific region and brings them to a global audience. In the same conversation, Minyoung discussed the importance of cultural adaptation and localization and provided behind-the-scenes insights into how the Squid Game became a global phenomenon starting from their focus on the Korean audience. Minyoung also addressed challenges faced by Asian content creators, offered her advice for aspiring filmmakers who want to collaborate with Netflix, and shared her thoughts on what great would look like for Netflix in the Asia Pacific. --- > “The most important lesson that I have learned is really Know your audience. You need to really understand your audience, and what they want because oftentimes the content executives make the mistake of programming for themselves rather than the audience. And I actually went through the exact same mistake when I first started, because I believed what I like is what audience like. So I think that's like the number one rule, really trying to understand the audience. That is number one. And as an individual, for me. I don't think it's only in Asia. I think globally building a relationship is really important. But trying to develop a relationship for the sake of a relationship never lands well. You can never, utilize the relationship. You build a relationship through great work and you build a relationship not only to get what you need but also to be able to say no.” - **Minyoung Kim** ### **Introduction** - Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s VP of Content, APAC excluding India ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimminyoung/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) How did you start your career and eventually end up working at Netflix? - What are the lessons in your career journey that you can share with my audience? ### **How** [**Netflix**](https://netflix.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) **bring Asian Content to the Global Audience** - Can you provide an overview of Netflix and its vision and mission? - How did Netflix start initially in the Asia Pacific region? What are the early days like given that you are part of the team that set it up? - What is the current footprint of the business in the region? - How does Netflix grow their distribution with partners given that Asia Pacific is such a diverse region? - Let’s come to the content creation and curation. What strategies do you employ to ensure Netflix's content resonates with diverse audiences across Asia? How do these strategies differ from country to country within the region? - What were your initial thoughts when you came across the script for 'Squid Game'? Did you anticipate the global phenomenon it became, and what do you think were the key factors in its worldwide success? - What have been some of the biggest challenges in creating content for Asian markets, and how have you addressed them? - How important is cultural adaptation and localisation in your content creation process? - Can you give an example of how you've successfully locally adapted a project for a global audience? - You mentioned the importance of building relationships with local creators. How do you approach these relationships, and what role do they play in the content development process? - Could you elaborate on the concept of 'green-light rigour' at Netflix? How do you decide which projects to green-light, especially in a diverse and competitive market like Asia? - What is your vision for the future of Asian content on the global stage? How do you see Netflix shaping this landscape? - What advice would you give aspiring creators and filmmakers in Asia who want to collaborate with Netflix? - How do you navigate the rapidly evolving streaming landscape, and what trends do you foresee in the Asian content market? - My traditional closing question: What does great look like for Netflix in the Asia Pacific region? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Minyoung Kim's recommendations: [The Boyfriend](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/81685212?ref=analysepodcast.com) from Japan, [Dr Climax](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/81517170?ref=analysepodcast.com) from Thailand and [Chicken Nugget](https://www.netflix.com/title/81582269?ref=analysepodcast.com) from Korea on Netflix. - BL's recommendations: The docuseries from Netflix, for example, [Rise of Empires: Ottoman](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/80990771?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/z9XaW9IPFX8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-netflix-bring-asian-content-to-the-global/id914868245?i=1000659432957&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Yxroau4CIIMgsifMsjG1r?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/how-netflix-brought-asian-content-to-the-global-audience-with-minyoung-kim?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFt8DJLQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/459%5FHow%5FNetflix%5Fbrought%5FAsian%5FContent%5Fto%5Fthe%5FGlobal%5FAudience%5Fwith%5FMinyoung%5FKim.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Google & Sustainability in Europe with Adam Elman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/google-sustainability-in-europe-with-adam-elman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:26.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Adam Elman, Head of Sustainability for EMEA at Google, shares the key initiatives of the company in Europe. We begin with Adam discussing his career journey, explaining how he came to lead key sustainability initiatives at Google and the innovative measures taken to enhance energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. He highlights the Environmental Insights Explorer, the challenges of achieving 100% renewable energy, and the role of AI in sustainability. Adam offers valuable advice for companies starting their sustainability journeys and emphasizes the importance of engagement, transparency, and accountability. Last but not least, he describes what great would look like for Google in its sustainability efforts. --- > "We have these very ambitious goals and we've spoken about a few, but there are many others in Europe. In particular, the E.U. and countries like the U.K. have very ambitious climate goals. For Google, we want to be part of the solution. So, good for me is, we make progress on our goals in our own operations, but we really want to help others. And we actually have this as a global goal rather than a regional goal, an ambition to help others save a "gigaton" worth of emissions every year from 2030 onwards. A "gigaton" is the emissions of Japan, just to put that in perspective. So, I want a big slug of that to come from the work we are doing in helping companies and other organizations and individuals within my region to help them make more sustainable choices." - **Adam Elman** ### **Introduction** - Adam Elman, Head of Sustainability, EMEA, Google ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-elman/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - How did you eventually end up in your current role? - What are the lessons you can share about your career journey with my audience? ### [**Google & Sustainability**](https://sustainability.google/?ref=analysepodcast.com) **in Europe** - Google is renowned for its technological innovations, but can you start by telling us more about your role as the Head of Sustainability at Google? What does your day-to-day look like? - Google has been at the forefront of sustainability efforts. What are some of the key initiatives your team is spearheading to address climate change specifically for your region EMEA? - Google's data centres are reputed for their energy efficiency. Can you delve into the specific measures and technologies that make this possible? - AI plays a crucial role in modern technology. How is Google leveraging AI to enhance sustainability, and can you share some real-world examples of its impact on reducing carbon emissions? - What is the one thing you know that very few do about making sustainability initiatives work? - Achieving 100% renewable energy matching is no small feat. What have been the major challenges and successes in maintaining this commitment over the years? - You mentioned the Environmental Insights Explorer during the GreenTech Festival panel which we are both on. Can you explain how it helps cities manage and mitigate their environmental impact? - With the rise of AI, energy consumption is a growing concern. How does Google manage the energy demands of its AI technologies, and what steps are being taken to minimize their carbon footprint? - Public and corporate engagement is crucial for sustainability. How does Google work to promote sustainability practices and raise awareness among the public and other organizations? - Transparency and accountability are key. What metrics does Google use to measure its sustainability efforts, and how do you ensure these are communicated effectively? - For companies that are just beginning their sustainability journey, what advice would you offer to help them enhance their practices and make a significant impact? - What does great look like for you with Google focusing on sustainability goals? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - How do my audience find you? **Acknowledgements:** Our host thanks the organizers of [**GreenTech Festival**](https://greentechfestival.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)Berlin 2024, 16-17 May 2024 for the invitation to speak and moderate the panels at the conference. Do watch out for the GreenTech Festival Singapore on 21 and 22 Oct 2024\. **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/i8Jv2rgftA8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/google-sustainability-in-europe-with-adam-elman/id914868245?i=1000658854722&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1pykatyfnLBD688ZYMmrHf?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/google-sustainability-in-europe-with-adam-elman?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsJH63k?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/458%5FGoogle%5F%5FSustainability%5Fin%5FEurope%5Fwith%5FAdam%5FElman.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Executive Coaching in the Asia Pacific with Parin Mehta URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/executive-coaching-in-the-asia-pacific-with-parin-mehta/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:26.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Parin Mehta, venture partner at Menyala and executive coach, shared his journey into executive coaching. He explained how his experiences inspired him to help leaders navigate their careers with intrinsic motivation and commitment, considering cultural nuances and the evolving business landscape. Parin discussed strategies for professional growth, the importance of peer mentorship, and his innovative approach to integrating AI into coaching. He also shared his vision of what success looks like for him as an executive coach in the Asia Pacific region. --- > "I don't like to work with someone unless they're intrinsically motivated to do it. And so what I mean by that is, I don't think this is a service that you should sell to people. They should demand it and then they're looking in the market for someone to work with them. So I don't like to go out there and sell it per se. And so I used to get some early inbound from boards or investors to say, "Hey, we've got this person. We think they're struggling or we think they've got a bit more potential, they need some help." And then when I spoke to that person, it was very evident that they were reluctantly doing this. So you've got a bit of a principal-agent problem there, right? Where the person you're working with is not incentivized or motivated to do the work. And so I typically now say "no" to those things. What I might do is maybe get an introduction from the board, but then I'll check with the person I'm working with. "Do you want this right now? Are you motivated to do the work?" Because as you said, it is a lot of work on the coachee as well, right - to do the reflection work and, take action. I'm trying to avoid that principal-agent problem. I want to make sure that the person I'm working with is deeply interested and invested in driving some change." - **Parin Mehta** ### **Introduction** - Parin Mehta**,** Venture Partner, Menyala and Executive Coach ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/parinjmehta/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@coachparin](https://twitter.com/coachparin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) at [Coach Parin](https://coachparin.substack.com/). - Let’s start with the origin story, how did you start your career? - Can you share your experiences as a senior tech executive at Google and Airbnb? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? ### **Executive Coaching In Asia Pacific** - Can you share your journey into executive coaching and what inspired you to become an executive coach? - Can you talk generally about why some executives out there seek executive coaching and how they approach an executive coach like yourself? - How would you describe your coaching philosophy and approach when working with executives generally? - What are the types of challenges that executives will come to you for coaching sessions? - What are the common challenges you face when coaching executives and how do you get them to open up? - How do both the person you coach and you evaluate the impact and effectiveness of your coaching sessions? - Can you share a success story or a significant transformation you have witnessed in a client who worked with you? (Reference: Notes: Confessions of a Candid Coachee: [part 1](https://coachparin.substack.com/p/notes-confessions-of-a-candid-1-1) & [part 2](https://coachparin.substack.com/p/notes-confessions-of-a-candid-coachee)) - How has the demand for executive coaching evolved in the Asia Pacific region over recent years? - Have you had to adapt your coaching strategies in response to the changing business landscape, cultural reasons and client needs? - As a coach, how do you continue to grow and develop professionally? - Do you have a professional coach group where you can seek mentorship and help each other? - What is the one thing you know about executive coaching in Asia Pacific that very few do? - What are your perspectives on applying AI to coaching? - You have a newsletter: Weekly Self-Reflection Prompts and how do you use the newsletter to reach out to people who sign up? How effective is having a weekly newsletter? - What does great look like for you as an executive coach? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Parin's recommendation: [David Senra, Founders Podcast](https://www.founderspodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/%5FWIVDF81MT8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/executive-coaching-in-the-asia-pacific-with-parin-mehta/id914868245?i=1000657812445&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5xKg089VaBuCy2Xuwh0VbJ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/executive-coaching-in-the-asia-pacific-parin-mehta?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFu8Qse8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/457%5FExecutive%5FCoaching%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FParin%5FMehta.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Product Management in a Scale-Up with Isaac Tay URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/product-management-in-a-scale-up-standup-comedy-with-isaac-tay/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:26.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Isaac Tay, VP of Product at Shopback shares his thoughts on how to be a product manager in a scale-up. Reflecting on his experiences as a co-founder in his former startup Honestbee, he offered his perspectives on the lessons he had learnt and what he could done differently. From there, he elucidates the concept of distance to understand how to align and work with teams across different cultures on building and developing products in different stages of maturity for a company. Isaac ties in his unique stint in stand-up comedy, revealing how it has influenced his professional life. Last but not least, Isaac shares what great would look like for product management in a scale-up. --- > "If I were to summarize it, your job as a product manager is to deliver the right product to the right users, to solve the right problems at the right time. Now, your role is very contextual because you will focus on different parts of that statement, depending on the founders, the stage of life of the company, which industry it is and everything else. There are some core functional skill sets that you can't run away from, and you must have them. But I don't think there is a cookie-cutter template on what you must do to succeed in product management." - Isaac Tay ### **Introduction** - [**Isaac Tay**](https://www.isaactay.com/about/?ref=analysepodcast.com), VP of Product, [Shopback](https://www.shopback.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@isaacttsg ](https://twitter.com/isaacttsg?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaactimothyt/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - How did you eventually end up in your current role? - Can you share the lessons that you have learned from your career journey with my audience? ### **Product Management in a Scale-Up with Isaac Tay** - Let’s start with war stories when you were a co-founder of a start-up called Honest Bee. Can you talk about the story of the company and how it eventually collapsed from your POV? - If you could reverse time back to the founding of the company and redo this again, what would you have done differently? - Can you discuss a challenging project you've worked on and how you navigated the complexities involved? - How do you handle feedback and iteration when a product doesn’t initially meet market expectations? - How does the experience of scaling shape how you think about product management from a start-up to a scale-up? - What key lessons have you learned from your diverse experiences in product roles across different companies? - How do you approach the creation and refinement of a product strategy in a fast-paced tech environment? - What do you believe are the most critical skills for a product manager today, and how do you foster those skills in your team? - Can you describe the concept of distance between teams from different cultures? Reference: [Distance Still Matters: The Hard Reality of Global Expansion](https://hbr.org/2001/09/distance-still-matters-the-hard-reality-of-global-expansion?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Harvard Business Review. - How would you align these teams who can look at the same problem from a different cultural point of view? - What is your leadership style, and how has it evolved? - How do you build and maintain a cohesive product team, especially in times of high pressure or significant change? - How do you balance professional growth with personal interests? - You took a break after leaving Honestbee and before your current gig, can you tell the story of how you came to perform standup comedy culminating in winning the June edition of the brutal [King Gong at The Comedy Store London](https://thecomedystore.co.uk/london/regular-shows/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in 2019? - What have you learned from standup comedy that can be translated into your life experiences? - What does great product management look like from your point of view? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Isaac's recommendation: "[Never Split the Difference](https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended-ebook/dp/B014DUR7L2?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Christopher Voss & Tahl Raz - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/grpLz3Z9erQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/product-management-in-a-scale-up-with-isaac-tay/id914868245?i=1000655468995&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/56GIlTKYwzsW59NdxDnH48?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/product-management-in-a-scale-up-stand-up-comedy-isaac-tay?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvmNyK8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/456%5FProduct%5FManagement%5Fin%5Fa%5FScale-Up%5Fwith%5FIsaac%5FTay.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OTQyMjU1MzUtYmM4ZC00NjdkLWE2NGMtNzcxYTU5Yjg4YmYx?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQ3M%5Fv0ouGAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Deploy and PropTech in 2024 with Jordan Kostelac URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/proptech-in-2024-deploy-startup-venture-jordan-kostelac/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:25.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jordan Kostelac, CEO and co-founder of Deploy, dives into the ever-evolving landscape of the real estate industry and the burgeoning proptech sector in 2024\. Reflecting on his previous role as the Director of Technology at JLL Asia Pacific, Kostelac shares the key lessons learnt while leading various proptech initiatives and establishing the UrbanLab accelerator with Swire Properties and PingAn. He details his transition from JLL to founding Deploy, a startup that addresses the inefficiencies of deal sourcing and due diligence in the startup venture ecosystem starting from the PropTech sector. Last but not least, he shares what great would look like for Deploy moving forward. --- > "I think the biggest learning that I had, and, by extension, JLL \[Jones Lang LaSalle\] in my last capacity was that it's not sufficient to take these companies and then just let them in the door. You can't hand one of your business clients the keys and expect them to drive. So, one of the first cohort companies in Urban Lab was a robotics company, and we created a revenue-sharing agreement with them any property that you get into through us, there's a revenue share. But the downstream incentives weren't sufficient enough. We didn't provide enough tools to people who were actually interacting with the properties to then want to actually be able to do it. Most of them didn't even know about it. That speaks to the size of an organization like that. when you sit up in an organization, you sometimes forget that you can't just speak something into existence. You need a ground game ..." **\- Jordan Kostelac** ### **Introduction** - Jordan Kostelac, CEO of [Deploy](https://deploycapital.online/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@Scopelessness](https://twitter.com/Scopelessness?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkostelac/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - How did you eventually end up in your current role? - What are the lessons you can share about your career journey with my audience? ### **Deploy and Proptech in 2024** - Can you provide an overview of the real estate industry and the total market opportunity of the proptech sector as part of that industry? - Let me work backwards from your former role as Director of Technology at Proptech, JLL Asia Pacific, can you talk about the role and coverage in that role and how you influenced technological innovation within the company? - What were some of the most significant projects you led at JLL in Proptech, and how did they transform the company’s operations across different business lines? - As a co-founder of UrbanLab within JLL, what challenges did you face while establishing this Proptech accelerator with major partners like Swire Properties and PingAn? - Could you share insights into the successes and learnings from operating UrbanLab and other accelerator programs like Propell Asia and LEAD India? - What are some of the misconceptions that PropTech start-ups have when working with large corporates and what advice would you give them? - What criteria did you use to evaluate and invest in early-stage Proptech startups? - What are the current trends that are shaping the Proptech industry in Asia Pacific? - From PropTech to now your current gig in Deploy, can you talk about the problem which Deploy is specifically solving? - Can you talk about how your experience in Bridgewater led you to work out the mechanics in Deploy? - Why is the value proposition for funds to work with Deploy? - How does Deploy select its scouts and experts? - How does the product work? Where is Deploy at the moment? - What does great look like for Deploy? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Jordan's recommendations: [Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime Video](https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Fallout/0HAQAA7JM43QWX0H6GUD3IOF70?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/XkBdxV-z2Qc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deploy-and-proptech-in-2024-with-jordan-kostelac/id914868245?i=1000654225131&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fCHFCtNMC9ZhpcCC47si4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/deploy-and-proptech-jll-swire-in-2024-jordan-kostelac?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvGxxCc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/455%5FDeploy%5Fand%5FPropTech%5Fin%5F2024%5Fwith%5FJordan%5FKostelac.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MGVlN2NjOWUtNDZjYy00NzE3LWE1MjQtNmZlNWNiNGFkZDEw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwios66kv-2FAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Akamai Cloud Computing & The Age of Edge AI with Jay Jenkins URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/akamai-cloud-computing-edge-ai-with-jay-jenkins/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:25.000Z Fresh off the studio, Jay Jenkins, CTO of Cloud Computing in Akamai, dives deep into the transformative potential of edge AI in a dynamic conversation on Akamai's latest technological advancements. Discussing the company's strategic edge computing platform, Gecko, Jenkins describes how it is redefining cloud computing paradigms by embedding capabilities directly into the edge network. He explores the broader implications of edge AI for real-time applications and generative AI technologies, highlighting Akamai's vision to support the burgeoning demands of data processing and AI inferencing at the network edge. With insights into early trials and future use cases, he shares how Akamai is set to revolutionize industries, from immersive retail to spatial computing and explores what great would look like for Akamai in cloud computing and AI at the edge. --- > "So already this year we've rolled out 10 of these regions. So two in APJ and Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. But 75 of these locations by the end of the year along with our core computing regions will give us 100 locations where customers can run these workloads, and we're not going to stop there. So we're going to have hundreds of these regions over the next few years, and we're going to focus on those locations where hyper-scalers don't have compute. Africa and South America, for example, have been extremely underserved when it comes to computing capabilities. There's a huge potential for those countries if we could get them the compute. And that's exactly what we intend to do. But, those are extreme regions. Even in places like the U.S., which are well served by the hyper-scalers, there's certainly the middle of the U.S. which is ignored. In Southeast Asia, if you're in Singapore or Jakarta, you're served by everybody. But if you're in Vietnam, how are you served? If you're in Thailand, how are you served? The internet is inherently unfair. We want to make it more fair for our customers and our customers' customers." - **Jay Jenkins** ### **Introduction** - Jay Jenkins, CTO, Cloud Computing, Akamai ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/thisisjayjenkins?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@jaydjenkins](https://twitter.com/jaydjenkins?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Let’s start with the origin story, how did you start your career? - How did you end up working with Akamai and where are you currently based? - What interesting lessons can you share with my audience in your career journey? ### **Akamai in the age of Edge AI** - Let’s start with the market opportunity, can you explain your definition of AI at the edge, the total market opportunity and the value proposition for enterprises and specifically why Akamai is poised to capture this market? - Can you introduce the company Akamai, its global vision and mission and its current footprint in the Asia Pacific region? - What is your current role and coverage as the CTO of Akamai? - As CTO, what are your long-term visions for Akamai’s role in the evolving landscape of cloud computing and edge networks? - Can you elaborate on the core concept of Gecko and how it differentiates Akamai's cloud computing approach from traditional models? - What inspired the shift towards embedding cloud computing capabilities into Akamai's edge network? - How does Akamai's Generalized Edge Compute (Gecko) enhance the user experience, especially in terms of performance and latency? - Could you discuss the challenges Akamai faced while integrating cloud-native computing capabilities with its massive edge network? - How does integrating Gecko into Akamai’s network address the limitations of current cloud and edge architectures? - Can you provide some insights into the early trials of Gecko with enterprise customers and the feedback received? - What are the potential future use cases for Gecko, especially in fields like immersive retail and spatial computing? - What is the one thing you know about Gecko in generalized edge computing that very few do? - How does Akamai's Gecko platform plan to leverage edge AI capabilities to enhance its services, particularly in AI inferencing and data analytics? - In what ways can generative AI technologies benefit from Akamai's distributed cloud and edge computing infrastructure provided by Gecko? - Could you share insights on the role of edge computing in facilitating real-time AI processes and how Gecko is optimised for such tasks? - How does Akamai envision supporting the evolving needs of generative AI applications in terms of computational power and data processing at the edge? - Can you discuss any potential collaborations or innovations Akamai is exploring in generative AI using the Gecko platform? - What does great look like for Akamai in the next few years? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Jay Jenkins' recommendation: [A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins and Richard Dawkins](https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Brains-New-Theory-Intelligence/dp/1541675819?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/kVoyRnDZQxw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/akamai-cloud-computing-the-age-of-edge-ai-with-jay-jenkins/id914868245?i=1000652775389&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/19BFGOqKiVU3rTdMFFqp6a?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/akamai-cloud-computing-the-age-of-edge-ai-with-jay-jenkins?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFv0TwPk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Akamai%5FCloud%5FComputing%5F%5FThe%5FAge%5Fof%5FEdge%5FAI%5Fwith%5FJay%5FJenkins.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/N2QwMGIyM2EtODliMC00OTNkLTk1ZTgtODdhY2JlYTc5NzM0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiw0P6zsMqFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Saison Capital and Real World Asset Monetization in Crypto with Qin En Looi URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/saison-capital-and-real-world-asset-monetization-in-crypto-with-qin-en-looi/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:24.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Qin En Looi, partner of Saison Capital, dives deep into the current developments and the future of Crypto and Web3 investments. He began with an overview of Saison Capital and its investment thesis. He shares how Saison Capital invests in the fintech and crypto space, and the current emergence of real-world asset (RWA) monetization, specifically in the tokenizing of physical assets on the chain. Last but not least, he shares what great would look like for Saison Capital. --- > "The one thing that has become quite clear in Asia, at least it's direct to retail - the government is not ready. The market is not ready. And there still needs to be a very high level of consumer protection. A lot more of a B2B-to-C approach. Where, let's say today's Web3 companies will need to partner up with existing licensed entities, whether they be licensed startups or even licensed institutions to provide their offerings to the retail. That's actually really good. Because it provides safeguards. We saw what happened last time when we didn't have those safeguards. So many retail investors lost money in FTX's spectacular blow-up, right? And that really hurt the space, that really hurt the trust, it really hurt the reputation of the space. So directionally it is inconvenient but necessary. For governments to I would say slow down or make access to retail a lot harder. Like in Singapore, we don't see any upcoming movements that crypto is going to be available to retail or easily available to retail anytime soon. We see the same in Hong Kong. The exception would of course be Dubai, but that's already more on the Middle East part, right? And then in the US, it's like a witch hunt. Basically, the long story short is it's still going to be very B2B2C driven, where the interface towards the masses, the retail, will still lie within licensed institutions." - **Qin En Looi** ### **Introduction** - Looi Qin En, Partner at Saison Capital ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/looiqinen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@webthreedad](https://twitter.com/webthreedad?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What is the path that eventually brought you to become a venture capitalist? - From your career journey, what are the lessons you can share with my audience? ### **Saison Capital and the next wave of Crypto and Web3 investments** - Can you give an overview of Saison Capital and what is the current investment thesis of the firm? - Given that we are talking about crypto and web3 in today’s conversation, how do you define the concepts of web3 and real-world assets tokenization (RWA)? - What is your strategy or approach towards investing in fintech startups that are leveraging Web 3.0 technologies? - What is a typical day for you as a VC? - What are the traits in founders and startup teams in the web3/crypto space that you index for when it comes to investing in them? - If I reverse the question, what are the red flags which will deter you from investing in them? - How do you advise founders to think about the choice of different blockchains and the conundrum between decentralization, speed of transactions and scarcity? - Could you share some case studies or any portfolio companies under you of successful RWA tokenization or blockchain integration in the financial sector and the key lessons learned from these implementations? - Could you elaborate on how Web 3.0's decentralized model significantly reduces operational costs in the financial industry compared to traditional finance systems? - What are the primary benefits and challenges of tokenizing real-world assets? How do you envision this impacting global financial markets in the long term? - Do you foresee any unforeseen challenges or hacks that will happen in the RWA market similar to what happened to the yield farming market in 2021 that crashed in 2022 with the Luna collapse? - What are the key technical and logistical challenges in integrating real-world assets into blockchain systems, and how can these be addressed? - In practical terms, how does the conversion of tangible assets into digital tokens enhance liquidity and facilitate fractional ownership? Could you provide an example of this in action? - With Asian governments and the private sector introducing new regulations for investor protection, what shifts are you observing in the industry's approach to Web 3.0 and RWA tokenization? - What is the one thing you know about RWA and web3 in Asia that very few people do? - Can you discuss the gaps that currently exist in bridging traditional finance with Web 3.0 in Asia, and what solutions might be effective in addressing these gaps? - Where do you see the role of Web 3.0 in the financial industry in the next 5 to 10 years, especially in the context of RWA tokenization? - How do you think the decentralization aspect of Web 3.0 will reshape customer experiences and operational models in financial services? - What does great look like for Saison Capital in the crypto / web3 world? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Qin En Looi's recommendation: Chris Dixon, "Read, Write, Own" - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/5iC7OwU94QE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/saison-capital-and-real-world-asset-monetization-in/id914868245?i=1000651942597&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/516c9ZP57nOGiGxXSmPNUa?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/saison-capital-and-real-world-asset-monetization-rwa-crypto-qin-en-looi?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFscj98Y?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/453%5FSaison%5FCapital%5Fand%5FReal%5FWorld%5FAsset%5FMonetization%5Fin%5FCrypto%5Fwith%5FQin%5FEn%5FLooi.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmUxY2FjZWEtZTg3NC00OWM1LThiYzEtMTBiY2E2YTVkYjVh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjYyty4vraFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Digital Report 2024 and why Generative AI did not show up this time with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/digital-2024-and-why-generative-ai-did-not-show-up-this-time-with-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:24.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp, co-founder and CEO of Kepios joined us for the 7th year to discuss the Digital Report 2024 and its pivotal insights. The dialogue kicked off with Simon pondering AI's potential impact on his job, then swiftly moved to the report's core findings. Simon also explored how digital marketing and content strategies are evolving due to generational differences, underscoring the necessity for content creators to adapt across diverse social media channels. Last but not least, Simon addressed the current lack of comprehensive data to include generative AI in this year's report. Last but not least, Simon shared his anticipation for what's on the horizon in the coming year. --- > "The key thing that I realize every time I look at the data is that the media is telling us a lot of nonsense. I think that the one thing I know is that the data tells a very different story to the media headlines. So I suppose my advice there is, never to accept clickbait at face value. If you're building a marketing plan, do your due diligence, and check the data because the data always surprises me. The one thing I know is that I'm always surprised. There's your key takeaway.” - **Simon Kemp** ### **Introduction** - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of [Kepios](http://kepios.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### [**Digital 2024 Report**](https://wearesocial.com/sg/blog/2024/01/digital-2024-5-billion-social-media-users/?ref=analysepodcast.com) **& Why Generative AI did not show up with Simon Kemp** - As always, I have followed your report for the past decade, what are the five most exciting takeaways for [Digital Report 2024](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-global-overview-report?ref=analysepodcast.com)? - With over 5 billion social media user identities globally, what are the primary factors driving this unprecedented growth, and how is it impacting global communication and marketing strategies? - What implications do you see from the slight increase in the time people spend online, especially considering the balance between productivity and digital well-being? - How are e-commerce and search engine use evolving in the digital landscape, and what trends do you foresee in these areas? - With the variations in internet and social media usage across different countries, what strategies should global businesses adopt to reach diverse audiences effectively? - How do generational differences in online behaviour impact digital marketing and content strategies? - With social media increasingly used for entertainment, how should content creators and platforms adapt to this shift? - TikTok's "FYP" hashtag has amassed over 55 trillion views. What factors contribute most to TikTok's unprecedented engagement and success? - With TikTok users spending an average of 34 hours per month on the app, surpassing YouTube, what trends or shifts in content consumption do you think are driving this change? - Considering Discord's significant user base growth, can you share insights into how niche platforms are expanding their appeal to broader audiences? - LinkedIn now boasts over 1 billion registered members. How do you interpret the discrepancy between registered and actively engaged users on professional networks like LinkedIn? - What is the one thing you know about Digital in 2024 that very few do? - Given the headlines from generative AI for the past year, I am surprised by why you did not include ChatGPT usage or any information specific to that part of the sector. Have you seen any significant usage shifts due to ChatGPT, Midjourney or Runway showing up in your data? - Amazon, Google and Facebook have implemented generative AI in different segments of their advertising business, for example, Amazon can generate product outlines and product placements; Google can do copywriting for ads and Facebook is slowly adding chatbot responses for small and medium businesses. In your perspective, how do you think Generative AI will change the dynamics of advertising? - What would you have hoped to add to the Digital 2024 report that you did not have and what would be the most important data and insights you want to flesh out hopefully in 2025? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Simon's recommendation: [How Brands Grow](https://www.amazon.sg/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/1511383933?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Byron Sharp - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/jnNhQigixSk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-report-2024-and-why-generative-ai-did-not/id914868245?i=1000651244929&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0UoHxaei5sJhqvTPIWrHq5?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/digital-report-2024-and-why-generative-ai-did-not-show-up-simon-kemp?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtY%5FT7A?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/452%5FDigital%5FReport%5F2024%5Fand%5Fwhy%5FGenerative%5FAI%5Fdid%5Fnot%5Fshow%5Fup%5Fthis%5Ftime%5Fwith%5FSimon%5FKemp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZDMzMGViMDMtODJmMy00MmY5LTk2NzUtODNhNWQ1YzVmMmYy?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIt7361qSFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Is TikTok going to be banned in the US? An Asian Perspective with Jing Yang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/will-tiktok-be-banned-in-the-us-an-asian-perspective-with-jing-yang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:23.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, the Asia Bureau Chief for The Information, provided an insightful analysis of the potential implications of the recent U.S. House of Representatives bill to force Bytedance to divest TikTok or face a ban in the US. Detailing a timeline of events, she illuminated how Bytedance and TikTok executives may have misinterpreted U.S. political signals. Despite Bytedance's profitability in China, she shed light on why TikTok is facing financial challenges and the complex dynamics between Bytedance and the investors of the company. Concluding her discussion, she offered her perspectives on the possible future of TikTok globally pending the outcome. --- > "If we assume that happens, I'm sure TikTok, let alone ByteDance as a company as a whole, will survive - and maybe even continue to thrive after this. Because, let's put things into perspective, right? TikTok has more than 1 billion users globally and then the US represents just a little over a 10th of that, 170 million. So I'm not saying that it's not going to impact TikTok and ByteDance. But does it pose an existential threat? Probably not. I believe given we already talked about how ByteDance has been super profitable. I think that, even if they get banned in the US, this is by no means the end of TikTok or ByteDance." - **Jing Yang** ### **Introduction** - Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief from [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@jingyanghk](https://twitter.com/jingyanghk?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/u/Jing%20Yang?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com)) - We start with your origin story: how did you start your career? - How did you eventually come to be the Asia Bureau Chief from TheInformation? - From your career journey, what are the lessons you can share with my audience? ### **Is TikTok going to be banned this time? with Jing Yang** - References from TheInformation - [As TikTok Faces Ban Bill, Investors Distance Themselves From App](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/as-tiktok-faces-ban-bill-investors-distance-themselves-from-app?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analyse.asia), - [TikTok Ban Bill Spotlights Open Secret: App Loses Money](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiktok-ban-bill-spotlights-open-secret-app-loses-money?ref=analyse.asia) - [TikTok Spent Years Developing Data Security Plan: Washington Ignored It](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiktok-spent-years-developing-data-security-plan-washington-ignored-it?utm%5Fsource=ti%5Fapp&rc=fk3gq1) - [To Fight Ban Bill, TikTok’s Best Hopes Lie in First Amendment Challenge](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/to-fight-ban-bill-tiktoks-best-hopes-lie-in-first-amendment-challenge?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [The Slow-Motion TikTok Bill](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-slow-motion-tiktok-bill?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - Let’s start at the beginning, this is the second time that the US is trying to ban TikTok. Can you talk about the chronology of events that led the US Congress with 353 to 65 votes to pass a bill last week to force TikTok into divestment and if not, they will be banned in the US? (Source: [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/13/house-passes-bill-that-could-lead-to-a-tiktok-ban-fight-shifts-to-the-senate.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Depending on the US Senate and President Biden signing on to turn this into an actual bill, what are the chances of the ban likely to happen? - Chew Shou Zi, the CEO of TikTok responded. What are the official arguments against the US making such a ban? - What are the implications for TikTok being banned in the US and how does it impact the content creators and users in that market? - What is the one thing you know about the current TikTok situation that very few do? - There are three stories in which TheInformation broke and I will start with the latest one: What factors led to TikTok's misjudgment of the political situation in the U.S., particularly regarding the bill to force TikTok to dissociate from ByteDance? - Can you discuss the motivations and challenges TikTok faced in restructuring its operations and investing $1.5 billion to create a separate data security unit? - How effective has Project Texas been in addressing U.S. concerns about data security, and what are the criticisms it faces from U.S. lawmakers? - Challenges with US Data Security (USDS): What operational difficulties has the establishment of USDS posed for TikTok, and how is it perceived within the company? - Chew Shou Zi took over the US negotiations when he came on board as TikTok CEO. How did he manage the negotiations with CFIUS and the U.S. Data Security (USDS) team? - How has Chew Shou Zi's communication and decision-making style affected TikTok's approach to addressing U.S. concerns about data security and Chinese ownership? - How do we assess Bytedance and TikTok’s team in handling this whole issue with the US? - The second article concerns the TikTok app losing money. For a long time, from my sources, ByteDance has been known to be printing money with Douyin and I was surprised by the news of TikTok losing money. Given that ByteDance does not disclose TikTok's financial performance, how do you assess the impact of its reported losses on investors' confidence and the long-term sustainability of the app? - With TikTok generating roughly $20 billion in revenue yet facing significant losses, can you discuss the main factors contributing to these financial outcomes? - How could the potential U.S. ban on TikTok affect its financial performance and efforts to become profitable and at the same time, the losses impact its ability to raise future funding or affect its valuation in the eyes of current and potential investors? - Then I came to the other article when the Bytedance investors distanced themselves from the TikTok app. What do you believe has caused the shift in investors' approach towards supporting TikTok now, compared to their mobilisation in 2020 during the Trump administration's attempt to ban the app? - Jeff Yass stands out as an investor willing to support TikTok publicly and it is alleged that he has had an impact in making former President Trump change his stance on TikTok. How do you assess the role of political affiliations and donations in shaping investors' public stances on contentious issues like this? - Considering the potential ban or forced sale of TikTok in the U.S., what does the future of TikTok look like? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Jing Yang's recommendations: "[Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir](https://www.amazon.sg/Friends-Lovers-Big-Terrible-Thing/dp/1250866448?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by the late Matthew Perry and the movie "[Society of the Snow](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/81268316?ref=analysepodcast.com)". - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/s05FsMCWDU4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-tiktok-going-to-be-banned-in-the-us-an/id914868245?i=1000650530698&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/48jVYoisqcHOXHyYxSgOd9?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/is-tiktok-going-to-be-banned-in-the-us-jing-yang-the-information?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvThOGI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/451%5FIs%5FTikTok%5Fgoing%5Fto%5Fbe%5Fbanned%5Fin%5Fthe%5FUS%5F%5FAn%5FAsian%5FPerspective%5Fwith%5FJing%5FYang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NzljZTZlZTMtMWU0MC00ZTdjLWI3NTAtZjg3M2RkNGFhZTZj?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwigw7eY%5FJKFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Don't Ignore Asia Tech with Catherine Shu URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/dont-ignore-asia-tech-with-catherine-shu/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:23.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Catherine Shu reflects on her 12 years at TechCrunch, chronicling the evolution of Asian tech from China to India. She highlights the rise of Chinese apps such as WeChat and TikTok's global impact and the shifting international views on Chinese tech. She explores India's rising tech scene, South Korea's startup growth with the rise of Coupang and Southeast Asia's expanding tech influence, with a focus on Grab. Shu offers her advice for journalists covering Asia's dynamic tech landscape and articulating what great looks like for Asia Tech in the future. --- > "When I wrote about it, in addition to assuming that all Asia tech companies, particularly in China, were copycats of Western companies, I think there are also a lot of misperceptions about how easy it is to enter a market, especially when they're an Asian market, especially when there are incumbent players already. For example, Uber failed. Basically, they failed. That's a harsh word, but they failed in both China and Southeast Asia, where they were acquired by Didi in China and Grab in Southeast Asia. And then Facebook really fell flat on its face with a lot of markets with free basics, it undermined Net Neutrality and also assumed that consumers just because maybe they had to be price conscious, were willing to access only a handful of sites as opposed to having access to a free Internet. I think people also underestimate the influence that Asia has had in other parts of the world." - **Catherine Shu** ### **Introduction** - Catherine Shu, Former Senior Reporter in TechCrunch ([@catherineshu](https://twitter.com/CatherineShu?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherineshu/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[Note that Catherine was on [episode 14](https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-14-state-north-east-asia-taiwan/) in Analyse Asia's early days\] - I am sorry to hear about you being laid off by TechCrunch recently, and you have been active on Twitter before your last article. What was the experience like suddenly engaging many people online? - What are your plans from now on? - Given your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? ### [**Don’t Ignore Asia Tech**](https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/29/dont-ignore-asia-tech/?ref=analysepodcast.com) **with Catherine Shu** - What is the inspiration behind this final article on TechCrunch? - Over your 12 years with TechCrunch, how have you seen Western perceptions of Asian tech companies change? - What were some common misperceptions about Asian tech you encountered and sought to correct in your writing? - How did your perspectives about Asian markets evolve, especially from your location in Asia? - Since you are based in Taiwan, do you cover Foxconn and TSMC, the tech giants there? - What is the one thing you know about Asia Tech with China included that very few do? - How has China's tech scene shifted from being seen as a hub of copycats to a leader in innovation, especially in social media and fintech? - What impact has TikTok had on global social media trends, and how did it change the game for Chinese tech companies internationally? - How does WeChat's super app model compare with similar attempts in the West, and what lessons can be learned from its success? - What are your thoughts on how the China tech ecosystem was caught flat-footed by ChatGPT from OpenAI and now playing the catchup game? - With the shift in venture capital trends, how do you see the future of Chinese startups and their global influence? - Can you discuss the evolution of India's tech ecosystem and how it's challenging Western preconceptions, especially in the smartphone market? - How is South Korea's startup ecosystem developing, especially with the influence of chaebols and government support? - Can you share more about Coupang's success and its approach to e-commerce and logistics? - Discussing Taiwan's startup ecosystem, what are the main challenges and opportunities you see for startups in sectors like AI and healthcare? - Can you share insights into Southeast Asia's tech ecosystem's growth and global impact? - What was your experience covering the evolution of companies like Grab and how they've influenced the super app model? - In your article, you discuss fintech innovations in Southeast Asia. Can you elaborate on their potential to influence global markets? - What advice would you give to journalists and analysts covering Asia's dynamic and diverse tech landscapes? - What does great look like for Asia Tech from your perspective? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Catherine's recommendations: [Warrior TV series](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/80177331?src=tudum&trackId=259776131&trkId=259776131&ref=analysepodcast.com) and "[How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy" by Jenny Odell](https://www.amazon.sg/How-Do-Nothing-Resisting-Attention/dp/1612197493?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [BL's recommendation: ](https://www.amazon.sg/How-Do-Nothing-Resisting-Attention/dp/1612197493?ref=analysepodcast.com)[Shogun](https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/shogun/viewers-guide?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/QBnxL1YG1SU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-ignore-asia-tech-with-catherine-shu/id914868245?i=1000649910532&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0jSJs1WgqIvYraCwaCQE6N?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/dont-ignore-asia-tech-with-catherine-shu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuLCDMo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/450%5FDont%5FIgnore%5FAsia%5FTech%5Fwith%5FCatherine%5FShu.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MjdiYTRhZmItYWE4OS00YTRkLTk2YzYtOTljODhhMjY4ZjEz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiYoJ7b54OFAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Don't-Ignore-Asia-Tech-with-Catherine-Shu-id2859782-id684120161?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Will the stocks from China recover & Asian Century Stocks with Michael Fritzell URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/will-the-stocks-from-china-recover-asian-century-stocks-with-michael-fritzell/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:22.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Michael Fritzell, Founder of Asian Century Stocks, shared invaluable insights into Asia's financial markets and discussed the recent tumultuous situation in Chinese equities and what potential government responses are possible. He provided a high-level overview of the Asian stock market, contrasting it with markets in the US and Europe and stressed the importance of understanding corporate governance and the role of short-sellers in exposing corporate frauds in Asian markets. He delved deep with his unique insights into forensic accounting challenges, the future potential of Asian stocks and the dynamic and intricate nature of these evolving markets. --- > “Let's remember if the leadership wants to do something, they have all the tools at their disposal and I don't think that they will want to underwrite massive unemployment. I think the Chinese leadership wants stability above all. So I will not rule out any kind of stimulus and perhaps it would look different than in the past. It will not go through the popular market, but it could well happen that you will see greater lending, perhaps in a select industries like autos or semiconductors, whatever it might be. But I've seen so many cycles at this point. I started investing in China in 2008\. And 2007 was a boom, 2010, another boom, 2013 was a low in the Asian market. It felt very much like today. I would go to these conferences and meet local investors and they were just so despondent. I feel very much the same kind of sentiment today. People say there's nothing, they can't see anything positive and that's fine, but we can't predict the future.” - **Michael Fritzell** ### Introduction - [Michael Fritzell](https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/about?ref=analysepodcast.com), Founder of [Asian Century Stocks](https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-fritzell-1aab10/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@MikeFritzell](https://twitter.com/MikeFritzell?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What brought you to Asia and what are your perspectives on the region given your experience covering the financial aspect of the Asian market? - From your career journey, what are the lessons you learned that you can share with my audience? ### Will China equities recover & [Asian Century Stocks](https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with Michael Fritzell - Of course, we kick off with the Year of the Dragon after [the turbulent stock tanking last week in China equities](https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampesek/2024/02/09/chinas-7-trillion-crash-masks-the-really-bad-news/?sh=6d86242e5359&ref=analysepodcast.com) (which at one point dropped to 40% from its all-time high and we record on the week after Chinese New Year). What just happened? - What are the steps taken by the Chinese government to stabilize the stock market (and we observed [a small rebound](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-09/china-stock-rebound-shows-cracks-spoiling-traders-holiday-mood?embedded-checkout=true&ref=analysepodcast.com))? - To start, can you provide a high-level overview of the Asian stock market based on the market capitalization and baseline where the Asian stock market including China as compared to the other regions, for example, the US and Europe? - What is the inspiration behind starting Asian Century Stocks and what is the vision and mission to help others understand the Asian stock market? - Who is the intended audience for Asian Century Stocks? - What is the coverage of Asian stocks look like, for example, by country or by industry vertical? - For your subscribers, what are the types of information (for example, thematic reports, portfolio and deep dives) you provide to them and how do they in turn utilize and apply the information? - If I am a new investor who wants to build an Asian portfolio, what would be the things I need to watch out for? (Reference:[ I am an investor, where do I begin](https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/p/im-a-new-investor-where-do-i-begin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Can you describe three to five stocks that you have covered recently and explain why they are interesting? - What is the one thing you know about the Asian stock market that very few do? - The first article I have read on your site is the article: [Fraud in Asia](https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/p/fraud-in-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com). It is concise and explains the strengths and weaknesses of Asian stocks based on the book “Asian Financial Stock Analysis” by Tan Chin Wee and Thomas Robinson. In your article, you mention various methods companies use to commit fraud, like overstating earnings and managing earnings. Can you share more insights on how these fraudulent practices differ in Asian markets compared to Western markets? - What are the key indicators that investors should look for to evaluate effective corporate governance in Asian companies? - Despite the short-sellers having an agenda, I respect them for their detailed exposure to companies, for example, Luckin Coffee by an unknown group and the Adani Group by Hindenberg Research. Can you elaborate on the role and influence of short-sellers in the Asian financial markets? How do they influence investors in placing bets? - How do Asian investors short the market? From my understanding, Hindenburg Research needed a different approach to short the market in the region. - Given your focus on forensic accounting in the context of Asian markets, what are the unique challenges faced in this field when dealing with Asian companies? - What does great look like for Asian stocks in the next decade? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Michael's recommendation: [Jeffrey Gundlach, the Bond King's youtube videos](https://www.youtube.com/results?search%5Fquery=jeff+gundlach+bond+king&ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/RxewaGWEttU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-the-stocks-from-china-recover-asian-century/id914868245?i=1000647277476&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ncD8lpB8vwRg7dZv7hG84?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/will-the-stocks-from-china-recover-asian-century-stocks-michael-fritzell?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuKmCzY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/449%5FWill%5Fthe%5Fstocks%5Ffrom%5FChina%5Frecover%5F%5FAsian%5FCentury%5FStocks%5Fwith%5FMichael%5FFritzell.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YjFmOTlkOWMtZWZlOS00MzUzLThlZWMtMmIxYjQ1Mjc3NGEx?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwio%5FKSFwMyEAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Will-the-stocks-from-China-recover-%26-Asian-Century-Stocks-with-Michael-Fritzell-id2859782-id677691721?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com)into - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### How Arta Finance Democratizes Wealth Management with Caesar Sengupta URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/arta-finance-democratizes-private-banking-digital-family-office-with-caesar-sengupta/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:22.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Caesar Sengupta, the CEO and co-founder of Arta Finance, shares the story of how the startup democratizes family office wealth management to accredited professionals in the digital era. Caesar shares the company's vision and mission, highlighting their alignment with current financial trends and their disruptive approach to traditional family office models. Following the conversation, he explains how Arta Finance leverages technology to provide personalized financial solutions for high-net-worth individuals and families and discusses the company's global strategy and its approach to navigating diverse financial regulations across different countries. Last but not least, he shares his vision for Arta Finance's future success in the coming years. --- > "So in our view, great would be when everyone can find the best place to put their money to work. To whatever cause they want. It could be investing. It could be protecting their family. It could be long-term. It could be a nonprofit. It could be helping a local business. Today in the world, there is Google to find information, right? There's Amazon to find products. But what about financial opportunities? There is no one place to find financial opportunities. We wanna be able to create that for the world where anyone who's looking to put their money to work has a place to put their money to work. And anybody who's looking for help in building whatever business or, growing whatever they want to grow, can meet, these people who are looking to put their money to work." - **Caesar Sengupta** ### Introduction - Caesar Sengupta, CEO and co-founder of [Arta Finance](https://artafinance.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/caesar-s/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@caesars](https://twitter.com/caesars?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation on the podcast, what have you been up to? - Can you share the key lessons from your career with our audience? ### [**Arta Finance**](https://artafinance.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) **and the Digital Family Office with Caesar Sengupta** - To start, can you describe the total market opportunity for the wealth management business and what is the inspiration behind Arta Finance such that you can capture that opportunity? - Could you describe the core vision and mission behind Arta Finance and how it aligns with current financial trends? - How does Arta Finance view the traditional family office business which is predominantly a private banking business? - In what ways does Arta Finance's approach disrupt traditional family office models? - How does Arta Finance leverage technology to enhance wealth management and investment strategies for its clients? - Can you elaborate on how Generative AI is used in Arta Finance to provide personalized financial solutions? - How does Arta Finance tailor its services to meet the unique needs of high-net-worth individuals and families? - What is the one thing you know about the wealth management business that very few do? - Can you share the investors behind Arta Finance? How do they partner and help the company? - What are the highlights so far for the company and what are the challenges that you did not expect but working to overcome? - One of the great fears for family offices is the security of their data and the older generation prefers their data not to be on a digital platform. How do you assure these clients to come on board on Arta Finance? What measures does Arta Finance take to ensure the security and privacy of its clients' financial information? - Does Arta Finance have a global strategy? How do you manage the diverse financial regulations across different countries? - What does great look like for Arta Finance in the next few years? ### **Closing** - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Caesar's recommendation: [Live Long & Prosper podcast](https://artafinance.com/podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Arta Finance - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/DybtgispCbo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-arta-finance-democratizes-wealth-management-with/id914868245?i=1000645368692&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/78X3SRczoUwTCXj5agLbka?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/how-arta-finance-democratizes-private-banking-wealth-management-caesar-sengupta?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvOHDas?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/448%5FHow%5FArta%5FFinance%5FDemocratizes%5FWealth%5FManagement%5Fwith%5FCaesar%5FSengupta.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YzYyZGExYjEtYzFkZi00MzAyLWJkMjgtYzYzYzViNjMzMzc4?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiw8eui5auEAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/How-Arta-Finance-Democratizes-Wealth-Management-with-Caesar-Sengupta-id2859782-id673101177?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### BYD vs Tesla: The New EV Empire with Lei Xing URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/byd-vs-tesla-the-new-ev-empire-with-lei-xing/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:21.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Lei Xing, founder of AutoXing & co-host of China EVs & More, shared his insights into the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) market and its implications for the global EV market. Lei discussed his career journey and the inspiration behind covering the China EVs market through his podcast. He broke down the competitive dynamics between Tesla and BYD based on their current strategies for global market expansion and technological challenges. He shared his perspectives on whether Chinese EV makers can rinse and repeat the solar panel strategy against the rest of the automotive companies in the world. Last but not least, he shared the groundbreaking innovations at CES 2024 and emphasized the challenges and opportunities ahead for Chinese manufacturers and their vision for long-term success in the EV industry globally. --- > “One thing I can add is the awakening, the shaking up, the shaping up of the rest of the global auto industry from the Chinese is in full swing. The Chinese are coming. And if the Western automakers are prepared, they're going to have a much tougher moment than when they confronted the Japanese or the Koreans. The Japanese \[and\] Koreans, they're very successful. Let's say in the U.S., but this is a whole different issue - the geopolitical aspect. But you know, they're coming.” - **Lei Xing** ### Introduction - [Lei Xing](https://blog.evsmart.net/author/lei-xing/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (**邢磊**), Founder & Co-host of [China EVs & More](https://chinaevsandmore.buzzsprout.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/china-evs-more/id1568843912?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/4CG3AFRk1RXAfppd3X2lOv?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Founder of AutoXing and former Chief Editor of China Auto Review ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lei77/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@leixing77](https://twitter.com/leixing77?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - How did you start your career? - What inspired you to get into covering the China EVs market? - You are the co-host of China EVs and More, what do you cover on your podcast? - From your career journey, what are the lessons you learned that you can share with my audience? ### BYD vs Tesla: The New EV Empire with Lei Xing - Can you provide a comprehensive overview of the global EV market and the total market opportunity? Specifically for China, how much of the EV market does the Chinese car makers have? - Can you share the background of key EV manufacturers in China, BYD, Nio, Xiaomi, XPeng and any others I have missed? - How do you assess the competitive dynamics between Chinese EV makers like BYD and international giants like Tesla? In what areas do you think Chinese EV manufacturers hold an edge over Tesla, and vice versa? - What is the one thing you know about the Chinese EV manufacturers that very few do? - What strategies are Chinese EV manufacturers employing to enhance their global market share? - How are Chinese companies addressing challenges in technology, production, and market penetration? - There has been a lot of chatter in the market that the Chinese EV car makers are rinsing and repeating the strategy of what they did in solar panels to beat out their competitors. Is that strategy possible in the automotive industry given that there are so many stakeholders in the market? - I understand that BYD has operations in the US, how are they performing in the US market? - Comparing Tesla and BYD, Elon Musk has commented about the competitiveness of Chinese car makers but also said that Tesla is also a robotics and AI company. Does BYD have its own car operating system, its own AI or self-driving car division or working with another Chinese tech giant to enhance its tech competitiveness? - How about NIO, Xiaomi and XPeng, whose founders have technology backgrounds? - How is Tesla adapting its strategies in response to the growing presence of Chinese EV makers in both local and global markets? - Let’s switch gears to look at innovations in EVs. From your perspective, what were the most groundbreaking EV innovations presented at CES 2024? - How do these innovations align with the current needs and trends in the global EV market? - Why are the Japanese keeping at the hydrogen fuel innovation in cars? Is it that they are hedging the electric car trend? - How are regulatory environments across different regions impacting the strategies of Chinese EV makers and their competition with global brands like Tesla? - What is your outlook for the EV market over the next 5-10 years, especially in the context of Chinese manufacturers versus global players? - What key challenges and opportunities do you foresee in the EV industry's evolution? - What does success mean for the Chinese EV makers in the long run? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Lei Xing's inspiration: his father's energy and drive and pursuing his own projects at the age of 80 and his daughter's aspiration to study in Stanford at the age of 12\. - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/6%5FVStJXeQOE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/byd-vs-tesla-the-new-ev-empire-with-lei-xing/id914868245?i=1000644396735&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6MadQcxcinqhodFm1Zn4GV?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/byd-vs-tesla-the-new-ev-empire-lei-xing-chinese-evs-more?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFszz7Jg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/447%5FBYD%5Fvs%5FTesla%5F%5FThe%5FNew%5FEV%5FEmpire%5Fwith%5FLei%5FXing.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YzFmYzRjMWMtYzZlZi00NTg1LTlhMTEtNTVlNmI4Nzk4MDRh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQ-MmA4JeEAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/BYD-vs-Tesla%3A-The-New-EV-Empire-with-Lei-Xing-id2859782-id670698737?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### AC Ventures & The Indonesia Venture Capital Report 2023 with Adrian Li URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/ac-ventures-the-indonesia-venture-capital-report-2023-with-adrian-li/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:21.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Adrian Li, founder and managing partner of AC Ventures joined us in a conversation to delve into the dynamics of the venture capital scene in Indonesia. He commenced by tracing his entrepreneurial journey, which spanned from the United States to China, and ultimately to Southeast Asia, culminating in his transition to venture capitalist. From there, he shed light on the investment thesis of AC Ventures, their decade of investing that led to their recent successful raise of US$210m to their 5th fund. He provided an in-depth analysis of the entire venture capital landscape in Indonesia, discussing its evolution over time. To conclude, Adrian shared his vision for AC Ventures, focusing on their intensified commitment to nurturing startups in Indonesia and across the broader Southeast Asian region. --- > "Indonesia is not of the scale of China and India. And some people argue that India and China are so vast, you can almost consider: North China, South China, East China and different parts of the world. But because Indonesia normally gets lumped into ASEAN, right? People think about, well, I don't want single country risk with a country of this size. And so that's where the differentiation came out. Nonetheless, this is our thesis. And we believe that the last 10 years have proven that thesis. So we continue to double down on that thesis. Again, we've invested in companies that are regional that come into Indonesia." - **Adrian Li** ### Introduction - Adrian Li ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianmli/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [AC Ventures Profile](https://acv.vc/ac%5Fteam/adrian-li/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & Managing Partner, [AC Ventures](https://acv.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [AC Ventures raises US$210M to back tech-enabled businesses in Indonesia and Southeast Asia](https://acv.vc/insights/acv-portfolio-news/acv-fund-v-final-close/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - Let’s start with your origin story: How did you start your career? - How did you eventually end up at AC Ventures? - Adrian's thoughts on his career journey: what are the traits in founders and startup teams that you index for when it comes to investing in them? ### [AC Ventures](https://acv.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the [Indonesia Venture Capital Report 2023](https://acv.vc/resources/indonesia-vc-report-2023/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with Adrian Li - As a start, as I interviewed your colleague Helen Wong from AC Ventures on this podcast last year, can you provide a short overview of AC Ventures, the investment thesis and how they think about the Indonesian market? - What is a typical day like for you as a venture capitalist? - If I reverse the question, what are the red flags which will deter you from investing in them? - During the XA AGM, we chatted about the startup class of 2021 vs the startup class of 2023 in Southeast Asia, what are the differences that you observe and how well will they perform for Southeast Asia VC funds in the future? - One of the reasons why I want to speak to you is about the report “[Indonesia Venture Capital Report 2023](https://acv.vc/resources/indonesia-vc-report-2023/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” put together by AC Ventures and Bain & Company last November. Can you describe the recent reset in the Indonesian venture capital industry and how investors are adjusting their strategies in the face of current market uncertainties​​? - How are changing investor preferences impacting the types of investments being funded in Indonesia, particularly regarding valuation multiples and unit economics​​? - Despite global challenges, Indonesia's VC deal value remained stable in 2022\. What factors contributed to this resilience, and what does it indicate about the Indonesian market​​? - What are the main challenges startups in Indonesia currently face, and how are they adapting to the changing investment landscape​​? - Which sectors are witnessing the most significant growth in venture capital investments, and what trends are driving these investments​​? - How are the Indonesian government's regulatory policies, such as digital infrastructure and consumer protection laws, influencing the venture capital landscape​​? - Considering the positive macroeconomic context in Indonesia, such as a young population and a growing middle class, how do you see this influencing future tech and business investments​​? - With IPOs picking up in recent years, how is the exit landscape evolving in Indonesia's startup ecosystem, and what are the implications for future investments​​? - What trends are you observing in the types and sizes of deals, especially in the context of early-stage versus later-stage funding​​? - What is the one thing that you know about the Indonesia venture capital landscape that very few do? - How do you anticipate the role of Indonesia-centric VCs evolving, given their growing deal share and the shift towards early-stage investments​​? - Can foreign entrepreneurs thrive in the Indonesia startup ecosystem? - What does great look like for AC Ventures from your perspective? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Adrian’s recommendations: [Hidden Potential by Adam Grant](https://adamgrant.net/book/hidden-potential/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and [Mastering the Rockefeller Habits](https://scalingup.com/book-mrh/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Verne Harnish - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/goVqNuQtUc0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ac-ventures-the-indonesia-venture-capital-report-2023/id914868245?i=1000643563516&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3QXMP9zFgjlQrFsHTuYmec?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/ac-ventures-the-indonesia-venture-capital-landscape-southeast-asia-adrian-li?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtvKTbM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/446%5FAC%5FVentures%5F%5FThe%5FIndonesia%5FVenture%5FCapital%5FReport%5F2023%5Fwith%5FAdrian%5FLi.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/Y2RkYWUzZjgtNGE5Yi00YjFlLWI1YTQtNzNiMzcxMWUzZDkw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjwlsLyj4aEAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/AC-Ventures-%26-The-Indonesia-Venture-Capital-Report-2023-with-Adrian-Li-id2859782-id668876059?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Vertex Ventures & Venture Capital in Southeast Asia & India with Carmen Yuen URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/vertex-ventures-india-southeast-asia-carmen-yuen/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:21.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Carmen Yuen, general partner from Vertex Ventures joined us to discuss the current state of venture capital in Southeast Asia & India after the difficult fundraising climate in the past year. Carmen began the story of her career, moving from the government sector to venture capital. She shares the evolution of Vertex Ventures from their investment thesis to the portfolio of startups and evaluates the startup class of 2023 vs 2021\. Last but not least, Carmen describes exits as the leading indicators for startup success and elucidates what great would look like for Vertex Ventures. --- > "The whole of Southeast Asia has to come up as a group. Hence, my secret about what I know about the VC industry that people don't know. The secret is that you've got to be very sane when you come to investing, right? So, if you invest so high, we can't get exits. When we can't get exits, we can't return money to LPs, and then the investors will say, ‘Oh, Southeast Asia cannot find exits one.’ It cannot be, right? So to me, we must be able to show exits. That's the proof of the pudding.” **\- Carmen Yuen** ### Introduction - **Carmen Yuen (**[**Linkedin**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuencarmen/?ref=analysepodcast.com)**,** [**Vertex Ventures Profile**](https://www.vertexventures.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com#team)**), General Partner, Vertex Ventures, Southeast Asia and India** - How did you start your career? - How did you eventually end up in Vertex Ventures? - From your career journey, what are the lessons learnt that you can share with my audience? ### [Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India](https://www.vertexventures.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and State of VC in 2024 - As I have Kee Lock on the show many years back, can you provide a comprehensive overview of Vertex Ventures, recent key milestones and their investment thesis on a strategic level? - What are your perspectives on the Southeast Asia and Indian markets as you are actively investing in them? - What are the verticals that you invest in within these regions? - What is a typical day like for you as a venture capitalist? - What are the traits in founders and startup teams that you index for when it comes to investing in them? - If I reverse the question, what are the red flags which will deter you from investing in them? - What are the interesting companies within your portfolio that you can provide colour in the Southeast Asia market? - While India is a homogenous market, Southeast Asia is a diverse market with different economic development and digital maturity, how do you advise founders to expand across the markets or dive deep into one large market, for example, Indonesia? - During the XA AGM, we chatted about the startup class of 2021 versus the startup class of 2023 in Southeast Asia, what are the differences that you observe and how well will they perform for Southeast Asia VC funds in the future? - What are the headwinds and tailwinds in the outlook in 2024 given that most startups in the region feel that the worst is over in 2022 and 2023? - What is the one thing you know about being a Southeast Asian VC that very few do? - What would be your advice to startup founders across Southeast Asia in navigating the difficult fundraising climate? - How do you convince LPs or investors out there on the Southeast Asia story? - What does great look like for Vertex Ventures in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Carmen's recommendations: Be part of a book club. - How do my audience find you? [Vertex Blog](https://medium.com/vertexventures?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Hard Truths podcast ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/hard-truths-by-vertex/id1659392336?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/2JMf3yPwhuOIY85rpx5B2Y?ref=analysepodcast.com), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPbU1xKnX4FXGY0Q5USG1zW3ZoS3LvhU4&ref=analysepodcast.com)) **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/hYxXjbtMs%5Fc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vertex-ventures-venture-capital-in-southeast-asia-india/id914868245?i=1000642825517&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0QwK9B62bayIJax92tJpV7?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/vertex-ventures-venture-capital-2024-southeast-asia-india-carmen-yuen?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtfYkPk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/445%5FVertex%5FVentures%5F%5FVenture%5FCapital%5Fin%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5F%5FIndia%5Fwith%5FCarmen%5FYuen.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZDc4ZTc4YzEtMWIyOS00ZmZjLTk0OGEtZGUzNDQwZGRjYjFj?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjwgIrn-PaDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Vertex-Ventures-%26-Venture-Capital-in-Southeast-Asia-%26-India-with-Carmen-Yuen-id2859782-id667386107?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Yana TV and Change Makers in the Asia Pacific with Yana Fry URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/yana-tv-and-change-makers-in-the-asia-pacific-with-yana-fry/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:20.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Yana Fry, producer & host of Yana TV joined us in a conversation about the behind-the-scenes of her show and her perspectives on interviewing Asian change makers across the region. Our conversation kicked off with Yana's odyssey to Singapore and delving into what sparked the creation of Yana TV and its core themes. In the conversation, Yana shares the heartwarming tales featured on her show, ranging from a kidnapped diplomat to a heart-touching Singaporean Santa Claus and her perspectives as a content creator in the Asia Pacific. Last but not least, she shares what great would look like for Yana TV. --- > "There are so many voices here that people can create their own unique things. And yet there is still this culture, that's still lingering from the past, that somehow the answers are in the West. And trust me, they are not. So the West is also confused and looking for their way to figure out things. And so the main inspiration for Yana TV was to create this particular platform where we can showcase the voices of Asian movers and shakers, which means people who are doing interesting things, who are standing up, who want to speak up, challenging the status quo, and the norms. People who are regional, who are thought leaders, and I also feel it is time there has to be a bigger platform where we can all go and see who are the people who are doing amazing things here." - **Yana Fry** ### Introduction - **Yana Fry, Producer and Host of Yana TV and Executive Business and Life Coach** ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanafry/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Main Site](https://yanatv.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsg?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & Host of Timeless Teachings Podcast ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/timeless-teachings-with-yana-fry/id1555257373?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/0F2ZNkJanAFJ5MfisS7vid?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - Let's start with your origin story, how did you start your career? - What brought you to Singapore and what are your perspectives after living here and exploring the other parts of Asia for 15 years? - What are the interesting lessons you can share from your career journey with my audience? ### [Yana TV](https://yanatv.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsg?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Change Makers in the Asia Pacific with Yana Fry - What is the inspiration behind Yana TV? - Who is the intended audience of Yana TV? - What are the main themes behind the interviews for Yana TV? - How do you put each episode together and describe the production process behind the scenes? - Given that the show emphasizes change-makers and unsung heroes in Asia, can you talk about the different guest profiles and how you use your medium to illustrate their stories? - How do the culture and diversity of the Asia Pacific region influence the narratives of the individuals you interview? - How do you think the narratives of Asian change-makers differ from global narratives, and why is this important? - What challenges do you think are unique to Asian change-makers, and how do they navigate them? - Excluding myself with a full disclaimer that I am a guest on your show, can you share some interesting or surprising stories about the other change makers you interviewed and describe what makes them unique? - How do you foresee the role of digital media evolving in telling stories in Asia through Yana TV? - What are your thoughts about content distribution that is an underrated topic of discussion among Asian podcasters? - What is the one thing you learned about Asian change-makers that very few do? - What does great look like for Yana TV? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Yana's recommendation: Have time with yourself, remove all distractions and don't do anything for 5 days. - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/4Kbi3I5A6qE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/yana-tv-and-change-makers-in-the-asia-pacific-with-yana-fry/id914868245?i=1000641891654&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2H13QC4jdFh6WKmAQZhDqj?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/yana-tv-and-change-makers-asia-pacific-yana-fry?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtl8UMk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/444%5FYana%5FTV%5Fand%5FChange%5FMakers%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FYana%5FFry.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/Mjg3ZDUxMjctN2MzMi00YWVhLThlZjktMGU4MmJlZmY3N2Qx?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiIi8Ok8OKDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Yana-TV-and-Change-Makers-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Yana-Fry-id2859782-id665197534?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Glints & Human Resources in the Age of AI with Oswald Yeo URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/glints-human-resources-in-the-age-of-ai-oswald-yeo/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:20.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Oswald Yeo, chief executive officer and co-founder of Glints joined us in a conversation to discuss how the startup has helped companies from all over the region to build out their talent hubs across Southeast Asia. We began the conversation with Oswald as he shared the journey of Glints and the importance of focus to find the product-market fit till scaling the company across the region. He shared his valuable insights on the application of generative AI in the human resources sector, particularly emphasizing its utility in cross-border recruitment and talent sourcing. Last but not least, he shared his vision on what great would look like for the startup in the future. --- > “\[Glints\] We would like to still be around and building an enduring company. A big part of why many of us at Glints are building what we want is we hope that our children and grandchildren can be using Glints to grow their careers as well. So we want this to be an enduring company. Our mission is to help realize human potential. And we would like to be a company that's here to last. That's one. Two, concretely we see a lot of opportunities in the platform business and in our cross-border business. We want to double down in this market, getting to market leadership in the market we're playing in, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and also expanding out to new markets for cross-border recruiting, helping employers around the world tap into their 300 million labour force in Southeast Asia, helping them to hire the people here." - Oswald Yeo ### Introduction - Oswald Yeo, CEO and co-founder of [Glints](https://glints.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/oswaldyeo/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@Oswaldyeo](https://twitter.com/Oswaldyeo?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Let’s start with your origin story, given I have known you and your entire team since the days when all of you started in the former Joyful Frog Digital Incubator aka JFDI, how did you start your career and eventually end up starting Glints? - Can you share the key lessons that you have learned from your career journey? ### [Glints](https://glints.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & HR in the Age of AI - Can you provide a comprehensive overview of Glints and share its vision and mission with my audience? - What is the total market opportunity for human resources across Southeast Asia and how is Glints poised to capture and create value for companies? - I hear about the concept from you on the borderless mindset. What does it entail and can you elaborate on how Glints is promoting and facilitating this mindset in the talent industry? - What advantages does this approach bring to employers and job seekers and how does it align with Glints' mission? - Southeast Asia is a diverse region with varying talent needs and dynamics. What are the current trends you're observing in the talent landscape across different SEA countries, and how does Glints tailor its approach to cater to these unique markets? - Glints has come a long way from its early days when you used Google Sheets to onboard a few employers and candidates. Can you share some pivotal moments that propelled Glints' growth into a 6 million talent platform with 60,000 employers? - Building a successful startup often involves learning from mistakes. Could you elaborate on some of the key challenges or setbacks Glints faced in its early stages and how these experiences influenced the company's trajectory? - Identifying the right product-market fit is crucial for startups. Can you walk us through the process of how Glints found its sweet spot in the talent industry? What were the signs that you were on the right track? - What is the one thing you know about Glints and the HR industry in Southeast Asia that very few do? - Who are Glints's current investors, and how do they help Glints as the company grows? \[Source: [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/29/singapore-based-career-development-platform-glints-recruits-50m-in-new-funding/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - Fundraising can be challenging, especially during economic downturns. What advice are you for founders seeking to secure funding in uncertain times? Are there any strategies or approaches that worked well for Glints? - As talent technology continues to rise in SEA, how do you envision Glints' role in shaping the region's future of talent acquisition and development? Are there any specific innovations or strategies you're excited about? - Generative AI is having a significant impact on various industries, including talent acquisition. Could you share some specific ways in which Glints is leveraging AI to enhance the hiring process? - How has Generative AI influenced strategies for talent acquisition and retention? - What does great look like for Glints in the next decade? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Oswald's recommendations: [Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall](https://www.jimcollins.com/books/how-the-mighty-fall.html?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G. Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/mBwoOr2D1DQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/glints-human-resources-in-the-age-of-ai-with-oswald-yeo/id914868245?i=1000641074129&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Ou4X3iwhXjf9G2jjCm4Im?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/glints-human-resources-in-age-ai-talent-hub-oswald-yeo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtFAul0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/443%5FGlints%5F%5FHuman%5FResources%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAge%5Fof%5FAI%5Fwith%5FOswald%5FYeo.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NzczZGY0MjktN2FmYy00OTZkLTliZjMtMjI1ZTUyYjVjMDA4?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjY%5FpqQm9GDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Glints-%26-Human-Resources-in-the-Age-of-AI-with-Oswald-Yeo-id2859782-id663444065?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### State of Analyse Asia in 2023 URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/state-of-analyse-asia-in-2023/ Last updated: 2023-12-27T22:26:21.000Z As we embark on the 9th year of this podcast journey, it's impossible not to reflect on the transformative shifts that have unfolded since 2022\. Notably, our decision to embrace video content—something I had hesitated about for quite some time. For the first time, Analyse Asia is no longer a side project to a corporate job. Since September 2023, I've enthusiastically rekindled my entrepreneurial spirit, focusing my energies on an enterprise AI startup (currently in stealth mode). As we assess the past year, taking stock of our triumphs and the opportunities we may have missed, I'll also chart a forward-looking course for 2024, with the momentous 10th anniversary of the podcast looming large. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-20-at-13.03.34.png) Cumulative Growth of Analyse Asia across all channels till Nov 2023 Nonetheless, I approach each day with the vigour of a fresh start, a mindset that has been particularly instrumental since we ventured into video content just one year ago. Throughout this year, I've been engrossed in unravelling the intricacies of content distribution, conducting a multitude of experiments across a spectrum of video platforms. Amidst this exploration, I'm profoundly thankful to G. Thomas Craig, our steadfast editor, whose unwavering patience and dedication have allowed us to continuously refine our approach, even in the face of experiments that didn't quite unfold as anticipated. ### Our growth and key takeaways in 2023 Based on last year's prediction, we reached our 3rd million downloads and plays in April 2023\. We produced 34 episodes this year as video production took a longer time, achieved 20.4% growth YoY on traffic and video has now reached an average of 57% of the entire traffic flow and has exceeded audio in the last three months. The video traffic has grown 1000% from 8k to 89k views on YouTube but I expect this growth rate will drop when we maintain a steady footing. We are on track to hit 4 million middle of next year based on the current forecast. I was hoping that the traffic would double again this year but we did not achieve the goal set. For the year 2023, we maintained the quality now in the video and shared a few highlights in no order of priority: - We hosted a live show at [SXSW Sydney 2023](https://sxswsydney.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with [Tom Verrilli](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-art-of-product-management-with-tom-verrilli/), former Chief Product Officer of Twitch. Being a product manager myself, it was the most fascinating conversation I have had in years we discussed how to handle communities' backlash against taking away features, and what being a manager of product managers is like. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2023/12/IMG_0036.JPG) Photo with Tom Verrilli in SXSW Sydney 2023 - We have attracted regional and global executives to the show this year with [Brigid Archibald from Qualtrics](https://www.analysepodcast.com/qualtrics-experience-management-asia-pacific-with-brigid-archibald/), [Jason Jameson from HERE technologies](https://www.analysepodcast.com/here-technologies-and-digital-map-making-in-the-asia-pacific-with-jason-jameson/) (and now he's the Chief Customer Officer - congratulations), [Emmanuel Pillai from AWS](https://www.analysepodcast.com/building-a-tech-savvy-workforce-and-amazon-web-services-training-certification-in-asia-pacific-with-emmanuel-pillai/), [Colin Daniels from SXSW Sydney](https://www.analysepodcast.com/how-sxsw-comes-to-sydney-with-colin-daniels/), [Guy Kawasaki from Canva](https://www.analysepodcast.com/product-evangelism-and-canva-with-guy-kawasaki/), [Lee Wong from Lombard Odier](https://www.analysepodcast.com/lombard-odier-key-trends-in-family-offices-across-the-asia-pacific-with-lee-wong/), [Arthur Hu - Global CIO of Lenovo](https://www.analysepodcast.com/lenovo-solutions-services-group-ssg-future-it-ai-arthur-hu-cio-cto/), [Jon Robertson from Snowflake](https://www.analysepodcast.com/snowflake-trends-on-data-warehouse-ai-in-the-asia-pacific-with-jon-robertson/), [Mike Clayville from Stripe](https://www.analysepodcast.com/stripe-and-the-innovation-of-financial-infrastructure-in-the-asia-pacific-with-mike-clayville/), [Joel Lange from Dow Jones](https://www.analysepodcast.com/dow-jones-ai-in-risk-and-compliance-with-joel-lange/). - Of course, on the venture capital front, we have [Kelly Choo from True Global Ventures](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-generative-ai-crypto-web3-2023-kelly-choo/) [twice](https://www.analysepodcast.com/true-global-ventures-web3-investment-outlook-in-2023-with-kelly-choo/) on the show, [Ong Peng Tsin from Monk's Hill Ventures](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-future-of-generative-ai-in-southeast-asia-with-ong-peng-tsin/), [Helen Wong from AC Ventures](https://www.analysepodcast.com/ac-ventures-investing-into-indonesia-with-helen-wong/). Of course, this is a challenging year for start-ups raising money from investors due to the rise of interest rates in the United States. We also have [Jeremy Au](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-southeast-asia-investment-landscape-vc-angel-investing-jeremy-au/), host of Brave SEA podcast and Monk's Hill Ventures to discuss the Southeast Asia landscape. - We have [Parag Khanna](https://www.analysepodcast.com/climate-alpha-with-parag-khanna/) returning to talk about his startup, Climate Alpha (and congratulations on the recent USD$5m fund raise), George Kesselman on [Insurtech in the Asia Pacific](https://www.analysepodcast.com/insurtech-in-the-asia-pacific-with-george-kesselman/) and [his new book "The Power of Play"](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-power-of-play-future-of-work-george-kesselman/). - On the crypto front, we are still bullish. Remember when we had [Askhay BD](https://www.analysepodcast.com/expanding-solana-to-the-international-community-web3-investing-with-akshay-bd/) from the Solana Foundation (before their price went to the moon at the end of the year), [Federico Ast](https://www.analysepodcast.com/kleros-decentralized-arbitration-in-web3-with-federico-ast/) \- founder of Kleros blockchain, the [Global Coin Research team](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-market-investment-trends-on-web3-and-crypto-with-global-coin-research/) reporting Asia fuels the rise of crypto in 2023, with the US media talking about this after they attended Token 2049 in Singapore with [Cosmo Jiang](https://www.analysepodcast.com/usdc-de-pegging-and-what-it-means-for-web3-and-crypto-with-cosmo-jiang/), Junney Kang and Jin Kang and [Chris Lee from TKX Capital](https://www.analysepodcast.com/tkx-capital-and-navigating-the-headwinds-of-crypto-in-asia-with-chris-lee/) and [Serkan Toto](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-web3-gaming-renaissance-in-the-asia-pacific-with-serkan-toto/) \- an old friend now on web3 gaming. For the first time, we have [Kim Grauer from Chainalysis](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-global-crypto-adoption-index-2023-asias-rising-in-crypto-with-kimberly-grauer-chainalysis/) coming to us to discuss their crypto adoption index report 2023 highlighting Asia's importance in the rising activity in crypto. - We love annual traditions with global and regional thought leaders in Analyse Asia. For Southeast Asia, we have[ Sapna Chadha and Florian Hoppe](https://www.analysepodcast.com/decoding-the-google-e-conomy-sapna-chadha-florian-hoppe-bain-temasek-2023/) to discuss the e-Conomy SEA report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co. for the third time. On China, we have Shai Oster, former Asia Bureau Chief, first to talk about the [impact of SVB's collapse](https://www.analysepodcast.com/silicon-valley-banks-collapse-and-its-impact-to-asia-startup-ecosystem/) on Asian companies and [his annual State of China review](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-china-2023-with-shai-oster/) for the 6th time and [Rui Ma to explain why China missed Chat-GPT](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-evolution-of-tech-giants-in-china-2023-with-rui-ma/). On how digital evolves across the Asia Pacific, we are thankful to [Simon Kemp](https://www.analysepodcast.com/digital-report-2023-social-media-streaming-wars-generative-ai-simon-kemp/) for sharing his insights from the Digital Report 2023 for the 6th time. Last but not least, [Benedict Evans](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-new-gatekeepers-new-questions-generative-ai-web3-vr-ar-benedict-evans/) has come on the show to talk about the new gatekeepers and where AI is heading. To be vocally self-critical, the growth rate has stagnated mainly on the audio front although Spotify is now dominating the podcast traffic with a +241% in streams and 22% in followers against Apple Podcasts, but doing both long and short-form videos for Analyse Asia brought in a different type of audience. I expected the growth of video to augment audio but the results have shown otherwise. Looking back, I wish that I had started working on the video earlier. I credited the pivot to my wife, who has nudged me towards that direction and I finally started last year. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2023/12/2023Wrapped_square.png) How has Spotify grown the audience for Analyse Asia? In essence, community building and monetization took a back seat because I focused on the content creation to ensure that I was serving my audience and being methodical in how I wanted to approach this. While limiting myself to the [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Tik Tok channel](https://www.tiktok.com/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) and our [LinkedIn page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), it has sharpened my focus and provided clarity on what is coming ahead. On community building, we did a poll on Discord and Slack and could not decide which platform to go on. As WhatsApp communities are on the rise, we decided to take a back seat and see which fits better for Analyse Asia to manage our community. For the time being, we limited our growth to our LinkedIn page, which has grown well in recent months. On the monetization model, even though we have not embarked on advertising, we have started a consulting practice that is profitable on day 1 which helped companies build out their content marketing strategy and provide advisory services and executive training in digital transformation, AI and web3 given Bernard's corporate background. We will share more as it is part of our roadmap in 2024\. ### How Generative AI Transformed Analyse Asia in 2023 I like to explain how the emergence of Generative AI such as Chat-GPT has transformed content creation significantly. It has introduced significant changes to what Analyse Asia can do now. Let me explain this with this diagram when I was working on my podcast from 2014 to 2019 before Descript: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-20-at-13.18.35.png) @BernardLeong - Simplify Your Worklife with AI After I worked with Geoff, my current editor with Descript and moving to video, I expected the 5 hours per episode will escalate to 15 hours per episode because of the nature of the video content creation. Luckily, the AI revolution from OpenAI's Chat-GPT4 and other tools in the market led to the following: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2023/12/Screenshot-2023-12-20-at-13.24.11.png) @BernardLeong - Simplify Your Worklife with AI With AI automation, I have brought it down from 5 hours to 2 hours with me outsourcing the arduous part of my work. Of course, I have reached 60% productivity gains. As a result of re-designing the workflow (and some parts of the process have been modified), allowed me to take some time to re-think what I want to do with Analyse Asia. While working on the Generative AI tools to speed up my productivity, I realized that we can do much more as compared to the past specifically in information retrieval and organization, and even solving the problem of transcription. For those who have been following us, we will release small experiments in the next couple of months. ### We are going to be 10 Years Old in 2024 In 2014, I embarked on the journey of creating the Analyse Asia podcast, driven by a deep passion for exploring the intricacies of our rapidly evolving world. Today, as I stand at the threshold of a significant juncture, I find myself contemplating the future direction of this podcast. In various conversations, I've alluded to a critical decision looming ahead - whether to conclude this remarkable voyage at episode 500, episode 1000 or let it flow indefinitely into the unknown. As we inch closer to that milestone 500th episode, which is expected to grace our airwaves in 2024 or early 2025, I'll pause to reflect and decide on the path forward. This show has seen its share of hiatuses, moments when I stepped away only to find myself drawn back, driven by an unwavering commitment to exploring diverse topics without a predefined business agenda. Yet, as I glance at other podcasts I've long admired, I acknowledge that our growth trajectory hasn't quite matched the lofty aspirations I hold for it. While the future remains uncertain, I'm keen to hear your thoughts and perspectives on the podcast. Your feedback, and your insights, matter immensely to me, for a conversation is richer when shared. So, let's engage in this dialogue, for hearing your thoughts is infinitely more rewarding than the silence of uncertainty. You can email your comments to me here at hello at analyse dot asia. Here are the three asks for which I would like your support: - **Join Our YouTube Community by** [**Subscribing to our YouTube channel**](https://www.youtube.com/@AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) **and Help Us Reach Our Goals:** We have not one, but two exciting milestones to achieve on our YouTube channel: first, we aim to hit 500 subscribers, and then our ultimate goal is to reach 1K subscribers. When we achieve these milestones, we unlock the potential for advertising revenue, which will significantly contribute to our ability to expand and enhance our content. Your subscription and consistent viewing play a crucial role in helping us get there. Get ready for a year filled with daily short-form videos in 2024! Your support makes a real impact. - [**Subscribe to the Analyse Asia main site as a free member**](https://www.analysepodcast.com/) and we will be doing more this year. - If you discover anything valuable in any podcast episodes and short-form videos in the past year, **please help us spread the word**, and please share our videos and audio podcasts with your friends out there across [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/itunes914868245/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com). You can follow us through these channels: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse.asia), X (formerly known as [Twitter](https://twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia)), [Tik Tok](https://www.tiktok.com/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia), [Threads](https://www.threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com), [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](https://facebook.com/asiaanalyse) and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/analyseasia/?ref=analyse.asia). ### Closing In the past year, I've mustered the courage to step away from my corporate day job and return to my roots as a founder CEO, working quietly on a startup venture in the enterprise AI distinct from Analyse Asia. I've come to understand that [the privilege of a lifetime is to be yourself](https://www.bernardleong.com/the-privilege-of-a-lifetime-is-to-be-yourself/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and accept that I do not need to be in the inner rings of others to be validated and embrace the struggle ahead. In light of this, I've chosen to prioritize three core aspects: Firstly, I'm dedicated to building my life's work and contributing to what truly matters. Second, I cherish spending quality time with my loved ones, valuing their presence deeply. Finally, I remain committed to lending a helping hand wherever possible. However, with time being an ever-precious commodity, I recognize the importance of focusing on what truly matters. Regardless of the path ahead, we'll take steadfast steps forward on our podcast journey. For me and the editorial team, it remains [Day 1](https://aws.amazon.com/executive-insights/content/how-amazon-defines-and-operationalizes-a-day-1-culture/?ref=analyse.asia). Take care & stay safe, **Bernard Leong, Founder of Analyse Asia** ### The Power of Play and Future of Work with George Kesselman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-power-of-play-future-of-work-george-kesselman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:19.000Z Fresh out of the studio, George Kesselman joined us to discuss his new book "The Power of Play". He shares the main themes and key takeaways on how games will drive the future of work. We began the conversation with George providing an overview of how work has evolved from a craftsman environment to the industrial age and explained why we need a re-thinking of work using game play. He dived deep into the different personas of gamers in work life and offered what success would mean for his book in redefining the workplace. --- > "Money is a very interesting kind of numerical way of measuring when you're levelling up. So that's where the distinction needs to be very clear. The way that I've positioned it in the book and what the research tells us is that if we force the games on people, it's very bad. But if we look at the games that they naturally played in their free time when they were younger, it's a very good predictor in terms of the type of work that they naturally would gravitate to. So if somebody is amazing and loves playing hours and hours of strategy games, and if we put that person in front of the machine, turning out widgets is going to be a very bad mismatch, and then we need to pay them a lot of money and continue trying to squeeze them to improve that performance. But if somebody is motivated by strategy games, and we give them the kind of problems that are very similar to the type of things that they naturally gravitate to they will be motivated. So we're not creating a new game for them, but we're looking at parallels and helping them to find that intrinsic motivation. And that's something that I think becomes super, super powerful where they then create their own games based on the work that we want them to achieve." **\- George Kesselman** ### Introduction - George Kesselman ([@mr\_insurtech](https://twitter.com/mr%5Finsurtech?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/insurtech/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Managing Partner, Willow Ventures and President and Founder of InsurTech Asia Association ([main site](https://www.insurtechasia.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@InsurtechAsia](https://twitter.com/InsurTechAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### [The Power of Play](https://www.amazon.com/Power-Play-Approach-Transforming-Engagement/dp/1394228015?ref=analysepodcast.com). with George Kesselman - What is the inspiration behind "The Power of Play"? - Who is the intended audience of the book? - What are the main themes and key takeaways behind “The Power of Play”? - You begin the book with a brief history of work and discuss the different demotivators of work: unlocking engagement & fulfilment, did the recent pandemic exacerbate these motivators when everyone went from one extreme in working from home to returning to the office? - You broke up the different work eras in the book's first part. Let’s start with work 1.0\. Can you talk about the legacy of work and explain the link between time and money? - Then comes work 2.0\. How did the impact of the Industrial Revolution change how we conceive work? For example, in my parents' generation, they talked about lifetime employment, total quality management and Six Sigma. - How did the Internet Work revolution (or you term it 3.0) change the way we work? - Can you discuss the role of gamification in the workplace and clarify the distinction between superficial gamification and meaningful game design, as touched upon in the book? - There are different personas in games: the achiever, the explorer, the socializer, the challenger and the hybrid, how do these profiles approach games individually and in teams? - What are the different motivations in work, and why did we choose money as the primary motivator? - Are there other motivations that draw people towards work? Can you dive deeper into the intrinsic vs extrinsic motivations? - How do we apply game development principles to work? - How should work be changed or modified by game mechanics? - What is a better predictor of success when matching people to work? - How do we test or gauge workers' performances in a remote or distributed work environment? - What are other interesting stuff that did not end up in the book or if I may ask, are you planning a sequel? - What does success mean to you for the readers who learn from your book? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired your life? - George's recommendations: Reconfiguring your kids' play space without digital devices and getting a good night's sleep - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/3fOkpBvO1is?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-power-of-play-and-future-of-work-with-george-kesselman/id914868245?i=1000639141913&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Tw7pKrXaJxz7tquzk6xzC?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-power-of-play-and-future-of-work-george-kesselman?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuBzAPI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/442%5FThe%5FPower%5Fof%5FPlay%5Fand%5FFuture%5Fof%5FWork%5Fwith%5FGeorge%5FKesselman.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MzQ3MTE2ZjEtZWQ4OC00MTMxLWFlNDItZTQ4MTAyYTNkNTdh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahgKEwiQ0%5FLwxJyDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQuAc&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Power-of-Play-and-Future-of-Work-with-George-Kesselman-id2859782-id658250171?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) --- *You just finished reading Analyse Asia, the podcast for analysing the most important issues in the tech industry across Asia. If you like this newsletter, please forward it to your friends.* *If someone sent this to you, you can sign up for free at* [*Analyse Asia*](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analyse.asia) *or subscribe to our* [*YouTube channel*](https://youtube.com/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia)*.* ### The State of China 2023 with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-china-2023-with-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:19.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Shai Oster, independent consultant and former Asia Bureau Chief from The Information is back for the sixth time with the annual review of what is happening to the China tech ecosystem in 2023\. The conversation started with Shai's predictions last year on what happened and what did not happen. From there, we discuss the major themes of the year: the decline and restructuring of venture capital in China, how the 2nd generation CEOs from Shein, Pinduoduo and Bytedance have successfully expanded globally as compared to their predecessors, the October surprise of Huawei's 7nm chip. Last but not least Shai offered his predictions in the road ahead for 2024\. --- > "You will continue to see Western investment continuing to decline. The risk-reward calculations won't change in the next 12 months, as far as I can see. The Chinese economy is not about to take off. What you will see is the beginnings of some people who are willing to take the gamble. They are going to try different ways to exit. You're going to see more people experimenting with domestic IPOs, and onshore IPOs because you can get the money off. For example, if you're investing in LiDAR or approved industries, you can do a joint venture or a WOFE or anything. It'd be a joint venture to be able to try and do some kind of onshore listings. I think by chance will stay in this weird suspended state. I don't think we're going to get a resolution from them. The big question is - how much stimulus will the Chinese government throw at the economy and how far are they willing to go to goose the economy?" **\- Shai Oster** ### Introduction - Shai Oster ([@beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), independent consultant and former Asia Bureau Chief in [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### State of China in 2023 - What is the report card for 2023? Which predictions you got right or wrong? - Let’s start with the Sequoia split which you initially predicted and it came one year too late, what are your thoughts on the split of Sequoia Capital into 3 parts: Sequoia US and Europe, Sequoia China renamed to HongShan and then Sequoia India & Southeast Asia renamed to Peak XV Ventures? - The rising geopolitical tensions between the US and China fueled the split between Sequoia US and China, but why did they drop India & Southeast Asia? In your opinion, what are your thoughts on why they are also separated? - On the longer state of venture capital in China, what are your thoughts as the US funding has declined significantly in fear of the US government sanctions? - Let’s go to IPOs, Alibaba has recently given up divesting its Alicloud business as a separate entity and decided to keep it within. What happened and where do you think Alibaba Group will go? - Pinduoduo has successfully entered the US market with Temu as compared to Alibaba many years back. Why do the 2nd generation Chinese CEOs from Bytedance, Pinduoduo and Shein figure out this as compared to the older BAT? - We discussed the Bytedance IPO for 2 years, and the status of TikTok being banned in the US is still in flux. Of course, there’s the famous congression hearing on Chew Shou Zi this year on TikTok. From now to the end of 2024, will TikTok be banned in the US? - Huawei in China has successfully fabricated the [7nm chip in their latest phone Huawei Mate 60 Pro with SMIC](https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3236924/huaweis-chip-breakthrough-china-has-won-battle-if-not-war?ref=analysepodcast.com), with Bloomberg and FT reporting on how they managed to do it. Morris Chang from TSMC wrote an open letter to address that getting yields for semiconductors is a matter of experience and expects China to catch up. I spoke to [Chris Miller, author of Chip War last year](https://www.analysepodcast.com/rise-asia-semiconductors-history-pov-chris-miller/) and he said that it’s impossible to replicate the entire semiconductor supply chain but it looks like China can do this now. Semiconductors have a great impact on the development of AI in China. Of course, we have seen Chinese-based LLMs like [Lee Kai Fu’s 01.ai ](https://01.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com)or others starting in China. What are the chances for China to be able to create the entire semiconductor supply chain by themselves? - What are your predictions for 2024? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Shai's recommendations: Reading "[Wind in the Willows](https://www.amazon.sg/Wind-Willows-Kenneth-Grahame/dp/1840227826/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=1OLYSTGM8F71W&keywords=wind+in+the+willows&qid=1702344147&sprefix=wind+in+the+willow%2Caps%2C266&sr=8-1&ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Kenneth Grahame to his children - Bernard's recommendations: Reading "[The 38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to his son: Perspectives, Ideology, and Wisdom](https://www.amazon.sg/Letters-J-D-Rockefeller-his-son/dp/8199968524?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by J.D. Rockefeller to his children - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/8rcRVC9wlnc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-state-of-china-2023-with-shai-oster/id914868245?i=1000638363582&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2CoeRgwLSDh4rB0XsbYtJw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-state-of-china-2023-with-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuXpM1g?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/441%5FThe%5FState%5Fof%5FChina%5F2023%5Fwith%5FShai%5FOster.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZDMxN2Q1MjctMTIyMC00NzJkLTk3YmUtMmU0NjQ2OTU4ZmU4?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjo84qp-YqDAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-State-of-China-2023-with-Shai-Oster-id2859782-id655841980?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) --- *You just finished reading Analyse Asia, the podcast for analysing the most important issues in the tech industry across Asia. If you like this newsletter, please forward it to your friends.* *If someone sent this to you, you can sign up for free at* [*Analyse Asia*](https://analyse.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com) *or subscribe to our* [*YouTube channel*](https://youtube.com/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com)*.* ### The State of Generative AI and Crypto in 2023 with Kelly Choo URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-generative-ai-crypto-web3-2023-kelly-choo/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:18.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Kelly Choo, founding partner from True Global Ventures discusses the state of generative AI and crypto in 2023 and what to look forward in 2024\. Kelly started with his take on the recent departure of CZ from Binance and the ouster and return of Sam Altman in Open AI and how this impacts the AI and crypto landscape. From there, he broke down how they are looking at the next wave of generative AI companies specifically in the education, metaverse and legal space and crypto companies from ERC 6551 in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to zero-knowledge proofs. Last but not least, Kelly defines what success would mean for both AI and crypto in 2024\. --- > "Consumer demand will accelerate the need for security, privacy and regulation. Like zero-knowledge (ZK) where you can prove something is true without revealing all information. And of course, security infrastructure, which is very interesting and important at this current moment, even before the next bull market. For example, one of the companies we invested into Ledger, a digital asset hardware wallet. You basically have an app store interface where you can trade, > you can stake. We see a lot of adoption of crypto in not just a retail space because of increased awareness, in the media, and new DeFi applications coming up, but also in the adoption of enterprise space. So a lot of these enterprises will be thinking to themselves, okay, in my treasury, not just do I need to hold USD and other currencies, maybe I need to also hold Bitcoins, or something else. DBS Bank, They're now holding some of this Sandbox Land, but where do they hold it? They can't hold it just in a wallet and then they throw it into some cabinet somewhere. They need to have the right, security hardware. So we believe this, will accelerate the adoption of applications like ledger, which is like a hardware wallet, for both retail and enterprise. So we believe that age-old saying of selling shovels during a gold rush is still very true." **\- Kelly Choo** ### **Introduction** - Kelly Choo, Founding Partner, True Global Ventures ([@kellychoo](https://twitter.com/kellychoo?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellychoo/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### **State of Generative AI and Crypto in 2023** - It has been a whirlwind weekend. Let’s start with the hottest topic and it is probably ongoing: what are your thoughts on what happened to Sam Altman and Open AI? - So, if we forget all the Open AI drama, and dial back to the Open AI Developer Day 3 weeks back, how did the recent Open AI Developer Day influence your views or strategies on investing in Generative AI and new Language Learning Models (LLMs)? - Could you walk us through the chronology of Generative AI's rise and its current state in the technology landscape? What are the startups that caught your attention and how do you see the foundational models, APIs and applications in the Generative AI space? - What business models are proving to be successful in the Generative AI space, and how is True Global Ventures engaging with these models? - What is True Global Ventures when it comes to AI startups? - In our last conversation at the start of the year, we discussed the [5 web3 megatrends](https://www.tgv4plus.com/tgvs-5-web3-megatrends-for-2023.html?ref=analysepodcast.com). Which trends worked out and which did not? - With Web3 evolving rapidly, could you highlight some of the most exciting developments you've seen recently, especially in real-world asset monetization? - Can you explain the concept of ERC-6551 and programmable NFTs? How are they different from the NFTs most people are familiar with? - From True Global Ventures' perspective, what new Web3 technologies or applications should we be paying attention to now? - How do you see AI, specifically Non-Player Characters (NPCs), enhancing the user experience within the Metaverse? - Let’s talk about the metaverse and gaming in crypto: the Saudi Arabian government's Neom project and Animoca Brands. Can you discuss the significance of the Saudi government’s investment into Animoca and its potential impact on the Metaverse? - Another big conversation in the year is Apple’s Vision Pro. How do you think that Apple’s foray into VR and AR will change the metaverse market? - Where do you think that the AR and VR market will go from there? - It is almost without doubt that the SEC will approve the Bitcoin ETFs starting with Blackrock and the rest and even conversion of GBTC to a spot EFT due to the loss in a lawsuit. That means institutional investors are coming to crypto, what does that mean for the crypto ecosystem as it balances between decentralization and other financial innovations in the space? - What are the chances for other cryptocurrencies such as ETH and SOL to be on the next wave of ETFs? How does that change the investment landscape? - How do you envision regulatory changes shaping the future of cryptocurrency ETFs and investor strategies, specifically the emergence of Dubai, London, Hong Kong in addition to Singapore? - What does great look like in the AI and web3 startup space in 2024? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired your life? - Kelly's inspiration: Life is about growth, learning and learning about yourself, and the excitement of going to work every morning. - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/5rflpEuH%5FNc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-state-of-generative-ai-and-crypto-in-2023-with-kelly-choo/id914868245?i=1000636853410&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5D9RrEkruIGcRUUsoJMKTk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-state-of-generative-ai-crypto-web3-kelly-choo-true-global-ventures?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvhDu3c?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/440%5FThe%5FState%5Fof%5FGenerative%5FAI%5Fand%5FCrypto%5Fin%5F2023%5Fwith%5FKelly%5FChoo.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MjlhMjlkMDQtZjY4Ny00YmQyLWE4ZGYtMzQ2MjYzOTc0ZDgw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIgoS7keiCAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-State-of-Generative-AI-and-Crypto-in-2023-with-Kelly-Choo-id2859782-id652340965?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Undivided VC & Investing in the Built Environment & Sustainability with Alexander Bent URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/undivided-vc-investing-in-the-built-environment-sustainability-with-alexander-bent/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:18.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Alexander Bent, founder & managing partner from Undivided Ventures, joined us in a conversation on why this is the time to invest in sustainability within the built environment. Alexander started with his background as a real estate developer and the inspiration behind starting his venture capital firm. He dived deep into his investment thesis and shared his perspectives on how transforming technologies from AI to materials engineering will transform the real estate industry. Last but not least, Alex shares what great would look like for Undivided Ventures. --- > “We've got a 330 trillion dollar industry here, which arguably a lot of it, we talk about stranded assets, CRREM pathways to stranded assets, et cetera. I talked to a lot of funds. I've talked to a lot of developers. They're getting very worried about this. And it's not just about their existing portfolios. It's about how they are going to exit portfolios. Because many buyers now actually build in the cost of retrofitting a building to bring it up to sustainability when they're looking at acquiring an asset. So, that might bring the price down. So, for us, we look at everything you've just mentioned. We look at materials. We look at hardware. We look at software and anything that gets us to some of these impact targets we want to achieve in the built environment and also is something which is commercially viable and fixes some particular pain point within this ecosystem.” - Alexander Bent ### Introduction - Alexander Bent, Managing Partner and Founder of [Undivided Ventures ](https://www.undivided.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com)([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-bent-2a609a125/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Let’s start with your origin story, how did you start your career and eventually land your current role as the managing partner of Undivided Ventures? - What are the key lessons that you can share about your career journey with my audience? ### [Undivided VC](https://www.undivided.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Investing in the Built Environment & Sustainability Globally - Can you share the vision and mission for Undivided Ventures and its focus on the built environment? - How do you visualize the total market opportunity in the landscape you invest in? Given the vast landscape of the built environment, how do you look at the space from the lens of an investor? - What is the investment thesis for Undivided Ventures and what falls or does not fall under the investment mandate of Undivided VC? - What is a typical day for you as a venture capitalist? - How do you identify and evaluate potential investments in the sustainability sector, especially for the built environment? - What are the traits in startup founders and their founding team that will help you in making the decision to invest in them? - What do you think about the business models for the startups to generate revenue in the area you invest in? How do you know if the startup is on the right track in building the right monetization model? - Reversing the question, what are the red flags that deter you from investing in them? - What is the help that Undivided VC provides for the startup teams? - Can you talk about a few startups within the Undivided VC and share their impact if everything goes right for them? - What is the one thing you know about investing in companies that operate in the built environment that very few people do? - Do you have any advice for startups or entrepreneurs looking to make a positive impact on the built environment's sustainability specifically tackling the big problems such as reducing carbon emissions and improving the building towards achieving net zero? - What are your mental models for these technologies that I will mention and describe their role in bringing the most significant potential to what you invest in? - Artificial Intelligence specifically generative AI - Internet of Things - Blockchain technologies - Augmented and Virtual Reality - Advancements in materials science or engineering sciences - What does great look like for Undivided VC? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired your life? - Alex's inspiration is derived from children and he is inspired to create a better future for them. - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/4gRwt6TBh%5Fs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/undivided-vc-investing-in-the-built-environment/id914868245?i=1000634949814&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6lAEyXl7xr1ITRGYw157r9?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/undivided-vc-investing-sustainability-built-environment-alexander-bent?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtvxH%5FM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/439%5FUndivided%5FVC%5F%5FInvesting%5Fin%5Fthe%5FBuilt%5FEnvironment%5F%5FSustainability%5Fwith%5FAlexander%5FBent.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MGVhMDYzNmYtODg2Ny00ODhkLTgzMDQtNTM4MWZhNjVhY2Q5?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwj43qTO98aCAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Undivided-VC-%26-Investing-in-the-Built-Environment-%26-Sustainability-with-Alexander-Bent-id2859782-id648862913?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Decoding the e-Conomy SEA 2023 Report with Sapna Chadha and Florian Hoppe URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/decoding-the-google-e-conomy-sapna-chadha-florian-hoppe-bain-temasek-2023/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:17.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Sapna Chadha, vice president of Google Southeast Asia, and Florian Hoppe, partner at Bain and Company shared the key takeaways from the Google e-Conomy SEA 2023 report. Sapna and Florian discussed how start-ups are navigating the current declines in venture capital funding and introduced how high-value users presented a new way of visualizing what goes behind the digital economy in Southeast Asia. Last but not least, they discuss what great looks like for businesses in Southeast Asia. --- > "I think in the past, we've looked more at inclusion and access, but actually we've made so much inroads over the past years. Now again, we're talking about participation because what we're seeing is that 30% of the highest spending customers who we call high-value users (HVUs) - they make up over 70% of the digital economies' transaction value. So 30% Are leading to 70% of the digital economy. We want to make sure that we don't leave users behind and we continue to drive growth and drive their participation. So we need to make sure that we are not ignoring this very important group that presents a 1.9x growth opportunity of that of high-value users. And for this reason, it's really important for us to talk about digital participation." **\- Sapna Chadha** ### Introduction - Introduction: Sapna Chadha, Vice President, Google Southeast Asia ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sapna-chadha-1128671/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Florian Hoppe, partner at Bain and Company ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-hoppe-09014b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As we had Florian and Stephanie (Sapna’s predecessor) here last year for the e-Conomy SEA report 2022 report, my first question is to Sapna: can you give an introduction of yourself and your role and coverage for Google? ### The [Google e-Conomy SEA 2023 Report](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/report/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with Sapna Chadha & Florian Hoppe - Let’s head straight into the report. We have major macroeconomic headwinds with high interest rates, a moderate inflationary environment and business cutting costs. What are the key takeaways from the report this year? - How do you characterise the region’s performance against global macroeconomic headwinds, specifically which verticals are growing and which verticals are declining? - What is the one interesting data point you find most interesting about the e-Conomy SEA report 2023 that very few know about? - Specifically for the startup ecosystem, as we understand that SEA private funding has declined to its lowest level in 6 years, does this align with global shifts in venture capital funding? - In your perspective, how should startups deal with a challenging funding environment? In other words, will the high-quality investments be able to secure funding in the Southeast Asia region? - Does the funding decline cut across all stages (Seed/Series, Series B/C and Series D/E+) or differentiated by different countries, for example, the top 6 economies (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, The Philippines and Indonesia)? \[Florian\] - With startups now struggling for funding, do the investors face challenges in returning capital to the investors? - What will be the recommendations for Southeast Asia digital businesses need to do to survive this funding winter? - Do we see a focus on monetization accelerating across the digital economy with the investors now wanting to see company profitability? - Has the data indicated that some startups with over-priced valuations will either collapse or be re-priced similar to the US and other parts of the world? - Based on the report this year, the financial services industry is at an inflexion point, given the high-interest rates and cash is no longer king, what is happening with the digital natives and traditional finance? - Are lending and adoption of digital insurance possible avenues for growth for fintech companies? - One major addition to the report is the concept of high-value users (HVUs), given the need for businesses to pursue an accelerated path of profitability, can you describe what constitutes a high-value user, and how they are defined in the context of the report? - What are the key trends about HVUs and what are their spending patterns compared to non-HVUs? - Is the 2030 goal of $1 trillion GMV within reach for the SEA economy? - While we are in a challenging year, what would success look like for businesses in Southeast Asia in the next few years, given we are seeing more geopolitical conflict? - What do you most look forward to seeing in 2024? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Sapna's recommendation: AI 2041 by Lee Kaifu and Chen Qiufan - Florian's recommendation: Essays and little books written by children in school that emit positivity in the current world in which we live. - Bernard's recommendation: [Google Bard](https://bard.google.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How does my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/28wyC7LFPjE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-the-e-conomy-sea-2023-report-with-sapna/id914868245?i=1000634052311&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/56F0aRyVRTnt3SCfgMl5V5?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/decoding-the-e-conomy-sea-2023-sapna-chadha-florian-hoppe-google-bain-temasek?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtyoL3g?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Decoding%5Fthe%5Fe-Conomy%5FSEA%5F2023%5FReport%5Fwith%5FSapna%5FChadha%5Fand%5FFlorian%5FHoppe.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OTQwM2ZiZWMtZGRiZS00NDk2LThiNjQtNWUwNTBhYzBhZWZk?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjg%5Ftyig7OCAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Decoding-the-e-Conomy-SEA-2023-Report-with-Sapna-Chadha-and-Florian-Hoppe-id2859782-id646852196?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Dow Jones & AI in Risk and Compliance with Joel Lange URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/dow-jones-ai-in-risk-and-compliance-with-joel-lange/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:17.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Joel Lange, executive vice president & general manager of risk and research from Dow Jones, discussed how the company is leveraging artificial intelligence and data analytics to help companies tackle risk and compliance and combat financial crimes and money laundering. Joel also explored generative AI's role in risk management and concluded by envisioning the future of Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and what great would look like in the Asia Pacific. --- > "And so what we do at Dow Jones, very specifically, is look at - What are the regulators demanding? What do they want you to do? What are the specific data points that you require? And which workflows do you want to use them in? And, there are very different workflows, which within, for example, a financial institution. You have the onboarding of your new customers, and in those situations, you may have a little bit more time. Obviously, there's the service level in terms of opening a bank account is faster and faster. But you have a little bit more time in that regard. You want to look at potentially more data. Then once you are a customer of a bank, you're gonna be amongst millions of customers. How do banks can then adapt to check additional data points? And, today the customer may be clean and have no adverse media, may not be sanctions, but that could change." - Joel Lange ### Introduction - Joel Lange, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Risk & Research for Dow Jones ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-lange-msc-a7099b1/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Dow Jones Profile](https://www.dowjones.com/team/joel-lange/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@JoelLangeRnC](https://twitter.com/JoelLangeRnC?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - [Support for freeing Evan Gershkovich from Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/history/sending-cards-for-a-happy-birthday-fdc39fa?ref=analysepodcast.com) on his 32nd birthday. - Let’s start with your origin story, how did you start your career and eventually land your present role at Dow Jones? - Can you share the important lessons you learned in your career journey? ### Dow Jones and AI in Risk Management and Combating against Financial Crimes with Joel Lange - To start and help my audience on the subject, can you share the global vision and mission of Dow Jones and what it does? - Can you define what constitutes risk management, anti-money laundering and financial crimes to level set my audience in understanding this complex subject? - What is the total addressable market opportunity specifically in risk management and mitigation against financial crimes for businesses? In other words, can you describe the financial and reputational impact on organizations if they did not manage their risk well or failed to catch financial crime happening within their organization? - What is the role and perspective of the Dow Jones Risk & Compliance division, particularly in the realm of managing risk and combating financial crime and the challenges that you have seen organizations face specifically in this area? - What is the one thing you know about risk management and combating financial crime that very few do? - Can you elaborate on Dow Jones' newly announced RiskCenter Advanced Screening and Monitoring (ASAM) based on best-in-class risk data and cutting-edge machine learning algorithms? - What makes it stand out from other risk management solutions in the market? - How does the solution work, specifically using AI and machine learning capabilities to refine the process of identifying potential financial crimes or irregularities? - How does the solution tackle false positives, given that machine learning tends to provide solutions that are probabilistic and have tradeoffs in the specificity and sensitivity of the data? - Specifically in the Asia Pacific region, where the regulatory landscape is unique and challenging. From your perspective, how does the diversity of the region both economically and politically impact the complex AML processes? - What is the mental model to strike the balance between economic recovery and anti-corruption efforts which affects the integrity of the financial sector in the countries which sometimes can be tricky with authoritarian governments in the region? - What are your perspectives on generative AI given that it has the propensity to both augment or create misinformation in the context of financial crime and risk management? - What would be your advice to C-suite executives in thinking about risk management with AI? - Our traditional closing question: what does great look like for Dow Jones Risk and Compliance in the Asia Pacific region with respect to the ASAM solution and market expansion? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired your life? - Joel's recommendation: [Gerard Baker, "American Breakdown"](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/gerard-baker/american-breakdown/9781549163821/?lens=twelve&ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/sXJrqHBgjWo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dow-jones-ai-in-risk-and-compliance-with-joel-lange/id914868245?i=1000633168015&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2LOdaQLc9x6hOrlmpnxW10?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/dow-jones-ai-in-risk-and-compliance-joel-lange?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuFwQno?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/437%5FDow%5FJones%5F%5FAI%5Fin%5FRisk%5Fand%5FCompliance%5Fwith%5FJoel%5FLange.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NWVlNjNmYjItMjIwMS00OTRmLTgyN2QtMWEzNmQ3M2RiMzg1?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjg6I3iqp-CAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Dow-Jones-%26-AI-in-Risk-and-Compliance-with-Joel-Lange-id2859782-id644824016?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### The Art of Product Management with Tom Verrilli URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-art-of-product-management-with-tom-verrilli/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:16.000Z Fresh out of the studio in SXSW Sydney, Tom Verrilli, former Chief Product Officer of Twitch joined us in a conversation to discuss the intricacies of product management. Tom shared his perspectives based on his experiences from navigating the delicate balance between feature addition and reduction in product roadmaps and managing normal and power users' expectations. With the recent advances in generative AI, Tom offered his insights on how this new wave will bring about changes in user behaviour and interfaces, and how it will bring about new thinking in product management. Last but not least, he laid out what great would look like for product managers in the next decade. --- > “It is useful both to internal and external, but it's also a really great litmus test. If you sit down to write your public letter and you can't explain why you're doing something, if it doesn't fit in with your overarching strategy, it goes back to that first thing we said as PMs \[product managers\], which is sometimes you have to say no to it. You're like, I actually can't explain to anyone why we're spending time on this particular feature. It doesn't fit any of the four themes we said we're doing this year. Does that mean we have a fifth theme or does that mean we shouldn't be doing that? And that clarity and that kind of litmus test. Is really, really useful as a leader when few people say no to you.” - Tom Verrilli ### Introduction - Tom Verrilli, former Chief Product Officer, [Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-robertson-042/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@tdrobbo](https://twitter.com/tdrobbo?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career and eventually end as Twitch's former Chief Product Officer? - From your point of view, do you think for the modern-day product management, can one still start from the business side and get towards the technology side or vice versa? - In your career journey, what are the essential career lessons you can share with my audience? ### The Art of Product Management with Tom Verrilli - How would you think about product management as a concept from a product manager's perspective or a manager of product managers' perspective? - Do you see that one of the responsibilities that the chief product officer has is resource allocation? - How does one balance the needs of different product managers who dedicate their time to perfect their individual products while serving the purpose of the overall roadmap of the chief product officer? How do you allocate and what criteria do you use to evaluate the allocation? - Based on timelines and constraints, what are the things you say no to as a product manager? - Adding features for a product is easy, but cutting features are difficult, what are your perspectives on that? - Based on your non-linear career and experiences in Asia, Australia and the United States, you have seen different ways of doing things. What is your mental model when it comes to designing for different cultures and diversity? - How do you deal with the angry mob (who may or may not be power users) when you take features away in order to bring the rest of the users into using the product? How will you handle the power users when they start going up in arms against the company that builds the products? - What are your perspectives on applying generative AI into products as the user interface is very limited and we only have the chat interface? How are we going to think about the product when it starts to incorporate the vision and even video transformers in the future? - As a product manager, how do you incorporate AI as an agent or co-pilot which has the capability to augment or amplify your ability to do something? - Last year, together with your chief monetization officer of Twitch, you both wrote an [open letter](https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/01/25/2023-an-open-letter-from-our-chief-product-officer-and-chief-monetization-officer/?ref=analysepodcast.com) to communicate your plans to the users, customers and stakeholders within the platform ecosystem. What is the purpose and the thinking process behind the letter? - What does great look like for product managers in the next 10 years? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Tom's recommendations: [Dungeons and Dragons](https://dnd.wizards.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and how it encourages storytelling. The coincidence is that our host has also spent a lot of time with Dungeons and Dragons when he was a teenager. - How do my audience find you? **Author's note:** *We thanked [SXSW Sydney](https://sxswsydney.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Sennheiser ANZ](https://en-sg.sennheiser.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) for the podcast stage and appreciated the opportunity to have our episode recorded live on 18 Oct 2023\.* **Podcast Information:** [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/hYsJ0qzyM4g?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-art-of-product-management-with-tom-verrilli/id914868245?i=1000632466680&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ht43FxiBg3egkyZj4VsNn?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-art-of-product-management-with-tom-verrilli?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsDdsS0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/436%5FThe%5FArt%5Fof%5FProduct%5FManagement%5Fwith%5FTom%5FVerrilli.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZWMyNGEzMmMtZjBlNi00OTIyLWJmYjAtYjBlMDhjMGE4ODQy?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjY-tWv04-CAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Art-of-Product-Management-with-Tom-Verrilli-id2859782-id643096732?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Stripe and the Innovation of Financial Infrastructure in the Asia Pacific with Mike Clayville URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/stripe-and-the-innovation-of-financial-infrastructure-in-the-asia-pacific-with-mike-clayville/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:16.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Mike Clayville, Chief Revenue Officer of Stripe, joined us in a conversation discussing Stripe's business in the Asia Pacific and shared invaluable insights into the evolution of financial infrastructure. Mike dived deep into how Stripe is adapting and expanding while at the same time with interesting customer stories in the Asia Pacific. He delved into Stripe's current innovations specifically on online payments & financial infrastructure within the dynamic Asia Pacific region. Last but not least, Mike shared the key trends in the financial infrastructure landscape and defined what great would look like for Stripe's future in APAC. --- > “Stripe isn't just payments. We actually build economic infrastructure for the global economy. And so we've got a lot more technology beyond payments. Our Stripe Tour is a cool venue where we get a chance to bring customers, partners and thought leaders together and talk about the current state of technology and future technologies - in a local Asian context. So it's been a lot of fun. And by the way, we're really enthusiastic about Asia here at Stripe. Not only because 60 per cent of the world's population is in Asia, but also because the Asian markets are very tech-forward. And you can see that by just looking at global trends, sometimes Asian markets completely leapfrog the trends like what happened to mobile. And so you got this great market that's huge, that's really tech-forward. And there's so much innovation possible.” - **Mike Clayville, chief revenue officer of Stripe** ### Introduction - Mike Clayville, Chief Revenue Officer, [Stripe](https://stripe.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeclayville/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Stripe Main Site](https://stripe.com/en-au/newsroom/news/mike-clayville?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - We start with your origin story. How did you start your career and eventually land your present role as the chief revenue officer at Stripe? - In your career journey, what are the key lessons you can share with my audience? ### [Stripe](https://stripe.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & the Innovation of Financial Infrastructure with Mike Clayville - To start the conversation and to guide my audience, can you provide a comprehensive overview of Stripe and its mission and vision globally? - Can you share the total market opportunity for online payments in the Asia Pacific region and explain the role of Stripe in helping businesses from large enterprises to small and medium businesses to facilitate their commercial transactions? - Stripe has always been at the forefront of online payment solutions. Can you share some of the latest tech innovations Stripe has introduced recently? - How does Stripe ensure that these innovations cater to the unique needs of the Asia Pacific market? - What is the one thing that you know about Stripe that very few people do? - With the rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, is Stripe exploring or integrating any solutions in these areas for the Asia Pacific region? - Security is paramount when it comes to online payments. How are Stripe's innovations ensuring safer transactions for both businesses and consumers? - Can you share some of the common challenges enterprises in the APAC region have brought to Stripe's attention regarding online payments? - On the flip side, how do these challenges differ when we look at startups or smaller businesses in the region? - Stripe has a vast clientele, from startups to established enterprises. How does Stripe tailor its solutions to cater to such a diverse range of businesses in the Asia Pacific which is comprised of the developed, emerging and frontier economies? - Can you share success stories of enterprises or startups in the APAC region that built their commercial success with Stripe's solutions? - With the ever-evolving business landscape, especially in the tech-savvy APAC region, how does Stripe plan to stay ahead and continue to offer relevant and efficient payment solutions for both enterprises and startups? - Our traditional question: what does great look like for Stripe in the Asia Pacific? - **Closing** - Any recommendations that have inspired your life? - **Mike's recommendations:** His inspiration is the oncological nurses in the United States, the people who dedicate their lives to helping others in times of challenging times of their lives. - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/28qZY1tmcNo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stripe-and-the-innovation-of-financial/id914868245?i=1000631632121&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1UdeYTo8xUmWslTlsFIHGq?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/stripe-and-the-innovation-finanical-infrastructure-online-payments-asia-pacific-mike-clayville?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvkqoI4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/435%5FStripe%5Fand%5Fthe%5FInnovation%5Fof%5FFinancial%5FInfrastructure%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FMike%5FClayville.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/Yzk5ODUyMDctNmI3Ni00YmJhLTkyMGUtYWM4M2JjNDQ2MTAz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjg%5FrKx-%5F2BAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Stripe-and-the-Innovation-of-Financial-Infrastructure-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Mike-Clayville-id2859782-id641241593?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### The Global Crypto Adoption Index 2023 & Asia's Rising in Crypto with Kimberly Grauer URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-global-crypto-adoption-index-2023-asias-rising-in-crypto-with-kimberly-grauer-chainalysis/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:16.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Kimberly Grauer, the director of research from Chainalysis provided an in-depth analysis of the Global Crypto Adoption Index 2023, highlighting Asia's burgeoning crypto and web3 activities. We discussed how Asia is currently leading the crypto activity from the Philippines to Pakistan, and highlighted what users are doing with their cryptocurrencies in their respective markets. We discuss the surprise in India's crypto and web3 activities despite strong anti-crypto regulation and how Asia's favourable regulation is bringing innovation from the US to the rest of the world. Last but not least, Kim described great would look like for the Global Crypto Adoption Index report in the next few years. --- > "The global adoption index is something that we put out once a year and it comes strictly within the research domain and it's our attempt to really elucidate just how much activity is happening around the world. Crypto is a global asset with activity in over 150 countries around the world, but people feel like it's a black box because they don't really understand who are these crypto users. Where are they? But in reality, we don't have answers to those questions because we don't have survey data around them. The government does not collect that data. So it feels like a black box, but it's kind of a created black box in its own right. And we're trying to show that that's not the case, that there's a lot of transparency here, and we can see where adoption is happening, and we can see which countries are the leaders in crypto adoption." - **Kimberly Grauer** ### Introduction - **Kim Grauer, Head of Research at [Chainalysis](https://www.chainalysis.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)** ([@KimberlyGrauer](https://twitter.com/KimberlyGrauer?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/diederik-van-wersch-137225a1/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - To start, we start with your origin story, how did you start your career and end up just before Chainalysis? - What are the lessons in your career journey that you can share with my audience? ### [Global Crypto Adoption Index 2023](https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2023-global-crypto-adoption-index/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Asia's rising activity in crypto and web3 - Can you provide a comprehensive overview of Chainalysis and its global vision and mission? - Can you talk about the products and services provided by Chainalysis? - What is the aim of the Global Crypto Adoption Index? - What are the data sources which you use to build the global crypto adoption index? - What are the key takeaways from the Global Crypto Adoption Index? - Mapping from the report, India + Southeast Asia + Australia + New Zealand made up 20% of the global crypto activity, what are the users within this geography doing that led to the increase in activity? How much of the activity is due to retail and institutional investors? - What is the one thing you know about the blockchain activity in the Asia Pacific that very few people do? - Looking at the report, centralized exchanges take up the majority of web traffic in India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Pakistan compared to the DEX, NFT exchange, P2P exchange and gaming. Are we seeing more trading activity in crypto vs. users doing actual transactions through the other applications? - How did the Axie Infinity phenomenon influence crypto adoption in the Philippines? - What are the future implications for crypto adoption in the Philippines after the decline of Axie Infinity? - How do you envision the Philippines' position in the future of cryptocurrency in Asia? - What are the primary drivers for crypto adoption in Pakistan, and how do they differ from the Philippines? - How are challenging economic conditions in Pakistan influencing the turn towards cryptocurrency? - Can you elaborate on the role of stablecoins in Pakistan's crypto landscape? - How has India managed to emerge as a top cryptocurrency market despite regulatory challenges? - What does great look like for the Global Crypto Adoption Index in a few years? - References: 1/[Is Central & Southern Asia the Future of Crypto? Here’s What Drives Crypto Usage in the Region Leading the Way in Grassroots Adoption](https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/central-southern-asia-cryptocurrency-adoption/?ref=analysepodcast.com). 2/ [Eastern Asia: Do Recent Hong Kong Developments Signal More to Come for China and Region at Large?](https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/eastern-asia-cryptocurrency-adoption/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired your life? - Kimberly's recommendations: - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/%5Fvwi8oaGvjo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-global-crypto-adoption-index-2023-asias-rising-in/id914868245?i=1000630875893&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4d382QLSWBmOB4wVvV0aF2?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-global-crypto-adoption-index-asia-rising-chainalysis-kimberly-grauer?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsVeQzQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/434%5FThe%5FGlobal%5FCrypto%5FAdoption%5FIndex%5F2023%5F%5FAsias%5FRising%5Fin%5FCrypto%5Fwith%5FKimberly%5FGrauer.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NDRmNjdiODgtYmRmZi00ZGFiLThlN2QtNDZlOTI4N2U4OGM0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIp%5FTls-yBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Global-Crypto-Adoption-Index-2023-%26-Asia's-Rising-in-Crypto-with-Kimberly-Grauer-id2859782-id639371638?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Snowflake & Trends on Data Cloud & AI in the Asia Pacific with Jon Robertson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/snowflake-trends-on-data-warehouse-ai-in-the-asia-pacific-with-jon-robertson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:15.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jon Robertson, President of Asia Pacific & Japan for Snowflake discussed the company's global vision & mission and their current expansion into the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Jon discussed the customer stories and how Snowflake's cloud data platform facilitates diverse workloads, from artificial intelligence to cybersecurity. Continuing the conversation, he explored the evolving trends in the data and AI landscape, amplified by notable advances such as ChatGPT and where it is heading. Last but not least, he shared what great would look like for Snowflake in the Asia Pacific region for the next 3-5 years. --- > "But today, the clouds are the new silos. They're like the silos in the data center, only they're public. But AWS is a bit of a data silo, as is Azure. We used to call it Hotel California - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Right? A big part of what Snowflake does is tear down those silos to allow customers to have the data where they want it. Because if it's on Snowflake, it doesn't matter which physical infrastructure is behind it; and to share that data easily around the world, that's a major change in the whole kind of cloud-silo infrastructure problem that we're facing today.” - Jon Robertson ### Introduction - Jon Robertson, President, APJ, Snowflake ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-robertson-5377a212/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - We want to dive into your origin story, how did you start your career and eventually lead up to this role with Snowflake? - What are the interesting lessons you can share with our audience on your career journey? ### [Snowflake](https://www.snowflake.com/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Trends on Data Cloud & AI in the Asia Pacific - Let’s start with the market opportunity for Snowflake, which has become a global force to help mobilize the world’s data. Can you describe the total market opportunity in why enterprises need to harness their data for insights and build innovations on the data cloud specifically globally down to the Asia Pacific region and Japan? - Can you provide an overview of Snowflake, and share its global mission and vision such that it addresses the total market opportunity? \[Reference: [Snowflake About page](https://www.snowflake.com/company/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - Can you briefly explain how Snowflake’s cloud data platform works and how it powers the eight different workloads, for example, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cybersecurity, data cloud, lake and warehouse? - What is the one thing you know about Snowflake that very few people know? - How would you describe Snowflake's current footprint in the Asia Pacific and Japan region? - How does Snowflake's product offering resonate with the needs of businesses in the APJ region? - Are there any region-specific features or customizations that Snowflake is working on to cater to the APJ market? - How does Snowflake plan to differentiate itself from competitors in the APJ market? - Are there any specific industries or sectors within APJ that Snowflake is focusing on? - What are the unique challenges and opportunities that Snowflake faces in the APJ market? - Can you share some success stories or case studies where Snowflake has made a significant impact in the APJ region? - Since we have you here, let’s segue to trends of data and AI in the Asia Pacific region, with the recent advances in generative AI brought about by ChatGPT, what are the most interesting trends you are seeing in businesses in their adoption of AI? - What would be your advice to the enterprises in thinking about how to use AI based on their data and what are the challenges that they need to work through? - Our traditional closing question: What does great look like for Snowflake in the Asia Pacific and Japan region moving forward in the next 3-5 years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired your life? - **Jon's recommendation:** Inspired by the leaders with whom he has worked: Pat Gelsinger (now CEO of Intel, former VMWare), Carl Eschenbach, Frank Slootman (CEO of Snowflake) and his book [Amp it Up](https://www.amazon.sg/Amp-Hypergrowth-Expectations-Increasing-Elevating/dp/1119836115?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/nOLieQcZx3A?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/snowflake-trends-on-data-warehouse-ai-in-the-asia/id914868245?i=1000629988530&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2bJQ8VyUNP5a2oH4vtCdoQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/snowflake-trends-on-data-ai-asia-pacific-japan-jon-robertson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFskM0gk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/433%5FSnowflake%5F%5FTrends%5Fon%5FData%5FWarehouse%5F%5FAI%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FJon%5FRobertson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MTJmYzJlMGUtZTczNC00OTM3LWI3NzMtMjc1N2IyMmIwZjAw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwi41oSl9diBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Snowflake-%26-Trends-on-Data-Warehouse-%26-AI-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Jon-Robertson-id2859782-id637107977?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Lenovo Solutions and Services Group & the Future of IT Services & AI with Arthur Hu URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/lenovo-solutions-services-group-ssg-future-it-ai-arthur-hu-cio-cto/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:15.000Z Fresh from the studio, Arthur Hu, SVP & Chief Information Officer at Lenovo, discussed the transformative role of the Solutions and Services Group (SSG) in the era of Generative AI. He shared his career journey and Lenovo's mission to assist customers end-to-end in their journey with the Lenovo Solutions & Services Group (SSG). Hu explored SSG's impact and Lenovo's sustainability initiatives in the Asia Pacific. He emphasized the promise of AI for businesses, including Lenovo's approach and shared a glimpse into the future of SSG's contributions to the tech landscape in the Asia Pacific and beyond. --- > "Now the fundamental motivation is customers don't just want to buy a server, right? They want to buy an outcome. They want something to happen. They want to get business value. So, the SSG \[Services & Solutions Group\] is Lenovo's pivot to meet our customers where they are, and also to lead our company into the future because as they have more sophisticated requirements, they need a simple way to manage and deploy all that I T across their organizations. When they want that holistic view, providing the services via something which is now SSG gives them that integrated offering. In a single contract, they can focus on using their technology in a smarter way. So that's where the SSG is within the context of Lenovo, and as the technology and delivery officer, I'm responsible for helping think about how new technology can make the experience better. It can make the outcomes better for our customers, as well as running the teams that are often because we have managed services that are delivering for customers 24 by 7\. All year round. And so the global team of delivery network and experts is also what I run to help bring those outcomes to the customers today." - **Arthur Hu** ### Introduction - Arthur Hu, SVP & Chief Information Officer (CIO), Lenovo and Chief Technology and Delivery Officer (CTDO), Solutions and Services Group, Lenovo. ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-hu-b29125/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Articles written by Arthur Hu on LinkedIn: 1/ [Smart Starts on the Inside - New IT and the Intelligent Transformation](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/smart-starts-inside-new-intelligent-transformation-arthur-hu/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and 2/ [If you don't think Intelligent Transformation applies to you, think again](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-dont-think-intelligent-transformation-applies-again-arthur-hu/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - We want to start with your origin story. How did you start your career and eventually join Lenovo that led to your present role? - What are the key lessons in your career journey that you can share with my audience? ### Lenovo Solutions & Services Group (SSG in short) & The Future of IT Services & AI - Could you give our audience a snapshot of Lenovo, its overarching goals, and its mission? - Can you explain the function of the Solutions and Services Group (SSG) and describe your specific responsibilities within this division? - With your unique position of holding both the CIO and CDTO titles, how do you differentiate the two roles and manage the demands of each? - Who primarily benefits from the services of the Solutions and Services Group? - How does Lenovo approach problem-solving for its customers? - Are there any notable success stories from the Solutions and Services Group in the Asia Pacific that you can share? - What is the one thing you know about the Lenovo Solutions and Services Group that not many people do? - The Lenovo Global Study of CIOs 2023 emphasised ESG as a novel area of focus for CIOs. How is Lenovo utilizing technology to champion sustainability, particularly in the Asia Pacific? - Considering the Asia Pacific's economic stature, how have Lenovo's green initiatives aided its clientele in the region to align with the rising demand for tech solutions that also benefit society? - As we gaze into the horizon, what potential hurdles and prospects do you anticipate for Lenovo and the wider tech sector in the Asia Pacific? - With the IT services domain undergoing rapid changes and DaaS and Cloud solutions predicted to experience significant growth by 2025, which sectors in the Asia Pacific do you believe are well-equipped to thrive despite challenges like inflation and talent gaps? - Do you have any words of wisdom for emerging tech leaders and pioneers in the region, especially those aiming to drive change through tech? - In light of the recent advancements in AI, particularly with technologies like Chat-GPT and generative AI, where do you see the most promising opportunities for businesses? - How does Lenovo view AI, and how is the company assisting its clients in navigating this AI-centric era? - Our traditional closing question: What does great look like for Lenovo SSG in the coming decade? ### Closing - Any recommendations (books, movies, TV series or anything else) that have inspired you recently? - Arthur's recommendations: "[The Cult of Smart](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250224491/thecultofsmart?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Federik Deboer and [Burn Rate](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653309/burn-rate-by-andy-dunn/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Andy Dunn - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/YqEeMBsZYLk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lenovo-solutions-and-services-group-the-future/id914868245?i=1000629119911&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5UhroafDpJnNYq3KUYv8Jw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/lenovo-solutions-and-services-it-ai-arthur-hu-cio-cto?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvpCAmg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/432%5FLenovo%5FSolutions%5Fand%5FServices%5FGroup%5F%5Fthe%5FFuture%5Fof%5FIT%5FServices%5F%5FAI%5Fwith%5FArthur%5FHu.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/M2Y3NzFkYzQtYmFjYy00MjhmLWE1ZjItNjdlMDU3NzYxYmI0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiA5-GB78aBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Lenovo-Solutions-and-Services-Group-%26-the-Future-of-IT-Services-%26-AI-with-Arthur-Hu-id2859782-id635019952?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Product Evangelism and Canva with Guy Kawasaki URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/product-evangelism-and-canva-with-guy-kawasaki/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:14.000Z Fresh from the studio, we had an enlightening conversation with Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist at Canva, who delved into the essence of product evangelism and revealed how the power of positive messaging propels Canva forward. Guy also dissected the transformative role of generative AI in democratizing design, explaining how it amplifies productivity and sparks greater creativity among users. To cap it off, he offered a glimpse into what great would look like for Canva's future trajectory. --- > "Evangelism comes from a Greek term, meaning bringing the good news. So fundamentally, what an evangelist does is bring the good news. And so with Macintosh, the good news was that this personal computer can increase your creativity and productivity. The good news with Canva was that this product, it can increase your ability to communicate by a democratizing design. That's the good news. My podcast can help you become a remarkable person because you listen to what other remarkable people have done and how they did it. That's the good news of my podcast. So what an evangelist does is bring the good news of his or her product. Now, this assumes that your product is good news. So if you don't have a product that is good news, it's very hard to use evangelism to make it successful." - **Guy Kawasaki** ### Introduction - Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist, [Canva](https://www.canva.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/guykawasaki/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@GuyKawasaki](https://twitter.com/guykawasaki?ref=analysepodcast.com), [main site](https://guykawasaki.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and host of [Remarkable People Podcast](https://guykawasaki.com/remarkable-people/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [well-known author](https://guykawasaki.com/books/?ref=analysepodcast.com) of several books: The Art of the Start 2.0 and Wise Guy. - For our listeners who may not know you, can you briefly introduce yourself and the journey to becoming the Chief Product Evangelist at Canva? - Over the years, you've held a variety of roles, from being at Apple to writing books and now at Canva. What drives you to continue evolving and learning in the tech space? - What are the lessons that you can share with my audience about your career journey? ### Product Evangelism & Canva - Can you introduce Canva briefly to my audience and share a brief history, mission and vision of the company with my audience? - What are your perspectives on the recent generative AI hype and how it will accelerate Canva’s mission moving forward? - Is there a danger that generative AI might take over the jobs of the creators and developers? - Many might be unfamiliar with the role of a "Product Evangelist." Could you explain what you do and why it's crucial for Canva? - How does one avoid being customer blind instead of being customer-centric? - What is the one thing you know about being a product evangelist that not many know? - Canva’s mission is to "empower the world to design.” How do you see this mission intersecting with the rise of digital economies in Asia? - Canva has had immense success globally, but what has been its growth trajectory globally, specifically in Asia? - How has the company adapted its product or marketing strategies to cater to the diverse market globally? - Canva offers an extensive array of design templates and tools. How does Canva decide which new features to add or areas to expand into? - How does Canva work to bolster its ecosystem, for example, creators and developers? - Our traditional closing question: What does great look like for Canva moving forward in the next few years? ### Closing - As you will be speaking at [SXSW Sydney 2023](https://sxswsydney.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), what will be the things that you will be looking forward to? - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? Guy's recommendation: Remarkable People Podcast with [Jane Goodall](https://guykawasaki.com/jane-goodall-podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - A short discussion on [Threads](https://threads.net/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/-0BJir2aT9I?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/product-evangelism-and-canva-with-guy-kawasaki/id914868245?i=1000626863440&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/79pX43E29faAj8oddTakTW?si=D6eIQ-cVQee81jvoOa3u7Q&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/product-evangelism-and-canva-guy-kawasaki?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFv2nuFg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/431%5FProduct%5FEvangelism%5Fand%5FCanva%5Fwith%5FGuy%5FKawasaki.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MTljYjgwYjMtNjJjNy00OGYzLTk5YmQtODMyMTNkZTJlN2Y3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiguLj1zZSBAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Product-Evangelism-and-Canva-with-Guy-Kawasaki-id2859782-id629842170?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analyse.asia) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analyse.asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### The Future of Generative AI in Southeast Asia with Ong Peng Tsin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-future-of-generative-ai-in-southeast-asia-with-ong-peng-tsin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:14.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Ong Peng Tsin, co-founder and general partner of Monk's Hill Ventures, delved deep into the realm of Generative AI in Southeast Asia. Reflecting on his journey as a venture capitalist, Peng Tsin shared insights into the evolution of his daily role after eight years of team building at Monk's Hill Ventures. He emphasized the unparalleled potential of generative AI, likening its transformative impact to the iPhone revolution, and addressing the booming generative AI market in Southeast Asia, catalyzed by technologies like Chat-GPT and how it presents significant opportunities in the region. Last but not least, he shared what a great AI startup would look like in the region. --- > "It is not just cheaper, faster, better. I'm not gonna deny that. If we go forward a number of years, it's gonna cause what we've been calling economic singularity. The value of labor drops to zero and you got all kinds of problems from that. But in the immediate future, what's gonna be interesting is this is the first technology that enables us to automate relationships. Basically, the AI can interact with us the way we interact with us. This sounds very trivial, but if you look at tech and you look at what has enabled tech to scale up to an incredible size around the world is our ability to automate the transaction. It's just that thing, and the problem with that is you end up with conversations of six months, LTV - Lifetime Value. What sense is in that? You are talking about a human being and your lifetime values over six months. And it's for a simple reason. When you automate transactions, all you control is a transaction. So you take a human being and you transact, and you drain the relationship out of that relationship and you throw it away, and then get another one and keep going." - **Ong Peng Tsin** ### Introduction - Ong Peng Tsin, co-founder & managing partner of [Monk’s Hill Ventures](https://www.monkshill.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@pengmhv](https://twitter.com/pengmhv?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pengtong/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [main site](https://www.monkshill.com/team-members/peng-t-ong?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - What is the typical day now look like for you after building a strong team that supports the fund over the past eight years? - If a young entrepreneur comes to you, what advice you would give to him or her? ### The Future of Generative AI in Southeast Asia with Ong Peng Tsin - Reference: [The Future of Human-Machine Relationships … And what that means for businesses](https://angsanacouncil.org/future-of-human-machine-relationships-businesses/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Peng T. Ong - To start our conversation, can you share your interest in generative AI and how you define generative AI, large language models aka LLMs and generative pre-trained transformers aka GPTs? - What is the major unlock for this technology that it is hailed as the iPhone moment or new electricity? - How do you see the different layers of technology for example, the foundation models in the form of LLMs dominated by a few major players such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Faces, the API layers driven by langchain and the applications where people built plugins to harness generative AI? - How would you describe the total market opportunity for AI, specifically the recent boom in generative AI in Southeast Asia, given the breakthrough brought about by Chat-GPT? - What is the one thing you know about Generative AI that not many people know in the Southeast Asia market? - Could you elaborate on the key trends you see emerging in the AI industry in Southeast Asia, and how they compare to global trends? - From a venture capitalist's perspective, what business models do you believe are most viable for AI startups operating in Southeast Asia? - How should AI startups in Southeast Asia approach their go-to-market strategies? What are the key considerations they need to keep in mind? - What are the key challenges for generative AI startups in Southeast Asia, and how can they navigate them? - How can generative AI startups balance the drive for innovation with the ethical considerations that come with developing and deploying AI? - How do you evaluate the potential of an AI startup when considering an investment? - What would be your advice for regulators on the topics of hallucinations with the fear of generative AI being used for misinformation, copyright matters due to the training of data or the fear of AI destroying the world? - My traditional closing question: what does a great generative AI startup look like from your perspective? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired your life? - Peng Tsin's recommendation: Read science fiction books to imagine the future. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/PzjCXj0rZnI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-of-generative-ai-in-southeast-asia-with/id914868245?i=1000624113324&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Gnw7oz80P0Kzk5TU3A5ow?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-future-of-generative-ai-southeast-asia-ong-peng-tsin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFs6JaUM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/430%5FThe%5FFuture%5Fof%5FGenerative%5FAI%5Fin%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FOng%5FPeng%5FTsin.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-future-of-generative-ai-in-southeast-asia-with-ong-peng-tsin-306220731?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MDFiNmI3OTItZTE5Yy00MmNmLTg5YzYtMjcxM2JiMWJjYmVi?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjQoK3n3dOAAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Future-of-Generative-AI-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Ong-Peng-Tsin-id2859782-id623751761?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Mastodon](https://mas.to/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [BlueSky](https://bsky.app/profile/analyseasia.bsky.social?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Threads](https://threads.net/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### How SXSW comes to Sydney with Colin Daniels URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/how-sxsw-comes-to-sydney-with-colin-daniels/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:13.000Z Fresh out of the studio, we had the pleasure of hosting Colin Daniels, the managing director of SXSW Sydney, who enthusiastically shed light on how the famous SXSW conference plans to make its debut in the Asia Pacific via Sydney. Unfolding the layers of planning and coordination involved, Colin gave us a sneak peek of what participants can look forward to - from film and music to arts, culture, technology, and innovation. Last but not least, Colin described what success would look like for the first-ever SXSW Sydney happening in October 2023. --- > "We might not have old rundown houses or shacks that are converted into brand activations, but we have boats and we have parks, and we have so many different opportunities for organizations and brands to profile themselves during South By, in interesting different ways. When you're putting together an event like South by Southwest, I go back to what I said before about understanding what it means to different people, what industry they're from, what does success look like for them and what are their goals for the event? Right from the beginning how I've approached this and how our team has approached this and TEG, who is producing the event in Australia; We are building the stage. It's up to our creative communities to perform we're providing the platform. We're bringing everyone to Sydney. You are only limited by your imagination of what you can do or achieve." - **Colin Daniels** ### Introduction - **Colin Daniels, Managing Director, [SXSW Sydney](https://sxswsydney.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)** ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-daniels-60139623/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - For every first-time guest, we want to know your origin and I will start with our first question: How did you start your career? - What interesting lessons can you share with my audience about your career journey? ### Behind the Scenes in bringing SXSW to Sydney - Could you share with us the origin story of how the idea of bringing the SXSW conference to Sydney first took shape? - What challenges did you encounter and how did you overcome them? - With the SXSW conference's roots in Austin, Texas, what unique adaptations have been made for its version in Sydney to make it relevant for the Asia Pacific region? - How has the cultural context from the Asia Pacific influenced the themes and focus areas of SXSW Sydney? - With such a diverse audience from across the Asia Pacific, how do you ensure that the conference content is relevant and engaging for everyone? - Could you walk us through the process of putting together a great conference like SXSW? What considerations do you prioritize? - For those unfamiliar, what makes the SXSW experience distinct from other creative and tech conferences? - Sydney is known for its vibrant creative and tech community. How do you think hosting SXSW in Sydney for the next decade will impact the city and its community? - Moving onto this year's event, could you share some of the highlights of the program for the upcoming SXSW Sydney? - What is the balance between international and local speakers and performers in your program and why is that important? - what would be your advice to attendees to make the most of their SXSW Sydney experience? - What is the one thing you know about building a great conference event that very few event organizers know about? - Given the scale and influence of SXSW, how do you ensure that the conference remains inclusive and accessible for all who want to participate? - How do you see SXSW Sydney evolving in the future and how will it continue to stay relevant in an increasingly digital and global world? - Finally, what does great look like to you for a successful SXSW conference in Sydney? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired your life? - Daniel's recommendation: [Rick Rubin, "The Creative Act" ](https://www.amazon.sg/Creative-Act-Way-Being/dp/0593652886?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/%5FoZMzYr1lCQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-sxsw-comes-to-sydney-with-colin-daniels/id914868245?i=1000623216075&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Ny77APDbDPBaQAY7J6vin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/how-sxsw-comes-to-sydney-with-colin-daniels?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsigJ2o?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/429%5FHow%5FSXSW%5Fcomes%5Fto%5FSydney%5Fwith%5FColin%5FDaniels.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/how-sxsw-comes-to-sydney-with-colin-daniels-305874107?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YjBhZjYxZGItNThkNS00MWU4LWI3NzYtNzhmYTM2MmZkYzI5?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiIkMH3476AAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/How-SXSW-comes-to-Sydney-with-Colin-Daniels-id2859782-id621689407?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### The Southeast Asia Investment Landscape with Jeremy Au URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-southeast-asia-investment-landscape-vc-angel-investing-jeremy-au/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:13.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jeremy Au, chief of staff & venture capitalist from Monk's Hill Ventures joined us in a conversation on how to navigate the challenging investment landscape in Southeast Asia. The conversation began with his career from an entrepreneur to now venture capitalist & podcaster. Jeremy drilled down specifically on the venture capital and angel investing scene and dived deep into the emerging trends shaping the different key markets from Indonesia to Vietnam, and elucidated startup expansion strategies driven by changes in technology, language and markets. Last but not least, he offered his take on what great would look like for a successful venture capitalist in Southeast Asia. --- > *"Southeast Asia is a very exciting market and I think lots of folks, and probably guests have talked about it, but let's just rattle off the list; obviously you have a rising middle class, you have that openness to trade, openness to immigration, and openness to keep growing from a policy perspective. Of course, there's the urbanization and the internet technology digitalization wave. So these are all the first three slides of every VC fund and LP deck, but also the first three slides of every market report. There are so many great ones out there. But I think when we double click a little bit further, what we're also thinking about is what are the industries that are ripe for change. You can call it disruption, you can call it digitalization, but I think that's the crux of it. When we look at venture capital, how do you build that a hundred million dollar revenue business within 10 years and create that 10x multiple? I think that's the home run that VC funds are geared towards. That's something that is currently still in motion. 10 years ago it didn't exist."* \- **Jeremy Au** ### Introduction - **Jeremy Au** ([@jeremyau](https://twitter.com/jeremyau?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyau/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), [Chief of Staff](https://www.monkshill.com/platform-team/jeremy-au?ref=analysepodcast.com) & VC from [Monk’s Hill Ventures](https://www.monkshill.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Host of Brave Southeast Asia Tech Podcast ([Main Site](https://www.bravesea.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/c/JeremyAu?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/4TnqkaWpTT181lMA8xNu0T?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/brave-dynamics/id1506890464?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What interesting lessons can you share with my audience about your career journey? ### The Southeast Investment Landscape with Jeremy Au - How would you describe the venture capital and angel investing landscape in Southeast Asia? - How does it compare to the US or China? - What do you see as the most significant trends in the venture capital industry in Southeast Asia in recent years? - How have changes in technology and markets influenced the types of startups that investors from Southeast Asia are interested in? - What does a typical day look like for you as a venture capitalist? - What are the key traits you look in the founding teams or startups for when deciding to invest in a startup? - Reversing the question, what are the red flags that you would look for that deter you from investing in the founders and their startups? - Could you share examples of interesting startups that you have invested in and talk about how you ended up writing the investment cheques? - What are the unique strengths and challenges of the startup ecosystems across the different countries within Southeast Asia? - In terms of government support and regulations, how does the US compare with Singapore and other SEA countries for startups and venture capital? - How does the availability of skilled talent for startups compare between countries within Southeast Asia vs the US or China? - Other than being an angel investor, you are also the host of Brave Southeast Asia Tech podcast, can you talk about the main themes of your podcast and the intended audience? - What have you learned from your interviews with the guests? - What are the differences between running a video podcast vs an audio podcast? - What does great look like for a successful venture capitalist in Southeast Asia from your perspective? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired your life? - Jeremy's recommendation: Ann Leckie, "[Translation State](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62873999?ref=analysepodcast.com)" and "[The Pod Generation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMx%5F7oAeUM&ref=analysepodcast.com)" starring Emilia Clarke. - Bernard's recommendation: Read the list of [Hugo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo%5FAward%5Ffor%5FBest%5FNovel?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Nebula](https://nebulas.sfwa.org/awards-by-year/?ref=analysepodcast.com) award winners sequentially from the first winner to now over a summer. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/i3U9LrWNR5E?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-southeast-asia-investment-landscape-with-jeremy-au/id914868245?i=1000622324713&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6qbIFnQTbgPoTCpF9FQbwG?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-southeast-asia-investment-landscape-vc-angel-investment-jeremy-au?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFu28QQc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/428%5FThe%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5FInvestment%5FLandscape%5Fwith%5FJeremy%5FAu.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-southeast-asia-investment-landscape-with-jeremy-au-305572914?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZGQzMGEwZWMtMzFmMS00YzdkLWEwYWUtMGMwMGQ0ODFkOTAy?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjA0uCTjauAAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Southeast-Asia-Investment-Landscape-with-Jeremy-Au-id2859782-id619618582?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Lombard Odier & Key Trends in Family Offices across the Asia Pacific with Lee Wong URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/lombard-odier-key-trends-in-family-offices-across-the-asia-pacific-with-lee-wong/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:12.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Lee Wong, head of family services from Lombard Odier and Co, joined us to discuss the firm's footprint in the Asia Pacific and the key trends in family offices across the Asia Pacific. We began with Lee Wong's background and how she entered into the private banking sector as a lawyer, specializing in the family offices industry. From there, she provided a comprehensive background on how family offices are built in the Asia Pacific, their purpose and structure with the right governance and framework to ensure their longevity. Last, but not least, Lee Wong shared the key trends in how the family offices market is growing in the Asia Pacific and what it means for the future due to the current geopolitical volatility --- > "You talked about the market opportunity. When you look at the landscape of the billionaire population today, statistics show that you expect that population to grow by about 34% in the years to come. And from that population, at least a third is going to come from Asia Pacific, and in the next five years time, we expect Asia Pacific to be growing by about 40%. So the market is large in relation to the space of wealth to be managed. And we look at the growth of family office space in Singapore has been exponential. So between 2017 to 2019., according to the statistics, the family office space grew by five times. In 2020 at that time they were looking at around 400 family offices. By the end of 2022, it has grown to more than 800\. So if you look at today, I think it is actually a very conservative estimate to say that the number of family offices in Singapore has crossed a thousand. you can easily expect it to be much more than that. So I think it's a very exciting area to be in." - Lee Wong from Lombard Odier ### Introduction - Lee Wong ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-wong-b0b9814/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Head of Family Services, Asia,[ Lombard Odier Group](https://asia.lombardodier.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@lombardodier](https://twitter.com/lombardodier?lang=en&ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What interesting lessons can you share with my audience about your career journey? ### Lombard Odier & The Family Offices Landscape in the Asia Pacific - **Lombard Odier & Co and The Family Offices Landscape in Asia** ([Main Site](https://asia.lombardodier.com/en/home.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw1MajBhAcEiwAagW9MRlYAG8y6m-f3-4Bd9Uk10CvGvbJ3tAov5aO60l4BYtAAkySTBz0whoCC6kQAvD%5FBwE&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank%5FLombard%5FOdier%5F%26%5FCo?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Can you introduce Lombard Odier and Co, an independent Swiss banking group based in Geneva I understand that it was founded in 1796 as the oldest private banking group and the role that the company play in assisting high-net-worth individuals and families in establishing and managing their family offices. - As we are covering a space that very few people will know about unless you are in private banking, can you explain the concept of family offices and their need to address wealth management and inheritance to my audience and talk about the total market opportunity for the family offices landscape for asset management and private banking in Asia? - How does one start a family office in Asia given that there are different financial hubs: Hong Kong and Singapore? What is the thinking process or mental model before they engage you as a firm to help them jumpstart the process? - What are the minimum requirements for high-net-worth individuals and families before they can set up a family office with a private bank like Lombard Odier? - As high-net-worth individuals and their families consider setting up a family office in Asia, for example, Singapore, what key factors should they take into consideration and the steps they need to take? - From your perspective and experience, what are the important elements for establishing a successful family office regarding structure and governance? - Can you elaborate on the significance of having a robust formal governance framework when it comes to guiding fair and trusted decision-making within a family office? - What are the potential challenges associated with implementing such a framework? - What is the one thing you know about the family office business in Asia that very few people do? - What are the current trends that are shaping the family office landscape in Asia? - How are factors like wealth transfer across generations, the generational divide, and the rise of NextGen investors influencing the industry? - How do you see the role of technology evolving in the operations of family offices? - Are there any specific technological advancements or tools that will have a significant impact on how family offices operate in the future? - How do you envision the future of family offices in Asia that have been established with Lombard Odier? What are the key elements or characteristics that will define a thriving family office in the region over the next few decades? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired your life? - Lee Wong's recommendation: She is inspired by her son and her dog for their efforts to do things beyond what they should be able to do. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/JwApmdWhkxs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lombard-odier-key-trends-in-family-offices-across-the/id914868245?i=1000617469577&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5naIf984MEStmBCa4NSAe4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/lombard-odier-key-trends-family-offices-asia-pacific-private-banking-lee-wong?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFu23kAQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/427%5FLombard%5FOdier%5F%5FKey%5FTrends%5Fin%5FFamily%5FOffices%5Facross%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FLee%5FWong.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/lombard-odier-key-trends-in-family-offices-across-the-asia-pacific-with-lee-wong-304552883?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NGVmNjRjZjMtOTRlMC00M2ZmLWE5NDMtYTA2OTg2YTUxYTQ2?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiokv%5Fs1M3%5FAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Lombard-Odier-%26-Key-Trends-in-Family-Offices-across-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Lee-Wong-id2859782-id605120659?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### The New Gatekeepers & Evolution of AI & Web3 with Benedict Evans URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-new-gatekeepers-new-questions-generative-ai-web3-vr-ar-benedict-evans/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:12.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Benedict Evans, the independent analyst and venture partner from Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First, joined us to talk about his recent annual presentation on the technology business: The New Gatekeepers. Benedict shared his perspectives on the evolution of Web3 and AI given the major shift from the metaverse to generative AI. Last but not least, Benedict delves into the exciting possibilities and potential outcomes for the emerging wave of AI startups and explains what success would really mean for them. --- > *"With both Web3 and VR, if you thought that was interesting a year ago, it's still interesting. Nothing's really changed. Like 98% of all the nonsense has gone away. But if it was early 2022 and you thought VR headsets are going to be a device that two or 3 billion people own, well nothing's changed in the last year to change that. If you think that we might build a billion-scale, consumer software, consumer internet service on a blockchain. Which is really what Web3 means. Yeah, ok. If you thought that a year ago, fine, but you should probably think that is still five years away, but it's just as interesting now as it was then. But it's five years away. Whereas this second wave of AI had been kind of bubbling away very quietly for five years. I mean, the first demo is using generative networks to make faces and things in 2014\. And they look terrible. They don't look very interesting. And then suddenly in the last six months, as I've said, suddenly this has worked. Or something's working. And then the growth thing. Well, what is it that's working and what will it become?"* **\- Benedict Evans** ### Introduction - Benedict Evans ([@benedictevans](https://twitter.com/benedictevans?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Blog](https://www.ben-evans.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Newsletter](https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Venture Partner of Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First & Independent Analyst - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - Given that you have been in the business for two decades, asking important questions on key trends in technology from mobile to AI and making investments in the sector, can you share the lessons learnt from your career journey with the younger audience who listen to the show? ### [The New GateKeepers](https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Evolution of AI & Web3 with Benedict Evans - What are the key questions or the narrative which you want the audience to understand in the presentation? - Who are the old and new gatekeepers that you mention in this year’s presentation? - Did the pandemic (which is now more or less an endemic) accelerate the demise of the old gatekeepers given that the digital transformation in the past two years was more than the last decade as mentioned by Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft? - What is the story of Amazon as a new gatekeeper, given that it has three revenue streams: e-commerce, cloud computing and advertising (which has “IPO” in quotation marks recently)? - How will Amazon be disrupted as a gatekeeper? - If we recall Marc Andreessen’s famous line, “Software is eating the world”, how did we move from an information arbitrage to software changes the product to now software is a new channel with Shein and Netflix? - What is the type of opportunities that tech can create now with infinite media (powered by generative AI) and infinite product (which has another business model by targeting the niche or long-tail) as all the old gatekeepers and filters are going away? - What is the one thing you have learned and now know in building “The New Gatekeepers” that very few people do? - We experienced a year where web3 and the metaverse went from the darlings of tech to now the doghouse (and of course, it might change given that BTC and ETH are getting popular again). What are the mental models now for those who are still building web3 or crypto and AR and VR? - In the last part of the presentation entitled “Dreams of the Future”, which will lead towards the current AI wave, what are your perspectives on the unlock of ChatGPT or generative AI as a whole? Is it the iPhone moment, a paradigm shift or the inflated expectations part of the hype cycle? - What are the questions which we need to ask about this new AI wave? - Can I build on top of “hallucinations” from generative AI as a feature rather than a bug? - Given that generative AI is not perfect and has an error rate, how do we control the content which might end up creating disinformation to others? - What are the type of applications you want to see from this wave of generative AI startups? - In my recent conversation on why China missed the invention of [ChatGPT](https://openai.com/product/chatgpt?ref=analysepodcast.com), one argument coming from those who are watching China and talking to the AI builders in that market is that they just did not go into full research mode with the large language models (LLMs) due to resources constraint, and OpenAI snatched the initiative and successfully launch DALL-E and ChatGPT, now they are being placed in a chasing position. It seems that for China, the key focus is in building LLMs to gain control for both Chinese tech giants and startups similar to OpenAI or Anthropic, but what I see is that in this new wave of AI startups, seems to take the OpenAI, Google or Amazon’s LLM as given and build on top of it, how should we think about AI as layers which we build or not build on? - Instead of asking you whether AI should be regulated, what are the areas of generative AI that the regulators should think about? - What does great look like for this wave of generative AI startups? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired your life? - How can my audience find you? Benedict's recommendation: ["Why Read the Classics"](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Read-Classics-Italo-Calvino/dp/0679743499?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Italo Calvino ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/sIw18W70Kiw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-new-gatekeepers-evolution-of-ai-web3/id914868245?i=1000613896267&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0MW9jc6W7tqTunK4Un3bms?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-new-gatekeepers-evolution-ai-web3-benedict-evans?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsUyDso?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/426%5FThe%5FNew%5FGatekeepers%5F%5FEvolution%5Fof%5FAI%5F%5FWeb3%5Fwith%5FBenedict%5FEvans.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-new-gatekeepers-evolution-of-ai-web3-with-benedict-evans-303523644?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YjNlZGJmNjgtNTczZS00YzdjLWIxZWUtOTNmNmQ1Mzk0ZGZj?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjI-7-xn4f%5FAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-New-Gatekeepers-%26-Evolution-of-AI-%26-Web3-with-Benedict-Evans-id2859782-id597566871?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Is Asia the real growth story for web3 and crypto in 2023? with Cosmo Jiang, Jin Kang & Junney Kang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-market-investment-trends-on-web3-and-crypto-with-global-coin-research/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:12.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Cosmo Jiang, Jin Kang & Junney Kang from Global Coin Research joined us in a roundtable to share the key takeaways from their market and investment report for Q1 2023\. We looked at how the builders and venture capital in web3 and crypto are surviving through a tough bearish market despite the rebound of Bitcoin and Ethereum from the trading front. We continued the conversation to address whether Asia from China to India is now leading the resurgent activity for the web3 and crypto market with its crypto-friendly regulations and the potential to take away the lead from the US due to the recent aggressive anti-crypto regulation from the SEC in the US government. --- > "Here in the US and to your US listeners at least, I think what maybe is lost is that despite the US's very aggressive stance against crypto, the totally opposite attitude is being adopted by governments on the other side of the world. Jin talked a little bit about Japan. I would just highlight Hong Kong as a proxy to China, mainland China. It's very clear that China is opening up to crypto through Hong Kong. This is a total about-face from less than two years ago when China banned crypto trading and mining in 2021, and all of a sudden it's reopening to retail in Hong Kong in June, like coming up. I think China's reopening up to crypto is in response to a few factors, which gives me confidence that this isn't short-term or short-lived kind of thing. First, China is really increasing the priority of economic growth over social control in their economy. I mean, a totally different issue than Japan, which has been dealing with 0% growth for 20 years. But China going from six to five is really scary, or five to four is really scary for other people. And so, in particular, its tech giants have slowed a lot because of regulation in China and so they're trying to get that back right by looking at crypto. Second is that China's really trying to regain lost mindshare from the last few years in Asia, the centre of gravity for capital in Asia has very seriously shifted towards Singapore after the Hong Kong political issues, after China's extended covid lockdown." - **Cosmo Jiang, Global Coin Research** **Author disclosure:** *I am a supporter of Global Coin Research and might hold different cryptocurrencies mentioned here. This is not investment, financial or even life advice and the content is for informational purposes. Please do your own research when it comes to crypto and web3\.* ### Introduction - GCR Team on the panel: **Cosmo Jiang** ([@cosmo\_jiang](https://twitter.com/cosmo%5Fjiang?ref=analyse.asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosmojiang/?ref=analyse.asia)), Founder of digital assets fund Nova River, Head of Strategy, Skolem, Member of [Global Coin Research](https://globalcoinresearch.com/?ref=analyse.asia) (GCR) and host of Liquid - Web3 investing Podcast by GCR ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/liquid-web3-crypto-investing/id1543419198?ref=analyse.asia)); ****Jin Kang** ([@TheJinKang](https://twitter.com/TheJinKang?ref=analyse.asia) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jin-kang-091a6735/?ref=analyse.asia)), Deal Lead, Global Coin Research and **Junney Kang**, Deal Lead, Global Coin Research ([@nonfungie](https://twitter.com/nonfungie?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/junney-kang-0ba733123/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - As we have Junney joining us for the first time, can you introduce yourself and what is your role and coverage with Global Coin Research? - Given that we have gone video, I have asked each of you this: what lessons can you share on your career journey with my audience? ### [Global Coin Research Market & Investment Trends Review - Q1 2023](https://globalcoinresearch.com/2023/05/02/gcr-market-and-investment-trends-review-q1-2023/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - What are the key highlights for the market and investment trends review in Q1 2023? - How does the macro picture influence the web3 and crypto market? - In 2022, we saw that the prices of cryptocurrencies are in tandem with the S&P 500, but in 2023, Bitcoin and Ethereum prices are moving up when the bank runs happen (or it looks like people are betting on the bank runs will force the Fed to print money and drop interest rates. How should we think about the market? - What are your perspectives on the recent [1 million bet by Balaji Srinivasan](https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/04/01/balaji-srinivasans-1m-bitcoin-bet-could-be-right-but-i-hope-hes-wrong/?ref=analysepodcast.com) that pushes the bitcoin against the ongoing bank runs starting with Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank? Note that [Balaji has conceded the bet recently](https://decrypt.co/138632/balaji-srinivasan-burns-1-million-bitcoin?ref=analysepodcast.com) just before the podcast. - Given that GCR is an investment & research DAO, what is the atmosphere for web3 and crypto startups seeking financing? - Based on your research, what is the current thinking in the crypto VCs when it comes to investment? Is it just that everyone is holding their dry powder or are they only investing in certain categories? - With the L2s starting their airdrops and the Ethereum community delivering the merge last August and now the [Sheppella (Shanghai) upgrade](https://cointelegraph.com/news/shapella-could-bring-institutional-investors-to-ethereum-despite-risks?ref=analysepodcast.com) on 12 April 2023, are there still white spaces for alt-L1 projects? - What about the web3 decentralised apps that will bring the billion out there into the space? Are VCs still looking at these apps? - How are the GCR-funded companies such as Mysten Labs (known for their Sui frameworks), Utopia Labs and C3? - \[Roundtable Question\] There have been brief mentions of Asia leading the web3 activity given the current anti-crypto stance from the current administration and [the SEC Chairman Gary Gensler](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSsp8Rvh5n0&ref=analysepodcast.com), is it true that [Asia is rising](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/asia's-rising-influence-in-shaping-the-global-crypto-landscape?ref=analysepodcast.com) similar to the 2019-2022 wave before the US started to come in again? Is the rise in web3 activity because of [Hong Kong](https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-banks-are-netting-crypto-customers-as-citys-push-gains-steam-ccb5811f?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Dubai](https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/stars-align-uae-become-global-crypto-hub-2022-05-06/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [London](https://cryptoslate.com/london-tops-crypto-hub-rankings-with-2nd-highest-number-of-crypto-companies-in-the-world/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Singapore](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/03/singapore-wants-to-be-a-crypto-hub-but-not-for-crypto-speculation.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) relaxing regulations and allowing banks to take crypto deposits? - \[Roundtable Question\] Will the US lose their dominance in crypto and web3 with the rest of the world picking up the tab? - What are you looking forward to in Q2 2023? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired your life? - How can my audience find you? - Cosmo's recommendation: Using [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/auth/login?ref=analysepodcast.com) for cooking recipes - Jin Kang's recommendation: [Never Split the Difference](https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended-ebook/dp/B014DUR7L2?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Chris Voss & Tal Rahz - Junney's recommendation: [The One Thing](https://the1thing.com/book/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/aZ3xG486dC8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-asia-the-real-growth-story-for-web3-and-crypto-in/id914868245?i=1000612940853&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/57QmWRNpUq5qSNnj49p845?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/is-asia-the-real-growth-story?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtgo9TM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/425%5FIs%5FAsia%5Fthe%5Freal%5Fgrowth%5Fstory%5Ffor%5Fweb3%5Fand%5Fcrypto%5Fin%5F2023%5F%5Fwith%5FCosmo%5FJiang%5FJin%5FKang%5F%5FJunney%5FKang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/is-asia-the-real-growth-story-for-web3-and-crypto-in-2023-with-cosmo-jiang-jin-kang-junney-kang-303211727?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZjMzM2Q1Y2ItMjAxOS00Yzg3LWE3ZDEtNzA1MTUxZTM3MGY0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjA7ajKo%5FT-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Is-Asia-the-real-growth-story-for-web3-and-crypto-in-2023--with-Cosmo-Jiang%2C-Jin-Kang-%26-Junney-Kang-id2859782-id595577850?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### AC Ventures & Investing into Indonesia with Helen Wong URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/ac-ventures-investing-into-indonesia-with-helen-wong/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:11.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Helen Wong, managing partner from AC Ventures joined us in a conversation about AC Ventures and the firm's investment thesis onto the largest economy in Southeast Asia: Indonesia. Helen began with her background story from how she started in Silicon Valley, then moved to China and witnessed the rise of the Chinese tech scene. Following on, she explained her mental model in how she evaluates and invests in founders from the Indonesian tech scene. Last but not least, she discuss what great would look like for AC Ventures in Southeast Asia. --- > "I would say first of all Indonesia is probably one of the remaining opportunities in a huge market, that's more or less homogeneous with a population of 270 million. You have to look at the GDP (gross domestic product) per capita is around 4,000 and then the GDP growth itself: it's about 5%. So I think you are hard-pressed to find any other country that matches these three very promising criteria. I would say that secondly, on the technology side, a high level of digitization has taken place and internet penetration has grown very quickly, especially during covid. So we are about 70% internet penetration and the whole digital infrastructure is ready for companies to take advantage of them, by that I mean things like payments and logistics. Then I would say that there are other factors that make this market attractive more for the venture capital ecosystem, One is talent. I think you'll find the most number of entrepreneurs in Indonesia in the Southeast Asia region. Number two is you can find follow on capital. for early-stage investors, that's really important, right? Thirdly maybe most importantly, you can find a local exit market. So the IDX is open for iPOs and we've had three IPOs in the last two years. so I think those are the most attractive factors when you think about Indonesia as an emerging market." - **Helen Wong** ### Introduction - Helen Wong, Managing Partner, AC Ventures ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-pei-hua-wong-2093427/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - Given that you have been in Qiming Ventures and GGV Capital, can you talk about your experiences working in the venture capital space in China and emerging countries? - What interesting lessons can you share with my audience about your career journey? ### Why Indonesia is the Next China for Tech Investment - [AC Ventures](https://acv.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Investing in Indonesia - Can you talk about the inspiration behind AC Ventures and what made you decide to come on board as a managing partner? - Does AC Ventures have an investment thesis? - What are the mission and vision of AC Ventures? - How do you explain the market opportunity of investing in Indonesia to investors all over the world who are looking for opportunities in emerging markets such as Indonesia? - What are the differences between the Indonesian market today as compared to the Chinese market say 20 years back or the Indian market in the last decade? - What are the stages of the companies in their life cycle the fund invests in? - What is the one thing you know about being a venture capitalist in Southeast Asia that not many people do? - From your experience in China, you have led investments in companies such as Akulaku and RedDoorz and served on the boards of high-profile Chinese internet companies, including Tudou/Youku and Mobike. What are the differences that you have seen in the startup teams and founders in Indonesia compared to China? - What traits do you look for in founders and their startup teams in Indonesia? - How does the fund help the entrepreneurs to achieve their goals? What is the support that you provide for them? - What is the mental model in thinking about the valuation of a company when you invest in them? - What do you think about the exits for the companies you have funded? - Reversing the questions, what are the red flags that would deter you from investing? - What are the interesting companies that AC Ventures have invested in? - How does the fund see the Indonesian market? Is it similar to how VCs think about China and India where secondary effects follow large market sizes? - How do you guide entrepreneurs to navigate geographic expansion beyond Indonesia which they need to adapt to in the future? - Where do you think venture capital is heading in Southeast Asia? Is it just going to be local venture capital in their respective countries? - What does great look like for AC Ventures? ### Closing - Do you have any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Helen's recommendation: She drew her inspiration from her daughter's learning agility and asking important questions about climate change and business. - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/BUR0JbmymSc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ac-ventures-investing-into-indonesia-with-helen-wong/id914868245?i=1000612084849&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2BE2nCEA3vOWYFi6XzOFi7?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/ac-ventures-investing-into-indonesia-southeast-asia-vc-helen-wong?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsgQGRE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/424%5FAC%5FVentures%5F%5FInvesting%5Finto%5FIndonesia%5Fwith%5FHelen%5FWong.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/ac-ventures-investing-into-indonesia-with-helen-wong-302933897?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NTFlMDg0YmItZGY4Zi00NzQyLWFlMDktODBiMzhhYjNlYmQ3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjo0IWJj-T-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/AC-Ventures-%26-Investing-into-Indonesia-with-Helen-Wong-id2859782-id593901689?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### The Evolution of Tech Giants in China 2023 with Rui Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-evolution-of-tech-giants-in-china-2023-with-rui-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:11.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Rui Ma, China tech analyst and creator of Tech Buzz China, joined us to discuss how the China tech giants are evolving after the regulatory crackdown in the past three years. We start the conversation by examining why China missed the boat on ChatGPT with the tech giants now chasing after the same technology with their own variations. Next, we start to examine the key questions that everyone from the rest of the world wants to know about China tech from the possibility of a Tik Tok ban in the US to Tencent might follow suit from Alibaba in splitting their current conglomerate structure into different companies. --- > "But if you look at Generative AI, that is fundamentally a different way that technology came about and it required a lot of investment without knowing what was going to transpire. So I've talked to a couple of people who are affiliated with various top AI labs in China, and I asked them the same question 'Well, why didn't you guys not create this?' And the universal answer was... honestly OpenAI themselves probably had no idea what was going to happen." - **Rui Ma** ### Introduction - Rui Ma, China Tech Analyst & Creator of [Tech Buzz China](http://www.techbuzzchina.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ruima](https://twitter.com/ruima?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - Given we have known each other for the past decade, what are the lessons you can share about your career journey for the audience listening out there? ### The Evolution of the Tech Giants in China with Rui Ma - As China ended their COVID-zero policy early this year, what is the mood for the startups and venture capital ecosystem in China? - Let’s start with generative AI given that it is the most important subject dominating the technology ecosystem from Silicon Valley to Beijing.[ Baidu, released their equivalent version of large language models (LLMs) Wen Xin Yi Yan (文心一言](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/16/1069919/baidu-ernie-bot-chatgpt-launch/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with the launch of the Ernie chatbot and [Alibaba released their equivalent](https://pandaily.com/dingtalk-launches-intelligent-features-based-on-alibabas-tongyi-qianwen/?ref=analysepodcast.com) called Tongyi Qianwen (通义千问) with integrations to DingTalk (their equivalent of Slack), what have we learned from how the Chinese tech giants are looking at generative AI and their applications for the Chinese ecosystem? - What about Bytedance and Tencent? Are they coming into the fray of generative AI as Microsoft, Amazon and Google are now gearing up for the generative AI mindshare in the US? - Are there startups equivalent to OpenAI and Anthropic in the China tech startup ecosystem? How far are they in competing against the tech giants? - Does the US imposing sale of high-end semiconductors restrict the evolution of AI development in China? - One thing that baffles me and was brought up by Shai Oster from The Information. We heard about Lee Kaifu’s assertions that China will be an AI superpower in early 2017-2018\. Surprisingly, they did not launch ChatGPT or generative AI tools first. ChatGPT was started in the US by OpenAI and every tech company on the planet (including the Chinese ones) is reacting to this. Does this mean that the developments of AI are overhyped in China? - Let’s switch gears to Bytedance given that they are now caught between a rock and a hard place. What are your thoughts on the TikTok CEO and fellow Singaporean, [Chew Shou Zi’s testimony in front of the US Congress](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=%5FE-4jtTFsO4&ref=analysepodcast.com)? (Source: [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-ceo-face-tough-questions-support-us-ban-grows-2023-03-23/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Is it what is expected or should they just ask the Bytedance CEO to come for the hearing instead? - What are the chances of the US banning TikTok? What are the other scenarios if they do not ban TikTok? - How does the US ban of Tik Tok affect their anticipated and upcoming IPO? - As we look at Alibaba with the return of Jack Ma to China and the [splitting of Alibaba into 6 companies](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Alibaba-to-split-into-6-companies-pursue-IPOs-in-major-shakeup?ref=analysepodcast.com#:~:text=The%20six%20new%20groups%20will,Digital%20Media%20and%20Entertainment%20Group.) with the CEO leading the cloud division, what is the rationale for the split of six companies and where do you see Alibaba moving forward in the next decade? - Of all the technology giants, Tencent has been quiet but they are also under regulatory pressure specifically on their WeChat walled gardens and the release of games in China. What is the likelihood that they will follow in the footsteps of Alibaba in splitting up the company? - What will be the likely splits for Tencent if that ever happens? - Given the current tensions between US and China, can delisting happen for Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent? - What does great now look like for the Chinese Tech Giants in the next decade? ### Closing - Do you have any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Rui Ma's recommendation: Elad Gil and Sarah Guo's "No Priors" podcast specifically, the Jensen Huang (CEO of Nvidia) interview. - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/NwlTuIsjX7o?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-evolution-of-tech-giants-in-china-with-rui-ma/id914868245?i=1000611223218&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/43DkXMRshrV6YmflWsf3ce?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-evolution-of-china-tech-giants-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvy1SB8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/423%5FThe%5FEvolution%5Fof%5FTech%5FGiants%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FRui%5FMa.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-evolution-of-tech-giants-in-china-with-rui-ma-302674042?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZWNlOWYwOWQtOTcxMi00YmJkLWI1NmUtYjBkYzhlNGVmZmU2?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwion4XTw9L-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM ](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Evolution-of-Tech-Giants-in-China-with-Rui-Ma-id2859782-id592100137?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/edb87eae-3b86-4e67-94df-26794098777c/analyse-asia?ref=dm%5Fsh%5FHkgG5aHffdD3qO8wpj20MkJDc) (US Only) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### The Web3 Gaming Renaissance in the Asia Pacific with Serkan Toto URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-web3-gaming-renaissance-in-the-asia-pacific-with-serkan-toto/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:10.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Serkan Toto, CEO & founder of Kantan Games joined us in a discussion to discuss web3 gaming after the three eras of gaming in the Asia Pacific: console, desktop and mobile. Serkan explained what makes web3 games different from the past and explained why the next breakout of web3 games would likely be from Asia. He also explored the debate that divided the traditional hardcore gaming and web3 gaming community and elaborated on the strengths and weaknesses of web3 gaming in the Asia Pacific. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on what a great web3 game would look like. --- > "Yes a lot of the blockchain companies don't know how to make games, and a lot of the game companies don't know how to incorporate blockchain into their games properly; there's really some truth to that. And there are some companies that put together both things like Animoca Brands for example, which started also as a gaming company and then morphed into a crypto gaming company. So they're trying to put these areas of ex expertise in together." - **Serkan Toto** ### Introduction - Serkan Toto, CEO and founder of Kantan Games ([@serkantoto](https://twitter.com/serkantoto?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/serkantoto/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - Based on our long relationship since 2008 and we have all evolved in our careers over the past decade, what are the lessons that you can share with my audience about your career journey? ### The Web3 Gaming Renaissance in the Asia Pacific with Serkan Toto - How to build the winning game & Blockchain Gaming in Web3 - Given your experience with console, desktop and mobile gaming, can you set the context and definition for web3 gaming? - What distinguishes web3 or blockchain gaming from the past waves of gaming? - Why are the well-known traditional gamers and game makers against the concept of web3 gaming and the concept of play to earn or play & earn depending on who you talk to? - What is the one thing you know about web3 gaming that not many people know? - What are the major weaknesses of web3 or blockchain gaming in the Asia Pacific or globally that you have observed from talking to many game developers out there? - One interesting challenge for web3 games is the embedded capital market that sits inside the game, say, for example, the Ronin Chain. Do you think that this will lead to regulation from financial institutions on these games as assets such as NFTs and tokens can be securitized? - Based on recent web3 gaming trends, for example, Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam are countries with growing gaming communities specifically, the rise of guilds in web3 games. What is the mental model for web3 gaming companies in engaging these communities, for example, Yield Guild Games (YGG) to accelerate the go-to-market strategy? - How do the concepts of interoperability and scalability for web3 gaming affects the gaming industry? - What are the key trends of web3 gaming in the Asia Pacific and specifically how has it been evolving in different countries such as Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and China? - Can you share some examples of web3 gaming in the Asia Pacific? - What are the ingredients for a great web3 game from your perspective? - What does a great web3 game look like in the future? ### Closing - Do you have any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Serkan's recommendations: [The Super Mario Bros Movie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FSuper%5FMario%5FBros.%5FMovie?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Poverty: A History](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4063680-poverty?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Bronisław Geremek](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3357604.Bronis%5Faw%5FGeremek?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/4SK0I3Ql7Bo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-web3-gaming-renaissance-in-the-asia-pacific/id914868245?i=1000608820157&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4e2RkAXGVzUyn8Oi2k3VRa?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-web3-gaming-renaissance-in-asia-pacific-serkan-toto?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFso2llc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/422%5FThe%5FWeb3%5FGaming%5FRenaissance%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FSerkan%5FToto.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-web3-gaming-renaissance-in-the-asia-pacific-with-serkan-toto-301980917?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OTc0ZDM2NDktYzA0MC00ZTM0LWFhOWYtY2VhYzdlNDQyMzYy?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwigrrKwoqf-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Web3-Gaming-Renaissance-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Serkan-Toto-id2859782-id587466372?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Building a Tech-Savvy Workforce and Amazon Web Services Training & Certification in Asia Pacific with Emmanuel Pillai URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/building-a-tech-savvy-workforce-and-amazon-web-services-training-certification-in-asia-pacific-with-emmanuel-pillai/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:10.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Emmanuel Pillai, Head of Training and Certification from Amazon Web Services, ASEAN, joined us to share how companies can build a tech-savvy workforce from building their startups to digital transformation with enterprises. Emmanuel began with an overview of AWS training and certification in the Asia Pacific. Then he dived deep into the recent report on building a tech-savvy workforce with Gallup and explained how economies and companies benefitted economically with the implementation of training and certification initiatives targeting to uplift the digital workers with modern technologies from AI/ML to 5G. Last but not least, Emmanuel shared what great would look like for AWS training and certification in the Asia Pacific. --- > "So at the Asia Pacific level, this study looked at several countries. But you know, we looked at a country level because that's the information that our customers and partners are interested in - whether they're in the government sector or in the private sector. So the countries include Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and India. In the ASEAN space, the four countries I mentioned before - are Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. So in this case, the first takeaway was that, again, digital fluency yields massive economic benefits. For example, those with advanced digital skills raised the Asia Pacific GDP by an estimated 934 billion. So it's pretty close to a trillion." - **Emmanuel Pillai from Amazon Web Services** ### Introduction - **Emmanuel Pillai, ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuelpillai-mba/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Head of Training and Certification, ASEAN, Amazon Web Services** - How did you start your career? - What brought you to Amazon Web Services and what is your role and coverage there? - What key lessons can you share with my audience in your career journey? ### Building a Tech-Savvy Work and AWS Training and Certification in the Asia Pacific with Emmanuel Pillai - Before we talk about the main topic, can you introduce the global vision and mission of [Amazon Web Services](https://aws.amazon.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (AWS) and its current footprint in the Asia Pacific? - Can you provide a comprehensive overview of what training and certification means in the AWS to the broader ecosystem, for example, your customers and partners who want to train their workforce in the Asia Pacific? - How do organizations that seek to start their digital transformation engage AWS to upskill and train their employees? - What benefits do certifications bring to the talent of these organizations? - What is the one thing you know about training and certification from AWS that many need to learn about? - Recently, AWS, in collaboration with Gallup, released [The Economic Benefits of a Tech-Savvy Workforce](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/training-and-certification/aws-gallup-digital-skills-study-asia-pacific-2023/?ref=analysepodcast.com) study. This report explores the economic benefits that digital skills provide for individuals, organizations, and national economies. Can you summarize what the key takeaways from that report are? - What are the data sources that were used to build up the report? - What are the benefits for economies with the arrival of digital workers? - There are different levels for digital workers. How do we distinguish between a digital worker who is only skilled in basic cloud computing and a software engineer who might be skilled in the software development the report talks about? - One interesting take from the report is that 7 in 10 employers in Asia Pacific countries face digital hiring challenges, in part due to strict bachelor’s degree requirements. The reason for the requirement is to help employers to set a minimum standard or a minimum qualification or signal for hiring specific to the immigration policy of that country. Removing that barrier might not help the filtering of the candidates, what are your perspectives on whether companies should remove the requirement? - Can you talk about the opportunities for digital workers in specific areas such as web3 / cryptocurrencies, 5G and artificial intelligence? - What does great look like for AWS training and certification in the Asia Pacific? ### Closing - Do you have any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Emmanuel's recommendations: Inspiring people. - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/1%5Fz3veaW6rg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/building-a-tech-savvy-workforce-and-amazon-web/id914868245?i=1000608043913&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/13irDkq4xpDzbYjETH7e6l?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/building-a-tech-savvy-workforce-aws-training-certification-emmanuel-pillai?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvd%5Fo8I?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/421%5FBuilding%5Fa%5FTech-Savvy%5FWorkforce%5Fand%5FAmazon%5FWeb%5FServices%5FTraining%5F%5FCertification%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FEmmanuel%5FPillai.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/building-a-tech-savvy-workforce-and-amazon-web-services-training-certification-in-asia-pacific-with-emmanuel-pillai-301779264?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MDI0ZjNhN2QtZTU3Zi00NmVlLWI3OTUtODY2NjU1ZmE4NWYz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjg79GFspz-AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Building-a-Tech-Savvy-Workforce-and-Amazon-Web-Services-Training-%26-Certification-in-Asia-Pacific-with-Emmanuel-Pillai-id2859782-id586196876?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### TKX Capital and Investing into Crypto in Asia with Chris Lee URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/tkx-capital-and-navigating-the-headwinds-of-crypto-in-asia-with-chris-lee/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:09.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Chris Lee, co-founder & partner of TKX Capital joined us in a conversation about TKX Capital and his perspectives on how to invest in crypto projects and protocols globally in an uncertain era. Chris began the conversation with his background as the former CFO for both cryptocurrency exchanges: OK Coin and Huobi, and what he learned from meeting Warren Buffett in person. Next, he deep-dived into the mission, vision and investment thesis of TKX Capital and shared his thoughts on the current crypto market. Last but not least, he offered his thoughts on what great looks like for TKX Capital. --- > "The first thing is that the crypto market is still quite small compared to the equity \[market\]. \[The size of the crypto market to equity market is about\] one to 120, less than 0.8%, not even 1%. So, some smaller projects are very manipulated. \[It is a\] tough market, and second thing is that a lot of people say the variation for crypto is Twitter driven. So when Elon Musk or CZ send out a Tweet, it can pump up the project by about 5% to 10%. Because each \[crypto\] project is like religion, people believe in you." **\- Chris Lee** ### Introduction - Chris Lee, Co-founder and Partner, TKX Capital ([@ChrisTKXCap](https://twitter.com/ChrisTKXCap?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislee6112/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Founder, HummingBirds Capital ([main site](https://www.hummingbirdscapital.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What inspired you to enter into the realm of crypto and web3? - You held both CFO positions in OKCoin and Huobi and were the CEO of OKX. - Let’s do this chronologically, how did you get involved in OKCoin first and learn about running a crypto exchange? - After that, you went to Huobi to be their CFO, are there any differences in moving into a different exchange and what have you learned in that role as well? - As the CFOs for both exchanges, what are the responsibilities and does it include building relationships with the regulators as well? - You are one of the few key crypto people who went to [meet Warren Buffett together](https://twitter.com/ChrisTKXCap/status/1225444736871411713?s=20&ref=analysepodcast.com) in 2020 with Justin Sun (founder of Tron), what are the key words of wisdom you have learned from your meeting with Warren Buffett? > This s a remarkable event n life changing dinner bb [@justinsuntron](https://twitter.com/justinsuntron?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=analysepodcast.com) n [@Tronfoundation](https://twitter.com/tronfoundation?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=analysepodcast.com) . Appreciate t! It s a great oppo to share views on blockchain tech n crypto investt value. Thx Mr. Buffett’s wisdom of life, career, family n investt. Hopefully we can make it again in 2030! [pic.twitter.com/cjj7fNfpDx](https://t.co/cjj7fNfpDx?ref=analysepodcast.com) > > — chrisee.eth (@ChrisTKXCap) [February 6, 2020](https://twitter.com/ChrisTKXCap/status/1225444736871411713?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - In your career journey, what are the most interesting lessons you can share with my audience? ### TKX Capital - TKX Capital ([main site](https://www.tkx.capital/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@TKXCAPITAL](https://twitter.com/TKXCAPITAL?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tkx-capital/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Crypto and Web3 Investing - To start, you have started TKX Capital. What are the vision and mission of the company? - How does it operate a full-service crypto investment bank? Who are the customers and what services does the firm offer for the customer? - What is the one thing you know about the crypto market that not many people know? - As stated on the TKX Capital site, there are three parts of the methodology: 1/ primary and secondary market strategies, 2/ hybrid approach and 3/ active treasury management. Can you elaborate on the approaches? - For active treasury management, what are your perspectives on DeFi as a yield-building mechanism? - What are the advantages of crypto projects adopting the strategies you mention? - How do you select the crypto companies to work with? What are the traits you look for in the founders and their teams? What are the red flags? - You have a strong portfolio of projects who are part of TKX Capital. Can you talk about some of these projects? For example, I see ERA7, a blockchain gaming company most active on Binance, and Polygon. - What are your reflections on the crypto crash in 2022 not focusing on any one player whether it’s Luna-Terra, 3AC and FTX collapse? - Given the regulatory pressure in the US is getting stronger with the EU leading the regulation and Asia leading the crypto innovation, what should be the framework for your company to engage regulators? - What is your mental model when it comes to the valuations of companies in this space? Given the recent meltdown in the crypto lending market, the valuations have gone down significantly, how does it evolve your thinking in valuations? - What does great look like for TKX Capital? ### Closing - Do you have any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Chris Lee: Remembering a common friend and entrepreneur who passed away at 49 during Christmas 2022\. - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/JAUT5gdosp0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tkx-capital-and-investing-into-crypto-in-asia-with-chris-lee/id914868245?i=1000606376106&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0MzU8VT2OlX2RYdUpWboy4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/tkx-capital-and-investing-into-crypto-asia-chris-lee?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFucXrS0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/420%5FTKX%5FCapital%5Fand%5FInvesting%5Finto%5FCrypto%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FChris%5FLee.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/tkx-capital-and-investing-into-crypto-in-asia-with-chris-lee-301221850?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MDYzZTAxYzYtNTAxZC00MmQ2LWI1MmUtNWM0MzBkYzBjYTc5?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiohIuA3v%5F9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/TKX-Capital-and-Investing-into-Crypto-in-Asia-with-Chris-Lee-id2859782-id582973293?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Silicon Valley Bank's collapse & its impact on the Asia startup ecosystem with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/silicon-valley-banks-collapse-and-its-impact-to-asia-startup-ecosystem/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:09.000Z Fresh out of the studio and an emergency podcast, Shai Oster from The Information discuss the fallout coming from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank over the past weekend, and what it means for the venture capitalists and startups in the Asia Pacific. We dived into what happened to Silicon Valley Bank, the aftermath of the intervention of the regulators on 12 March 2023 and what would have happened to the startup ecosystem across China, India and Southeast Asia if the US regulators did not intervene. --- **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premiere podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology and media in Asia. I am Bernard Leong and the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has sent shock waves to the rest of the world, not just in the tech ecosystem. What is the impact of Silicon Valley Bank on Asia Pacific, specifically for China, India and even Southeast Asia companies? With me here, is Shai Oster, the Asia Bureau Chief for The Information. The Information has broken down a few critical stories on the topic. Shai, welcome to the show and let’s get into the account. **Shai Oster:** Thank you. It's a pleasure. **Bernard Leong:** So maybe I will set the context first about what Silicon Valley Bank is, and then we will talk about why, they got into trouble, and subsequently what has happened up to our current time, which is 13 or March 9:00 PM in Singapore time, and that means it's 9:00 AM now in. New York time where the market bell has just started ringing. So Silicon Valley Bank (aka SVB in short) was founded in 1983 in California and become the bank for the tech sector there, and the people who finance it help the startup ecosystem. Of course, it claimed to have banked for nearly half of the US venture-back startups as of 2021\. It is also the banking partner for many venture capital firms because I was looking at their S-1 filing and could see all the branded venture capital firms from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia and Benchmark, etc. They funded the startups and called themselves the financial partner of the innovation economy. One thing is that it's very tightly woven into the financial infrastructure of the tech industry, specifically the startups. So it operated globally, (see [Kevin Xu's tweets](https://twitter.com/kevinsxu/status/1635004188047601669?s=20&ref=analysepodcast.com)) so I don't want to call it a regional bank. It's opened in Israel in 2008, the UK in 2012, China in 2012 with Pudong Development Bank in Shanghai, Ireland in 2016, Germany in 2018, and India, Canada, and Denmark in 2019\. That means, if I hear it correctly yesterday during Janet Yellen's interview, any foreign bank can take it over. Of course, it must pass the CFIUS test. Can you help us understand what this bank is, and what it means, and can you explain the background on why it ended up in trouble? **Shai Oster:** So, I'm not a banking expert, but, so I'm sure to mangle this, and I'm sure you'll get angry comments. I would think of Silicon Valley Bank as a small-town bank, but in this case, the small town happens to have a global footprint. It's the bank for Silicon Valley, which has developed expertise in dealing with particularly the small and young emerging startups, which a big bank wouldn't necessarily touch because they represent a kind of risk that normal banks don't deal with. \[For example\] I'm a young woman, graduated from MIT. I have a brilliant idea, but I have no revenue and my business model is kind of sketchy. But my venture capital backers believe in me and they include Andreessen Horowitz and whatever VC firm. Now if you're a Citibank, HSBC or Bank of America, you're gonna look at this and say, "How am I gonna lend you money or even open a bank account if I don't know about what your assets are? You don't even have a garage. Whereas Silicon Valley Bank developed expertise in serving these clients and took a gamble in some way. But it was a pretty lucrative gamble. It worked out pretty well for them, but they developed that expertise, and it's really like boots-on-the-ground networking. They developed that network of bankers in the valley where they would know everyone. It's unique expertise to know how to lend and deal and do business banking for a very young, nascent startup. Now with that expertise, they try to export other startup scenes around the world. So you have an active startup scene in Israel. You have a startup scene in the United Kingdom (UK) And then of course in India and in China. In China, they were already doing some work in the early 2000s and opened up an office in 2005\. The joint venture with Pudong Development Bank was in 2012\. That was interesting because they were doing some local currency business. I think that the scale is still somewhat modest, but they were developing a good relationship with the Shanghai government that they were even managing some of the government guidance funds, which are essentially government pools of cash for venture capital. So, they were pretty embedded in the scene and in particular, what Silicon Valley Bank could do for players in India. In particular for China, if you're a young startup guy or woman from Shanghai or Shenzhen or heaven forbid, from a third-tier city and you're trying to raise dollars and set up in an offshore BVI \[British Virgin Islands\] or Cayman, and you rock up to your big Wall Street bank and say, "Hi, I am an unknown Chinese person with a bank account in the Cayman Islands, and I'd like to open up a credit line for 2 million." The banks will need to do the KYC (know your customer), you \[SVB\] know your client and clear all the anti-money laundering \[AML\] regulations. It is so much work to figure out who this person is, where the money's coming from, what the actual business is and why is it in the Cayman Islands. How come? But wait for a second, but you don't own anything. The VIE structure is really hard to understand, and so if you understand how a big bank works and why I devote hours of manpower resources to sorting through this, it just wasn't worth their time. Silicon Valley Bank became the default. It was already the banker for the fund. So if I'm Sequoia China, I say, "Look, my fund is already with Sequoia Capital and then I can bring my hot startup to the bank, I vouch for Chiang. I think they're superstars. Trust me, I got them." This isn't like some weird narco-syndicate thing. Whoever it might be and because it's really difficult, there is capital control on the Chinese side and anti-money laundering regulation on the US side. So it was quite difficult for some unknown startup to open up a bank. Offshore and that, but opening up that bank account offshore is the only way to raise US dollars. Otherwise, what are you gonna do? So the loss of this conduit was potentially devastating for the Chinese startup, particularly in the early stages. Once you reached Unicorn status, the guys at Citibank are gonna come knocking and say, "Hey, we'd like to be your commercial banker. We hear you have revenue of US$100 million a year, and we'd like to be part of that. So, why not issue a statement saying that they were no longer banking with SBV? That makes sense because I recall Silicon Valley Bank's total balance sheet is like 150 billion and the market cap is roughly the same. Of course, they're gonna be banking at someplace bigger. But, you know, we interviewed with one startup, which is also on the raise according to Pitchbook, roughly USD$200m, a company named Laiye which does robotic process automation among other things. In their earliest stages, they were with Silicon Valley Bank. As they matured, how do you say presciently, they had started reallocating their capital in the US to other banks and within China, they must have a Chinese bank account. Now as to the cause of the \[SVB bank\] run. The bottom line is rising interest rates caused the bank's assets. They'd parked their cash into US treasuries, and as the interest rates rose, the value of the treasuries went down and that caught them short of cash. They arguably wisely said, "We need to recapitalize to make up for the shortfall." Once that word got out and they have to announce it as a publicly traded institution. These are banks and there are degrees of transparency. Once that got out, people like, wait, what do you mean you have to recapitalize the value of what? And, you know, bank runs are like mass psychosis? Somebody else that I forget who was quoting this, "Capitalism is a collective hallucination, so sometimes we hallucinate the world differently." This is the classic case where the bank has no assets because everyone decided the bank has no assets. If everyone had decided that it's fine and they'll raise the 5 billion, don't sweat it. But I think there's perhaps an underlying anxiety already in the markets. All it takes is that one trigger, but basically, it's the interest rates. So the culprit to some extent, seems that they may have adequately hedged for that interest rate risk. Now, I'm not a banking expert. I don't know the ins and outs. I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive yet on whether or not they weren't hedged and maybe there are some other underlying issues, but it seems that they just didn't hedge for interest rate risks. **Bernard Leong:** They didn't hedge for interest rate risk. There's a very good article entitled "[The Demise of Silicon Valley Bank](https://www.netinterest.co/p/the-demise-of-silicon-valley-bank?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Mark Rubenstein from Net Interest, which I read pretty religiously on financial institutions and structures. They bought some mortgage securities and because the deposits are getting lower and lower, what they were suffering from is the duration risk. Had they had enough time, they would not have defaulted. The best part was when they wanted to recapitalize, they started informing all the VCs. Some of the VCs say hold, and some big ones like Peter Thiel from Founders Fund asked them to pull out everything. So it triggered a bank run on their end and actually as it happens, even for me as an angel investor, I'm getting at least a few Southeast Asia founder emails from startups in that I invested. In Southeast Asia, there is little to no exposure because everyone is banked with a local bank. I don't have any exposure there as well. The real secondary effects came from the USDC (or circle stablecoin) de-pegging, and as a web3 investor, the founders are getting into panic mode and asking what is going to happen with their US dollars. The price of the USDC went from $1 down to 0.89 cents. Everyone started to panic and it was a bank run that spilled over into the ecosystem. **Shai Oster:** So the US federal government came in with a guarantee. For the sale of Silicon Valley Bank's UK assets, the numbers seem quite small. It's just breaking news. So I think the numbers are like 4 billion. It's a relatively small balance sheet, right? It's not systemic. They don't think they really were huge in the UK. But you know, as of early trading, it seems that people aren't buying into it yet, that it hasn't stemmed the panic and the feeling that other regional banks are also inadequately hedged against these risks. **Bernard Leong:** In fact, in [the press release](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1337?ref=analysepodcast.com) from the US Treasury, US Federal Reserve and FDIC was that they are going to have a program to backstop the deposits. They're only going to protect the depositors and not the shareholders or the management. Within the same press release, they also talk about a similar systemic risk exception: Signature Bank, which is actually the other crypto bank similar to Silvergate Bank a few days ago, which got into a bank run and has collapsed as well. So I don't know whether this is going to start percolating across the US banking system, you know, it feels a little bit like 2008\. As an update, [Silicon Valley Bank UK has been acquired by HSBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/13/hsbc-buys-silicon-valley-bank-uk-protecting-deposits-.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) for 1 pound on 13 March 2023. **Shai Oster:** Right. So the language there, I mean, so basically they're the government. What they're saying is that we are not bailing out the people who made the mistake. We're bailing out the people who hold accounts. They don't wanna use the word bailout because it's not taxpayer funded. The idea is that if you're a startup and you're using SVB to pay your payroll, your payroll is safe. If you are somebody who lent money to SVB, or some private equity firms or you are a shareholder but chances are that you are an accredited investor, a high net worth individual, you can take a little pain. Whereas the next start-up with 30 people, 100 people, or 1000 people, if they can't make payroll, that's actually really problematic. So I could see a wobble in share prices because all the shareholders are like, oh my goodness, but I think you know, it's hard to gauge a market because it's psychology, right? Not necessarily in reality or is it psychology that's gonna drive the reality? It's unclear to me. I think Biden's supposed to be giving a speech later today. If they decide that the real economy matters more than the investor economy, things might calm down relatively soon. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think that this situation affects only the series A and B startups in the Asia Pacific? Everybody's allowed to withdraw their deposits. One interesting thing is that the Silicon Valley Bank actually offer certain loan services to founders or even VCs who first started out. This will actually make it almost very difficult because the actual financial plumbing for startups and the VC ecosystem in Silicon Valley collapsed and will probably affect the rest of the world. This ecosystem doesn't exist anymore now. So will the liquidity problem that happens in the US start to reflect back to the rest of the world? Are we gonna be seeing some form of a common recession, and then even turn into a type of depression for the startup ecosystem? **Shai Oster:** It depends on how fast the vultures swoop in. I'm kidding. Yes, you're right. So there are all these financial issues, and it's unclear to me in the details of what will or still won't be functioning under federal control. Will the bank still do these lines of credit? I'm sure they're working on that. I think they're sophisticated enough to understand the ramification, that it's not just about, you know, startups doing payroll, but also about, you know, a VC having access to its credit line. The other thing is that you know, there's the bidding process right now to acquire the bank and that's complicated. In the meantime, people are looking for alternatives and it's a question of how quickly they can create these alternatives. So one of the hardest things, you know, friends of mine who have startups in the US have already opened up bank accounts. In fact, in The Information, I think we even wrote about it. We've figured out a way to protect ourselves. Definitely, I know a handful of startups where, and even a Chinese startup where they had an American co-founder, just went to JP Morgan \[bank\] and within an hour, was able to open up a bank account. So the ones that have an alternative, they're probably already trying to seek it. The Wall Street banks, you know, I have a friend who is formerly from SVB a couple of years back, was saying basically like now every Wall Street CEO just realized that Silicon Valley has money and realized that this is a whole line of business here. I wasn't aware we could do that. It's the Chinese expression that crisis brings opportunity. That expression really is in this case. Yeah. Silicon Valley bank's crisis is gonna be an opportunity for everybody else. It is a question of how long and how quickly that transaction will take. My guess is we'll see a very ugly 3-6 months. But then again, it also depends on the details of what Federal control looks like. I mean, you know, there've been times where the government's controlled companies and they've functioned pretty well. The Royal Bank of Scotland in the UK did okay. You know, there've been examples of effective government ownership of companies, I think in the US where the company still managed to function. So I don't know yet. Everybody who knows anything at SVB, are they going to take their expertise to another bank where it's gonna take six months for them to get the institutional plumbing in place or are they gonna stay? So I think there are a lot of questions that we don't know. I think the next six months are like a haze. After six months though, it's clear that Silicon Valley will no longer only have one bank, which is crazy, right? When you look back on it, you will think that this is an insane idea where like all of our risks were on one institution. Like who have looked at this and said, "Great idea, guys." So we'll probably be in a healthier position where all these other banks will have scrambled and gotten talent pushed all the best and brightest from SVB and built their own \[equivalent\] Silicon Valley bank branches. That's the optimistic case. The pessimistic case is that the internet breaks and we're sending smoke signals. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think that it will end up becoming a regionalization-type situation? Like, say maybe India will have its own version of Silicon Valley Bank. China will end up having its own Silicon Valley Bank and Southeast Asia might have its own as well, because suddenly, you know, everything that used to be concentrated in one is now being fragmented across the world. **Shai Oster:** I think because the capital is still largely US dollars. The institutions will still remain primarily American, just not one bank. It's crazy when you look back on it, It's crazy that Silicon Valley Bank which is effectually a small town bank, was doing this for everybody. My guess is that there might be joint ventures, and partnerships, but I think it'll just be another part of the portfolio in Goldman Sachs, ABN Amro, Credit Suisse or whatever they're all gonna have as part of their portfolio you know, startups and VC businesses. I could see a Japanese bank playing key roles right through SoftBank as well. Chinese banks are tough ones. It's really not small private businesses and not really in their DNA. They're good at global finance with big state-owned shipping and construction. I don't know enough about India. But I think it still comes down to big LPs. If you're a startup and you're raising money from a big Western LP or with Western GP like Andreessen Horowitz or a private equity firm, then your banker is gonna be Western. **Bernard Leong:** One thing for sure, most of the Asian VCs raise a lot of their money from LPs in the US and over the weekend, it's also quite a nightmare because there were VCs that have so many assets tied into Silicon Valley Bank and then they may not even be able to afford payroll. They need to go to their LP and ask for some emergency drawdown to basically fund some of the startups within the portfolio. I could see this kind of impact. Even for the LPs, it might be even much more difficult for them to invest in the Asia Pacific region as a whole. I'm talking about China, India and Southeast Asia. Take your pick, whichever region is. Do you see the impact heading to these regions? **Shai Oster:** There's so much else going on in the region that's problematic. I mean, the reverse CFIUS and all these constraints on investment and in particular the slowdown of investment in China. This has already been pretty sharp. India, I don't have figures off the top of my head. I think it's still gonna continue. I think what happened over the weekend was the legitimate response where people were scrambling to make sure they could make money and payroll. That problem is solved now. You don't need to go to your VC. You don't need to go to your LPs to get cash. The US government stepped in and we're fine. I mean, you know your share price. There may be some other weird like secondary derivative impacts from share price and sort of market jitters, but the money's safe. And I think everyone will be gun-shy for a while because they've just been traumatized. But you know, I think after three to six months people will start looking again at the fundamentals. With China, the big question is: can you trust President Xi? President Xi Jinping, is he trustworthy? How much do you believe in the economic recovery post-Covid-19? People will figure out a way if they believe in the China story, they'll figure out a way to get money into it. But I do think that there's a lot of wound-licking, particularly for Chinese investors, as they've just been traumatized so much. You know, they've had a rough 12 months. They really didn't need this. Bernard Leong: Just one final question: what would be your advice now to the startups in the Asia Pacific after this event? Shai Oster: I would keep your money in Silicon Valley Bank. I think it's safe. I trust, you know, I mean, maybe foolishly, but I trust America. Well, you know, Janet Yellen. Her word is gold. Do look for an alternative because especially if you're Chinese, it's gonna take you a long time to open up another bank account. But it doesn't make sense to start hedging your bets because the SVB of today is not gonna be the SVB of the future. My concern is that whoever takes over SVB may not have when the next Bytedance in the making rocks up and says that I'm some random Chinese dude from some random village who needs the opening up of a BVI account. Do you know what I mean? That's building expertise. That's just not easy to do. I've heard from friends of mine who have told me that it took them a year to open up a bank account in one of the mainline investment banks or commercial banks, a year of due diligence, meetings and phone calls This was a VC who's raising $200 million. So it's not chunk change, right? It's not like my first fund. You don't know me, somebody with a relatively established track record, but it took them a year and a lot of pulling strings. Replacing SVB is just not easy. So, keep your money safe for now. Don't buy gold bars yet. I don't think we're at the stage of smuggling diamonds in our underwear to pay people. **Bernard Leong:** Our grandmas put money in their boxes and that was in the 1920s to 1930s. **Shai Oster:** Yeah. I think now is the time to look for an alternative, and it's gonna take a long time to find that alternative just because of the paperwork and the proof of who you are, it won't be simple. I think the competing banks see an opportunity, so they're gonna make it, they're gonna make it quicker because they want that business. They suddenly realize that I said earlier that there is a business there. But I think the worst of it is over. Any famous last words? Bernard Leong: I think we'll continue to monitor and then if there's anything else, we can always have another emergency podcast. So Shai, thanks for coming to the show. I just have one closing question for you. Can you just tell my audience where to find you? Of course, The Information is really putting up really great stuff this weekend and I've been reading a lot of interesting stuff as an investor. Shai Oster: Fantastic. Glad to hear. So we're at [The Information dot com](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). I'm at shai (at) theinformation (dot) com. I'm on Twitter at [@BeijingScribe](https://twitter.com/@beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), my direct messages are open. I'm also on Signal, Telegram, fax machines, smoke signals and stone carvings. I'm out there. I'm also on LinkedIn. Another interesting thing is that I'm now based in Bangkok for the past couple of months, but I officially announced it lately. It's an interesting perspective to see China from another angle. I'm fine using more Chinese apps here than I was in Hong Kong such as Lazada and Uber. In any case, we are following the story. I don't think it's over yet. I'm curious to see if China somehow has a way to weigh in on this. because VC investing is so important to the Chinese economy. You know, the lawyers I spoke to, said that the Shanghai Pudong venture is a small and discreet business. But I just have a feeling that there's somebody in Shanghai sitting there trying to think like, how can we leverage this crisis for our opportunity? What can we do that'll increase our standing, you know, again, like pure, crazy speculation? This is not reporting. This is just me. You know, mulling things that like if I would be President Xi's advisor, I'd be like, dude, we need to find a way to put a monkey in the wrench. Just as a way to say like look, China matters and you're about to like do something important with a big bank that has a global footprint on technology. You need to ask us for permission. Total speculation, guys. I'm just spitballing and everyone I've spoken to says I'm. So take it as your own free will. It's just this feeling that I'm waiting for the shoe to drop. **Bernard Leong:** Okay, and definitely find us Analyse Asia on the YouTube channel and Shai, we will talk very soon. **Shai Oster:** All right. Take care. ### References: - [SVB's Chinese Customers face logjam in moving money](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/svbs-chinese-customers-face-logjams-in-moving-money?ref=analysepodcast.com), The Information - [U.S. to Backstop All SVB Deposits; Regional Banks Look Likely to Prevail in Sale](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/regional-banks-are-most-likely-to-prevail-in-svb-sale-process-sources-say?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com), **The Information** - [Chamath's comment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEee7dAk25c&ref=analysepodcast.com) on the China tech startups being affected in the All In Podcast - [9 Questions about the Silicon Valley Bank's collapse answered](https://www.vox.com/technology/23634433/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-silvergate-first-republic-fdic?ref=analysepodcast.com), Vox. ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/UaZHKIzOvag?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/silicon-valley-banks-collapse-its-impact-on-the-asia/id914868245?i=1000604077946&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4b56WKQPwlYTw1qQ98YgPN?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/silicon-valley-banks-collapse-asia-startup-vc-ecosystem-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtAnPW4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/418%5FShai%5FOster%5FPodmix.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/silicon-valley-banks-collapse-its-impact-on-the-asia-startup-ecosystem-with-shai-oster-300550067?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MWM2NTgyOWYtZGFmNC00YzBlLTkwMTEtNjUyM2Q0MDQ0N2I2?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiolIrG-dr9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Silicon-Valley-Bank's-collapse-%26-its-impact-on-the-Asia-startup-ecosystem-with-Shai-Oster-id2859782-id578631404?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Kleros 2.0, Proof of Humanity & Decentralized Arbitration in Web3 with Federico Ast URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/kleros-decentralized-arbitration-in-web3-with-federico-ast/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:08.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Federico Ast, founder of Kleros returned to the podcast to share the story of Kleros over the past few years and where it is heading as a decentralized arbitration service in the web3 and crypto economy. He dived deep into the concept of proof of humanity and how it helps to resolve identity verification and explored the implications of how Kleros has transformed the legal landscape from a landmark case in Mexico resolved by the protocol to advising the United Nations. Last but not least, Federico shared the new use cases relating to tokenized physical assets with Kleros and shared what great looks like for Kleros in the future. --- > "What if you could just outsource your disputes to Kleros? Whenever users have a dispute on your platform, Kleros will select a jury to analyze the dispute. They're going to see the evidence, see the agreement between parties, and they're going to make a decision about who is right, and then Kleros informs you of the decision on your platform. And then this is enforced by the smart contract and the money. Let's say Alice wins. So she's reimbursed the money that she would pay Bob for this. So this is one example in the freelancer (space). But imagine all of these platforms that just connect to Kleros through some pipes and send disputes - and Kleros sends back decisions. So this is the vision of what Kleros is going to build. This is why we call it "Decentralized Court" for all of the Web3 ecosystems." **\- Federico Ast** ### Introduction - Federico Ast ([@federicoast](https://twitter.com/federicoast?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicoast/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder and President of the Cooperative, Kleros - Since our [last conversation](https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-274-how-to-do-an-ico-and-kleros-with-federico-ast/) in 2018, what have you been up to? - We discussed the things you learned the last time and I am sure you have evolved in your career. Let me ask this again: What are the important lessons you can share with our audience on your career journey so far? ### [Kleros 2.0](https://kleros.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Decentralized Arbitration in Web3 with Federico Ast - Kleros 2.0 and Distributive Justice ([main site](https://kleros.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@kleros\_io](https://twitter.com/kleros%5Fio??ref=analysepodcast.com), [discord](https://t.co/FaA0UrJWZR?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - The last time when you are here, you were educating us about how to do an initial coin offering (or ICO) for a coin, and talk about the initial journey of Kleros. To start, given that Kleros emerged from the first crypto winter and have been mentioned by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum and CB Insights as a blockchain with an interesting application. Now you have a foundation and a development team, and Kleros has been running for a while. Can you share the global vision and mission of Kleros? - Can you explain what it means to be a decentralized arbitration service for the disputes of the new economy? - What is the difference between Kleros from the traditional arbitration that is traditionally performed by human professionals called lawyers with the judges and jury in the courts run by governments? - How does Kleros deal with disputes and facilitate the arbitration process in the web3 economy? - Concept of [Schelling Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal%5Fpoint%5F%28game%5Ftheory%29?ref=analysepodcast.com) in game theory and how it is applied in real-world arbitration. - Of course, there is an inherent concept of proof of humanity in Kleros. Can you explain how proof of humanity and how the concept works? - The different vectors of attack on Proof of Humanity: 1/ synthetic identities, 2/ collusion of soulbound NFT profiles, and 3/ an AI bot triggering a smart contract to Kleros on a legal arbitration. - How does Kleros integrate into [the network state](https://thenetworkstate.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) concept pioneered by [Balaji Srinivasan](https://twitter.com/balajis?ref=analysepodcast.com)? - How does the constitution-building process happen with Kleros? Reference: Federico Ast: [Sortition in The History of Democracy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6weziIA8XLE&ref=analysepodcast.com). - Can you explain the tokenomics of Kleros and also how different stakeholders play in your ecosystem? For example, you can join as a juror and earn money to bring justice to the world. - What if the defendant or prosecutor did not like the arbitration process and demanded an appeal to the courts' process? How does that work in a decentralized system? - What is the one thing you know about Kleros and the decentralized arbitration service that not many people do? - Can you talk about the interesting applications of Kleros globally with some examples? For example, how does it work for insurance, e-commerce and finance, content moderation, and intellectual property? - How has Kleros evolved from where we last spoke till today? What are the highlights of Kleros in the past few years? - Can you talk about the global coverage of Kleros? Where and how are developers are building on your platform? - [How to Enforce Blockchain Dispute Resolution in Court?](https://blog.kleros.io/how-to-enforce-blockchain-dispute-resolution-in-court-the-kleros-case-in-mexico/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The Kleros Case in Mexico. - [Kleros in the United Nations](https://blog.kleros.io/kleros-community-update-june-2022/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Kleros June Community Update. - What keeps you up in the night with Kleros as a founder of a protocol? - What are the new areas which Kleros are now exploring in this bear market? - What does great look like for Kleros in the next few years? ### Closing - What are the recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Federico's recommendations: Balaji Srinivasan's "[The Network State](https://www.amazon.com/Network-State-How-Start-Country-ebook/dp/B09VPKZR3G?ref=analysepodcast.com)" and Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom". - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/h5f1D-UgrSQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kleros-2-0-decentralized-arbitration-in-web3-with/id914868245?i=1000603464538&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7bgBII9blNEaesrVJSGhfb?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/kleros-2-0-decentralized-arbitration-web3-crypto-proof-humanity-federico-ast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtqgWAM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/417%5FKleros%5F2.0%5F%5FDecentralized%5FArbitration%5Fin%5FWeb3%5Fwith%5FFederico%5FAst.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/kleros-2-0-decentralized-arbitration-in-web3-with-federico-ast-300364866?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YTA1ODZhNzEtY2ZkMC00OWY2LThkNjEtYmYyNzY3YzcyZTE3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjggY6Olc%5F9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Kleros-2.0-%26-Decentralized-Arbitration-in-Web3-with-Federico-Ast-id2859782-id577373963?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### Digital Report 2023 on Myth of Social Media Dying, Streaming Wars & Generative AI with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/digital-report-2023-social-media-streaming-wars-generative-ai-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:08.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp returned for the 6th year to break down the key digital, mobile, and social media trends in the annual Digital Report 2023\. Simon began with the first surprise that social media is not dying from Meta to Twitter, and debunked the myth propagated by social media on the war between Instagram vs Tik Tok. He highlighted the key trends on how the shift from pandemic to endemic will impact the streaming wars, and the fallout on cryptocurrencies and NFTs after the crypto crash in 2022\. In the same conversation, Simon discussed how generative AI inspired by ChatGPT and Midjourney will upend digital advertising and marketing and what it means for brands moving forward. Last but not least, Simon offered what great would look like for the digital report in the next decade. --- > "The media have been feeding us this fake news story about the death of social media. There is absolutely nothing in the data - regardless of what data points I look at, there's nothing in the data that supports the idea that social media is dying. It's the complete opposite. Social media users are growing. The time that we spend using social media is increasing. There is no evidence of the death of social media. So that was a big surprise in there. When you start looking at things like streaming, there are obviously some really interesting conversations there about the overall time we spend streaming TV content versus how that splits across different companies. So Netflix versus Disney plus versus whatever else. Search behaviors. I'm sure we're gonna unpack that later on, but that is another one that is evolving quite rapidly. And how people find what they're looking for on the internet is evolving rapidly. That's got implications for everybody. It's not just a business conversation. That's anybody that is wanting to reach and influence audiences on the internet." - Simon Kemp ### Introduction - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of [Kepios](http://kepios.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How has life been treating you since our last conversation in August 2022? - We spoke for the past few years, and I am sure that you have evolved in your career. What are the interesting lessons you can share with our audience on your career journey so far? ### [Digital 2023 Report](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-global-overview-report?ref=analysepodcast.com): Social Media is not dying, Streaming Wars and Generative AI - What are the key takeaways and major surprises from the [report in 2023](https://wearesocial.com/sg/blog/2023/01/digital-2023/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? - What are the new data sources added to the report this year? - What is the one thing you know now about social media that not many people do from the Digital 2023 report? - Are there any inflection points relating to growth on the web, mobile, and social users across the world? - An interesting perspective from the report is that social media choices are not a zero-sum equation and what does that mean for brands, consumers, and advertisers? - One key insight which I saw was that the social media CPMS had experienced a major drop, what happened there, and are there causes for worry in the advertising market? - Where are we in the barometer for Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp) is dying given that they have had a stock price surge recently? - How about Twitter? It seems that it is growing after Elon’s takeover of a kitchen sink. What are your hypotheses on Twitter? - Can web3 networks like Farcaster or Mastodon challenge Twitter? - Given the crypto crash in 2022 with the FTX collapse being the most significant, how has the cryptocurrency market with respect to NFTs and cryptocurrencies? - What is your feeling on the ground on web3 gaming or NFTs? I am surprised by the amount of developer activity in web3 gaming growing in the past few months. - Given that we are now living in an endemic world and even China has reversed on their COVID-zero policy and opened up, are there any implications for example, streaming videos for consumers or other behavioral changes that are dominant during the pandemic period? - How would that change given that Netflix, Disney+, and other streaming platforms are in the midst of rolling out their advertising tiers to the market? - Are you going to relook at search engine advertising with the recent surprise that sprang up by Microsoft and Open AI challenge to Google? What are the signs of growth or decline you will look at the monopoly that Google has enjoyed for the past 15 years? - Of course, the big story in the past few months is generative AI, starting with everyone testing their podcast readings with Open AI’s ChatGPT to testing whether the AI is sentient with Bing’s Sydney. With generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, and Midjourney for images, means that content generation will be automated, what are your perspectives on the likely impact on the social apps we are using? - We have chatted now on your annual report for the past 7 years and it’s a major milestone. I have never asked this question before but I will do it here today. What does great mean for the Digital Report for the next decade? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Simon's recommendation: [James Webb Space Telescope Images](https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analyse-asia), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analyse-asia)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analyse-asia)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analyse-asia) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analyse-asia)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/VuvDwyL3YsE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-report-2023-on-myth-of-social-media-dying/id914868245?i=1000602267044&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2m3jORZkm6am6IdGRjA0zr?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/digital-report-2023-social-media-streaming-wars-generative-ai?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFt%5F70HM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/416%5FDigital%5FReport%5F2023%5Fon%5FMyth%5Fof%5FSocial%5FMedia%5FDying%5FStreaming%5FWars%5F%5FGenerative%5FAI%5Fwith%5FSimon%5FKemp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/digital-report-2023-on-myth-of-social-media-dying-streaming-wars-generative-ai-with-simon-kemp-300061851?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OTI5Zjk3MDEtOThkZC00N2NmLWFhOGItOWI2YjRiY2YzYzY0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQgYzL6br9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Digital-Report-2023-on-Myth-of-Social-Media-Dying%2C-Streaming-Wars-%26-Generative-AI-with-Simon-Kemp-id2859782-id575010616?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analyse-asia) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analyse-asia) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analyse-asia) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analyse-asia) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analyse-asia) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analyse-asia) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analyse-asia) ### China & Taiwan Tech Giants in a Fragile Global Supply Chain with Tim Culpan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-china-taiwan-tech-giants-fragile-supply-chain-with-tim-culpan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:08.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Tim Culpan, the Bloomberg columnist, joined us to discuss how the tech giants from China (Huawei, YMTC) and Taiwan (Foxconn, TSMC) are navigating a fragile global supply chain. Starting our conversation, Tim examined how Foxconn and TSMC are making key moves to ensure the resiliency of the global supply chain from contract manufacturing to semiconductors. As we moved on, Tim provided a glimpse into how the Chinese tech giants, Huawei and SMIC are addressing the same challenges and examined the key strategy for China to develop its own semiconductors. Last but not least, Tim broke down the amount of money that Warren Buffett from Berkshire Hathaway had left on the table after retreating from his recent position in TSMC. --- > "You're right. Now the US is trying very hard to get TSMC to move to the US and they're throwing money out - TSMC is going to Arizona. The CHIPS Act has been passed. That'll throw a lot of money around, but that won't be enough. In the currently announced plans - just purely what's been announced so far - I ran the numbers and estimated that TSMC's global capacity, only less than 5% would be in the US based on the currently announced plans. Now, I expect those plans to expand and broaden. They seem to have enough land and the possibility of up to four factories instead of two. They could even go to six, who knows? But even if they were to expand to the maximum of what might be possible in Arizona, I think still we'd get maybe 7% of global capacity in the US may be up to 10%. And it won't be the leading edge. The leading edge will still be in Taiwan. And that's not just for protection reasons. I think a lot of people think that all the Taiwanese don't wanna have the best in America because they're trying to hold onto it for themselves - which is true - but it's also an issue of practicality." - **Tim Culpan** ### Introduction - Tim Culpan ([@tculpan](https://twitter.com/tculpan?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-culpan-3a753617/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/columnists/AOZ1cdFX8mo/tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Columnist at Bloomberg - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### China & Taiwan Tech Giants in a Fragile Global Supply Chain - The last time we spoke, we discussed the [tech cold war](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-tech-cold-war-with-tim-culpan/), and a lot has happened over the past 4 years between China and the US. Where are the Taiwan tech giants, for example, TSMC and Foxconn? - Foxconn is still the largest contract manufacturer for Apple in the world, and they are still assembling the iPhones in China. What is the risk for both Foxconn and Apple if the supply chain starts to decouple? \[Reference: [Maybe Apple's Weakness isn't just supply chain woes](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-02-03/apple-earnings-maybe-its-weakness-isn-t-just-supply-chain-woes?ref=analysepodcast.com), Bloomberg\] - Is Foxconn looking to expand its contract manufacturing somewhere, for example, Vietnam and India? - How are the suppliers from Taiwan working with Apple? - Are there any new developments for Foxconn in new areas of investment? - Before we dive deeper into TSMC, can you describe the semiconductor supply chain from the design that comes from the US, the key machine from ASML, a company based in the Netherlands, the reference architecture from ARM, memory chips & NAND storage from Samsung and the role that TSMC is playing within the ecosystem? - What is the impact on the consumer if the semiconductor supply chain falls apart? - What are the key technological advancements for TSMC within the semiconductor supply chain? - Given that Russia has invaded Ukraine, there are worries out there that China might do the same to Taiwan. Instead of talking about geopolitical risks which we are neither experts on the subject, I want to focus on the Taiwan tech giants. What will happen to both Foxconn and TSMC and the disruption that it will cause to the global supply chain if Taiwan falls? \[Reference: 1/ [The World's Chip Addiction is Propping up TSMC, Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-12/global-chip-addiction-is-propping-up-tsmc?ref=analysepodcast.com), 2/ [Sorry, USA, $40 billion won't buy Chip Independence, Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-12-07/-40-billion-us-semiconductor-plant-won-t-buy-independence?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - Are there any key players in the semiconductor industry within China and how far are they in catching up with TSMC out there, for example, [YMTC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze%5FMemory%5FTechnologies?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [SMIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor%5FManufacturing%5FInternational%5FCorporation?ref=analysepodcast.com)? - How are the companies such as [Huawei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei?ref=analysepodcast.com) currently sourcing their semiconductor chips given that supply is cut from them? - Given the recent [CHIPS act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS%5Fand%5FScience%5FAct?ref=analysepodcast.com) and efforts from the US and European governments to get TSMC set up in their respective countries, can the expertise really be exported to these countries such that the risk can be diversified? - Warren Buffett has recently retreated from TSMC. How much money has he left on the table and what are the potential reasons why he pulled out his entire position from TSMC? \[Reference:[ Buffett's TSMC Selloff Backs Apple Over Its Supplier, Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-02-15/warren-buffett-s-tsmc-selloff-backs-apple-over-its-supplier?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Tim's recommendation: Chris Miller, "[Chip War](https://www.amazon.com/Chip-War-Worlds-Critical-Technology-ebook/dp/B09RX5F238?ref=analysepodcast.com)" (and check out [our video interview with Chris](https://www.analysepodcast.com/rise-asia-semiconductors-history-pov-chris-miller/)) - Bernard's recommendation: Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis, "[Rebooting AI](https://www.amazon.com/Rebooting-AI-Building-Artificial-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B07MYLGQLB?ref=analysepodcast.com)' - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/IEB%5F4S0w9iY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/china-taiwan-tech-giants-in-a-fragile-global-supply/id914868245?i=1000601358711&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1psg0B6xwqOnnMAm2IjnQ4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/china-taiwan-tech-giants-fragile-global-supply-chain-tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsraFLI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/415%5FChina%5F%5FTaiwan%5FTech%5FGiants%5Fin%5Fa%5FFragile%5FGlobal%5FSupply%5FChain%5Fwith%5FTim%5FCulpan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/china-taiwan-tech-giants-in-a-fragile-global-supply-chain-with-tim-culpan-212268359?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NmY1MDVmZGUtY2ZhNS00NmZlLWFkNGItYTkwZDAwYjA5MWMw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjAq%5FP3gK39AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/China-%26-Taiwan-Tech-Giants-in-a-Fragile-Global-Supply-Chain-with-Tim-Culpan-id2859782-id573662379?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Expanding Solana to the International Community & Web3 Investing with Akshay BD URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/expanding-solana-to-the-international-community-web3-investing-with-akshay-bd/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:07.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Akshay BD, Head of International Expansion and advisor to the Solana Foundation, joined us in a conversation to explain why the rumors of Solana's demise are greatly exaggerated and describe the vibrant developer ecosystems globally across the world. Starting from his origin story, Akshay discussed how Solana developer communities are continuing their building journey despite the recent crypto crash and articulated Solana's value proposition for interesting decentralized applications moving ahead. Last but not least, Akshay offered his perspectives in crypto and web3 key topics from tokenomics to valuation and shared what great would look like for Solana internationally. --- > "So one way to think about crypto is a group of people come together and they have a vision of the future, and they're betting on that fork of the future through collective capital. So some folks think it's going to be L2’s that are going to scale. Some people think it's Solana. Whatever it is, you get to bet on the version of the future that you want with your rest of your community. That's chaotic, it's a zoo of people collectively trying to decide what the future's going to look like. But the good news is at least if the past cycles are anything to go by, almost all reasonable forks of the future get funded, and then it actually goes extreme where. Where crypto dick butts are also getting funded and pictures of like the 18th dog token is getting funded. And so, if anything, those who have been in crypto long enough seem to have benefited; because I have certainly have not – I’m much newer to this industry. But they seemed to have benefited from holding tight on what they believe about the world to be true and sticking to that vision over a sufficiently long period of time - which in crypto is potentially, what, four years I guess. And that has been rewarded, because if they worked on something for four years, the tech is behind them, there's a community behind them that sort of becomes a meme. So, I don’t know how to value them. Maybe it's all relative but it's certainly not an exercise that I either have expertise in or even try to build one in." - **Akshay BD** ### Introduction - [Akshay BD](https://www.akshaybd.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@akshaybd](https://twitter.com/akshaybd?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshay-bd-74202653/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Head of International Expansion and Advisor to [Solana Foundation](https://solana.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How did you start your career? - What are the important lessons you can share based on what you have learned through your career journey? - [Superteam](https://superteam.fun/?ref=analysepodcast.com) DAO ([@SuperteamDAO](https://twitter.com/SuperteamDAO?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and [Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi-pkXLbm7sqXFhV1NBLUfQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Youtube) ### Expanding Solana to the International Community & Web3 Investing - Can you briefly give a background on Solana as a layer 1 blockchain technology and the applications they cover in the ecosystem? - Can you also distinguish between Solana Foundation and Labs and talk about your role and coverage there in the Asia Pacific? - Can you talk about the interesting innovations from Solana, for example, the recent launch of a developer web3 mobile phone? - Can you talk about the Solana ecosystem in India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, for example, the developer activities and how the Solana foundation and labs support them? - What is a typical day for you to work and energize communities in the Asia Pacific region for Solana? - Can you share interesting projects that arise out of the Asia Pacific? - Example: [UXD Stablecoin](https://uxd.fi/?ref=analysepodcast.com) project and web3 gaming. - As Solana is an L1 blockchain similar to Ethereum, Avalanche, and Binance BNB chain, how does the chain differentiates itself from the other L1s? - How do you see the L2 chains from Ethereum such as Optimism and Arbitrum and even zero knowledge EVM side chains like Polygon shaping up as competition against Solana in transaction speed? - What is the one thing you know about Solana and the web3 market that many do not know? - I understand that you are also an investor in different crypto and web3 companies. What do you think about the different funding mechanisms, for example, equity, token, or a mixture of both? - What is your mental model when it comes to the valuations of companies in this space? Given the recent meltdown in the crypto lending market, the valuations have gone down significantly, how does it evolve your thinking in valuations? - Currently, ChatGPT by Open AI has spurred venture capital and investors away from web3\. What is your advice for builders who have invested their efforts in web3? - As we went through a turbulent year in 2022 with the implosion of FTX collapse, what are your reflections on the impact of Solana? - What does great look like for Solana in the Asia Pacific? ### Closing - What recommendations can you give that have inspired you recently? - Akshay's recommendations: [The Cryptopians](https://laurashin.com/book/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Laura Shin and [the Unchained Podcast](https://laurashin.com/podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/GsktnQaDNtM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/expanding-solana-to-the-international-community-web3/id914868245?i=1000600399195&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1wVdPsxx4LLCiQmQWTx8hf?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/expanding-solana-to-the-international-community-web3-investing-akshay-bd?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFv-6G9M?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/414%5FExpanding%5FSolana%5Fto%5Fthe%5FInternational%5FCommunity%5F%5FWeb3%5FInvesting%5Fwith%5FAkshay%5FBD.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/expanding-solana-to-the-international-community-web3-investing-with-akshay-bd-212089198?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NTA1MDhjNDAtMWU2OS00YjVlLTg1NGMtOThkM2MyYzMyOWQ5?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjYxvv93KH9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Expanding-Solana-to-the-International-Community-%26-Web3-Investing-with-Akshay-BD-id2859782-id572438594?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### HERE Technologies and Digital Map-Making in the Asia Pacific with Jason Jameson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/here-technologies-and-digital-map-making-in-the-asia-pacific-with-jason-jameson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:07.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jason Jameson, general manager, and senior vice president for Asia Pacific in HERE Technologies discussed the company's focus to broaden the location intelligence across the Asia Pacific and talked about the key trends in the digital map-making space. We start off with Jason's background from IBM to HERE Technologies and then dive deep into the current developments in the region. Last but not least, he shares where the digital map-making industry will be heading and how it will impact autonomous driving and smart cities in the future. --- > "Mapping the world is really an infinite exercise. We're on this journey to create this digital representation of the physical world - buildings, places, things, everything. This is going to be very critical. And that extra precision, that greater resolution as we support businesses to comply with all sorts of things - be it even new regulations ... And then of course, the other key trend is the ongoing rise of AI and automation. And as you have better insights and location, that will support better optimization of supply chains and those smart cities and all sort of stuff that will lean on location technology." - **Jason Jameson** ### Introduction - Jason Jameson, General Manager and Senior VP for Asia-Pacific at HERE Technologies **([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-jameson-0994a2109/?ref=analysepodcast.com))** - We begin with your origin story. How did you start your career? - What are the important lessons you can share based on what you have learned through your career journey? ### [HERE Technologies](https://www.here.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Digital Mapmaking in Asia - Can you provide a comprehensive overview of HERE Technologies, its global vision and mission, and what it set out to do? - Can you talk about the total market opportunity and applications for digital maps and what it means for the Asia Pacific region? - How are digital maps produced in the Asia Pacific region and incorporated into HERE technologies for your customers? - What is the one thing you know about digital map-making that many do not know about the business? - What is the business footprint for HERE Technologies in Asia Pacific? - What are the customer stories you can share about HERE Technologies in Asia Pacific? - Recently HERE Technologies announced the development of UniMap. How did the company decide to develop and what is its product differentiation against other mapmakers in the market? - How does a business benefit from using or building on Unimap? - Let’s switch gears to discuss the broader landscape for digital mapmaking. Can you share the present state and key trends in the digital mapmaking business and how they evolved from 10 years ago? - Given that a majority of the landscape in the Asia Pacific is in remote areas (Australia and Indonesia), how do we accurately map those areas? - Given the rise of decentralization technologies such as blockchain, what are your thoughts if there is a web3 company challenging the current digital mapmaking space? - What does great look like for HERE Technologies? ### Closing - What recommendations can you give that have inspired you recently? - Jason's recommendations: [James Watt Space Telescope](https://www.nasa.gov/mission%5Fpages/webb/main/index.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [National Ignition Facility's achievement with Nuclear Fusion](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.20221213a/full/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/xKI41lAObkI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/here-technologies-and-digital-map-making-in-the/id914868245?i=1000599188926&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0x31KAr8g4yiwoxsmtJ9ZI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/here-technologies-and-digital-map-making-asia-pacific-jason-jameson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtU5nBM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/413%5FHERE%5FTechnologies%5Fand%5FDigital%5FMap-Making%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FJason%5FJameson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/here-technologies-and-digital-map-making-in-the-asia-pacific-with-jason-jameson-211834127?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NzQ4MGQ2ZDctYjUxZi00NjdjLWI3N2EtYjAyZjhhYjQzM2E3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiorZqTwI%5F9AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/HERE-Technologies-and-Digital-Map-Making-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Jason-Jameson-id2859782-id570575575?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Qualtrics & Experience Management in the Asia Pacific with Brigid Archibald URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/qualtrics-experience-management-asia-pacific-with-brigid-archibald/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:06.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Brigid Archibald, managing director in Asia Pacific and Japan, Qualtrics, joined us in a discussion on the business footprint of the experience management company and the key trends in the region. We started with Brigid's background and her experience in B2B sales and then proceed into how Qualtrics is working with companies to improve their customer experience. Last but not least, she discuss the key trends in the experience management space & advised what the potential call to action are for executives. --- > "I think there are three main things. The first is the continuation of the strategic investments that we are making across the regions in the markets that we serve. The second one is an acceleration of our ecosystem, because our partners play such an important part in the success of our customers and also themselves and us as well, and the third one is really innovation. The constant innovation on our platform is critical and there is no sign of that slowing down as we look forward to 2023 and beyond." - Brigid Archibald ### Introduction - Brigid Archibald, Managing Director, Asia Pacific & Japan, Qualtrics ([@BrigidArchibal8](https://twitter.com/BrigidArchibal8?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brigidarchibald/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - From understanding your career on Linkedin, you have worked in many key enterprise companies before Qualtrics: Salesforce and HP. What have you learned from these companies in thinking about business-to-business sales? - What key lessons can you share with my audience in your career journey? ### Qualtrics & Experience Management in the Asia Pacific - Can you provide a comprehensive overview of Qualtrics as a global company (which was acquired by SAP in 2019 and taken to public listing in NASDAQ) which worked with 17,000 organisations globally to manage their customer and employee experience programs? - Can you introduce the concept and the total market opportunity of experience management which is the practice of designing & improving products, services & experiences for businesses and other organizations and how Qualtrics deliver value for their customers? - What are the problems which Qualtrics are purporting to solve for the customers? - How does Qualtrics help customers determine and resolve bad user experiences? - What are the profiles of customers who will adopt Qualtrics? - In Asia Pacific, can you describe some key customers in different countries who are adopting Qualtrics and what are their use cases? - What is the one thing you know that many people do not know about Qualtrics? - Based on the report that Qualtrics has published on annual employee experience trends recently, what are the critical trends in redefining how employees are thinking about work in the Asia Pacific & Japan (Reference:[ The 5 EX trends to know in the Asia Pacific & Japan in 2023](https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/5-ex-trends-2023-apj/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - What should executives do in response to these trends? - Another study suggested businesses in Southeast Asia are risking US $165 billion in revenue due to poor CX. What’s your advice to leaders to address this? - We’ve seen a lot of change in CX and EX over the last few years - what do you think is ahead for 2023? - What would great look like for Qualtrics in the Asia Pacific for the next few years? - The references which were mentioned during our conversation: 1/ [Qualtrics 2023 Employee Experience Trends Report](https://www.qualtrics.com/au/ebooks-guides/2023-ex-trends-report/?ref=analysepodcast.com), 2/ [Qualtrics 2023 Global Consumer Trends Report](https://www.qualtrics.com/au/ebooks-guides/2023-cx-trends-report/?ref=analysepodcast.com), 3/ [Experience management in action](https://www.qualtrics.com/xmplus/x4/?ref=analysepodcast.com), 4/ [Centre for Experience Management Innovation in Singapore ](https://www.qualtrics.com/news/sap-qualtrics-and-the-singapore-economic-development-board-commits-s14-1-million-to-establish-singapore-as-regional-hub-for-experience-management-innovation/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Closing - Do you have any recommendations which have inspired you lately? - Brigid's recommendations: [A New Way to Think by Roger Martin](https://www.amazon.com/New-Way-Think-Management-Effectiveness/dp/164782351X?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/v1x%5FABz5CQM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/qualtrics-experience-management-in-the-asia-pacific/id914868245?i=1000597647251&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1gmkjS5bqAftbI3xxVta5F?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/qualtrics-experience-management-brigid-archibald?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsK7fYA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/412%5FQualtrics%5F%5FExperience%5FManagement%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FBrigid%5FArchibald.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/qualtrics-experience-management-in-the-asia-pacific-with-brigid-archibald-211446071?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NzE0NWE1NWItMTdhNi00YTE4LWFkOTgtNGE5NTczYmM2ZmNj?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwi47pqU9%5FX8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/channel/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-id2859782?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### True Global Ventures & Web3 Investment Outlook in 2023 with Kelly Choo URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/true-global-ventures-web3-investment-outlook-in-2023-with-kelly-choo/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:06.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Kelly Choo, the founding partner from True Global Ventures shares the backstory of how the fund came together with its investment thesis on investing in repeat serial entrepreneurs. Kelly begins with the story of his career journey as both an entrepreneur and now as an investor, and how he works with his profile companies. Last but not least, he offers his perspectives on the investment outlook for web3 and crypto companies in 2023\. --- > "I think great looks like a combination of a few things. We always talk about how a startup hits product market fit and then essentially gets a flywheel going in terms of value and everything. So I think 'great' at True Global Ventures from my point of view is us finding that company, that team of serial entrepreneurs and an idea that can essentially change the industry, convincing them that we as a fund can help them to grow exponentially, globally. And us actually helping them to not only close a round with us, but also to grow, and also to close the next round of funding and all subsequent rounds of funding till the ultimate exit. And having that kind of chemistry that maybe after many years later when they come back and look at us they say, 'Hey, thanks for the ride.' We really treasure what you do. And in my new startup, say for example (Because these are serial entrepreneurs that cannot usually sit still, right?) I would love for you True Global Ventures to be our investor again." **\- Kelly Choo** ### Introduction - Kelly Choo, Founding Partner, [True Global Ventures](https://www.tgv4plus.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@kellychoo](https://twitter.com/kellychoo?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellychoo/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What have you learned most from your different entrepreneurial stints specifically for Brandtology and Neeuro? - What are the lessons as an entrepreneur that you would draw from your experiences or would have done something differently if it had not worked out? - What are the important lessons you can share with my audience in your career journey? ### [True Global Ventures](https://www.tgv4plus.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Web3 Investment Outlook in 2023 - What is the inspiration behind setting up True Global Ventures? - As a founding partner to the fund, how did you bring together the fund and start investing in companies? - What is a typical day like for you as an investor of a fund? - Is there an investment thesis when you first started the fund? - How do you select founders and startups to invest in? - Reversing the question, what are the red flags you look out for? - Can you talk about some of the highlights of your fund, for example, I understand that the fund invested in 2 unicorns: Animoca Brands and Forge. - Is the funding on the crypto/web3 or metaverse companies intentional and something which the fund has discovered these companies? - How do you look at web3 or crypto companies with different mechanisms of funding, for example, token, equity or a mixture of both? - What are your thoughts on NFTs? Are there interesting use cases which you think people have not explored? - What is your mental model in thinking about the valuation of the companies you invest in? - What are the other interesting companies on the portfolio which we have not spoken about? - How do you manage and work with your portfolio companies? - Coming from an entrepreneurial and operator background, how do you help your companies as a board member? - How do you work with the LPs of your fund? - What is your outlook for 2023? \[Reference: [TGV's 5 web3 Megatrends for 2023](https://www.tgv4plus.com/tgvs-5-web3-megatrends-for-2023.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - What does great look like for True Global Ventures? ### Closing - Do you have any recommendations which have inspired you lately? - Kelly's recommendations: Conversations with people who shared common goals and ideals, for example, the recent lunch between Kelly and Bernard where they discuss their aspirations, ideas and what they are working on. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/kupSCSAr2P8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-global-ventures-web3-investment-outlook-in-2023/id914868245?i=1000596212507&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4MYO5PW5nJw74PfKpkyrST?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/true-global-ventures-web3-investment-kelly-choo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsQmCr8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/411%5FTrue%5FGlobal%5FVentures%5F%5FWeb3%5FInvestment%5FOutlook%5Fin%5F2023%5Fwith%5FKelly%5FChoo.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/true-global-ventures-web3-investment-outlook-in-2023-with-kelly-choo-211120449?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/N2I4ZDM0ODEtYmMxMi00OGRmLThjZWUtOGZiNjEwMmM4NTM0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwigmKCJ1d%5F8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/True-Global-Ventures-%26-Web3-Investment-Outlook-in-2023-with-Kelly-Choo-id2859782-id565189020?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### ### ### InsurTech in the Asia Pacific with George Kesselman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/insurtech-in-the-asia-pacific-with-george-kesselman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:05.000Z Fresh of the studio, George Kesselman, the president & founder of Insurtech Asia Association, joined us to discuss the intersection of insurance and technology in the Asia Pacific. We began with George's work in the insurtech industry from a start-up co-founder to a corporate executive in a leading Chinese firm within the Asia Pacific region. Then he dived deeper into the challenges, key innovations such as China's famous waterdrop model, use cases and important trends in insurtech that are converging with web3 and crypto. Last but not least, George shared a glimpse into the future of insurtech for the next few years. --- > "So there's a tremendous amount of friction that exists there because I think we're still at the point where we're. We're using traditional insurance products that have been invented in the 1970s and trying to add this digital layer on top of it. So where InsureTech has struggled, I would say, is unless there is a significant amount of product innovation. It's very hard to really optimize the product. So, becoming a full stack was one of the hypotheses that the InsureTechs pursued, and we've seen those take off quite well in states in China, and now India is another market that's really progressing very well." - **George Kesselman** ### Introduction - George Kesselman ([@mr\_insurtech](https://twitter.com/mr%5Finsurtech?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/insurtech/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), President and Founder of InsurTech Asia Association ([main site](https://www.insurtechasia.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@InsurtechAsia](https://twitter.com/InsurTechAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - How did you start your career? - Can you talk about your role with the InsurTech Asia Association? What does the association do? - In the distant past, you were a startup co-founder and CEO of Anapi which was acquired by AETNA insurance brokers, what did that startup experience teach you? - You have just finished a tenure as the chief commercial officer with ZA Tech (or ZhongAnn which is a well-known insurance giant in China), what have you learned from that experience? - What are the important lessons you can share with my audience in your career journey? ### InsurTech in the Asia Pacific - To start our conversation, I want to start off by getting you to define InsurTech and how does technology interweave with the insurance industry? - Can you describe the total market opportunity for the insurance market in the Asia Pacific? - Can you distinctly talk about the different types of insurance markets, for example, consumer life and term insurance, reinsurance, and insurances pertaining to businesses, for example, cybersecurity insurance? - What are the key challenges that the insurtech is trying to solve? - Can you tell me one thing you know that most people do not know about the insurance and insurtech industry? - The insurance market is one of the slow-moving industries due to regulation and legislation in different countries. Can you explain the barriers to entry and explain why it is difficult for start-ups to attack the market? - How is the regulation of insurance differing and evolving across markets in the Asia Pacific? - What should an insurtech company look out for and what will be the advice you give these companies in dealing with governments? - Can you provide some interesting insurtech companies across the Asia Pacific? - What are the key trends in the insurtech market which you find exciting about the space? - How about the traditional insurance companies thinking of adapting the insurtech into their current operations in the midst of digital disruption? - There are some advances in China in insurtech specifically from tech companies such as Alibaba and traditional companies like ZhongAnn and Ping An). Can you talk about the water drop model and other new business model innovations they have done? - Let’s talk about decentralized finance, crypto and web3\. Despite the economic downtown, what are your thoughts on applying blockchain technologies to insurance? - Does the concept of decentralized insurance work given that it is written in a smart contract? - What do you think that most crypto startups get wrong about the insurance business? - What is the future of insurtech in the Asia Pacific? ### Closing - Do you have any recommendations which have inspired you lately? - George's recommendations: [Daniel Pink, "Drive"](https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/k7cHayS0Ccw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/insurtech-in-the-asia-pacific-with-george-kesselman/id914868245?i=1000594523376&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6UyEAmQPg9uC4CSfwI0Ya5?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/insurtech-in-the-asia-pacific-george-kesselman?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsqdFdU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/410%5FInsurTech%5Fin%5Fthe%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FGeorge%5FKesselman.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/insurtech-in-the-asia-pacific-with-george-kesselman-210805273?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/Nzk5ZTJhNzgtZDJiMy00NDQwLWFkMDYtYjBlMGM2NjY0ODU0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiopN%5FA0sr8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/InsurTech-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-George-Kesselman-id2859782-id563078858?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Climate Alpha with Parag Khanna URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/climate-alpha-with-parag-khanna/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:05.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Parag Khanna, founder and CEO of Climate Alpha unveils the story of his new company which leverages artificial intelligence to decipher how real estate will transform amid climate adaptation. Parag offers his observations on the ongoing global issues from the potential resolution of the Ukraine-Russia war to the easing of tensions on the Taiwan straits. Last but not least, he comments on the recent COP27 conference and offers his view on what great looks like for Climate Alpha. --- > "The vision is to future proof global real estate. Now why real estate? One thinks that it's just one industry, right? Well, it's 300 trillion dollars. There is no asset class, no industry that is remotely as valuable. Not all the treasury bonds in the world, not all the stock exchanges in the world, and not all the real GDP of the economies of the world add up to the value of global land and property assets: 300 trillion dollars. Now, what will any of it be worth tomorrow, one year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now in different places in the world? We used to have a pretty stable answer to these questions. The truth is the valuation model is broken because it's very antiquated, and not only is the appraisal or valuation model broken, it's even more broken because it never took climate change into consideration." - **Parag Khanna** ### Introduction - [Parag Khanna](https://www.paragkhanna.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@paragkhanna](https://twitter.com/paragkhanna?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/pub/parag-khanna/28/381/689?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ personal site](http://paragkhanna.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Founder and Managing Partner of [Futuremap](https://futuremap.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com), CEO of [Climate Alpha](https://climatealpha.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and author of “[Move](https://www.amazon.com/Move-Forces-Uprooting-Parag-Khanna/dp/1982168978?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, “[The Future is Asian](https://www.amazon.com/Future-Asian-Global-Twenty-first-Century-ebook/dp/B07F148BBX/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=2Q5I7I850AQ2I&keywords=The+future+is+asian&qid=1647672609&s=books&sprefix=the+future+is+asian%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C363&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com)” - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### Observations on Global Geopolitics - There has been a lot happening across the globe. Given that you are one of the avid geopolitical watchers in the world, what are your thoughts on the following issues? - China's COVID-zero policy and the ongoing protests. \[Please note that the interview was done in early December before the Chinese government switched gears and started opening up in mid-December\] - China and US sabre-rattling around Taiwan - Any potential chance of a peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine - Is an energy crisis coming to Europe in this winter? ### [Climate Alpha ](https://climatealpha.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Let’s establish the baseline before we go deep into Climate Alpha. I have your friend Ravi Chidambaram on the show where he talked about the article you both collaborated on[ investing in climate adaptation](https://hbr.org/2022/08/its-time-to-invest-in-climate-adaptation?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Harvard Business Review. To refresh my audience, why should we invest in climate adaptation, and how this leads to the market opportunity of Climate Alpha? - What is the inspiration behind starting Climate Alpha? - As the CEO of Climate Alpha, what is the vision and mission of the company? - How does the AI platform in Climate Alpha work and what does it purportedly solve for the customer? - What are the customer profiles which Climate Alpha targets? - What are the specific features in the product suite in Climate Alpha and how do they leverage analytics and AI to make forecasts and predictions? - Can you share some customer highlights who have used Climate Alpha? \[Customer stories\] - What are the revenue sources for Climate Alpha? - How do you scale Climate Alpha as it grows and where do you see the business multipliers come from? - What factors will you look out for and will change real estate in the next few decades due to climate change? - What are the likely scenarios for humans to solve climate change? What is your optimism after the recent COP 27? - What does great look like for Climate Alpha? - It’s the end of the year 2022, and what do you look forward to in 2023? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Parag's recommendations: [Corruptible](https://www.amazon.com/Corruptible-Who-Gets-Power-Changes/dp/1982154098?ref=analysepodcast.com): Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klass - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/IUpolqIUjw8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/climate-alpha-with-parag-khanna/id914868245?i=1000591856624&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0NyhFVktK1DlYOMLKfSeDH?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/climate-alpha-with-parag-khanna?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtXvFjY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/409%5FClimate%5FAlpha%5Fwith%5FParag%5FKhanna.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/climate-alpha-with-parag-khanna-210425509?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NjA2ZmZhMmItYTZhOS00Nzg4LWE1MWMtMGY5NjBlZTljZWUx?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiw4eyynaj8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Climate-Alpha-with-Parag-Khanna-id2859782-id559646727?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### State of Analyse Asia in 2022 URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/state-of-analyse-asia-in-2022/ Last updated: 2023-01-01T01:12:50.000Z For the first time in 8 years, we review how the Analyse Asia podcast has performed in 2022\. We want to discuss the key highlights and experiments we have done and share our perspectives on what we could have done differently. We reframe our vision and offer glimpses of what we want to achieve in 2023 and set ourselves up for success in the future. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2022/12/Screenshot-2022-12-25-at-5.12.11-PM.png) The cumulative growth of the Analyse Asia Podcast by the number of plays from Sep 2014 to Dec 2022. ## Our growth and key highlights in 2022 As I regained the helm of the podcast in Sep 2021 with a two-year and three months break, the whole of 2022 is to restore the monthly growth rate from 2014 to 2019\. We produced 46 episodes in 2022, with 8 recurring guests and 37 new guests. We hit [episode 400 ](https://www.analysepodcast.com/analyse-asia-china-with-carol-yin-bernard-leong/)with my former host, Carol Yin in Nov 2022\. In June 2021, we reached 2 million plays counted by the number of streams, downloads and plays across different platforms ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [SoundCloud)](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com). We achieved 213.52% YoY growth from FY 21 to FY 22\. Based on our current forecast maintaining the average number of plays per month, we will reach 3 million plays in March 2023\. It means that we are doubling the growth approximately half the time. Between Jan and March 2022, due to [the passing of my late father](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-my-late-father-shaped-career-bernard-leong/?ref=analysepodcast.com), our host took some time off before regaining the momentum to start the podcast production again for the rest of the year. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/2022/12/Screenshot-2022-12-27-at-4.12.41-PM.png) Analyse Asia on Spotify in 2022 Since Analyse Asia's founding, we focused on making a high-quality podcast for our audience. For the past eight years, we raised the bar for the quality of our guests invited to the show and made sure that we are a brand to the audience out there. For the year 2022, we maintained the quality and share a few key highlights in no order of priority: - **For the first time, we have an award-winning author who came on the show before his win**: [Chris Miller, author of "Chip War"](https://www.analysepodcast.com/chip-war-with-chris-miller/) to talk about the rise of Asia from the semiconductors industry point of view, who won the [FT book prize of the year 2022](https://www.ft.com/content/fa250523-bb2f-4265-a9d4-a43d48a469d7?ref=analysepodcast.com). We congratulated Chris on his success and we looked forward to other authors who would want to have a deep conversation about their work. We interviewed a few authors with their new books on the show this year: "Surveillance State" by [Liza Lin](https://www.analysepodcast.com/surveillance-state-with-liza-lin/) & Josh Chin, "Growth by Choice" by [Haresh Khoobchandani ](https://www.analysepodcast.com/autodesk-in-asia-pacific-growth-by-choice-with-haresh-khoobchandani/)(VP Autodesk APAC), "Don't Quit Your Day Job" by [Aliza Knox](https://www.analysepodcast.com/dont-quit-your-day-job-with-aliza-knox/) (former head of APAC for Cloudflare and Twitter), "Move" by [Parag Khanna](https://www.analysepodcast.com/move-with-parag-khanna/) and "Community in a Box" by [Mark Birch](https://www.analysepodcast.com/community-in-a-box-with-mark-birch/) (global startup community lead from Amazon Web Services). - **The key executives running the regional business for technology companies from Google to South China Morning Post have approached our podcast as their first port of call.** Since the re-start of the podcast in 2021, we have the following key executives in Asia Pacific who have graced the show to talk about their business footprint in the Asia Pacific and engaged us in provoking thought leadership. Since our restart, we have [Scott Beaumont](https://www.analysepodcast.com/connecting-the-next-2-5-billion-with-scott-beaumont/) from Google, [Dan Neary](https://www.analysepodcast.com/meta-what-the-metaverse-opportunity-means-asia-pacific-dan-neary/) from Meta, [Gary Liu](https://www.analysepodcast.com/south-china-morning-posts-digital-transformation-journey-web3-gary-liu/) (former CEO) from South China Morning Post who has [spoken to us twice](https://www.analysepodcast.com/south-china-morning-post-and-perspectives-on-media-with-gary-liu/), [Paul Marriott](https://www.analysepodcast.com/sap-in-asia-pacific-sustainability-the-future-of-work-with-paul-marriott/) from SAP, [Mitch Young](https://www.analysepodcast.com/servicenow-the-rise-of-digital-native-companies-in-the-asia-pacific-with-mitch-young/) from Servicenow, [Haresh Khoobchandani](https://www.analysepodcast.com/autodesk-in-asia-pacific-growth-by-choice-with-haresh-khoobchandani/) from Autodesk, [Ahmed Elhusseiny](https://www.analysepodcast.com/roche-pharmaceuticals-transforming-healthcare-asia-pacific-ahmed-elhusseiny/) from Roche Pharmaceuticals, [Bjarke Mikkelsen from Daraz](https://www.analysepodcast.com/daraz-bjarke-mikkelsen-south-asia/), and [Venkatash Saha from Wise](https://www.analysepodcast.com/wise-and-fintech-in-asia-pacific/). I am grateful to have them sharing an hour of their precious time with me and look forward to them coming back to the podcast. Sometimes, I get an additional one-hour private lunch with them privately to have a conversation on interesting topics in the region. - **The movers and shakers of Web3 and crypto companies in the Asia Pacific shared their insights and perspectives on this podcast, from builders of protocols and decentralized applications to crypto hedge funds.** [Yat Siu ](https://www.analysepodcast.com/animoca-brands-and-the-open-metaverse-with-yat-siu/)from Animoca Brands, [Andrew Vranjes](https://www.analysepodcast.com/blockdaemon-in-asia-pacific-proof-of-stake-with-andrew-vranjes/) from Blockdaemon, [Gabby Dizon](https://www.analysepodcast.com/yield-guild-games-the-crypto-gaming-metaverse-gabby-dizon/) from Yield Guild Games (YGG), [Aleksander Larsen](https://www.analysepodcast.com/axie-infinity/) from Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity, [Darius Sit](https://www.analysepodcast.com/qcp-capital-crypto-derivatives-investing-in-asia-pacific-with-darius-sit/) from QCP Capital, [Sandeep Nailwal](https://www.analysepodcast.com/polygon-with-sandeep-nailwal/) from Polygon, [Raj Gokal](https://www.analysepodcast.com/solana-with-raj-gokal/) from Solana, [Jacky Yap](https://www.analysepodcast.com/chain-debrief-enlightened-rats-metajam-crypto-crash-with-jacky-yap/) from Chain Debrief, [Gwendolyn Regina](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-bnb-chain-web3-with-gwendolyn-regina/) from Binance, [Alex Chung](https://www.analysepodcast.com/reality-platforms-and-decentralized-mapping-in-the-metaverse-with-alex-chung/) from Reality Platforms, [Cosmo](https://www.analysepodcast.com/genesis-potential-insolvency-ftx-collapse-with-cosmo-jiang/) Jiang, [Joyce Yang, Jin Kang & Daniel Kim](https://www.analysepodcast.com/global-coin-research-web3-101-with-joyce-yang-jin-kang-daniel-kim/) from Global Coin Research, [Rawson Harvety](https://www.analysepodcast.com/decentralized-finance-past-present-future-with-rawson-haverty/) from Reflection Digital, and even [Kyle Davies](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-3ac-demise-with-kyle-davies/) from 3AC. Despite the crypto crash this year, we remain optimistic and remind ourselves that we are in a period where it is time to build for the next wave of innovation coming out in the next two to three years. I remain thankful for how helpful the crypto community has been in helping me source and bring guests on the show. - **We made an aggressive effort to document the venture capitalists, angel investors, key operators and startup founders in Southeast Asia since Sep 2021\.** On the startups in Southeast Asia where we set our bar high, we have [Liu Tianwei](https://www.analysepodcast.com/xfers-and-the-launch-of-xsgd-with-liu-tianwei/) from Xfers, [Choo Oi-Yee](https://www.analysepodcast.com/addx-private-markets-asia-pacific-choo-oi-yee/) from ADDX, [Kelvin Lee](https://www.analysepodcast.com/fundnel-valuation-liquidity-of-private-markets-in-southeast-asia/) from Alta Group (Fundnel), [James Chan](https://www.analysepodcast.com/ion-mobility-the-electric-vehicles-market-in-southeast-asia-with-james-chan/) from Ion Mobility, [Vidit Agrawal ](https://www.analysepodcast.com/gajigesa-and-fintech-for-the-unbanked-across-southeast-asia/)from GajiGesa, [JJ Chai](https://www.analysepodcast.com/rainforest-and-the-rise-of-ecommerce-aggregators-in-asia-pacific-with-jj-chai/) from Rainforest, [Turochas Fuad](https://www.analysepodcast.com/pace-enterprise-the-future-of-bnpl-and-fintech-in-asia-pacific-with-turochas-fuad/) from Pace Enterprise, [Ravi Chidambaram](https://www.analysepodcast.com/rimm-esg-investment-climate-adaptation-ravi-chidambaram/) from RIMM and [Kiren Tanna](https://www.analysepodcast.com/una-brands-ecommerce-aggregator-supply-chain-asia-pacific-kiren-tanna/) from Una Brands. On the venture capital and angel investors segment, we brought prominent angel investors such as [Yeo Yaw Shin](https://www.analysepodcast.com/two-corporate-cultures-angel-investing-in-southeast-asia-with-yaw-yeo/) (former Twilio and Alibaba Cloud), [Tony Zameczkoski, Alap Bharadwaj and Belinda Ong](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-xa-network-angel-investment-landscape-in-southeast-asia-belinda-ong-alap-bharadwaj-tony-zameczkowski/) from XA Network, [Tan Yinglan](https://www.analysepodcast.com/insignia-ventures-and-the-southeast-asia-ecosystem-tan-yinglan/) from Insignia Ventures, [Lim Kuo-Yi](https://www.analysepodcast.com/monks-hill-ventures-investing-into-an-uncertain-era-in-southeast-asia-with-lim-kuo-yi/) from Monk's Hill Ventures, [Michael Lints](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-southeast-asia-exit-landscape-with-michael-lints/) from Golden Gate Ventures, [Tiang Lim Foo](https://www.analysepodcast.com/forge-ventures-early-stage-investing-in-southeast-asia-tiang-lim-foo/) from Forge Ventures and [Brian Ma](https://www.analysepodcast.com/iterative-capital-building-the-entrepreneurial-community-in-southeast-asia-with-brian-ma/) from Iterative VC. Moving forward, we revise the bar for startup founders formerly at Series B since the start of the podcast and raise it to Series C unless they hit our exception criteria, for example, a reputable founder from the past or an established senior executive in any industry moving forward in 2023\. - **We showcased the key industry watchers and journalists covering important stories and surprising trends from key reports in the Asia Pacific.** Kay Lum (now with Iterative VC) talks about the [Zilingo debacle](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-zilingo-debacle-with-ka-kay-lum/), Terence Lee from Tech in Asia and Jon Russell (now a venture capitalist in Crypto.com) discuss the [challenges of press coverage in the Asia Pacific](https://www.analysepodcast.com/evolution-of-media-coverage-in-asia-with-terence-lee-and-jon-russell/). We have also covered the annual [E-Conomy SEA (Southeast Asia) Report ](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-e-conomy-sea-report-2022-with-stephanie-davis-and-florian-hoppe/)by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co where I interviewed Stephanie Davis (Head of Southeast Asia from Google) and Florian Hoppe from Bain & Co, [the SCMP China Internet Report 2021](https://www.analysepodcast.com/scmp-china-internet-report-2021-john-artman/) with John Artman (former Technode and now SCMP tech editor), [Jon Y](https://www.analysepodcast.com/tsmc-global-chip-shortage-with-jon-y/) who build some of the best videos on semiconductors in Asianometry, [James Crabtree ](https://www.analysepodcast.com/flashpoints-supply-chain-challenges-in-asia-pacific-james-crabtree/)(author of "The Billionaire Raj and executive director of IISS-Asia) on geopolitics in the Asia Pacific, and [Lillian Lee](https://www.analysepodcast.com/why-cloud-computing-saas-is-different-in-china/) on China's evolving SaaS and enterprise software landscape. - **The global thought leaders who I get to host now and then**, for example, [Benedict Evans](https://www.analysepodcast.com/technology-past-present-future-with-benedict-evans/), who writes about technology past, present & future, [Simon Kemp](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-digital-across-asia-pacific-with-simon-kemp/) who produced the global state of digital every year with We Are Social and Hootsuite and [Parag Khanna](https://www.analysepodcast.com/great-protocol-politics-with-parag-khanna/) on his thought-provoking foreign affairs article "Great Protocol Politics" explaining why crypto and web3 are shifting our paradigm in how geopolitics will evolve by the acceleration of present-day technology. - **We arrived at the 5th year running with Shai Oster from [The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) discussing** [**the state of China in 2022**](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-china-in-2022-with-shai-oster/). In fact, in a long distant past, we also have [Jessica Lessin](https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-275-the-information-with-jessica-lessin/), the founder of The Information on the show. Since our first engagement with Shai in 2017, we always reflect on the year that has passed on the most important events that shook the China technology ecosystem and predict what is to come in the following year. It was a milestone for us and I was often inundated with great feedback from the audience. Many listeners are now looking to this episode as an annual ritual. As China is re-opening its borders in 2023, we expect interesting news from the 2nd largest economy in the world. - **Last but not least, we experimented with the first video podcast on** [**our official Analyse Asia Youtube channel**](https://www.youtube.com/@AnalyseAsia/?ref=analysepodcast.com)(dormant since 2014, and now we are kicking it off) starting with [Kyle Davies](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-3ac-demise-with-kyle-davies/), one of the co-founders of 3 Arrows Capital, on the demise of the crypto hedge fund. This is the first but it is not going to be the last and we are moving forward with videos for some guests on the show for the coming years. We have placed [a high-quality transcript of the conversation inside the main post](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-3ac-demise-with-kyle-davies/). We are aware of the constant requests from our audience. ## Where are we heading? As the founder of the podcast, I have been asked about monetization of the podcast many times. My only north star when I first started the podcast, is to be the premiere podcast brand in the Asia Pacific. I do not know if we are there and given my status as a former Amazonian, it remains Day 1 for me. Over the last two months in 2022, I started to think deeply about the future of the podcast and begin to crystalize the flywheel for Analyse Asia, what's next for the next year & then the next decade, and what great would look like. **Our vision is to tell the story of Asia from our unique point of view.** From our vision, we focus **our mission to bring insights and ideas from important business, technology & media stories to educate, inform and enable our customers to make key business decisions in the Asia Pacific market**. We aim to help them understand why Asia is the most dynamic and fastest-growing region in the world. The business, technology & media stories reflect best on why everyone out there needs to pay attention to our region. With that vision and mission in mind, we embark on a new journey with new forms of storytelling by evolving our podcast from an interview format to a multi-channel media network. If the key theme for Analyse Asia in 2022 is restarting the engine, the theme for 2023 will be **improving the growth engine**. By improving the growth engine and only right-size the set of goals, we might be able to monetize the podcast. For a long time, as the founder of the site, I have not worked on monetization because it is a side project and serves as a passion that keeps my entrepreneurial muscles going. Moving forward to 2023, the editorial team will focus on three key initiatives that will provide a roadmap towards monetization. That being said, if we want our customers to pay us, we must maintain a high-quality bar for everything else now as we did with the audio podcast in the past. We must ensure that our customers will acquire value with the money they pay to Analyse Asia. Here is my [simple plan](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simplicity-business-bernard-leong/?ref=analysepodcast.com) for Analyse Asia in the next year that will address the long-term plan: - **Shifting the podcast from audio to a multi-channel network with a laser focus on growing our audience with video only on YouTube**. Other than doing video interviews, I am looking at different types of story-telling there specifically in the analysis of key trends, the weekly summary of key stories in Asia tech and what they mean for technology, business and media globally from our point of view. - **Building the community by introducing paid membership to our community channel using either Slack or Discord and physical events**. I want to introduce the memberships model gradually in 2023\. The first set of benefits which I want to introduce consists of getting access to our new channel either Slack or Discord (and we are not decided yet) and high-quality text-based edited transcripts of past interviews that the audience has asked for. The differentiation for Analyse Asia is that we don't use an AI to just transcribe and leave it there with bad grammar but we edit it with human curation to provide the reader with the right context. - **Growing advertising through our media content.** We will first introduce how advertising will work for Analyse Asia audio podcasts before growing it on video. We are interested in brand-native advertising that our audience can identify with. We will share more details on our site in the next few weeks. Here are our **three key asks** to our fan base over the years before we jumpstart any form of monetization: - [**Subscribe to our Youtube channel** ](https://www.youtube.com/@AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com)and support us as we need to **reach 1k subscribers and 4k watch hours** before we can leverage the monetization model of advertising via YouTube. We will gradually step up to have a short form video per day in 2023 - **[Subscribe to the Analyse Asia main site as a free member](https://www.analysepodcast.com/)**, as we will be building a section on transcripts where free members will be able to read selected transcripts and paid members will be able to read all transcripts starting from Sep 2021 when we re-started the podcast. As I have said before, the memberships will come in Q1 2023, and you can decide to come on board when I have properly seeded the community there. - **Spread the word for us, and please share our videos with your friends out there and audio podcasts and follow us through these channels [Facebook](https://facebook.com/asiaanalyse), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/analyseasia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Tik Tok](https://www.tiktok.com/@analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com),** [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) **and** [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com). We don't share our podcasts daily on most social channels other than on Twitter daily. Yet, every day without fail since the beginning of our podcast, we curate and share the most important insights, infographics and key statistics through these channels at 9 am and 9 pm in Singapore time without fail. We need your help to spread the word out there. ### Closing The foundation work which we have built to jumpstart the growth of the Analyse Asia podcast will set us up for success in the next few years. The achievements in 2022 were built upon the last eight years of blood, sweat and tears, from sourcing guests, production work and distribution through various channels. Over the past year, I have migrated a significant chunk of repeatable work to a remote team which I can rely on them to get the train running. While moving forward, I am grateful for the support I have from my family and close friends who provide thoughtful comments on how we can improve for the future. For me and the editorial team, it remains [Day 1](https://aws.amazon.com/executive-insights/content/how-amazon-defines-and-operationalizes-a-day-1-culture/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Take care & stay safe, **Bernard Leong, Founder of Analyse Asia** **Editor's update on 1/1/2023:** We updated the metrics specifically the YoY growth for Dec 2022 after the year closes. ### How do we select and curate our guests on the show? URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/how-do-we-select-and-curate-our-guests-on-the-show/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T10:07:13.000Z For a long while, we have had enquiries from corporate communications leads from different companies to public relations (PR) agencies on how we select and curate our guests on the show. Here are the rules of engagement and our guidelines and red lines moving forward. --- From the start of the show, we insist on high standards to bring interesting guests to the show. Over the years, we are keenly aware that there are aspiring individuals who would want to be on the show but wants to know our criteria in selection. Hence we will provide our guidelines moving forward. It is important to understand that **Analyse Asia is a media outlet and not a news outlet**. We are not interested in breaking news and even if the guests want to announce something here, we won't object to them. What we are looking for, are the perspectives of business, media and technology in the Asia Pacific and we don't agree and disagree during the interview. We let the guest speak no matter how controversial they are but allow the audience to be critical and make up their minds after listening to or watching the podcast. First, there is only one decision-maker in the entire process, and that is our host and the owner of Analyse Asia, [Bernard Leong](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com). He works with the editorial team to discuss, select and curate who he wants to come on the show and makes the final call to who finally comes on the show. If you attempt to bypass him, please be warned that your guest will be rejected without fail. Another approach is to go through people he knows, trusts and values highly, or in simple words, referral. ### Types of Guests on the Analyse Asia show We have broken up our choice of guests into the following segments. **Senior Executives of regional and multi-national corporations in Asia:** In the past year, we have raised the bar to at least vice presidents, c-suite executives, CEOs and regional heads from known business corporations. We are interested to engage the corporation communications head of these corporations directly with us instead of working through their designated PR firms. In our experience with Google, Facebook, Servicenow and South China Morning Post, which we believe to be the best experience for our interviews to go smoothly without fail, it is best practice to just directly engage us from the corporate communications lead from the company instead of a PR firm. Typically, you need to come to us with a pitch. It must not be only about the business activity of the company in the region, but also a topic of interest which she or he can provide thought leadership, for example, environmental, social & governance (ESG), future of work, digital transformation or something we may find interesting. One interesting nugget is that we tend to have technology executives on the show as our founder has been working in the technology sector for a long time. **Start-up Founders**: Since the beginning, we have decided that the minimum bar for startup founders is that their startups must be venture-backed to at least series C financing with a run rate above USD$100 million. As per our recent state of Analyse Asia in 2022, we have raised the bar for start-up founders to have at least Series C financing with a revenue run rate above USD$100 million. Of course, there are start-up founders who may make the exception 0f being a seed stage, series A or B. Typically these start-up founders have an interesting background, for example, she or he is the former head of a business for a multi-national company for 14 years or an experienced senior executive from a well-known professional services firm. All the exceptions we have made for start-up founders in Series A all ended up in Series B later which in our view, are coincidental and we have been lucky for the few calls we made. Start-up media has used our podcast as a barometer to gauge who is going towards their next stage of funding. If you want coverage as an early-stage start-up, we advise that you tap into regional outlets such as Tech In Asia, E27, DailySocial in Indonesia, Technode and many others. Specifically for crypto and Web3 founders, we are open to builders of different crypto protocols and decentralized applications. We are keen to interview people who are sceptical of web3 and crypto as well. **Investors**: We cover all segments of investors from the early stage of investing to public markets. For the investor segment, we feel comfortable with prominent angel investors, venture capitalists and private equity investors. We are interested in covering family offices as well as the limited partners (LPs) to funds as well. Typically, the conversation will cover their investment thesis, how they select investments, examples of interesting start-ups or late-stage pre-IPO companies they backed and how they look at the different markets. This segment is open to crypto and web3 investors specifically to crypto hedge funds. **Journalists covering stories in the Asia Pacific:** We have the honour of hosting journalists from well-known media outlets such as Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, South China Morning Post, The Information, The Ken, TechCrunch, Technode, Tech in Asia, E27, The Straits Times, and Mashable. **Industry and Geopolitics Observers:** We cover analysts or interesting reports which focus on the global and key trends in the Asia Pacific. If you have a specific point of view on an industry with a report covering the region (and not one individual country in Asia), we are interested to speak to you. Examples include the annual e-Conomy Southeast Asia report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co, the State of Digital report by Hootsuite and We Are Social, Charles Reed Anderson on smart cities, future of work and Internet of Things (IoT) or Jon Y covering the semiconductors industry from Asianometry. That includes think tanks from the US or within the region who have a point of view on the supply chain and potential flashpoints, for example, the tensions between the US and China or the Taiwan issue in the region. **Authors:** We cover authors with interesting books that discuss key trends or stories specific to the Asia Pacific. We have also covered authors of books written by senior executives in the Asia Pacific with local context as well. **Global Thought Leaders and Influencers:** We are always happy to host global thought leaders, for example, Horace Dediu from Asymco, Benedict Evans, Ben Bajarin, and even CEOs of global companies who are passing by in the Asia Pacific. In the distant past, we have Gary Vaynerchuk. However, we will ask questions about your connection to Asia. **Regional Political Leaders & Senior government officials:** We are interested to interview any regional or global political leaders if they are keen to discuss business, technology and media in the Asia Pacific. We cover them without fear or favour as interviewees and will prefer respectful conversations. We are also open to senior government officials as we have done with an official from the Australian High Commission in the past on how Australia bring their startup companies into Asia through Singapore as a hub. We are interested in public policy discussions. We will update our criteria for guest selection and curation from time to time. ### Rules of Engagement for Corporate Communications & Public Relations Agency URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/rules-of-engagement-for-corporate-communications-public-relations-agency/ Last updated: 2026-04-03T04:03:52.000Z How do corporate communications lead from different companies or high-growth start-ups engage us? Here are the rules of engagement which you should read before communicating with our host. --- ### Why should your stakeholder come to Analyse Asia for an interview? We are the premiere and pioneer podcast brand in the Asia Pacific. We have completed up to 400+ episodes and hit close to 3M plays for the past 8 years distributed across three major platforms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify and SoundCloud. Our audience demographics are 40% from the United States, 10% from China and the rest split between the major cities of the Asia Pacific and Europe. They consist of investors, start-up founders, and senior c-suite executives from the US and Europe with a focus on investing in Asia Pacific. On the investor side, we typically have institutional, mutual and hedge fund listeners who have contacted us for due diligence. There are two types of start-up founders who are listeners to the show: one within the Asia Pacific region and the other from the United States and Europe thinking of expanding into Asia. We have also been listened to by think tanks in the US and Europe, who want to understand the Asian point of view (POV) in the current global geopolitics. We are mentioned as sources in the top-tiered US and European podcasts as the destination of the first call if you want to be in the Asia Pacific. Our host, Bernard has been invited to speak at global leadership summits for two Fortune 500 companies and closed-door sessions with important people who are patrons of the think tanks. He has discovered some key decision makers who attended World Economic Forum (WEF) are fans of his show through giving a talk on drones with an overflowing panel in Vietnam WEF 2018\. ### What is the understanding that PR agencies and corporate communications need to learn before engaging us? Please note that Analyse Asia is a boutique media outlet and our host, Bernard Leong is not a journalist but a media outlet owner with past start-up background with an exit of selling a media company to Tech in Asia, a known angel investor with the XA Network and corporate experiences as a senior executive with different firms: Vistaprint, Singapore Post, Airbus and Amazon Web Services. The style of the interview is non-aggressive unlike the western media and assumes a heart-to-heart conversation with the guest. Please understand that our host is a senior executive himself and he knows many senior executives out there. It is not in his interest to embarrass his guest if the executives understand game theory. If the interviewee does not treat the host with respect, she or he should not be here as well. ### How should PR firms engage us? Please do not send us press releases because we are not interested in amplifying your message. Press releases are so 20th century. If you want to help your client, please come up with a narrative and work backwards on how you want your client to be presented on the podcast. Here is the procedural flow of our engagement: - For corporate communications leads and PR agencies, you can email us here at this address: hello at analyse dot asia or approach [our host ](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)via a LinkedIn InMail. In the email, please state who you want us to interview, the biography of the individual with their LinkedIn profile and the topics which you want us to cover. - Upon receiving the request, if you do not see a response within two weeks, likely, your email does not gain the interest of the host and you can try again in a few months with a better pitch. For LinkedIn InMails, you are likely to get a direct rejection very quickly. For account executives and managers of PR firms, do not attempt to connect with our host if you have not met him in real life. This is met with the consequence of a 100% probability that he will reject your connect request followed by an InMail rejection. - If you get a reply from our host who is interested in interviewing your interviewee, please follow the five steps process described. - First, we agree on a date and time with your client who would come on as a guest. It is the prerogative of PR firms and the interviewee to send materials, for example, basic corporate information, case studies, and discussion points that they want us to cover. Our host is a senior executive and hence he will request either Tuesday or Thursday evenings 9-10 pm. - Second, the Analyse Asia editorial team will send a set of questions to be vetted and agreed upon between both sides. Note that the host has the right to double-click (or dive deeper) a question during the interview. We will not deviate from the main flow of the questions. - Third, during the recording of the interview, if the speaker made a mistake or misspoke, she or he can request that part be cut off. It will be removed with no questions asked. We can do that at the end of the recording. After that, the recording will be sent to our production team for editing. Please note that the host will do a final listen before it is released for publication. Our turnover is about 3-4 weeks for the published podcast depending on the backlog. - **How should you prepare your client (or the interviewee)?** Please make sure that the client is in a quiet room with a pair of headphones. Microphones are optional. One interesting thing to ensure high audio quality is to help your client to figure out how to record on his side. - **What happens if we are recording in a video podcast?** We are using zoom to record and hence we can only have the speaker and the host on the show. If we are recording audio, the PR and corporate communications lead can attend. - Here's our preference in engagement: **We prefer to engage the corporation communications head of these corporations directly with the guest instead of working through their designated PR firms**. In our experience with Google, Facebook, Servicenow and South China Morning Post, which we believe to be the best experience for our interviews to go smoothly without fail, it is best practice to just directly engage us from the corporate communications lead from the company instead of a PR firm. PR firms tend to be slow and they often try to dictate before consulting their customer. - Here's the **red line 1**: if any corporate communications lead or PR agencies attempt to ask for the edited recording to listen to before publication, we can choose not to publish the recording and move on. Hence do not try to challenge this rule or even bother to ask if you have engaged our host before. - Here's the **red line 2**: We will blacklist a PR agency that makes changes at the last minute, for example, a change of the original speaker. If the original speaker agreed to speak with us and could not make it due to unforeseen circumstances, we are happy to reschedule. What we do not entertain, is a PR agency having a CEO of a company agreeing to speak in our podcast and making a last-minute change to their CIO or COO and going to another podcast. The problem is not about going to the other podcast but the change in guests from the company. It means to us that the PR agency and the client does not respect the brand and reputation of the podcast. We will update these rules of engagement from time to time so that everyone gets a clear understanding of how we operate before engaging us. ### Genesis' potential insolvency & FTX collapse with Cosmo Jiang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/genesis-potential-insolvency-ftx-collapse-with-cosmo-jiang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:05.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Cosmo Jiang, founder of Nova River and host of Liquid - Web3 investing podcast with Global Coin Research, joined us to break down the consequences of FTX's collapse and how it triggered the crisis for Digital Currency Group (DCG) with the potential insolvency of Genesis and its crown jewel, Grayscale. Cosmo shared his perspectives on how the crypto and web3 space will evolve and the potential backlash coming from the regulatory authorities in different countries. Last but not least, he offered an optimistic outlook on how the narratives for crypto and web3 will look in the future. --- > "Yes FTX was a very large institutional player, Genesis whatever happens out there was a very large institutional player and so it'll take a lot of time for the fallout to fully play out. But just taking a step back and looking at the big picture, none of this has any impact on crypto's multi-year arc towards enabling innovation. Ethereum as a trustless, decentralized digital asset set on one layer is ground breaking that nothing will change. Tokens as a form of capital creation is a paradigm shift for business formation. Nothing's gonna change that. And talented builders are still continuing to come into the system and soon their work and their labor will bear fruit." **\- Cosmo Jiang** Genesis' potential insolvency & FTX collapse with Cosmo Jiang (Youtube) @2022 Analyse Asia **Editor's Note:** *This video podcast with Cosmo is recorded in the first week of December and will not take into account events which happened after 9 Dec 2022\.* ### Introduction - Cosmo Jiang ([@cosmo\_jiang](https://twitter.com/cosmo%5Fjiang?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosmojiang/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder of digital assets fund Nova River, Head of Strategy, Skolem, Member of [Global Coin Research](https://globalcoinresearch.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (GCR) and host of Liquid - Web3 investing Podcast by GCR ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/liquid-web3-crypto-investing/id1543419198?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### Genesis' Potential Insolvency & FTX Collapse - Let’s start with the FTX collapse first, what is the chronology of events that led to the collapse of FTX and the spectacular downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried aka SBF? - It is widely known that the relationship between Alameda Research and FTX is a tenuous one in the industry. How did Alameda Research end up being bailed out by FTX and that in turn, caused FTX to collapse? - One can think of the cryptocurrency exchange as a casino, and the casino always wins. What are the contributing factors that led to the collapse from your perspective? - I have read a couple of analyses from the Chopping Block in Unchained podcast and Bankless. One playbook that SBF is to launch new tokens such as FTT, and Serum and use Alameda to front-run the trade during the bull market, but when the market turns sour, the FTT price was too high and largely insolvent, people can dump the token and trigger a bank run in this case. What are your thoughts on why they screwed up here? - What is the fallout from FTX filing for bankruptcy? Will creditors, investors, and the users on FTX exchange get back their money? - What about the crypto protocols? For example, Solana was badly affected by the FTX collapse. - How about the VCs such as Sequoia who invested in FTX? For example, I was surprised by the lack of board seats and the minimum due diligence done in the process. To be fair to Temasek, and this is also mentioned in the Chopping Block podcast as well, they were the only ones who admitted that they were wrong in this one. - When you were here in [early July on the podcast](https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-crypto-meltdown-with-cosmo-jiang/), we discussed the collapse of 3AC, Terra-Luna, and Celsius. We explained how the algorithmic stablecoin model did not work and led to the crypto contagion. At that point, Sam Bankman-Fried was hailed as the JP Morgan of crypto in bailing out Voyager and BlockFi. In fewer than 2 weeks in early November, the world changed with FTX filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy and Alamada research becoming insolvent. During that conversation, we discussed Genesis and GBTC, because it appears that all the contagion started from this. Can you briefly introduce Digital Currency Group (DCG as we know it) which owns Grayscale (with the GBTC), Genesis (its lending arm), Coindesk (their media outlet), and who Barry Silbert is? - Can you describe how Genesis works as a lending institution and how the crypto hedge funds, for example, 3AC and Alameda Research, and the exchanges, for example, Gemini interacts with them? - Genesis was the largest creditor to 3AC with 1.2B as mentioned in the chapter 15 filing. The whole thing seems to originate with 3AC and Alameda Research being caught with GBTC going from trading at a premium to now trading at a discount (as of today about 40%). What is the mechanics behind this trade? - Of course, this was exacerbated by the Terra Luna collapse, asset prices falling as the Federal Reserve raised rates and the FTX collapse. Can you talk about the current situation of Genesis? - How do Genesis’ issues impact DCG given that there are intercompany loans, and what happens with Grayscale? - If Genesis files for bankruptcy, what are the likely scenarios for the crypto industry in general? In some sense, FTX collapse can be constituted to a crypto near-extinction level. - SBF, 3AC and Do Kwon all went on media tours to talk about their side of the story. What are your thoughts on whether they can redeem themselves? - Specifically for SBF and Do Kwon, if they were proven guilty based on the present allegations out in the open, do you think that they should go to jail? - Do you think that the exchanges going for a proof of reserves audit, for example, Binance will restore investors’ confidence? - Can the industry recover from this setback? Will there be a larger regulatory pushback? - What are the narratives that have sprung out from this collapse, for example, centralized exchanges are the problem and not DeFi, and not your keys, not your crypto and shitcoins? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/408%5FGenesis%5Fpotential%5Finsolvency%5F%5FFTX%5Fcollapse%5Fwith%5FCosmo%5FJiang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/genesis-potential-insolvency-ftx-collapse-with-cosmo/id914868245?i=1000590937377&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvITISM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fkvchFubniH9uqmDlKsHJ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/genesis-potential-insolvency-ftx-collapse-cosmo-jiang?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/genesis-potential-insolvency-ftx-collapse-with-cosmo-jiang-210199880?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OTE4NDQ1NzMtNzFhZS00MTliLWI4MDUtZWQ4N2QxZGQ1MWUx?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQjZjLnIz8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Genesis'-potential-insolvency-%26-FTX-collapse-with-Cosmo-Jiang-id2859782-id557469524?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3utjCAJip8&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The State of China in 2022 with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-china-in-2022-with-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:04.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information, returned for the 5th time in a row for his annual review of China for the year 2022\. Shai started the grading of his predictions last year and dive deeper into Sequoia China's current status, and potential tech IPOs of Chinese companies: Bytedance, Ant Financial and Didi. He examined how Apple and Tesla will navigate China amid tensions between China and the United States. Last but not least, he gave his predictions on China tech for the year 2023\. --- > "If you look at over 30 years, China equities have returned zero, basically gone up and gone back down to where it was 30 years ago. It was shocking. So the other thing that is hard to believe, I think we're entering a period of even greater uncertainty now than where we were six months to a year ago. Opening up is a huge gamble. the markets are rallying right now -- 'yay China is opening!' -- but at what cost?" **\- Shai Oster** ### Introduction - Shai Oster ([@beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Asia Bureau Chief from [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### The State of China in 2022 - What did you get right and wrong about your predictions about China for the year 2021? **Sequoia Capital in China** - The most interesting one is on Sequoia Capital, where one of the predictions was why [Sequoia Capital will split up from the star Chinese partner](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-sequoia-capital-could-split-from-star-chinese-partner?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[2022 Predictions in The Information\]. That did not happen. Based on what you know now, is it just a matter of time or not happening? - Despite that they still manage to [raise $8B in new funds](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sequoia-capitals-china-arm-seeks-8-billion-in-new-funds-defying-tech-rout?ref=analysepodcast.com) in March 2022, where are they deploying their capital in China now? Is it mainly directed towards the choke point technologies based on the direction under President Xi or the Little Giants program? - Is Sequoia Capital’s China dependent on [their version of the little princelings program](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sequoia-capitals-china-arm-employed-daughter-of-politburo-member?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) similar to how the investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have done in the 2000s to 2020s? - Why the funds are moving from China to Southeast Asia or India - We have heard that [Hillhouse Capital is now focused on growing outside China](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinese-investment-giant-hillhouse-capital-seeks-to-expand-outside-china?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) and likely focusing on Europe or Southeast Asia. What is the likely impact on China and in these regions of interest? - GGV has a setup in Southeast Asia but rarely invests in the region as compared to their recent writedown in 2021 on the edutech companies in China. Does that mean that they are just bullish on China? Where are they deploying their capital? - We see a congregation of talent and money into Southeast Asia from China, for example, Era7, a blockchain gaming is founded by a Chinese tech entrepreneur in the gaming space and was involved in the Chinese gaming scene for a while and is now the best gaming token in Binance exchange, how do you think that the Chinese influence affects Southeast Asia? **Can Chinese tech companies still go public?** - With Beijing easing its big tech crackdown, the Ant Group, Didi and to a certain extent, Bytedance have to wait for IPO clarity. What is holding them from going public? Is it just government intervention? - With the Chinese economy struggling due to real estate and COVID zero policy and of course, Xi getting his third term, does it mean that these IPOs will eventually happen in 2023? - Where are they going to list? Is it HKSE or Shanghai Starboard? What are the factors driving the choices of the companies? **Bytedance and their upcoming IPO status** - As Zhang Yiming has moved to Singapore according to The Information, where do you think Bytedance’s priorities will be coming into 2023? - Will Tik Tok eventually be banned in the US or other parts of the world, given the tensions between China and the US? - Will it finally IPO in the US? **China's current situation & status of US tech companies in China** - Will Apple and Tesla be forced to leave China given the current tensions between US and China over Taiwan and other human rights issues? - Are there areas where we should be optimistic about China in the tech startups and venture firms that have driven its rival status to Silicon Valley before the COVID-19 pandemic? - With the recent protests caused by the populace’s being upset with the COVID-zero policy and the Chinese government starting to ease and throw their local officials under the bus, do you think that the Chinese economy will recover and achieve stability? **Predictions for China in 2023** - What are your predictions for 2023? ### Closing - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited only in audio format by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/The%5FState%5Fof%5FChina%5Fin%5F2022%5Fwith%5FShai%5FOster.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-state-of-china-in-2022-with-shai-oster/id914868245?i=1000590096352&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFubn9bg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4r3nLRsjrC8jLCPJdOwNcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-state-of-china-in-2022?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-state-of-china-in-2022-with-shai-oster-209738121?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZTc5ZGQ3YmMtY2RkMS00OTJhLWE5MjItMjU3NDkyNTMwMjAx?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiIzPi08Pf7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-State-of-China-in-2022-with-Shai-Oster-id2859782-id555456909?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/IcB0yXiebsI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The 3AC Demise with Kyle Davies URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-3ac-demise-with-kyle-davies/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:04.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Kyle Davies, co-founder of 3 Arrows Capital aka 3AC, joined us in a discussion to discuss their firm's demise in June 2022 and its aftermath after filing Chapter 15 bankruptcy. He explained why and how the firm's thesis on the crypto super cycle failed with the Luna-Terra collapse and offered his thoughts on the current meltdown of the crypto markets amid the ongoing meltdown. Last but not least, he offered his responses to several allegations and why he challenged the hosts of the "On the Brink" podcast on a debate about BlockFi and his perspectives on the current state of crypto post-FTX-collapse. --- > "What we did instead is we did not. The market rallied. We were just clouded in our judgment and we were not scaling the firm the way we should have. So that was probably one big one. The other one was after the liquidation I should have just had blinders on to the media and focused on creditors only and probably just had a round table and said these are what I think the options are. What do you think the options are? And if that were the case I think we probably wouldn't be in bankruptcy. We would've found one of the solutions that I just mentioned." - **[Kyle Davies](https://twitter.com/KyleLDavies?ref=analysepodcast.com)** (@KyleLDavies) The interview in video format in Youtube ### Introduction **Bernard Leong:** Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and today's conversation totally deviates from my usual format. Joining me today from an undisclosed location, Kyle Davies ([@KyleLDavies](https://twitter.com/KyleLDavies?ref=analysepodcast.com)), co-founder of Three Arrows Capital \[or 3AC in short\]. Under normal circumstances, I would have him dig into his investment thesis, career highlights, and how he is helping the crypto ecosystem. But today we'll mostly focus on the demise of 3AC from Kyle’s point of view. One quick disclaimer before we start— I am a web3 angel investor and a retail crypto trader. I do not have any business dealings with Zhu or Kyle from 3AC except that we had a couple of lunches together talking about other things other than crypto. I have my own opinions on the recent crypto crash and the players involved, but I will not be sharing any of my own perspectives today. The aim is to let Kyle share his story from his perspective and let the audience decide for themselves where they stand. Of course, everything we discuss here does not constitute investment advice but is for informational purposes only. So do your own research. With that out of the way. Kyle, welcome to the show. **Kyle Davies:** Thanks for having me. By the way, not undisclosed. I'm here in Bali. **Bernard Leong:** To start, can you do a brief introduction of yourself and your background before you start 3 Arrows Capital with your co-founder, Zhu Su ([@ZhuSu](https://twitter.com/zhusu?ref=analysepodcast.com)) together? **Kyle Davies:** Sure. Zhu and I actually both started at Credit Swiss working on the equity derivatives trading desk. We were trading things like structured products, and convertible bonds and I stayed there for three years. Zhu moved to FlowTraders, which is an ETF, high-frequency trading shop. **Bernard Leong:** I have Arthur Hayes’ essay “[Number Three](https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/number-three-511f334d8fae?ref=analysepodcast.com)” talks about how you both started in TradFi. How did you switch to crypto after arbitrage trading on foreign currencies? **Kyle Davies:** Sure in many ways, the crypto market is very similar to the TradFi market. We looked at futures, forwards and spots. In other ways, it’s very different. If you look at the clearing model, and prime brokerage financing, these are completely different in it. We could actually spend about two hours going through this, but I'm sure you have some, other questions as well. **Bernard Leong:** Maybe the easiest way to get in-depth into the question is actually to help my general audience of this podcast who may not be into cryptocurrency. Can you explain what [market-making](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketmaker.asp?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [margin trading](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/margin.asp?ref=analysepodcast.com) are specifically in the context of crypto? **Kyle Davies:** Sure. Market making, very simply \[put\], is providing liquidity such that when a buyer comes in, a genuine buyer, there may not be a genuine seller at the price that they want. A market maker will warehouse that risk for a period of time and wait until they find a genuine seller. Margin trading is the idea that you can borrow funds and trade beyond what you have deposited in a specific account. ### The story of 3AC's Demise from Kyle's point of view **Bernard Leong:** This is where I want to talk to you about what happened to Three Arrows Capital, but from your point of view, and discuss some of the recent events that have been happening in crypto as well, specifically about the [FTX collapse](https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/11/12/the-epic-collapse-of-sam-bankman-frieds-ftx-exchange-a-crypto-markets-timeline/?ref=analysepodcast.com). The way I want to talk about the main subject of the day is to break the conversation into four parts. The first part is the investment thesis of Three Arrows and the trading before the Three Arrows Collapse, followed by the crypto crash with the immediate aftermath after the Terra Luna collapse, and then the filing of chapter 15 bankruptcy by 3AC. Lastly, I just want to get your perspectives on the current storm after the FTX collapse, depending on when we are publishing this podcast. I understand that both Zhu and you have this crypto [super-cycle thesis](https://www.theblock.co/linked/149111/su-zhu-says-his-supercycle-price-thesis-was-regrettably-wrong?ref=analysepodcast.com). Can you explain how you came to that thesis and how did it influence your hedge fund's trading strategies? \[Reference: [Zhu Su's tweet](https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1530160645294931973?lang=en&ref=analysepodcast.com) on getting wrong on the supercycle thesis\] > Supercycle price thesis was regrettably wrong, but crypto will still thrive and change the world every day > > — Zhu Su 🔺 (@zhusu) [May 27, 2022](https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1530160645294931973?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Kyle Davies:** So, the idea of a super cycle is that crypto is hitting mainstream adoption and it's somewhat analogous to, let's say the Web2 tech after the 2001 bubble where there's still volatility, there's still pullbacks but on, let's say a 30 to 40% pullback in the market. We would generally be a better buyer. I think that this is true to some extent, but the usage definitely is not keeping up. With some of the price action and furthermore from 2020 to 2022, there was really a massive credit bubble. I'm still bullish, but that's the idea. **Bernard Leong:** How does it influence your hedge fund's trading strategies because you believed in this crypto supercycle? It does give you some idea of how you look at decentralized finance aka DeFi or NFTs \[non-fungible tokens\]. **Kyle Davies:** We invested in a broad array of ideas and innovation in the space, whether it was DeFi or various protocol scalability solutions or NFTs. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. Generally speaking, the way it influenced trading is that we invested pretty continuously. We tried not to time the market per se, with an investment. We would just invest continuously through a cycle and with trading. Generally, on the 30 to 40% pullbacks, we were the better buyers. **Bernard Leong:** You have done an NFT fund, Starry Night Fund with Vincent Van Dough and Defiance Capital for the DeFi piece of the trading as well. **Kyle Davies:** That's right. We actually had several groups, so we had an OTC group that would focus more on the client-facing stuff. We had an arbitrage trading team that would look at the spreads. We had a venture-focused team and an NFT team as well. **Bernard Leong:** So as you set up all this, you probably also have governance and risk management as well? **Kyle Davies** Yes. So each group was run pretty independently, the idea being that if we wanted to invest in NFTs, let's say I had a broader thesis on it, but I was surely not the best person to do that, Vincent Van Dough, VVD was. He has probably one of the biggest NFT collections in the world. The same goes for Defi with Arthur Cheong ([@Arthur\_0x](https://twitter.com/Arthur%5F0x?ref=analysepodcast.com)). The same went for our client-facing business as well. **Bernard Leong:** One of the highlights is the GBTC trade you made in the past and you may have made a huge profit if you had taken the money off the table in 2021 when the bitcoin prices were at an all-time high because GBTC was trading at a premium and then moved into a discount. After all, others were copying your trade. [Matt Walsh](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpwalsh/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@MattWalshInBos](https://twitter.com/MattWalshInBos?ref=analysepodcast.com)) alleged the trade you made, given that you have told him not to [publish it](https://onthebrink-podcast.com/roundup-06-24-22/?ref=analysepodcast.com). That led to the speculation that you guys started to have problems when GBTC was trading at a discount and then turned to the Luna-Terra trade. Can you verify what happened then? **Kyle Davies:** Sure. So we actually did very well off of GBTC \[[Grayscale Bitcoin Trust](https://grayscale.com/products/grayscale-bitcoin-trust/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] and the [\[Grayscale\] Ethereum Trust](https://grayscale.com/products/grayscale-ethereum-trust/?ref=analysepodcast.com) as well, ETHE. Those were relatively bear market trades. Those happened in 2019, 2020 & 2021\. As we got bigger, we had to do a statutory filing for over 5%. As we are the largest holder of GBTC, we owned more than 5% of the trust. When we did that, the trust was still at a premium. So I was still okay to talk about it. That's because as you would subscribe, you would wait six months and then you'd be able to sell and harvest that premium. But when it went to a discount, I was very wary about talking about it. That's because as the largest holder, you're like a whale in the book. If you can decide to sell, \[or if\] you can decide to buy more, you can decide the timing of that. I just didn't want to give up any of my thought processes at that time, because if it leaked, the minnows would be front-running all of my trades, and that would've been Matt and Nick basically. **Bernard Leong**: And so that's the reason why you didn't talk, you didn't want to talk about it and leave it as it is. **Kyle Davies:** Yeah, exactly. So we did have a position, but I just thought given that the trust was at a discount and that the decision node wasn't as clear before, you would just sell it. You'd wait six months, you'd sell. But after there was a lot more game theory to it. I did not want to leak my hand. **Bernard Leong:** And also that is also not the reason why you turn to the Luna territory. That's a separate thing, right? Because there **Kyle Davies** Oh, the timing of that is like over a year different as well. By the way, that has almost nothing to do with it. **Bernard Leong:** There have actually been a lot of red flags raised on Do Kwon's algorithmic stablecoin. Specifically, Kevin Zhou from [Galois Capital](https://galois.capital/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@Galois\_Capital](https://twitter.com/Galois%5FCapital?ref=analysepodcast.com)) explained why[ the stablecoin is actually getting more and more insolvent as it got bigger](https://unchainedpodcast.com/the-chopping-block-kevin-zhou-on-why-he-knew-terra-would-crash/?ref=analysepodcast.com), I guess the question is not so much about why the trade was made, but I think the question to me is, you probably have read all the interviews out there, people raising red flags. Why did you both not pull out of that trade then, given that you have started to do a lot on the Terra/Luna USD ecosystem? **Kyle Davies:** Yeah, good question. So I have a lot of respect for Kevin. Kevin's a smart guy. That said, there are a lot of other people on the other side of that as well, right? When we invested, we participated in the LFG \[Luna Foundation Guard\] round which raised a billion dollars. We did USD$200 million of that. So that means there were a lot of other people that participated: Jump, Delphi, to name a couple. The argument at the time was that the world needed a decentralized stablecoin. This was the biggest one. In general, scale matters. It was known to be unsustainable with the high anchor rate. So the main usage of UST the stablecoin itself was to deposit into anchor and earn 20%. But that wasn't the only thing that they built. They built lots of other usage for UST and as that rate would be lowered to a more sustainable rate, the usage of the other protocols would go up and that would be more sustainable over time. **Bernard Leong:** What are the other things that were built that you mentioned here? Is it like, for example, Metaverse related stuff or NFT related? **Kyle Davies:** It was across the board. Payments were a big one. But frankly, the idea was an entire ecosystem. There was gonna be no one specific thing. You asked what happened. What ended up happening is that after our LFG round, the team made the decision to diversify the reserves from just Luna to Bitcoin and some other coins as well. But the way they executed it was not amazing. So they gave a lot of UST to Genesis, which then immediately lent it or sold it to other firms, which in a relatively coordinated fashion, just sold it immediately. The first question you asked \[earlier\] was, "What is a market maker?" A market maker's job is to hold a position and wait for a genuine buyer. There were genuine buyers. There was I was told 10 figures worth of buyers for UST. It was the best yield in the market at that time over at 20%. But that is not what happened. It was sold to immediate sellers who attacked UST and Luna at the same time, catalyzing the collapse. **Bernard Leong:** And also the CURVE protocol was also upgraded. **Kyle Davies:** Exactly. **Bernard:** That led to the different actions and triggered everything. **Kyle Davies** Exactly. Even after it was falling and UST had broken its peg, there were potential bailouts. There was a very serious offer from Binance as well as some others. And as we now know, with 20-20 vision, it would've been well worth it for everyone if it had been bailed out, right? I would've estimated at some point, it may cost USD2 billion to fix. That pales in comparison to the pain in the market that we feel today, right? But for worse it did not happen. Over time, this de-pegging cascaded and the cost would've gone up and it did not get bailed out. **Bernard Leong:** That's the trigger of the death spiral and leads to Luna-Terra's collapse. That's a USD $54 billion ecosystem down to almost zero. **Kyle Davies** In a matter of days **Bernard Leong:** Galaxy Digital was also involved in that LFG round. There are quite a lot of big players involved at that point in time. I want to ask this question. Is there a world where this would have worked? Kevin Zhou would say that they shouldn't have jacked up the yield rates to 20%, because as they get larger and larger, more and more people investing equals the fund actually becoming more and more insolvent. Kyle Davies: So it certainly should not have happened when it did. That was a product of the execution of the bitcoin trade \[or BTC\]. Whether it could have lasted a long time into the future is a better question for when the anchor rate was lowered, would the adoption that soaked up that USD have been sufficient to maintain the market capitalization? And I think we will almost never know, right? A decentralized stable coin is somewhat of a holy grail in crypto. While Bitcoin may be decentralized, Ethereum may be decentralized, censorship-resistant, and permissionless access. All the good stuff that crypto is, stablecoins are absolutely not. They have dollars in a bank account that are in an attack vector. So this is something that was an attempt at solving that and it failed. **Bernard Leong:** If the Metaverse would have worked, they would have real economies. You can think of fiat currency as an algorithmic stablecoin except that there's a \[gross domestic product\] GDP, roads built, buildings built, and actual economies working and running. That's why algorithmic stablecoins in some sense should exist, but maybe it just doesn't have the economy ready from that point of view. **Kyle Davies:** Perhaps I don't think it's the last time someone's gonna try. **Bernard:** I totally agree. When the Terra Luna collapse happened, the death spiral happened. What was your reaction at that point in time from being an owner of a fund and also vested in the actual ecosystem itself? **Kyle Davies** So, we didn't have any exposure to UST. We had exposure to Luna from the LFG round and for us, I was watching from the sidelines. I was not in the internal war room talking about the bailouts. I was maybe on the second or third rung of that and my reaction was that this really should have been bailed out. I thought about it then and I still think about it now. I thought the execution should have been handled in a better way. I think there was probably a coordinated attack as well as people had over the course of a year or more been shorting it, talking about the death spiral over and over again. They were wrong and they lost lots of money doing that. So I thought why? And, why this execution? **Bernard:** So since you mentioned the bailout, how would the bailout work? That means a couple of exchanges maybe together with Binance FTX then and let's say we contribute 2 billion together to stop this whole thing from happening, but it still requires the Terra or the Luna governance to agree to it. **Kyle Davies:** They could have just defended the peg, they could have just bought up to peg UST back to one. **Bernard Leong:** I see. **Kyle Davies:** The cost of that probably would've been around there. It depends on when they did it right. But... **Bernard Leong:** So you think that they actually moved too slowly, that's the reason. **Kyle Davies:** I think, they moved too slowly. There's also the prisoner's dilemma problem where you don't want to be the guy that does the bailout because you're bailing out everyone. **Bernard Leong:** Okay. **Kyle Davies:** So it goes. **Bernard Leong:** Are there any other trades that contributed to the collapse of 3AC then? **Kyle Davies:** Actually [Luna](https://www.coindesk.com/price/terra-20luna/?ref=analysepodcast.com) itself was not devastating for us. We just lost what we put in the LFG round. What was painful was the aftermath. This was the first time that two top 10 crypto coins had gone to zero. Going to zero is very different than going down to 80%. Going to zero means you can buy things at 20 cents on the dollar and then still lose all your money, right? I think the hole in the market from that was enormous and the aftermath was too. Just to give you an idea, I think Bitcoin was down -Bitcoin, ETH, L1's ([layer 1 blockchains](https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/what-is-layer-1-in-blockchain?ref=analysepodcast.com)) were down all 60, 70, and 80% each the credit market was freezing up. We had lots of recalls. We honoured all of them during that period. All of our spread trades, like we did lots of finance, balance sheet kinds of trades, GBTC, as we mentioned, but also staked Ethereum and some others. At this period, the [staked ETH](https://ethereum.org/en/staking/?ref=analysepodcast.com) broke its peg. All spreads blew out. The GBTC discount blew out. Everyone had similar trades and this was the catalyst, Luna. **Bernard Leong:** All the things that catalyzed and contributed to the collapse itself led to the 15 June 2022, although rumours have already started calculating into the press**.** When Su posted this [tweet](https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1536876343815983104?s=20&t=5%5Fitp0fo4pI8CrNW10Bl2A&ref=analysepodcast.com), “We are in the process of communicating with relevant parties and fully committed to working this out”. > We are in the process of communicating with relevant parties and fully committed to working this out > > — Zhu Su 🔺 (@zhusu) [June 15, 2022](https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1536876343815983104?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=analysepodcast.com) Were you both working with the relevant parties then? And what were you are trying to do? Were you exploring other alternatives before filing for [chapter 15 bankruptcy](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/chapter-15.asp?ref=analysepodcast.com) then? **Kyle Davies** Yeah, absolutely. So there were parties that we were talking to about injecting capital. And it would've been better for everyone. Frankly, the chapter-15 bankruptcy means that it's a full liquidation process. That means I am no longer in control of the company and the liquidator is. If I look at what some of our colleague's firms did, we could have had a better outcome. Things like[ debt-to-equity conversion](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/debtequityswap.asp?ref=analysepodcast.com), an equity injection or even a debt token, some of our other firms did. The reality was during that period, it was very hard to have that conversation. The media was going nuts. There were all kinds of speculation running around and it didn't happen. So the creditors and we both filed for liquidation. They beat us by one day. Our firm is in liquidation with their choice of liquidator. **Bernard Leong:** On those alternatives that you mentioned, I think they were only in discussion. They never got to fruition or even like close to, like maybe if we had pushed this button, it would have worked. **Kyle Davies:** In retrospect probably all of them were options. I can look at other firms now... arguably are in worse shape that is not in bankruptcy. I'm still hopeful that there is a way we're talking to investors and we're talking to creditors, both about a new venture, but also about dealing with Three Arrows. I'm hopeful that there's a way. **Bernard Leong:** Based on the aftermath of Three Arrow's filing of chapter 15 bankruptcy in early July, I think maybe personally, what have you learned and what would you have done differently? **Kyle Davies:** There are several things, but if I go far enough back I would say in mid-2021, two of our early partners that were part of this, wanted to retire and we bought them out. They left. In retrospect, we should have fought to keep them or replaced them with multiple people each to fill partnerships. What we did instead is we did not. The market rallied. We felt we were just clouded in our judgment and, that we were not scaling the firm the way we should have. So that was probably one big one. The other one was after the liquidation, I should have just had blinders on to the media and focused on creditors only, and probably just had a round table and said these are what I think the options are. What do you think the options are? And if that were the case, I think we probably wouldn't be in bankruptcy. We would've found one of the solutions that I just mentioned. ****Bernard Leong:** What are your rebuttals to the different allegations made and general reporting by crypto Twitter and the mainstream media? What have they gotten wrong? What are the rebuttals to the allegations, for example, moving money to a shell company, and posting the same collateral to different lenders? What do you say to them? **\[References\]:** *Here are the types of claims that the Analyse Asia editorial team referenced here: 1/ Claims that you have moved money out of 3AC into a company called Tai Ping Shan controlled by you both \[Source: [Forkast](https://forkast.news/3ac-founders-moved-money-out-allege-liquidators/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\], 2/ Claims that you swindled $1m from an HK crypto fund \[Source: [Tech in Asia](https://www.techinasia.com/arrows-accused-swindling-1m-hk-crypto-firm?ref=analysepodcast.com)\], 3/ Claims that you posted the same collateral to two different lenders \[Source: [On the Brink podcast](https://onthebrink-podcast.com/roundup-06-24-22/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Matt Walsh and Nic Carter\]* **Kyle Davies:** Let me address each one of those and then I can just talk more generally. The 1 million that was alleged to be moved was actually when our FTX account was liquidated. I believe it was moved from like a sub-account to the main account. FTX, I believe, settled that separately. So that was a completely false accusation. The second \[allegation was\] that we had pledged collateral multiple times. It has been six months. I've never heard from the liquidator. I've only heard that it is alleged by two firms: I've heard it alleged by FTX who now we know did multiple collateral pledges and by the [Castle Island guys](https://www.castleisland.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with BlockFi \[see [reference podcast](https://onthebrink-podcast.com/roundup-06-24-22/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\]. Both firms are in bankruptcy, legal action, regulatory \[and\] potential criminal \[indictment\]. So I have to believe that a lot of the media during that period was disingenuous and was not constructive in finding the truth. It was rather to put up smoke and mirrors or whatever. It was not productive. I think I was thinking too much about what people were saying at that time. I really should have been thinking about creditors and just said-- closed-door meeting, we talk with creditors, we figure this out. The third one, just for completeness, you said was moving money around. The very last person who put money in overtime, actually we had a reduction of capital. Like after Luna, for example, we had some recalls. A lot of the major creditors recalled a third of their book or something like that. The last person who put money in was Zhu, so we very much believed in our thesis right to the end. **Bernard Leong:** I think where we wanna get to is the Castle Island guys, because I listen to "On the Brink" podcast, even though I'm a fan, I want to be very fair here. So I think one of the things relating to BlockFi and based on your [comments on](https://www.coindesk.com/learn/blockfis-rise-and-fall-a-timeline/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Twitter. > Day 1 of waiting for [@nic\_\_carter](https://twitter.com/nic%5F%5Fcarter?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=analysepodcast.com) to accept a podcast debate invitation > > Looking forward to Nic’s pro Blockfi argument on: > > 1) custodial BTC > 2) interest bearing retail deposits / $100m settlement with the SEC > 3) superior risk mgmt / losing $0.5B prop trading GBTC and rest on FTX > > — Kyle Davies (@KyleLDavies) [November 27, 2022](https://twitter.com/KyleLDavies/status/1596695194619228161?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=analysepodcast.com) We know that [BlockFi has recently filed for chapter 11 for the second time](https://blockfi.com/November28-ClientUpdate?ref=analysepodcast.com) after they thought that they were in the clear with FTX being the white knight. Then FTX collapsed as well. Matt Walsh and Nic Carter from the podcast [created a bad boys segment for their podcast](https://onthebrink-podcast.com/roundup-06-24-22/?ref=analysepodcast.com) for Zhu Su and you. They play the \[bad boys\] music almost every week. Then you challenge them to debate on the podcast, which they subsequently refused even on neutral ground. They alleged that they don't debate with scammers. The heart of the debate, based on what I read from your tweets is, I think there were three things. One is about Nic Carter's pro-[BlockFi](https://blockfi.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) argument on custodial Bitcoin or BTC. The other one is the USD$100 million settlement with the SEC in 2021, and then superior proprietary trading of GBTC with money on FTX. What is the heart of your debate with them? What arguments would you want to lay out if that debate challenge was taken by them? **Kyle Davies** Sure. So the reason \[that\] we have talked on Twitter with each other is that I just find them extremely disingenuous and hypocritical. At the same time, while they're like speculating on us, which I've just said are like completely false accusations, they're supporting BlockFi still to this day. BlockFi, just for full clarity here was masquerading around as a bank in the US. They had to settle with the SEC for that. Taking retail deposits, paying interest on them. And then were actually acting as a relatively risky hedge fund. They followed us into GBTC - lost half a billion dollars... They fired their entire risk team and brought in someone new. Then they did some of the \[most\] riskiest lending. They just lent to two firms - us and Alameda Research, \[and\] maybe a couple of other small guys, eventually leaving all their funds on FTX. So Nic and Matt should really just look at themselves in the mirror and understand that they made an investment in BlockFi. They even put together an SPV for other investors in BlockFi and probably had their friends and others deposit \[money\] into BlockFI. That's unfortunate and sometimes we're wrong, but now we know that we're wrong. So at this point, I just find it absurd that they're so critical of us, without even speaking to us while still actively promoting BlockFi. **Bernard Leong:** Let's say, the [Bankless guys](https://shows.banklesshq.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ask you to go on a debate with them and they agree. **Kyle Davies:** I would happily debate with him. Yeah. **Bernard Leong:** So you would just lay out exactly all the set of things that you talked about, for example, the whole thing about they are just like a crypto lender. They're doing all this proprietary trading. They're just acting like a hedge fund. **Kyle Davies:** Yes, exactly. One of the unfortunate things in the space is sometimes people. They espouse the virtues of crypto, right? Sometimes you make a mistake, for example, investing in BlockFi. I invested in BlockFi early, and then as soon as GTC went on a negative basis, I sold it. For them it's unfortunate, but they're very much part of this Bitcoiner community - East coast Bitcoiner provincialism and somehow they got roped into the BlockFi scam and they're still promoting it. Guys, it was a scam. Get over it. That's the way the industry heals. **Bernard Leong:** I think BlockFi is actually very similar to Celsius. I mean from the way I was looking at the company. Based on your recent tweets on your creditors \[Zhu Su’s tweets on the [creditors](https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1599245108356210688?s=20&t=5%5Fitp0fo4pI8CrNW10Bl2A&ref=analysepodcast.com) and [StarkWare token warrants](https://twitter.com/zhusu/status/1546801270014758912?s=20&t=5%5Fitp0fo4pI8CrNW10Bl2A&ref=analysepodcast.com) and Kyle’s[ tweet on the creditors](https://twitter.com/KyleLDavies/status/1598964000556953600?s=20&t=5%5Fitp0fo4pI8CrNW10Bl2A&ref=analysepodcast.com)\], what are the current issues with the creditors given you call the [liquidators inaccurate](https://coingeek.com/three-arrows-founder-calls-liquidators-inaccurate-as-court-approves-probe-into-singaporean-entities/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and what do you both want to achieve by going public on the record with them? > Unfortunately our Liquidators seem to refuse to engage us constructively. After months, cash in a bank account, minimal asset sales, there have still been no disbursements to creditors. Let us speak openly with all creditors to find a better way forward. [pic.twitter.com/i2mJxsMcnu](https://t.co/i2mJxsMcnu?ref=analysepodcast.com) > > — Kyle Davies (@KyleLDavies) [December 3, 2022](https://twitter.com/KyleLDavies/status/1598964000556953600?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Kyle Davies:** As I mentioned, I think we would've been best off if we never went into a full liquidation. Either we'd be in a judicial liquidation or we'd be in, not a bankruptcy at all. If we had been able to do that from the start, the reality is we're here now. It has been six months. Like these guys, the liquidators have paid themselves a lot of money. They've distributed zero to creditors and have done very little in the asset sense. So I think there is a better way. There are potential restructuring kinds of ideas and or ways we can involve people with a new venture as well. But these are all discussions that I'd like to just have with creditors, and I think it's beneficial to all. **Bernard Leong:** But then what do you want to get if you just put it out in a public record? Is it just for negotiation or to set the record \[straight\]? **Kyle Davies:** No, I'm reaching out to them directly. But every once in a while, there was a hearing. The liquidators put blame on us so that they can continue doing what they're doing. I feel sometimes that I need to put a rebuttal out there. There are other ways that you can sell the assets and you've been sitting on cash in a bank account for like months now. That's not distributed, right? Furthermore, you didn't listen to what we said with StarkWare. For me, if I join these hearings, I don't get a voice at all. Sometimes I can't even speak. I think that there's a better way forward. **Bernard Leong:** So you hope that the creditors can directly talk to you and then try to tell the \[liquidators\]? **Kyle Davies:** I am slowly making the rounds to speak to all of them. Then we'll set up a round table discussion so that we can see if we can find a meeting of the minds. At the end of the day. Right now, the liquidator is in control of the fiduciary duty to the creditors. So they have power if they can act together and if they have an alignment of interest. I have no power. **Bernard Leong:** Okay, I hear you on that. That I will leave you to continue to work on and hopefully achieve a good outcome with your creditors. I want to switch subjects and really go into something else. Nothing to do with 3AC but is probably related in some ways. Haseeb Qureshi said on the [chopping block podcast](https://unchainedpodcast.com/the-chopping-block-ftx-the-biggest-collapse-in-the-history-of-crypto-ep-418/?ref=analysepodcast.com) that you told him that you had figured out the methodology that [Sam Bankman-Fried](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam%5FBankman-Fried?ref=analysepodcast.com) aka SBF was doing with FTX and Alameda when he met you in Singapore in June 2021, what is your recollection of that meeting? What did you say to him about Alameda, FTX, and SBF? **Kyle Davies:** Yeah, absolutely. So this was right around the time of the [Serum](https://www.projectserum.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) [token](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/serum/?ref=analysepodcast.com) launch. I listened to the episode with Haseeb, I thought he did a great job of explaining it, but I'll summarize it here. Basically, serum was the most predatory token to retail I have like ever seen. It was a very high fully diluted valuation. It had a very low float. It had a seven-year vest. It had a very high concentration in the team from [FTX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTX%5F%28company%29?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [Alameda Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda%5FResearch?ref=analysepodcast.com). I thought that it was initially just going to be like the purest dump on retail, but it just didn't make sense because it was too obvious. And after the launch, it traded up a lot. I think the round was around 10 cents. It was trading over a dollar, like on day one. At this point, I realized what it was and I just said that they must be buying. The reason they're buying is that it is cheap for them. They own a lot of it. The majority's all locked up. This was a time when they were hungry for credit, but lenders were hungry to lend out. If you had offered lenders like even unlocked Serum a year prior to that, they would've said no. They would've thought it was a joke. But at that time, they were just looking for excuses to lend out more. It might just make sense that they would even take locked Serum with a seven-year period, like zero liquidity on this stuff. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. It was his cheapest form of financing. **Bernard Leong:** I don’t know whether you have heard Matt Levine's [\[conversation\] with SBF on Odd Lots podcast on yield farming during April 2022](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/sam-bankman-fried-described-yield-farming-and-left-matt-levine-stunned?ref=analysepodcast.com) where he talked about the magic box analogy. **Kyle Davies:** I remember seeing the quote. **Bernard Leong:** When Matt Levine called him out and said \[paraphrasing\] something along the lines of "aren't you running a [Ponzi scheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi%5Fscheme?ref=analysepodcast.com) on top of that?" Then SBF was trying to wiggle his way out. What he did with serum is the form of Ponzi \[scheme\] that you're talking about, where he was trying to get the highest amount of credit from retail investors with all these restrictive conditions. **Kyle Davies:** I think so, and it was maybe in 2017 the Ponzies \[Ponzi schemes\] were very simplistic. What Sam realized is that he had a very large black box with Alameda, which was a pure black box. He owned, I think 90%. Gary owned like 10%. So that whole thing was a black box. But FTX was a black box to most people and also investors. He could put things in this box that would play with the knobs, right? So for him, [the FTT token](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ftx-token/?ref=analysepodcast.com) was the first time that he saw a token that he could post as collateral. This is where he got addicted to it. He probably regretted the way it was handled. He said he could have made a lot more money. He did this whole FTT thing wrong, and for Serum, I remembered hearing the pitch. The vision was a joke. The tech was more or less non-existent before they had just dreamed it up. If I had to speculate now, I would say the timing of that was probably because they needed to raise cash. It was not because that was the time of peak innovation for Serum. So I think Sam realized first with FTT that this was possible. Then he did it with Serum, [Oxygen and Maps.me](https://www.coinspeaker.com/oxygen-maps-me-tokens-ftx/?ref=analysepodcast.com), and numerous projects. **Bernard Leong:** So you call the Ponzi Box scheme that they came up with, is basically the ICO 2.0 after 2017. **Kyle Davies** Yeah they got more sophisticated. In ICO land you were supposed to sell. The founders sold. In 2021, the founders bought and borrowed dollars. **Bernard Leong:** So you dealt with FTX before the Luna-Terra collapse, and you have also remarked you've tussled with them previously. What was the rate flex you noticed regarding SBF and his team at Alameda in deals with the crypto industry in general before they collapsed? **Kyle Davies:** Yeah, sure. I met them relatively early when they were doing their high-interest loans. One of our partners had met them in Hong Kong and asked if I could meet the guy. I met him when he came to Singapore, and he walked out of a meeting on me. I was talking in a circle of people asking him. I had the deck and I asked him about the 15% guaranteed loans and "you can't lose money under US law". The AUM \[assets under management\] was very misleading. The profits part was very misleading. The whole deck was fraudulent on like multiple levels. And he walked out. And at that point, I knew that stuff was wrong, so I showed it to Zhu Su. We were pretty vocal. I think Zhu's done some tweets on this as well. But he raised FTT shortly thereafter. We now guess that this was probably to fill a hole. Probably he was using some money from one pocket to build an exchange on another pocket. So Sam had done this early on and over time, I didn't trade on the exchange for the first year and a half. I thought it was a complete bucket shop. But then he started to get real investors: [Temasek](https://www.temasek.com.sg/en/index?ref=analysepodcast.com), being the most famous in Singapore, but also [Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan fund](https://www.otpp.com/en-ca/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Sequoia Capital](https://www.sequoiacap.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Paradigm](https://www.paradigm.xyz/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and some of the biggest, most respected VCs and institutions that are known for hard due diligence. I, as a user, cannot see the inner workings, but I thought perhaps they would. We eventually ended up trading on the exchange. There was a crackdown in China. I was the biggest open interest trader in Huobi and OKX. So when we moved that over, we needed a place to go and FTX was convenient. **Bernard Leong:** And you all just thought that with all those like big VC funds, sovereign wealth funds, and pension teachers funds. So you all ended up also trading on FTX as a result. **Kyle Davies:** We did, yeah, and we traded quite a bit there. I knew that there was some stuff that was probably not quite correct, but I didn't think that they would take client deposits. That's absurd. They spend client deposits and have them deposited directly into Alameda Research so that they then credit onto FTX. They hunt positions, print fake tokens and insider trade like these, which are all very serious. Any one of those can put you in jail in the US, right? So this was an offshore entity. Even still, this was really aggressive stuff. So I just thought given those institutions, there was no way he was going that far. **Bernard Leong:** I think it's because the surprise was that the due diligence was not done very well. Temasek, as a Singaporean, is where my funds are in there. When they wrote out the [*actual memo about \[why they screwed up\]*](https://www.temasek.com.sg/en/news-and-resources/news-room/statements/2022/statement-FTX?ref=analysepodcast.com), I thought that they were the only ones that owned up. I think Sequoia didn't own up at first and only after that, then they [put on an apology to their LPs](https://www.wsj.com/articles/sequoia-capital-apologizes-to-limited-partners-for-ftx-investment-11669144914?ref=analysepodcast.com) because of a leak in [The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ftx-collapse-tarnishes-sequoias-reputation-prompts-apology?ref=analysepodcast.com). I was actually very surprised by not enough amount of [due diligence](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/duediligence.asp?ref=analysepodcast.com). Did any of those due diligence people just call you up and say, "Hey Kyle you guys run 3AC, what do you think of FTX?" **Kyle Davies:** I can't recall from any of those specific investors, but pretty much anyone that asks. I was very vocal about FTX in the early days and I was told I was an idiot many times because FTT was a huge success for a lot of people. I knew many people that turned seven into nine figures by investing in FTT. The same goes for Serum. So I was repeatedly reminded that I was the wrong one. But this is the way it goes and, frankly, I don't blame any of these investors for their messaging to others. At the end of the day, early-stage investment sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. I think if I were in Temasek and maybe reviewing things, I would probably just say, you know what, we're still gonna do investments in early-stage stuff. But we're just maybe not gonna do it in our name anymore. We're gonna invest in other funds that do it. Or, maybe create some-- which, they already do. But this one was just particularly painful because it was done so publicly by such a big name. Whether you like it or not, people are going to take that as a stamp of approval. **Bernard Leong:** There was one thing that happened during the New York Times interview, that SBF said which actually reveals what he thinks about VCs cynically and he said that they only trade on the upside and they forgot, they always never think about the downside. Maybe that was how he managed to get them to put the money in. But I want to get your point of view on this. So based on the FTX collapse, you have also alluded to that as well. It has been alleged that SBF had committed fraud by commingling funds between Alameda Research and FTX. What are your thoughts on the FTX collapse and his recent media tour? He also went to [the Block with Frank Chaparro](https://www.theblock.co/post/192005/2-hour-sit-down-with-sam-bankman-fried-on-the-ftx-scandal?ref=analysepodcast.com) as well, who tried to grill SBF for two hours. **Kyle Davies:** I watched that one. He also did one with the Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America, and many others. I think that he has done enormous damage and been incredibly fraudulent in many different ways. So it's not a case of misleading investors or something. His media blitz surely is just to show ignorance over negligence. We'll see if it works out for him, but it's just very hard to believe this stuff. **Bernard Leong:** Based on what has been alleged, do you think that Sam should go to jail if all the allegations are ever proven true? **Kyle Davies:** Yes. I definitely think he should, but it's really gonna come down to first, jurisdiction and second, his dealings in the US. There are numerous regulators in the US. I'm sure he's violated some stuff in there. **Bernard Leong:** If I want to flip it over to the Terra Luna collapse, which you \[3AC\] lost money. What should we do about Do Kwon? Should he be punished? **Kyle Davies:** That is a much more difficult question in my mind. Because at the end of the day, Do Kwon designed a technology platform and it failed. So whether it is criminal, is a question of whether he intended to fail. Did he know that it would? Did he profit from it? If those questions are all, no, then maybe this is not. But if a judge determines that some of them are yes, and there was malevolent intent, then maybe. **Bernard Leong:** That will be decided by Korean law because they are the ones going after him now anyway. **Kyle Davies:** Right, which is another question of jurisdiction as well. Yeah, this is one of the tricky things about crypto. **Bernard Leong:** There's not much regulation on that. But I think now that everyone has gone through this part of history. Actually, to be quite honest, it's very similar to what happened to gold in the 1890s when you know there was Jay Gould causing a bank run. For all the market makers \[at that time\], the railway is the equivalent of today's technology and everything else. Maybe the question I want to ask you is: should crypto be regulated after this debacle? How should we think about risk management and governance? **Kyle Davies:** So I will say that US regulation pushed FTX offshore, and the lack of enforcement allowed BlockFi to keep operating after getting a hundred million dollar fine from the SEC. Luna is largely not in the US. So the question is going to be what regulation in what jurisdiction, and I don't have a good answer for that. That's up to other people to decide. **Bernard Leong:** Do you think that like things like stablecoins needs to be regulated? For example, there's a stablecoin bill that was supposed to be for the collateralized or over-collateralized stable coins are okay, but algorithmic stablecoins shouldn't be allowed or something along those lines. **Kyle Davies:** I think in general that if you regulate the previous cycle, the market has already learned, right? Crypto in many ways is a capitalist libertarian future, and if you are allowed to play these large experiments and they blow up, then they don't happen anymore, right? People will try new things. So if we try to regulate exactly what happened the last cycle, it likely will have no bearing on what happens next cycle. That's where the problem in this regulation is going to be. **Bernard Leong:** I think one problem with crypto or Web3 we call it, is that whatever you do, there's always an embedded capital market that sits on it. It doesn't matter what you do, and I think that is where the challenge really is. Once you have an embedded capital market, you can throw any form of financial engineering at it. Let me ask, are you or Zhu Su still bullish on the space and believe that a supercycle will still come someday? **Kyle Davies:** We are still bullish on the space. I think the aftermath of FTX has not been felt entirely yet. The reality is it's gonna take six months. To really know the full implications of that, we'll start to see some form of regulation to come through too. But really, it's the insolvencies, the companies, the projects that run out of money, because it'll be hard to raise in this environment. All that stuff needs to flush first. Then after that, we can go super cycling again. **Bernard Leong:** The question is actually all pending due to whether Genesis will be insolvent and take down the entire \[Digital Currency Group\] DCG, because that's the only near-extinction event that's going to happen. **Kyle Davies:** They're not the only ones. I'm not going to name them on the show, but I could name numerous firms, which are likely insolvent and struggling. **Bernard Leong:** No, I think that there is this interesting point of view. Actually, when I met you both, I actually went and drew a map of all the relationships of the lending firms, the hedge funds and everything, I discovered that everything leads to Genesis. The question is that if Genesis blows up, then everyone blows up as well. The real near-extinction event is probably if Tether gets de-pegged and causes a bank run on Binance. **Kyle Davies:** Arguably Bitcoin should be nuclear proof, but in terms of even more serious damage to the industry, there has been a massive consolidation; I would argue that has never been seen since this potential level of consolidation in the stablecoin space and in the exchange space, and probably also now in the DCG. The whole point of crypto in general is that there's decentralization and choice. This prevents attack vectors. Now we have three or likely more prominent firms which have their own risk mitigants or whatever but it's just that each one of those has an >80% market share in their dominant areas. That's not the way crypto's supposed to work. **Bernard Leong:** If I read you correctly, what you're saying is that it's better to be decentralized, so there's one. That means-- you will look at something like Bitcoin because I, was listening to different podcasts. Everybody thinks that you're now all into Bitcoin and not into the other coins. **Kyle Davies:** No, I was. I've been very jaded through this process. I started with Bitcoin and I liked the principles of bitcoin and [the sovereign individual](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FSovereign%5FIndividual?ref=analysepodcast.com). These whole ideas are guiding principles for the space. I do think that there can be other investments and other ideas. But I think it's worth now taking a harder look at some of them. During certain periods, maybe you let the innovation go. Now I think it's worth taking a good hard look and saying why we have this giant consolidation in these areas. Why did the lending space have this giant credit bubble? What do we think about that? **Bernard Leong:** That is very fair. So I probably have two more questions, but I think the first question I want to ask is: is there anything you want to say to your LPs? Creditors. Investors, investees. Friends, families and employees after this event. I'm sure it was not very easy on you and plus all the things that are going over the world, the media, and I think I hear some of the tussles you have and some of the things that people were saying about you. Is there anything you wanna say to them? **Kyle Davies:** I know there's a lot of pain and we lost all of our money in the fund. I know investors, creditors family, and friends also lost lots of money. All I can say is we'll do what we can. **Bernard Leong:** And you're sorry about it. I'm just, I just wanna make sure that I... **Kyle Davies:** Yeah, I wish things could have happened in a different way, but at this point, we're gonna do what we can. **Bernard Leong:** Okay. One last question would be, what are both of your plans for the future, of course, after all of these issues and turmoil, and maybe the issues with the creditors & liquidators have been resolved? **Kyle Davies:** So we're speaking with investors and soon creditors as well about a next venture. I think this is just the best way forward. The liquidation process will run. I think there are better ways that we can probably do it. But ultimately that will be up to the creditors. And in terms of a new venture, would like to include people to the extent that it makes sense. And I think this is the best. **Bernard Leong:** The thing about these things is trust. Do you believe that they will trust you again? **Kyle Davies:** So for creditors, I think we can include them in whether they can invest or not invest. We can probably still include them. For new investors, yeah. It's not a question. **Bernard Leong:** Okay. Kyle many thanks for coming on the Analyse Asia podcast I wish under better circumstances that I would like to have lunch with you and Zhu, and discuss other things other than crypto. In closing, I have two very quick questions. During this time, do you have any recommendations which have inspired you recently through such dark times? **Kyle Davies:** Yeah. So for me, June and July were my darkest months, and I know that other people are maybe having their darkest months now. What I can say is that nothing lasts forever. The good times, the bad times, nothing lasts if you're feeling that way. What helped me was first focusing on myself, self-meditation, no alcohol, no medication. Then family and then rebuilding outwards. I believe you can see the light. **Bernard Leong:** How can my audience find you? **Kyle Davies:** Twitter is probably the best one for now. Zhu and I both have accounts. But maybe we can be a little bit more public in the future. **Bernard Leong:** And of course, you can definitely find us at Analyse Asia or tweet us and give us your feedback. We are definitely distributed across all platforms. So Kyle, many thanks for coming to the show. Take care, Zhu Su and yourself and I look forward to better times when we can speak again. **Kyle Davies:** Thank you. --- ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited for both audio and video formats by [G.Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gthomascraig](https://twitter.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). For the first time, we have this episode recorded in video format. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/406%5FThe%5F3AC%5FDemise%5Fwith%5FKyle%5FDavies.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-3ac-demise-with-kyle-davies/id914868245?i=1000589335067&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtVNzGI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/10LqHQ4nzxUzfxUpfWe2V8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-3ac-demise-with-kyle-davies?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-3ac-demise-with-kyle-davies-209572389?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OGFjODk3OTYtOWJjZS00MDhkLWE1NzgtNDNjNDFhNDQwYzRi?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiAotacm-n7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-3AC-Demise-with-Kyle-Davies-id2859782-id554009527?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdvTBzZ5aU&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Polygon with Sandeep Nailwal URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/polygon-with-sandeep-nailwal/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:03.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon joined us to discuss the origin story of the Polygon blockchain and its evolution as a layer-2 chain for builders out there. Sandeep started with his backstory and how it led to the creation of the polygon blockchain followed by the subsequent evolution into a layer-2 chain within the Ethereum ecosystem. He shared his perspectives on the key trends of web3 and offered advice to builders there on how they should navigate in the midst of the current crypto downturn. Last but not least, he shared what great would look like for Polygon in the next few years. --- > "For me, it's only about daily active users. I feel in the next five years, especially for the whole ecosystem. I'm not talking about Polygon first - let's say for the whole blockchain ecosystem… In \[the\] next five years, if we don't reach somewhere between 50 to 100 million users, I think we would've failed very badly. So all apps. I'm talking about all apps in all ecosystems, layer one, layer two, all the apps - payments, Bitcoin, everything included. We should have 50 to 100 million daily active users. Obviously, for Polygon, we want to capture as much market share out of that: 50 to 100 million. If Polygon remains the number one adopted amongst those daily active users, it will be a great scenario for Polygon." - Sandeep Nailwal ### Introduction - Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon ([@sandeepnailwal](https://twitter.com/sandeepnailwal?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandeep-nailwal-60709a33?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - We like to dive into your origin story. How did you start your career? - What led you to blockchain technology that eventually led to the beginning of Matic which became Polygon today? - What are the interesting career lessons that you can share with my audience? ### Polygon ([main site](https://polygon.technology/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and the evolution of layer-2 chains in Web3 - Before we begin, can you introduce the concept of layer 2 in the Ethereum ecosystem and the role of Polygon as a layer 2 chain in the blockchain ecosystem? - What is the vision and mission of Polygon blockchain? - What is the key set of problems that the polygon blockchain seeks to address today? - What are the highlights of the polygon blockchain in the past few years? - Polygon raises $450M from Sequoia Capital India, SoftBank and Tiger Global \[Source: [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/07/polygon-raises-450m-from-sequoia-capital-india-softbank-and-tiger-global/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - MATIC Surges as Disney Chooses Polygon for Accelerator Program \[Source: [Coindesk](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/07/13/polygon-joins-disneys-accelerator-program-to-develop-ar-nft-and-ai-experiences/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - MATIC Jumps 20% in a Day After Instagram's Polygon NFT Minting Reveal \[Source: [Decrypt](https://decrypt.co/113565/matic-jumps-instagram-polygon-nft-minting?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - How does the Polygon chain distinguish itself from the other layer-2 chains out there? - What interesting applications have you seen in the polygon ecosystem, for example, decentralized finance (DeFi), web3 games, and applications that involve non-fungible tokens (NFTs)? - How does the polygon foundation help developers to jumpstart the development of decentralized apps (DApps)? - Can you talk about how Polygon has incorporated zero-knowledge rollups into the blockchain and what it enables developers to do with the blockchain? - What are your thoughts on the recent crypto crash brought forth by a few key events (Luna-Terra collapse, 3AC, and FTX crash)? - What will be your advice to all the builders who may have lost some confidence with the recent crypto crash? - What are the key trends in Web3 that you are most excited about? - What does great look like for Polygon blockchain in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Sandeep's recommendation: [The Alamanck of Naval Ravikant](https://www.navalmanack.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Eric Jorgenson - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://chrt.fm/track/555E63/media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/405%5FPolygon%5Fwith%5FSandeep%5FNailwal.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/polygon-with-sandeep-nailwal/id914868245?i=1000588740936&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtzHKLo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0kKXLb3j6IR65nG8NOa?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/polygon-with-sandeep-nailwal?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/polygon-with-sandeep-nailwal-209452670?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YjgwNDZmNTktYTJiMC00MjIwLWFkNjctNTRmYjI4MTRhZjUw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwioh9PBy-H7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Polygon-with-Sandeep-Nailwal-id2859782-id553132354?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URsP-trXU2k&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Roche Pharmaceuticals and Transforming Healthcare in Asia Pacific with Ahmed Elhusseiny URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/roche-pharmaceuticals-transforming-healthcare-asia-pacific-ahmed-elhusseiny/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:03.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Ahmed Elhusseiny, the area head of the Asia Pacific in Roche Pharmaceuticals joined us in a discussion on how healthcare has been transformed in the Asia Pacific and what we have learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. We began Ahmed's career journey and continued with the story of Roche Pharmaceuticals in the Asia Pacific. Ahmed dived deep into the key trends of healthcare specifically personalized healthcare which is augmented by digital tools and data. Last but not least, Ahmed shares what great would look like for Roche Pharmaceuticals in the Asia Pacific. --- > "Because of the pandemic, we all became patients. We all became aware of diagnostic tools \[and\] therapeutic interventions. The level of awareness that exists now around this specific topic is very high, but it also translates into us being more aware of why it's important to be preventative. The mask is preventative, exercise in the post-pandemic world is preventative for heart conditions, and there's a much larger appetite now to start looking at how we can work together in partnership to identify those things that allow us to intervene early in order to prevent or to slow down any types of conditions that could happen to individuals and shift the narrative around how we approach healthcare in Asia. This is absolutely necessary because of the challenges that we face and it will be totally enabled by data and technology. So the tools for that exist. The biggest question really is how we start to implement them." - Ahmed Elhusseiny ### Introduction - Ahmed Elhusseiny, Area Head of APAC at Roche Pharmaceuticals ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-elhusseiny-a8018a/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What are the most interesting career lessons which you can share with my audience? ### Roche Pharmaceuticals & Transforming Healthcare in Asia Pacific - [Roche](https://www.roche.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Pharmaceuticals and Transforming Healthcare in Asia Pacific - As an introduction to my audience, can you talk about the global vision and mission of Roche and what it is currently doing in Asia Pacific? - What is your role and coverage in Roche? - To start, we went through the global COVID-19 pandemic for the past two and half years, and now in a post-pandemic world, what were the key challenges for the healthcare industry during that period? - How were new systems and innovative health-tech solutions implemented to address the needs of the patients during the COVID-19 pandemic? \[You can address this from Roche’s point of view\] - Given the challenges during the pandemic and given that it is difficult for any healthcare organization to do it alone, how did Roche manage to work with partners in the ecosystem to overcome the issues? - What are the interesting lessons we have drawn from implementing these new digital technologies accelerated out of the need from a pandemic? - Can you share examples or case studies of the digital technologies that were implemented for the COVID-19 pandemic and are now being re-purposed for other uses? \[Reference: Ahmed mentioned in[ this panel](https://milkeninstitute.org/video/health-care-post-pandemic-era?ref=analysepodcast.com) the example of a track and trace app in Malaysia that is now repurposed for diabetes patients' use\] - Given the lessons learned from the pandemic, we are now shifting to a post-pandemic world. What re-thinking do we need for the healthcare system in the Asia Pacific region? \[Reference: [How to make data-enabled healthcare a reality in Asia-Pacific](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/how-to-make-data-enabled-healthcare-a-reality-in-asia-pacific/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - Can you define how data and personalized healthcare can be enabled for the Asia Pacific region to enable better delivery of healthcare? - How do we measure the effectiveness of personalized healthcare? \[Reference: [Asia Personalized Healthcare Index](https://www.futureproofinghealthcare.com/en/asia-pacific-personalised-health-index?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - What does great look like for Roche in the Asia Pacific for the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Ahmed's recommendation: "[In the Dragon's Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century](https://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Shadow-Southeast-Chinese-Century/dp/0300234031?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Sebastian Strangio - How does my audience find you?' ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/roche-pharmaceuticals-and-transforming-healthcare-in-asia-pacific-with-ahmed-elhusseiny?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/roche-pharmaceuticals-and-transforming-healthcare-in/id914868245?i=1000588028059&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvBA%5F24?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6qya1ayvHcAlKV8tUEAnH6?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/roche-pharmaceuticals-healthcare-transformation-ahmed-elhusseiny?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/roche-pharmaceuticals-and-transforming-healthcare-in-asia-pacific-with-ahmed-elhusseiny-209171101/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YzQ2ZjYzZjgtMTUyNy00OWRlLWJjNTgtZjg2NWE2ZjgwZGZi?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiYteuh1dT7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1210485976173290) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Roche-Pharmaceuticals-and-Transforming-Healthcare-in-Asia-Pacific-with-Ahmed-Elhusseiny-id2859782-id551844570?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG3TGERz3Fw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### ServiceNow & the Rise of Digital-native companies in the Asia Pacific with Mitch Young URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/servicenow-the-rise-of-digital-native-companies-in-the-asia-pacific-with-mitch-young/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:02.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Mitch Young, president of Asia Pacific & Japan from ServiceNow, joined us in a conversation to discuss their business activity and focus and explore the rise of digital-native companies in the Asia Pacific. Mitch began with the story of ServiceNow and the interesting customer stories across the Asia Pacific. Then he dived deep into explaining how the modern digital business works and the playbook which executives can use to strategize from automation of workflows by digitization to augmenting artificial intelligence in their businesses for their next phases of digital transformation. --- > "If you think about a modern digital business, what does that mean? Well, it translates to personalized, proactive service and support. At a minimum, it's also the ability to deliver and provide access to self-service. It's about eliminating all of the mundane and repetitive tasks that are required to drive great engagement and customer loyalty and where a process or a workflow is required to be executed. A digital business is about automating and optimizing that request across the enterprise delivered to the right person with the right skills, maybe the right spare parts, the right geographical location, the right availability to deliver on that customer or employee request." - **Mitch Young** ### Introduction - Mitch Young, President in Asia Pacific & Japan, [ServiceNow](https://www.servicenow.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchelly/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - How did you start your career? - What are the most interesting career lessons which you can share with my audience? ### [ServiceNow](https://www.servicenow.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & the rise of digital-native companies in the Asia Pacific - To start, can you provide a comprehensive introduction to ServiceNow, its mission and its vision globally to my audience? - One key element in making digital transformation happen is the concept of workflow digitization. Can you describe what workflows are and how do they help to bring about the digital workflow transformation? \[Reference: [The Workflow Revolution](https://www.servicenow.com/workflow/employee-engagement/the-workflow-revolution-bernard-salt/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - What are the key workflow challenges ServiceNow seeks to address and solve for businesses amid their digital transformation journeys? - For a starter, many people know of ServiceNow through their IT services management system. However, the company has evolved into the Now platform. For example, human resources services delivery is an extension of where ServiceNow has moved beyond IT. Can you talk about the key capabilities of the Now platform and how the platform optimizes processes, connects data and organizational silos, and accelerates innovation at scale? - Can you share some of the exciting customer stories in ServiceNow within Asia Pacific? - Marc Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz once remarked that software is eating the world. In looking at how companies transformed in the past decade, there is the perception that software is the business where digital technologies mediate every aspect of operating and scaling a modern company. Can you talk about the core principles of how a modern digital business works? \[Reference: [Software is the Business](https://www.servicenow.com/workflow/it-transformation/all-companies-are-business-software/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - What are the key trends in artificial intelligence (AI) for digital businesses? \[Reference: [Digital Gold Rush](https://www.servicenow.com/workflow/it-transformation/ai-australia-digital-gold-rush/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - What are the recommendations for executives in coming up with strategies that can best help them in bringing AI into their business? \[Reference: [Digital Gold Rush](https://www.servicenow.com/workflow/it-transformation/ai-australia-digital-gold-rush/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - Can workflows be augmented by artificial intelligence? If so, can you provide examples in ServiceNow that AI can be deployed to enhance the digital workflows used by businesses? \[Reference: [A digital gold rush will be built on AI](https://www.servicenow.com/workflow/it-transformation/digital-transformation-automation-in-australia-workplace/??ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Best Examples of Human-Machine Teaming](https://www.servicenow.com/workflow/customer-experience/roundtable-human-machine-teaming/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - What does great look like for ServiceNow in the Asia Pacific? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Mitch's recommendations: [Mika Häkkinen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mika%5FH%C3%A4kkinen?ref=analysepodcast.com)'s life story and the lessons learnt from his comeback during F1 Singapore 2022\. - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/servicenow-the-rise-of-digital-native-companies-in-the-asia-pacific-with-mitch-young?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/servicenow-the-rise-of-digital-native-companies-in/id914868245?i=1000587334037&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFucQG-o?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0rB4CrZ0HZkar1SqiOn201?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/servicenow-the-rise-of-digital-native-companies-asia-pacific-mitch-young?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/servicenow-the-rise-of-digital-native-companies-in-the-asia-pacific-with-mitch-young-208913992?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MGMyZGQ2MmMtMzUzYy00ZDExLTkzMjItMzZjNGI4ZDgzNjdl?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiA5v2E8cX7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/655800629668764) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Servicenow-%26-the-Rise-of-Digital-native-companies-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Mitch-Young-id2859782-id550540026?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJQGi8V94CQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Autodesk in Asia Pacific & Growth by Choice with Haresh Khoobchandani URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/autodesk-in-asia-pacific-growth-by-choice-with-haresh-khoobchandani/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:02.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Haresh Khoobchandani, vice president of Autodesk Asia Pacific joined us to discuss the business footprint of Autodesk in Asia Pacific and his new book "Growth by Choice". The conversation sets off with Haresh discussing his career trajectory and the inspiration behind writing his book "Growth by Choice" and providing strategies for those who are navigating their careers in the midst of a post-pandemic world. Last but not least, Haresh shared how Autodesk is helping businesses to transform in the Asia Pacific digitally. --- > "Because you can learn the hard skills, but if you don't know what holds you back, you don't know who you are, you don't know what your triggers are, you don't know what motivates you, what upsets you. How do you bring the best version of yourself every single day to what you do and get better? ... We need to pay attention to that because the whole idea is you cannot anticipate change ahead of you, but you gotta learn how to ride the waves of change ahead of you more gracefully. So you don't want the waves to come slamming at you, but you need to turn around and ensure that when they come, you can manoeuvre, you can ride the waves to change." - **Haresh Khoobchandani** ### Introduction & Growth by Choice - Haresh Khoobchandani, VP of Autodesk APAC & author of “[Growth by Choice](https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Choice-Make-Space-Better-ebook/dp/B0BFZR5PZG?ref=analysepodcast.com)” ([@HareshK\_](https://twitter.com/HareshK%5F?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LInkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/haresh-khoobchandani-6434865/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As I read your new book “Growth by Choice”, I decided to dedicate your career story with the book together, because you have discussed your career trajectory with the book. We will go with your origin story. How did you start your career and can you share more about your experience before Autodesk? - That comes to your book, “Growth by Choice”, what is the inspiration behind writing the book and who is your audience? - What are the key themes of the book? - One key part of the book which I really enjoyed is the section on the concept of return on inaction. It resonated with me. Can you elaborate on the idea of return on inaction and what it means for people who are navigating their careers? - Can you talk about the growth framework which you advocated in the book? - What tools, for example, the ARC principle that we need to equip ourselves with to deal with the great acceleration and the great resignation at the same time? - What does the future of work look like, with the framework that you have introduced in the book, for example, how to manage the performance of employees remotely or the need to bring people back to the office? - My last question, given that we covered your book: What are the interesting career lessons that you can share with my audience? ### [Autodesk](https://autodesk.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Asia Pacific - Can you provide an introduction to Autodesk and its mission and vision from a global point of view? - What is your current role and coverage in Autodesk? - How did Autodesk transform from being a product company to a platform company? - How does Autodesk support and advance companies in their digital transformation journeys? - Becoming a platform company means you need to bring in new users & developers into the system. How does Autodesk educate them and bring them on board? - Given that Autodesk has been used in manufacturing, construction & other purposes, what is its current role in digital transformation for companies out there? \[talk about Convergence, Construction/BIM, and Manufacturing here\] - Can you talk about the interesting customer stories about adopting Autodesk? - How can customers of Autodesk work with the company, for example, if they build apps on top of the platform, is there an app store for them to distribute their products? - What does great look like for Autodesk in the Asia Pacific? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Haresh's recommendation: - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/autodesk-in-asia-pacific-growth-by-choice-with-haresh-khoobchandani?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/autodesk-in-asia-pacific-growth-by-choice-with-haresh/id914868245?i=1000586900655&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvT8k0M?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4M77zN52dpmC036X9skYgo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/autodesk-in-asia-pacific-haresh-khoobchandani?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/autodesk-in-asia-pacific-growth-by-choice-with-haresh-khoobchandani-208763163?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NzU2ZGYzMDQtY2I1MS00OWE4LWFhYjItM2ZmMmViNmIxMTMz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiIi-XItr77AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/596921008902118) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Autodesk-in-Asia-Pacific-%26-Growth-by-Choice-with-Haresh-Khoobchandani-id2859782-id549690733?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqZlq7YfPVg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Reality Platforms and Decentralized Mapping in the Metaverse with Alex Chung URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/reality-platforms-and-decentralized-mapping-in-the-metaverse-with-alex-chung/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:01.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Alex Chung, founder and CEO of Reality Platforms joined us in a conversation and share the backstory of his company and his perspectives on decentralized mapping in the metaverse. Alex dived deep into the weeds into how decentralized mapping works and the use cases that Reality Platforms are targeting on. Last but not least, he elucidates the key trends in the current dynamic web3 market and the mental models that builders need to have in order to navigate an uncertain and difficult market ahead. --- > "My version of success here is to build the most valuable data set in web3\. Hopefully, if we do our jobs right, it'll probably be just one of the most valuable data sets in the world, period. When we look at Google Street View, this is an ecosystem, a platform, where there is probably so much low-hanging fruit - gems that can be extracted to build really great businesses, unlock new experiences, to advance the human condition. When it comes to computing, I fundamentally believe it has not been innovated even close to that first inning in terms of like, the baseball, I want to create that data set. I want to then generate the Metaverse maps of the world from it, and then I wanna be able to push them into different use cases that just make new things possible." - **Alex Chung** ### Introduction - Alex Chung, CEO from [Reality Platforms](https://realityplatforms.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@alxchung](https://twitter.com/alxchung?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-chung-gsd?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What are the essential experiences you have learned from working in Facebook and Amazon Web Services? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? ### Reality Platforms & Decentralized Mapping in the Metaverse - [Reality Platforms](https://realityplatforms.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Apple iOS](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/realitymaps/id1632074602?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Google Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.realityplatforms.miner&pli=1&ref=analysepodcast.com)) - I want to start by talking about. What are you building exactly? - What is the problem that Reality Platforms are solving and what makes it better than what is already out there? - What are the use cases that Reality Platforms seek to do for the users and who are the customers that you are targeting? - How did this concept of a decentralized 3D metaverse map of Planet Earth come about and link to the metaverse? - How does this tie into digital real estate? - Can you talk about the current mapping systems on our planet Earth and how the mapping industry's layers are organized? - Reference: [Reality Platforms Documentation](https://docs.realityplatforms.org/monetization-and-pricing/current-market/maps?ref=analysepodcast.com) - What is the mission and vision of Reality Platforms? - Which is the blockchain protocol that you are currently building on and are you planning to expand into other chains? What is the thinking behind the selection of the chains? - How does a user get access to Reality Platforms through your products and start their journey to map the areas around them? \[Can you describe your products and how users gain access to them?\] - Can you talk about the digital ownership aspects of RealityBlocks? How does the platform incentivise people to take photos to get credits and miners spend the credits to own digital real estate? - How many people do you need to map a region? - There have been several web3/P2E companies that have done well initially but then fizzled significantly over time. Why do you think you will be different? - Can developers build on reality platforms? - Based on the hype going on with the Metaverse, what are the interesting trends that are taking us from our physical world into the digital realm? - Given that the web3 industry is in its infancy, what is the mental model for bringing a billion users into web3? - How do you advise founders in the mental model of valuation in Web3 and adopting either equity, token or a mixture of both? - What does great look like for Reality Platforms? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Alex's recommendations: [Digital Body Language](https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Body-Language-Connection-Distance/dp/1250246520?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Erica Dhawan - How does my audience find you? **Editor's note**: *This interview is done before the FTX implosion. The discussion does not take into account what has transpired in the past 2 weeks.* ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/reality-platforms-and-decentralized-mapping-in-the-metaverse-with-alex-chung?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reality-platforms-and-decentralized-mapping-in/id914868245?i=1000586350008&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuwM%5FAw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1djD9Kv7UdiW3GvSRI2AIs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/reality-platforms-decentralized-mapping-metaverse-alex-chung?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/reality-platforms-and-decentralized-mapping-in-the-metaverse-with-alex-chung-208555720?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZmFjNDc1ZWEtZjU2ZS00OTE0LTg3N2EtM2FhNWVjMzJlNTY4?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjgvdnAyrH7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2674410662690174) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Reality-Platforms-and-Decentralized-Mapping-in-the-Metaverse-with-Alex-Chung-id2859782-id548303952?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flYymr66fc4&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Analyse Asia & China with Carol Yin & Bernard Leong URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/analyse-asia-china-with-carol-yin-bernard-leong/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:01.000Z Fresh out of the studio and we hit our 400th episode, both hosts of Analyse Asia: Carol Yin and Bernard Leong sat down to reflect on China and how the podcast has evolved over the past two years and reached this important milestone. We start with Carol's current work in China, the status of entrepreneurship there and what it is like living in China in the era of dynamic COVID-zero policy. Following on, Bernard and Carol discuss the state of Analyse Asia and outline the challenges ahead for the podcast specifically in the selection of guests, monetization model and whether we will hit the 500th episode. --- > "So, because I think the way I've always been thinking about this podcast is (as) a brand, I think we talked about it just now, the quality of the guests we curate is now a challenge for everyone who wants to get onto the show as well. And I've been very methodical about the selection of guests. I would rather have no episodes, but the quality of the guests must be there. And I'm very mindful of that and the topics I want to go for (are) very deep." - **Bernard Leong** ### Introduction & Catching Up - What have you been up to? - What are the lessons in your career journey which you can share with our audience? ### China - How have the startups and tech scene been in China? Is it still as vibrant as before? - Can you talk about the dynamic COVID-zero policy? - What is day-to-day like living in a COVID-zero environment? - What is travel like now in China? - The Chinese New Year will be coming in Jan 2023 and what is it going to be like with the largest migration in the country? ### Analyse Asia at 400 - What has happened in the past hundred episodes? What are the highlights of our episodes? - How do we select our guests for the interviews? - What is our process with our guests? - Who are the people who are doing the invisible work behind the scenes? - What are the challenges we have faced? - What have we learned from talking to our guests? - What are we trying at the moment? The challenges of monetizing media in the Asia Pacific - When do you think we will reach our 500th episode? - What does great look like for Analyse Asia podcast? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Carol's recommendations: [素書 (or Su Shu)](https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/chinese-rare-books/catalog/49-990078924520203941?ref=analysepodcast.com), "[The Road Less Travelled](https://www.amazon.com/Road-Less-Traveled-Timeless-Traditional/dp/0743243153?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by M Scott Peck and "[How will you measure your life?](https://www.amazon.com/How-Will-Measure-Your-Life/dp/0008316422/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Clayton Christensen, [James Allworth](https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-66-how-will-you-measure-your-life-with-james-allworth/) & [Karen Dillon](https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-184-competing-against-luck-with-karen-dillon/). - Bernard's recommendations: [Karl Popper, "The Open Society and its Enemies"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FOpen%5FSociety%5Fand%5FIts%5FEnemies?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/analyse-asia-china-with-carol-yin-bernard-leong?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-china-with-carol-yin-bernard-leong/id914868245?i=1000585828730&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFs7Ec6g?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1CvY6vuExVtBEUnT61kykW?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/analyse-asia-china-with-carol-yin-bernard-leong?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/analyse-asia-china-with-carol-yin-bernard-leong-208419322?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NGUxN2IzZmYtZmNlNy00ZGQ1LWFiOGEtMTdlNDJkMjgzODdh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwigoaTFmaX7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/903252853990914) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Analyse-Asia-%26-China-with-Carol-Yin-%26-Bernard-Leong-id2859782-id547187249?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWTLSYFIgZY&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### ADDX & Private Markets in the Asia Pacific with Choo Oi-Yee URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/addx-private-markets-asia-pacific-choo-oi-yee/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:01.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Choo Oi-Yee, CEO of ADDX, joined us in a conversation to discuss the company's platform to serve the private markets and reviewed the state of private markets in the Asia Pacific. She began the conversation with the market opportunity of the private markets and how ADDX facilitates the interactions between accredited investors and entrepreneurs seeking funds through their products and services on the platform. Last but not least, she shared her perspectives on how companies can thrive in a challenging economic climate and the possibility of secondary exits through other instruments such as SPACs or acquisitions in the current market. --- > "And so we see the private market as a very interesting space because as I said, if everybody had 20% of their portfolio in private markets, we're moving from almost zero in a mass affluent hand to 20%. That's a lot of wealth, but that wealth requires a lot of thinking, a lot of platforms, a lot of technology innovation to solve. Because private markets are very complex. If you think about simple things like cryptocurrencies or stocks, the way that it trades, the post asset servicing is quite simple." - **Choo Oi-Yee** ### Introduction - Choo Oi-Yee, CEO of ADDX ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/oi-yee-choo-a6b9732/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What eventually brought you from a career in investment banking to ADDX? - What are the interesting career lessons that you can share with my audience? ### [ADDX](https://addx.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Private Markets in the Asia Pacific - To start, can you talk about the state of private markets in the Asia Pacific region and what is the untapped market opportunity to access these markets for investors? - Based on the market opportunity, what are the inspiration and the problem that ADDX is poised to solve for the private markets? - What is the vision and mission of ADDX? - What are the customer profiles that access ADDX? - What are the products and services that ADDX provides for the customers, specifically the private companies who are seeking funding or the accredited investors who seek to invest in the market? - How is ADDX looking at the management of digital assets, specifically cryptocurrencies and their related products? - Can you share some of the highlights that ADDX has achieved in the past few years? - Can you talk about some of the key partnerships that ADDX has achieved? - How does ADDX work with regulators such as MAS to ensure compliance with the private companies seeking funding from accredited investors? - What should founders and employees think about upon the opportunity of secondary liquidity events which can take the pressure off them and at the same time, get in the funding to continue building the company? - Who are the investors and key partners with ADDX? - Let’s talk about private markets in general, what is the mental model that investors need to have in valuing the companies that they invest into? Is it art for companies before series B and science after series B rounds? - How do you look at the digital assets space, specifically cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and the role of decentralized finance such as Uniswap, Aave, or Compound from the perspective of ADDX? - Given the current macroeconomic climate where many private companies will take a longer time to achieve exits, are there pockets of opportunity where they can engineer a secondary exit through SPACs or other instruments? - With the recent rate hikes to curb rising inflation, the market has triggered an economic downturn. Most VCs are now deliberately turning off their taps and letting the startups either rise or go underwater, given that they have the upper hand on valuation now. What will be your advice to entrepreneurs and capital allocators out there? - What does great look like for ADDX in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Oi-Yee's recommendations: James Clear "[Atomic Habits](https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits?ref=analysepodcast.com)". - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](x-private-markets-in-the-asia-pacific-with-choo-oi-yee) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/addx-private-markets-in-the-asia-pacific-with-choo-oi-yee/id914868245?i=1000585277629&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvWDUoc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5VIiYZ5PPtbLn1AkyPRDvy?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/addx-private-markets-asia-pacific-choo-oi-yee?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/addx-private-markets-in-the-asia-pacific-with-choo-oi-yee-208287165?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MzA5MmI0ZDEtNTg4ZC00NzY5LTk1ZmMtYjhhODJhMjVhYTVl?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwi43tnTnJv7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1303194697093187) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/ADDX-%26-Private-Markets-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Choo-Oi-Yee-id2859782-id546128533?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uaSWTCMB9c&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Chip War with Chris Miller URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/chip-war-with-chris-miller/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:00.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Chris Miller, associate professor of international history from Tufts University joined us in a conversation to discuss his new book "Chip War". Starting from the birth of Silicon Valley and the inability of the Soviet Union to develop its semiconductor ecosystem, Chris chronicled the story of semiconductors that brought forth the rise of Asia in the past few decades and how Japan, Korea and Taiwan built their expertise within the chip supply chain along with other key players. He brought us to the present state of affairs and explored whether China can develop their semiconductor industry by decoupling from the rest of the world and risk a conflict with the United States over Taiwan. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on the future of the semiconductor industry. --- > "It's impossible today for any country to do it all on their own. And even if you looked at the United States, which is still the biggest player in the supply chain by far, it's still the case that the US can't do it all on its own. As you mentioned, it imports lithography equipment from the Netherlands. It imports chemicals and materials from Japan. And then the most advanced fabrication of processor chips is in Taiwan. So, no country can do it alone. And really no country is even close." - **Chris Miller** ### Introduction - [Chris Miller](https://www.christophermiller.net/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Associate Professor of International History](https://fletcher.tufts.edu/people/faculty/christopher-miller?ref=analysepodcast.com) in The Fletcher School at Tufts University and author of “Chip War” ([@crmiller1](https://twitter.com/crmiller1?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-miller-93004923/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What are the most interesting career lessons which you can share with my audience? ### [Chip War](https://www.christophermiller.net/semiconductors-1?ref=analysepodcast.com): The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology ([Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Chip-War-Worlds-Critical-Technology/dp/1982172002/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Simon & Schuster](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Chip-War/Chris-Miller/9781982172008?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - To start, I have read the book and from a reader’s perspective, it feels like the history of the world, even the rise of Asia, written from the semiconductor's point of view. What is the inspiration behind “Chip War” and what are the key themes and takeaways from the book? - The history of semiconductors came from Silicon Valley. Can you summarize the story of the traitorous eight and how part of the team, for example, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore eventually end up starting Intel? - How did the semiconductor industry eventually end up with consumer electronics given that its early origins are focused on the military and the space race? - History doesn't repeat itself but it seems to rhyme. Can you talk about the rise of Japan and how it displaced Intel in the process, which in turn, forced the company to pivot to microprocessors in the 1980s? - How far was Japan in the semiconductors race in the 1980s? What was done by the US government to constrain the Japanese so that they don’t take over the US enterprise? Part of the story also came from an alliance between Intel and the other chip makers to contain Japan’s rise as well. - How did South Korea manage to enter into the semiconductors race with Samsung? - Then we come to the 1990s Taiwan’s turn to build their semiconductors expertise. Can you talk about how Morris Chang, a well-known executive from Texas Instruments came to work with the Taiwanese government and built TSMC? - How did TSMC disrupt the vertically integrated model from Intel with the foundry model? - What are the factors that made TSMC successful, for example, its partnership with ASML and the talent bench they have to execute the chip production for major customers, NVIDIA and Apple? - [TSMC 30th anniversary video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGT3zSGDN3k&ref=analysepodcast.com) hosted by Morris Chang mentioned by BL during the interview. - If we look at the semiconductor supply chain today, it’s extremely specialized, for example, Taiwan produced the chips, the Netherlands built the ASML machines for EUV lithography, the UK with ARM architecture, and Japan and Korea with their expertise, does made it difficult for any country to be able to do it all, for example, China? - The early origins of semiconductors are meant for the military, what were they used for then and why is it that China is severely constrained by this choke point technology? - China is rising differently from Japan and Korea, because, first, it is not a democracy and second, it is starting to decouple from the supply chain with its version of the GPS: beidou and third, they have a 1.4 billion population which constitutes the largest market in the world and have its domestic market. Will it be able to replicate the semiconductor chain given all the blocking coming from the US? - If we start from the present and dial into Graham Allison’s book “Destined for War” how Japan ended up attacking the United States because of tough sanctions of oil as a final straw, and then replaced China with Japan and then oil with semiconductors, what is the likelihood that China will attack Taiwan with the recent conclusion of the 20th party congress? - If we fast forward to the next decade, what will be the story of semiconductors in the future? - Chris' thoughts on the Chips Act and Intel's prospects in the future. ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Chris' recommendation: Joseph Torigian's "[Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao](https://www.amazon.com/Prestige-Manipulation-Coercion-Struggles-Soviet/dp/0300254237/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" - How does my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/chip-war-with-chris-miller?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chip-war-with-chris-miller/id914868245?i=1000584867976&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuQoTKw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0hVdFnororb6y5WQeyKq25?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/chip-war-with-chris-miller?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/chip-war-with-chris-miller-208186419?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmE0N2I0MDMtODNjNy00ZDdmLWJmM2YtM2U3OWNjZTI1NWYz?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjap9PQ5JD7AhXfkIkEHeH6CGIQkfYCegQIARAF&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1524950561279341) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Chip-War-with-Chris-Miller-id2859782-id545184714?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgUBktTdygQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The e-Conomy SEA Report 2022 with Stephanie Davis and Florian Hoppe URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-e-conomy-sea-report-2022-with-stephanie-davis-and-florian-hoppe/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:52:00.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Stephanie Davis from Google and Florian Hoppe from Bain & Company joined us to break down the key findings from the e-Conomy SEA Report 2022\. Stephanie and Florian shared their perspectives on the different digital trends in various sectors from e-commerce to web3 and what important trendlines they are looking forward to in the next 12 months. --- > "First forecasted back in 2016, we had anticipated the 200 billion by 2025\. It also stands out to us that the digital economy grew 20% year on year. And the reason that stands out is that we expected things to slow down somewhat as we came out of the pandemic because we saw incredible acceleration over the last two to three years, and to see that people have returned to so-called normalcy, at least in terms of going out shopping, visiting, retail spaces. And in fact, that mobility has returned to pre-pandemic levels and often times exceeded it, but yet you still see the digital economy growing 20%. So those are real standouts for us." - Stephanie Davis ### Introduction - Introduction: Stephanie Davis ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-davis-59917a/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Vice President, Google Southeast Asia, and Florian Hoppe ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-hoppe-09014b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), partner at Bain and Company - For Florian, since it’s your first time on the show, can you give a brief introduction of your role and coverage for Bain and Company? ### [The e-Conomy SEA Report 2022](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Link](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/e%5Fconomy%5Fsea%5F2022%5Freport.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Before we discuss the findings from the report this year, can anyone of you share the methodology behind the e-Conomy SEA report every year? How are the data sources curated to bring Google, Bain & Company & Temasek together in building the report? - What are the key highlights of the e-Conomy Southeast Asia report 2022? - Based on the market coverage with 5 leading (E-Commerce, Transport & food, Online travel, online media, and financial services) and 4 nascent sectors (Healthtech, Web3, Edtech, and SaaS), are there any surprise learnings that come out this year’s report? - As the e-Conomy report in 2016 accurately predicted the Southeast Asia digital economy to reach $200B gross merchandise value (GMV) and it arrived 3 years earlier than expected, what are the drivers and macroeconomic conditions that led to the digital economy reaching this number earlier? - Based on the recent headwinds, for example, the US and China tensions over Taiwan Straits and Russia-Ukraine war, will this digital economy growth be slowed due to less globalization? - Let’s zoom into fintech, the digital fintech landscape is getting competitive, and given that we have seen fintech and crypto / web3 companies compete for mass and unbanked customers, while established banks fast-tracked digitalization like DBS, what are the interesting innovations or use cases examples you have seen in the landscape? - Do you think that the fintech and crypto /web3 technologies will converge? - With the recent crypto crash, do you see Southeast Asia governments will step up the regulation of fintech and crypto in the same space? - One key data point in the report is in ESG, can you talk about how SEA companies are thinking about the environment, social & governance (ESG), labour practices and diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) issues moving forward? - With the rising rates from the US Federal reserve, capital will be expensive and scarce and the recent challenge of startups getting new funding, how do you see the startup landscape into two categories: the early-stage companies and the middle to late-stage pre-IPO companies? - The report has indicated that the digital economy will reach $1T GMV by 2030\. What are the conditions that will help to accelerate the growth towards that number earlier? - Where are the growing regions in Southeast Asia and how should companies think about expanding in those markets? - Before the e-Conomy report 2023, what are the key trends and indicators that you will be interested to see in the next 12 months? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Stephanie's recommendations: Ted Osius, "[Nothing is Impossible: America's Reconciliation with Vietnam](https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Impossible-Americas-Reconciliation-Vietnam/dp/1978825161?ref=analysepodcast.com)" - Florian's recommendations: [Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power TV series](https://www.primevideo.com/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.f856462e-f3f0-47d6-99a7-8e7900ffb935?ref%5F=dvm%5Fpds%5Ftit%5Fsg%5Fdc%5Fs%5Fg%5Fmkw%5FsDytM6QGo-dc%5Fpcrid%5F614927072109&mrntrk=slid%5F%5Fpgrid%5F148325516548%5Fpgeo%5F9062543%5Fx%5F%5Fptid%5Fkwd-1717784209082&ref=analysepodcast.com). - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-e-conomy-sea-report-2022-with-stephanie-davis-and-florian-hoppe?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-e-conomy-sea-report-2022-with-stephanie-davis/id914868245?i=1000584437159&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvHzFto?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7jDLJYS4zMF0Qcp7uXve6n?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-e-conomy-sea-report-2022-stephanie-davis-florian-hoppe?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-e-conomy-sea-report-2022-with-stephanie-davis-and-florian-hoppe-208078828?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YWI2OTU5OTAtZWE3YS00YjBmLWIxZDgtNTFlMjE2Y2RkMzI4?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjQ3dexr4n7AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1040943737304035) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-e-Conomy-SEA-Report-2022-with-Stephanie-Davis-and-Florian-Hoppe-id2859782-id544226972?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bABKwuo7LYw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Future of Work with Charles Anderson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-future-of-work-with-charles-anderson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:59.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Charles Anderson, chief strategy officer of Eight Inc joined us to share his perspectives on the future of work. He shared how companies are struggling to cope with the post-pandemic era where they have to embrace hybrid and remote work and dive deep into the strategies for managing and retaining employees in this period of great resignation. Last but not least, he shared the critical trends in the technologies & social practices and what great looks such that it aligns with the future of work. --- > "So people don't mind going back to the office. But in Asia, the people who wanna go to the office the least are the people who are working in Northeast Asia. So in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, those are ones that have more of a tough environment to work in, more of a bullying culture, the strict 9-9-6 in China (which I know is going away) but people are still expected to work a lot. ... They don't have that type of a great work life balance, and they don't wanna go back in. So it's really a difficult thing. There's dozens of different types of dependencies you would need to look at. We need to start this process because this isn't gonna go away. We're gonna keep transitioning to it, so we might as well put in a better plan to make sure that our return-to-work and hybrid models are successful." - **Charles Anderson** ### Introduction - [Charles Anderson](https://www.charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/charlesreedanderson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Chief Strategy Officer, [Eight Inc](https://eightinc.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & host of [TechBurst Asia Podcast](https://www.charlesreedanderson.com/techburst-asia-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - What led you to join Eight Inc? - Can you talk about your role and coverage with Eight Inc? ### Future of Work **([Video](https://vimeo.com/751968305?ref=analysepodcast.com))** - Can you define what the future of work means for the layman out there? - From the start of the pandemic to the post-pandemic era now, what has changed for organizations adopting hybrid and remote work? - How well are we progressing with the return to the office? - What do business leaders need to consider for their employees returning to the office and how should they sequence the return? - We have seen companies implementing either flexible/hybrid workspaces and policies for knowledge workers. What are they getting right and wrong with these work strategies? - The key issue is human outcomes. What is the human impact of the pandemic and how does that lead to great resignation? - How does the great resignation lead to a great disconnect between employees and employers? - How does one measure outcomes in a remote work environment? - What is the experience master plan that can be applied to the future of work? - How do you measure the return on experience for that master plan? - What are the critical trends for the technologies and social practices that align with the future of work? - Can you talk about the digital twin concept and how does they help the different stakeholders in a building and the underlying mechanisms? - What does great look like for any company successfully implementing the future of work? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Charles' recommendation: [Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/feel-better-live-more-with-dr-rangan-chatterjee/id1333552422?ref=analysepodcast.com) with [James Nestor](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/124-why-changing-the-way-you-breathe-will-transform/id1333552422?i=1000492174225&ref=analysepodcast.com), author of "[Brdoesth](https://www.amazon.sg/Breath-New-Science-Lost-Art/dp/0735213615/ref=asc%5Fdf%5F0735213615/?ref=analysepodcast.com)". - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-future-of-work-with-charles-anderson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-future-of-work-with-charles-anderson/id914868245?i=1000583628240&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFve06fc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5R7VO110La7do5RUtBwcpp?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-future-of-work-with-charles-anderson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-future-of-work-with-charles-anderson-207866847?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YTgwMWU5OTMtMGVkYS00ZTEyLWE5MmUtYWI2OTUxYTBjODMw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjo04OZ1vf6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1463740134031598) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Future-of-Work-with-Charles-Anderson-id2859782-id542587902?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShJmr5LgJAs&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### AppWorks Ventures & Deep Dive into Web3 with Jessica Liu URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/appworks-ventures-web3-investment-with-jessica-liu/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:59.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jessica Liu, the partner from AppWorks Ventures joined us in a discussion to probe deep into what it is like to invest in the Web3 space. We began with her backstory of how she transitioned from fintech into crypto as a venture capitalist. From there, she offered her perspectives on how the web3 space is evolving and why the web2 paradigm cannot be translated into the new mission of web3 in onboarding the next billion. Last but not least, Jessica reviews the different mechanisms of funding in web3 and how DAOs will evolve in the next wave post the current crypto downturn. --- > "I'm actually not a believer of the web 2.0 turning into web 3\. So these days a lot of companies are basically turning non-profitable web 2.0 companies and adding token elements into that and turning it into a web 3 company - and think issuing a token can flip the whole picture differently. I'm not a believer in that, the reason is that the user is coming on board with a different purpose. These people from the web 2.0, they don't care about whether they have tokens, they don't care about whether they're owning the assets." - Jessica Liu ### Introduction - [Jessica Liu](https://appworks.tw/team/jessica-liu/?ref=analysepodcast.com), partner at AppWorks Ventures ([@jessieliu35liu](https://twitter.com/jessieliu35liu?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-liu-64b70112/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [AppWorks profile](https://appworks.tw/team/jessica-liu/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - How did you end up in a career in venture capital? - How do you transition from web2 to web3 as an investor? - What are the interesting career lessons that you can share with my audience? ### AppWorks Ventures & Deep Dive into Web3 - To start, as I interviewed [Jamie](https://www.analysepodcast.com/appworks-investing-in-web3-with-jamie-lin/) earlier this year on AppWorks and the overall investment thesis of the firm, can you share a quick introduction to AppWorks for my audience? - Can you define the market opportunity in web3 or crypto or blockchain and the key segments that interest you most in the web3 space? - What does a typical day look like for you as a venture capitalist? - What key traits you index in a founder or a startup team are you likely to invest in? - Reversing the question, what are the red flags you are looking for? - What are the interesting web3 companies that you have invested in the space? - What are the most exciting trends that you are seeing in the web3 space, specifically in DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi and NFTs areas? - A strong opinion I have with other investors is that you cannot slap a web2 user interface and experience into a web3 world. What are your thoughts? - Are we moving towards a multi-chain world with different specializations or a world where a few key blockchains would lead the way like what BTC, Solana or ETH does? - How do you evaluate the opportunities in different chains, for example, a game on the Solana blockchain vs another in Ethereum blockchain? - How does the landscape play out in Web3 in terms of business models such as play to earn or customer acquisitions such as memes and airdrops? Are we going to see more shifts in how these mechanisms are? - What are your thoughts on funding companies with equities, tokens or a mix of both? - Do some DAO governance issues, as we observed recently, make it difficult for investors to put money in? - Given that we are in the midst of an evolving bear market, what is your memo to crypto or web3 startups on how they should navigate through these tough times? - What does great look like for you for Appworks in the web3 space? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Jessica's recommendation: [Finite & Infinite Games](https://www.amazon.com/Finite-Infinite-Games-James-Carse-ebook/dp/B004W3FM4A?ref=analysepodcast.com) by James P Carse - BL's recommendation: "[The Gun, The Pen & The Ship](https://www.amazon.com/Gun-Ship-Pen-Warfare-Constitutions/dp/0871403161?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Linda Colley - How does my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/appworks-ventures-deep-dive-into-web3-with-jessica-liu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/appworks-ventures-deep-dive-into-web3-with-jessica-liu/id914868245?i=1000583252192&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvYEnMA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4AdKr1qzhQ6DpZhCnmYeeU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/appworks-ventures-deep-dive-web3-investing-jessica-liu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/appworks-ventures-deep-dive-into-web3-with-jessica-liu-207779741?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZGEwNjYyNDUtNDQ2Ny00YjYxLWJmYTEtNjA4MWRmM2I1Njc4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/498520162158381) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/AppWorks-Ventures-%26-Deep-Dive-into-Web3-with-Jessica-Liu-id2859782-id541723095?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSdkS-DiAZE&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### TSMC & Global Chip Shortage with Jon Y URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/tsmc-global-chip-shortage-with-jon-y/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:58.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jon Y, the founder of Asianometry joined us to discuss TSMC and the global chip shortage happening across the world. Jon Y began the conversation with an overview of the semiconductors industry with the different key players in the space from SMIC in China to Samsung in Korea. Then he dived deep into TSMC and explained why it is hard to replicate the semiconductor foundry to other parts of the world and their competitive advantage in the market. Last but not least, he examined the end of Moore's law and the future of the semiconductor industry. --- > "I think one of the things that TSMC does is that they tend to hit their targets. When they say they're gonna build something, they're gonna do something, they do it. I think that when you contrast that with other companies in the industry like for example, a particular company in America that says and sets a certain deadline and misses it repeatedly, that affects your credibility. TSMC has always said that they're gonna hit a certain number. It's like a pretty good chance that they'll hit it." - Jon Y ### Introduction - Jon Y, founder of [Asianometry](https://asianometry.substack.com/) ([@asianometry](https://twitter.com/asianometry?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/c/Asianometry/videos?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What is the inspiration behind starting Asianometry? - What are the highlights of the newsletter and youtube channel? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? ### TSMC & Global Chip Shortage - To jumpstart this conversation, can you explain the chip development from start to finish? How does the chip end up in our laptops, mobile phones or even cars? - I want to drill down to the chip shortage that has been reported. \[Reference: [Where the Real Chip Shortage is](https://asianometry.substack.com/p/where-the-real-chip-shortage-is)\] Can you provide an overview of the different fabs and semiconductors in the market, specifically on their sizes, for example, UMC which specializes in the 65 to 28 nm range, reports monthly revenue growth of 35% in August 2022 and TSMC which is gunning at the frontier edge of 3nm? - What is the landscape for semiconductors? Other than TSMC, how do we look at other companies in the space: Samsung in Korea, SMIC in China, Vedanta in India and Intel and other US chip makers now supercharged by the Chips Act in the US? - I like your deep dive into the [3nm process](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dT-h74lPDc&ref=analysepodcast.com) where you have given a clear explanation of the technology and why it matters. Can you talk about how leading-edge semiconductor process nodes are made? - What are the factors that are responsible for the global chip shortage? - What can the industry do to increase the supply to meet the demand of the chip shortage just by building more fabs (or fabrication plants)? What are the tradeoffs that companies like TSMC need to make in order to increase chip production? - I want to zoom in on TSMC because they are leading the semiconductor race. What are the key competitive advantages they have that the rest cannot replicate? One word on the street we hear is that they have talent. How about the economies of scale they have in building a gigafab? \[Reference: [The Economics of a Giga Fab](https://asianometry.substack.com/p/the-economics-of-tsmcs-giga-fabs)\] - What does the current TSMC supply chain look like and can you elaborate on the inter-dependency between ASML and TSMC? - Who are the key people in TSMC and what’s the corporate culture like in the company? - How is TSMC performing in 2022? What are the key highlights and economic concerns on them? You have done an interesting review of them. \[Reference: [2022 TSMC Update](https://asianometry.substack.com/p/visiting-tsmc-in-tainan)\] - What is the future of the semiconductor industry and are we close to the end of Moore’s law? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Jon Y's recommendations: [Minions: The Rise of Gru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minions:%5FThe%5FRise%5Fof%5FGru?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/tsmc-global-chip-shortage-with-jon-y?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tsmc-global-chip-shortage-with-jon-y/id914868245?i=1000582364456&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFu%5FiwTw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1kmvez1z4O34UWZnv5HC50?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/tsmc-global-chip-shortage-asianometry-jon-y?si=79239f0c12644caa9cdeb86755063859&utm%5Fsource=clipboard&utm%5Fmedium=text&utm%5Fcampaign=social%5Fsharing) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/tsmc-global-chip-shortage-with-jon-y-207523628?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OWU2NDM2ZjgtNzBlNS00NWE2LWE2NGMtMjk1MDg4ZDk3MmJi?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiAjqHa69n6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1160744481463899) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/TSMC-%26-Global-Chip-Shortage-with-Jon-Y-id2859782-id539764076?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2FPke%5FRBs&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Surveillance State with Liza Lin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/surveillance-state-with-liza-lin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:58.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Liza Lin, senior correspondent at the Wall Street Journal, discuss the key themes of her new book, Surveillance State, co-authored with Josh Chin. We began the conversation on the motivation and inspiration behind the book and dived deep into the key stories of how AI and digital tools are adopted to maintain social control in China. Last but not least, Liza shares how these technologies developed by China are now exported across the world, foreshadowing the war between different political ideologies. --- > "China's vision is basically to use the big data that it's harvested to enable its government to be just more nimble and more reactive to the demands of its citizens. So China's idea is, you know, if we collect enough data, we can spot problems and nip them in the bud even before they occur. Or we can spot, for example, a national security threat and nip that in the bud even before a terrorist is able to do anything." - **Liza Lin** ### Introduction - Liza Lin, Senior Correspondent at the Wall Street Journal and co-author of “Surveillance State” - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? ### Surveillance State: Inside China's quest to launch a new era of social control - Surveillance State by Liza Lin and Josh Chin ([Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-State-Inside-Chinas-Control-ebook/dp/B08R2K1D36?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Macmillian](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250249296/surveillancestate?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - To start, what is the motivation and inspiration behind writing this book? - Who is the intended audience of the book? - What are the key themes of the book? - Can you talk about how the digital surveillance industry with computer vision and AI rose in China which led up to what it is today? - What are the key companies that are providing the digital surveillance industry, specifically in the hardware and software components? - What are the biggest misconceptions from Western Media about the surveillance state that China brought about? - The irony that I have learned from your book is that some of the concepts that the Chinese have adopted came from the US. Can you describe a few of those which were adopted in China? - Technology is neutral and it depends on how governments are using them. Specifically for China, while we read a lot about the “black mirror” part of the digital authoritarian culture, what are the applications in which these technologies turn out to be sinister? - Let’s turn to how it can behelpful, for example, child trafficking. - What I find interesting about the book is the story of Hangzhou and how they built on the concept of a smart city in 2016, where Alibaba made an AI-powered platform, City Brain, to help the government to optimize everything from traffic to water management. Can you tell the story of how it is being put together and what has been solved and not solved? - The technical implementation for social credit is pitched by Lin Jinyue, an American-educated expert in credit systems from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Can you talk about the origins of how the concept of social credit came together and what it is meant to solve initially? - The ACLU in the US and many western outlets conflated Alibaba’s Sesame Credit with the social credit system. How does the social credit system work in actuality? - Of course, when there is a large-scale implementation of the social credit system, there will be bugs and part of the reason lies with the black lists. Can you talk about the story of Zhuang Daohe, a legal scholar in Hangzhou and how he ended up suing the Chinese regulator? - We observe how the US has responded with sanctions first with export controls on semiconductors and recently stopping NVIDIA from exporting the AI chips. Will this slow down the development of digital surveillance in China? - How are these digital surveillance technologies exported out of China and where are they used now? - What is the future for these technologies in digital surveillance and what are its implications for the world order with the rise of China and the decline of democracies in Europe and the US? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Liza's recommendations: Erich Schwartzel's "[Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the battle for cultural supremacy](https://www.amazon.com/Red-Carpet-Hollywood-Cultural-Supremacy-ebook/dp/B0943FL2PY?ref=analysepodcast.com)" - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/surveillance-state-with-liza-lin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/surveillance-state-with-liza-lin/id914868245?i=1000581897007&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFteO5-I?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5UyMcs110OZ19PRybvLAjI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/surveillance-state-with-liza-lin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/surveillance-state-with-liza-lin-207390703?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YTBjOTFiODAtNGJlZC00Mzk5LTk3NjMtM2M0OTU0ZmE4ZGQ2?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwioofCF3836AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/663055165112580) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Surveillance-State-with-Liza-Lin-id2859782-id538647426?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN-zFBj0-r8&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Flashpoints & Supply Chain Challenges in Asia Pacific with James Crabtree URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/flashpoints-supply-chain-challenges-in-asia-pacific-james-crabtree/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:57.000Z Fresh out of the studio, James Crabtree, executive director from International Institute of Strategic Studies Asia, joined us in a conversation on the current flashpoints in Asia Pacific from the China and Taiwan issue to India and what these tensions will mean for businesses and the global supply chain. James dived into the current dynamics of the region specifically the semiconductors shortage and provided potential scenarios in how the supply chain will be reconfigured or recalibrated due to the current world order. Last but not least, James examined if we are still going to see the Asian century in the midst of the current developments in the next few decades. --- > "More generally, this air of crisis is just going to force companies to look again at the wisdom of supply chains, which crisscross Asia in a way that didn't take account of geopolitical boundaries. You already see a move by many companies to try and create more robust and resilient supply chains to geopolitical shocks, and so that might mean companies like TSMC or Global Foundries building semiconductor plants in Arizona or in Singapore, it might mean companies that have previously sourced from China to create products that will ultimately be sold in the US will now source from Vietnam or from India instead." **\- James Crabtree** ### Introduction - [James Crabtree](https://www.jamescrabtree.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Executive Director, IISS-Asia [International Institute for Strategic Studies](https://www.iiss.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescrabtree2000/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@jamescrabtree](https://twitter.com/jamescrabtree?ref=analysepodcast.com), [IISS profile](https://www.iiss.org/people/indo-pacific-defence-and-strategy/james-crabtree?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Our last conversation was a discussion of your book “[The Billionaire Raj](https://www.amazon.com/Billionaire-Raj-Journey-Through-Indias/dp/1524760064?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and you were with the Lee Kuan Yew school of government. Since then, what has happened between now and then? - Can you talk about what the International Institute for Strategic Studies does? - What is your role and coverage there? ### Flashpoints & Supply Chain Challenges in Asia Pacific - I want to begin the conversation on China as I recalled you having a conversation with Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia and now the president of Asia society. As we look at the US-China ongoing tensions from Taiwan exacerbated by Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to a slow road to supply chain decoupling with sanctions on China acquiring chokepoint technologies like semiconductors, it looks like we are heading towards the Thucydides trap or probably the[ tragedy of great power politics](https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Great-Power-Politics-Updated/dp/0393349276?ref=analysepodcast.com) pointed by [John Mearsheimer](https://www.mearsheimer.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Is war between China and the US avoidable? - TSMC and Foxconn are important companies in Asia and they are currently based in Taiwan. What is the risk of the Asian supply chains being disrupted if China hypothetically made a move on Taiwan? Will the supply chains head back to the US for example, the passing of the CHIPS Act with Intel’s being the key benefactor? - How should we look at the relationship between China and Russia? What do the Chinese learn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? - With the COVID-zero lockdown, China has slowed down in the Belt & Road Initiative. Till when they open up, will they still continue their economic expansion via the BRI? - How will Japan and Korea handle the volatility that exists in the North Asia region? - Let’s move to India, where you are familiar with. What is the calculus for Modi and his government in the unwillingness to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? - As you covered India for a relatively long time, will India shift from the world’s largest democracy towards something else? - Can the fragile supply chain in Asia Pacific be able to handle the global demand in manufacturing, for example, mobile phones? - How do Asian businesses navigate through the current geopolitical landscape in Asia? - Flipping it back to the US and European businesses, are their expansion efforts going to be curtailed given the push back against China? - With the world taking a retreat from globalization towards national interest, what is the future of Asia in the next decade? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - James' recommendations: [The Bureau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FBureau%5F%28TV%5Fseries%29?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Avoidable War by Kevin Rudd](https://www.amazon.com/Avoidable-War-Dangers-Catastrophic-Conflict/dp/1541701291?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Chip War by Chris Miller](https://www.amazon.com/Chip-War-Worlds-Critical-Technology-ebook/dp/B09RX4RK6T/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=1ZPT4DO8SNG9T&keywords=chip+war+chris+miller&qid=1664846291&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjM2IiwicXNhIjoiMS40OCIsInFzcCI6IjEuMzcifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=Chip+War+%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C392&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com). - Where can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/flashpoints-supply-chain-challenges-in-asia-pacific-with-james-crabtree?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/flashpoints-supply-chain-challenges-in-asia-pacific/id914868245?i=1000581485746&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvVca0o?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4KD5eBnlM7yKIA4ovA1yGf?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/flashpoints-supply-chain-challenges-asia-pacific-james-crabtree?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/flashpoints-supply-chain-challenges-in-asia-pacific-with-james-crabtree-207283854?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NmY2YjUxMzEtMTE1ZC00OTE1LTlhODUtMmE0ZjhkNWRmZTM3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiA-quvz8X6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1112527386321309) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Flashpoints-%26-Supply-Chain-Challenges-in-Asia-Pacific-with-James-Crabtree-id2859782-id537749972?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-JHo1y0pR4&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### QCP Capital & Crypto Derivatives Investing in the Asia Pacific with Darius Sit URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/qcp-capital-crypto-derivatives-investing-in-asia-pacific-with-darius-sit/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:57.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Darius Sit, founder of QCP Capital, joined us in a discussion on the crypto hedge fund and an overview of the crypto derivatives space in the Asia Pacific. Starting with his background in derivatives training, Darius shared how he entered into the crypto space and explained the key concepts behind crypto derivatives trading. He dived deep into the digital assets segment specifically in the DeFi space. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on how he approached venture investing into web3 & crypto startups. --- > "Strategy wise. This is the path that we went through. We started looking at options because we wanted to possibly buy options to hedge our balance sheet. But when we looked at it, we were like: this kind of volatility, very difficult to buy. If it's very difficult to buy means selling is good. So in this case, I think low control leverage volume selling tends to be a very good strategy because of the high carry." - **Darius Sit** ### Introduction - Darius Sit ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/darius-sit-7b9b81152/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@dariussitzl](https://twitter.com/dariussitzl?ref=analysepodcast.com) ), founder and Chief Investment Officer of [QCP Capital](https://qcp.capital/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@qcpcapital](https://www.twitter.com/qcpcapital?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/qcp-capital/?originalSubdomain=sg&ref=analysepodcast.com), [medium](https://qcpcapital.medium.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As you are a first-time guest on the show, we will dive straight into your origin story, how did you start your career? - How did you eventually co-found QCP Capital? - Can you talk about your role and what made you begin your first foray into crypto? - In your career journey, what are the engaging lessons that you can share with my audience? ### QCP Capital & Crypto Derivatives Investing in Asia - To start, can you briefly provide an overview of derivatives such as options, perpetuals and futures in the crypto market and how are they different from traditional derivatives trading, for example, commodities options and futures? - Can you define what alpha and beta mean in derivatives related to volatility? - Given cryptocurrencies are speculative high-risk trading digital assets, how do the derivatives intersect with decentralized finance protocols such as DeFi? - For crypto derivatives trading, does one need to have an investment thesis to make a directional trade? - I am keen to double-click on the derivatives market and the concept of carry. I have two questions on that: the first is that there is an opportunity for market making given the high volumes of crypto trade going in Asia. Is volume selling a form of carry for you or a form of yield generation because you are selling volatility? - What does it mean when we say carry in crypto derivatives, is it just cash and carry or curve trading? - What is the education required to bring an LP to onboard about crypto and specifically DeFi? - Are crypto derivatives trading globally so that they can be executed everywhere and anywhere? Are there nuances for the Asia Pacific region where there may be differences? - Given that the misconception of BTC as an inflation hedge is debunked and the upcoming ETH2 merge, how should we look at crypto digital assets? Are they just call options that are highly correlated with the S&P 500? - We share common investments in crypto or web3 startups and we only met up today for the first time. Given that venture capital is so different from crypto derivatives, how do you treat this asset class? - What traits do you index in a founding team or startup when you invest as a venture capitalist? - What are the categories in crypto or web3 that you are looking at? - What can we learn from the recent collapses of blockchain protocols, crypto lending firms and hedge funds that blew up after the Terra-Luna-UST event and are not specific to anyone per se? - What does great look like for you in QCP Capital? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Darius' recommendations: Joe Rogan's [recent interview with Elon Musk](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2aB2swgyXqbFA06AxPlFmr?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/qcp-capital-crypto-derivatives-investing-in-the-asia-pacific-with-darius-sit?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/qcp-capital-crypto-derivatives-investing-in-the-asia/id914868245?i=1000580600213&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFs6BHWE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/33tIkiVNzbRZJq6ju3tDdj?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/qcp-capital-crypto-derivatives-darius-sit?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/qcp-capital-crypto-derivatives-investing-in-the-asia-pacific-with-darius-sit-207048930?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NDVjMDhkMjctYmVmZC00ZTM4LWFhZTYtYmU1YzVjZmNjMWU0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiIhrqtnLH6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/802539131012078) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/QCP-Capital-%26-Crypto-Derivatives-Investing-in-the-Asia-Pacific-with-Darius-Sit-id2859782-id533594175?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk8odfZfyVs&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Blockdaemon in Asia Pacific & Proof of Stake with Andrew Vranjes URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/blockdaemon-in-asia-pacific-proof-of-stake-with-andrew-vranjes/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:56.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Andrew Vranjes, VP of sales & general manager of Blockdaemon Asia Pacific, joined us in a conversation to discuss the business footprint of the company and break down everything on proof of stake. Andrew started from his background and discuss how he invests into web3 companies as an angel. Next, he discuss the importance of nodes and how Blockdaemon is able to ensure an institutional grade infrastructure for blockchain protocols and provide staking for different stakeholders within the web3 ecosystem. Last but not least, he discuss his thoughts on the Ethereum merge and what it means for the greater ecosystem. --- > "Without nodes, there's no blockchain. Without blockchain, there's no cryptocurrencies. Without cryptocurrencies, there's no web3\. So nodes are the key core fundamental architecture and infrastructure for this ecosystem. Whether you are a persona just trading around the tokens, you need nodes to be performing. So that when you do a trade, read-write transactions happen, you verify how many tokens are in your wallet." - **Andrew Vranjes** ### Introduction - Andrew Vranjes, VP of Sales & General Manager, APAC, [Blockdaemon](https://blockdaemon.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewvranjes/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@andrewvranjes](https://twitter.com/andrewvranjes?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As it is your first time on the podcast, we want to dive into your origin story. How did you start your career? - Given that you have been a prolific angel investor and involved in the XA network, what are the key traits that you index for in founders before investing in them? - Which areas of interest in web3 are you investing in? - What is your mental model in thinking about valuations in the web3 space? Do you prefer tokens, equity or a mixture of both? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience. ### [Blockdaemon](https://blockdaemon.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Asia Pacific & Proof of Stake - To start the conversation before we dive deep into Blockdaemon and its footprint in Asia Pacific, let’s establish a baseline. Can you explain what proof of stake and liquid staking mean? - Moving from the proof of stake consensus, how do blockchains provide staking through deployment of nodes? - How important are nodes as part of the key infrastructure behind blockchain protocols? - Given that we have explained how nodes work, what is the value proposition of Blockdaemon? - Can you provide an overview of Blockdaemon and what is its vision and mission as a company? - What are the key highlights of the company and can you share some key milestones for the company till now? - What is your role and coverage in Blockdaemon? - Who are the customers of Blockdaemon? How do they leverage the institutional grade blockchain structure to allow blockchains to stake, scale and deploy their nodes? - What are the blockchain networks which Blockdaemon are currently supporting? - What are the key products which Blockdaemon provides for the customer (for example, public validators, white label validators, custodians and liquid staking)? - Does Blockdaemon work with startups and developers? How do they tap into the institutional grade infrastructure to build their web3 applications? - Can you talk about some interesting case studies about your customers, for example, Solana, where Blockdaemon has contributed to the deployment of their nodes? - Given that Blockdaemon has set up in Asia Pacific starting from Singapore, what is the focus of the team in this part of the world? - By the time when this interview happens, ETH2 merge will probably happen, what are your thoughts on the event and how will the industry move forward from here? - What does great look like for you Blockdaemon in Asia Pacific in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Andrew's recommendations: Lego, inspiration from builders across Asia Pacific, [Metal Shop Masters](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/81199095?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Netflix) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/blockdaemon-in-asia-pacific-proof-of-stake-with-andrew-vranjes?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blockdaemon-in-asia-pacific-proof-of-stake-with/id914868245?i=1000580013818&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFu7weHA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2gxJD35UNalO6rmBItPQ0q?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/blockdaemon-in-asia-pacific?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/blockdaemon-in-asia-pacific-proof-of-stake-with-andrew-vranjes-206872859?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NmI1ZmM4MzctN2IwZi00YTUwLWJmYzItZDY0OWMxOTRkYTU3?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjmlt%5FrvaL6AhUOdRoKHer5C-oQkfYCegQIARAF&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1038871580108336) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Blockdaemon-in-Asia-Pacific-%26-Proof-of-Stake-with-Andrew-Vranjes-id2859782-id531531136?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBrAJQJrZoc&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### SAP in the Asia Pacific, Sustainability & the Future of Work with Paul Marriott URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/sap-in-asia-pacific-sustainability-the-future-of-work-with-paul-marriott/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:56.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Paul Marriott, the President, SAP in the Asia Pacific and Japan, joined us to discuss the footprint of the business in the region, sustainability and the future of work. Paul explained how the SAP platform is incorporating sustainability, specifically in tackling scope three carbon emissions with the network applications. Last but not least, he offered fresh perspectives on the future of work and the key things to watch out for as we transition into a hybrid work environment. --- > "So these three things, continue the digital transformation, the business networks and the supply chain resilience, both of those underpinning solving for scope three \[carbon emissions\], circular process and a more sustainable future for Asia. The opportunity we have ahead of us, to solve for what I think, are really profound problems that the planet needs to obviously solve." - Paul Marriott ### Introduction - Paul Marriott, President, SAP Asia Pacific Japan ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmmarriott/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As it is your first time on the podcast, we want to dive into your origin story. How did you start your career? - Whthe at brought you to Asia Pacific? What have you learned about Asia through living and working in different countries here? - Can you share the key learnings or lessons from your career journey? ### SAP in Asia Pacific & Sustainability - Can you briefly introduce SAP and what is its vision and mission globally? - What is your current role and coverage in SAP? - What are the key business activities in SAP across the Asia Pacific and Japan? - As a CIO myself along with the CFO, SAP is the bread and butter of how we manage our financial reporting, financial planning and analysis (FP&A), and expenses. What are the other aspects of SAP which you would want customers to know? - Can you talk about the success stories of customers from different verticals in the Asia Pacific that have achieved success with SAP and its cloud computing offerings? - I like to talk about two interesting areas I did not know about before this interview: (1) helping startups with the SAP ecosystem with SAP.io and (2) sustainability with the green token. - Let’s start with the startups, how does SAP facilitate startups to build their innovations on SAP.io? - Are there programs which startups can tap into in working with SAP? Have you seen interesting innovations in the Asia Pacific that allowed startups to tap into the ecosystem at large? - On the sustainability front, can you talk about GreenToken from SAP and how it helps your customers to track the supply chain transparently and efficiently? - What are the benefits of using GreenToken in ensuring sustainability for the customer, for example, in carbon emissions, and manufacturing? - What does great look like for SAP in Asia Pacific & Japan moving ahead? ### Future of Work - The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest accelerator that has brought remote work to the forefront. As we move from a pandemic to an endemic phase, where do you think employers will move towards: fully remote, hybrid or fully back in the office? - What are the cultural practices which we need to put in place for remote work to succeed, for example, communication with teams and performance assessment of teams? - What are the trends from technologies to social practices in workplaces that you are seeing in the future of work and what are the key things you will be watching out for to make the future of work happen? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Paul’s recommendations: [Rebel Talent](https://www.amazon.sg/Rebel-Talent-Pays-Break-Rules/dp/0062694634?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Francesca Gino. - How can my audience find you? **Sponsored by** [**Esevel**](https://esevel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), which helps your in-house team by taking cumbersome tasks off their hands and giving them tools to manage IT effectively. Get help across the Asia Pacific from onboarding, procuring devices, to real-time IT support and offboarding. With the state-of-the-art platform, you can gain full control of all your IT infrastructure in one place. Esevel's team of IT support pros is keen to help you grow! Check out Esevel and get a demo today. Use our referral code “asia” for 10% off. Terms and conditions apply. ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/sap-in-the-asia-pacific-sustainability-the-future-of-work-with-paul-marriott?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sap-in-the-asia-pacific-sustainability-the-future/id914868245?i=1000579520908&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFs0mnl8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7nc6Yg2MSBQKwue7i29S5u?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/sap-in-the-asia-pacific-paul-marriott?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/sap-in-the-asia-pacific-sustainability-the-future-of-work-with-paul-marriott-206742573?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmZmYmEyZjAtNjIzMy00ZGM2LTkwNGEtZmNlNWUyY2ExNjQz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiI4KHNyZX6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1344231409317684) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/SAP-in-the-Asia-Pacific%2C-Sustainability-%26-the-Future-of-Work-with-Paul-Marriott-id2859782-id530054595?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTG3U6VISxk&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Can we invest into tech startups in China? with Rui Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/can-we-invest-into-tech-startups-in-china-with-rui-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:56.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Rui Ma, creator & tech analyst from Techbuzz China joined us to discuss one of the most important questions at present: can we invest into tech startups in China? We dived deep into different aspects of the China tech ecosystem from the decrease in VC funding to the stringent regulation placed by the Chinese government to build a reasonable picture and answer the question at hand. Last but not least, we focused on China's recent "Little Giants Program" and examined its implications to the startup ecosystem in the future. --- > "China is doing exactly what you said, it is trying to basically have backups for choke point technologies, so that in the case of sanctions, it is not left not being able to do anything. Because that's a very real risk for China right now. Whether or not, it needs to have a complete supply chain. Well, it actually has a lot of the more lower value add components than in the really more advanced pieces. As you pointed out that it does not have a solution and it's actually pretty far behind, I think, anywhere from ten, or some people even think it's 20 years behind because there are so many pieces that go into these more sophisticated machines or processes." **\- Rui Ma** ### Introduction - Rui Ma, China Tech Analyst & Creator of [Tech Buzz China](http://www.techbuzzchina.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ruima](https://twitter.com/ruima?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since Carol’s last conversation with you on the botched Ant IPO, what have you been up to? - How has Tech Buzz China evolved over the past few years since its inception? ### Can we invest into tech startups in China? - To start, the Chinese technology ecosystem has undergone major changes over the past three years: 1/ the regulators have taken a stronger hand towards the Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, Didi and many others, 2/ the education tech industry was decimated and 3/ COVID-zero policy that instituted the lockdowns which will affect their GDP growth this year and 4/ the amount of venture financing in China decreased down from US$18.1B to US$8.1B based on [Nikkei Asia Review](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Startups/China-startup-funding-plunges-to-8-year-low-in-Q2?ref=analysepodcast.com). The first question which I want to set up for the rest of the conversation is: what is the sentiment on the ground like for Chinese tech startups? - How has Chinese government regulation changed over the years? - How about the VC ecosystem and how are they adapting to the change in mood in the tech ecosystem? I assumed that GGV capital has a major writedown given their investment in education tech companies. - It is predicted by my friend Shai that [Sequoia China will split up and be an independent entity moving forward](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-sequoia-capital-could-split-from-star-chinese-partner?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com). What are your thoughts given that they have raised a [whopping US$9B](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sequoia-capitals-china-arm-raises-9-billion-exceeding-target?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com) this year? - Specifically, for the Internet, are we seeing less emphasis on Chinese consumer tech and more towards enterprise tech? - Will the Chinese tech ecosystem be funded only by local VCs such as Qiming Ventures moving forward in the next few years? - One key focus will be on semiconductors, while China is slower on the chip manufacturing side, Yangtze Memories Technologies (YMTC) is moving upstream with the memory chips and now in 5% of the global market, will China eventually have their own semiconductor ecosystem? - China has introduced the [Little Giants program](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-28/china-to-add-3-000-little-giants-this-year-to-spur-innovation?ref=analysepodcast.com#xj4y7vzkg) for 3000 startups from Bloomberg, which is similar to the “Hidden Champions” program which jump-started the German manufacturing industry and brought about their giants such as Bosch to the scene. Can you talk more about the Little Giants program and what specific areas are the startups focused on? - Given what happened to Didi, will we see less and less successful Chinese tech companies to list in the US but choose to do it in either HKSE or Shanghai Starboard? - Taking a more optimistic view, what are the most interesting Chinese tech startups that you are monitoring in the ecosystem that people do not know about and which segments they are in? - The final question: can we invest into tech startups in China? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Rui Ma's recommendations: Parenting books and [Asianometry newsletter](https://asianometry.substack.com/) & [youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/Asianometry/videos?ref=analysepodcast.com) focused on semiconductors industry. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/can-we-invest-into-tech-startups-in-china-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-we-invest-into-tech-startups-in-china-with-rui-ma/id914868245?i=1000578641474&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtsV1GA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6QPXVToD3izZR7RW3YYOTz?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/can-we-invest-into-tech-startups-china-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/can-we-invest-into-tech-startups-in-china-with-rui-ma-206491208?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmU1NmM5MzQtZDNiYi00NGViLTg0NWItNDI5MjgzNjQ4NDU0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiIg-3-xoH6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/780642636520659) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Can-we-invest-into-tech-startups-in-China--with-Rui-Ma-id2859782-id528220960?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oykMM0Y6z2Q&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Monk’s Hill Ventures & Investing into an uncertain era in Southeast Asia with Lim Kuo-Yi URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/monks-hill-ventures-investing-into-an-uncertain-era-in-southeast-asia-with-lim-kuo-yi/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:55.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Lim Kuo-Yi, co-founder & managing partner of Monk's Hill Ventures, discuss the next evolution of the venture firm and dived into his perspectives on investing into an uncertain time across Southeast Asia. We dived deep into Kuo-Yi's background as a venture capitalist from public sector to the private sector and hear his mental model in how he indexes founders and startup teams and valuation of companies. Last but not least, Kuo-Yi reflects on how the startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia is changing after the key exits in the last decade. --- > "Look, I think this is a long game. A lot of times you don't see the results until you're a few years out. At the same time, the fundraising game is a very short game, which means you want the short results very quickly. So the LP sees that you are ahead of the pack in fundamentally what is a very long game. So there's a huge disconnect there. and I think the pressure has always been there to show short term results in the long term game." - **Lim Kuo-Yi** ### Introduction ### - Lim Kuo-Yi, co-founder and managing partner of [Monk’s Hill Ventures](https://www.monkshill.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@limky](https://twitter.com/limky?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/limky/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As a first time guest on the podcast, let’s go straight to your origin story. How did you start your career? - Given that you were the CEO of Infocomm Investments in IDA (or now IMDA), what have you learned from being a venture capitalist in the public sector vs now? - In your career journey, what are the valuable lessons that you can share with my audience? ### [Monk’s Hill Ventures](https://www.monkshill.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Investing into an uncertain era in Southeast Asia - I want to start the conversation on Monk’s Hill Ventures, given that I have interviewed Peng Tsin a few years back on its origin. I saw the rise of Monk’s Hill Ventures and you are definitely [on track with your third fund](https://www.venturecapitaljournal.com/monks-hill-ventures-targets-150m-for-third-fund/?ref=analysepodcast.com). The first question I want to ask: How has the fund evolved from its origin to today? What are the key milestones that your team has managed to achieve to its present state today? - What are the things that did not work out and what would you have done differently in investing and building your portfolio of companies? - What does a day look like for you as a VC? - What are the traits that you index for to know if you want to invest in the founding team and the startup? - Reversing the question, what are the red flags that you would look out for? - What are the key industry verticals that would interest you today? - What is your mental model in thinking about valuations of the companies within this region? - What are the interesting companies that you have worked with within your portfolio and what makes the founding team interesting there? (Name 3-5 companies) - Recently, The Information reported that there is the flow of more VC money from China into Southeast Asia, and of course, Singapore sits between the US and China, what does it mean for the startup ecosystem in this region? - Given that all of us have been participants in Southeast Asia for the past decade, what are your reflections on the market in general? Is there a myth of a common market or is it just countries specific strategies that startups need to think about? - How would you advise the founders today in thinking about geographic expansion and what are the pitfalls that they have to avoid? - Given that we have just gone from a boom to an uncertain market with money becoming more expensive today, if you will write a memo to your startups like Sequoia Capital or YCombinator, what are the key points that you would tell them in the memo? - What does great look like for Monk’s Hill Ventures in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/monks-hill-ventures-investing-into-an-uncertain-era-in-southeast-asia-with-lim-kuo-yi?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/monks-hill-ventures-investing-into-an-uncertain-era/id914868245?i=1000577988483&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtkvB7s?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4KesSN1A5JcYYLhbdWPqzi?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/monks-hill-ventures-investing?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/monks-hill-ventures-investing-into-an-uncertain-era-in-southeast-asia-with-lim-kuo-yi-206316424?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZmY1NTcwNjAtNjhkZC00MDVkLThlYmUtYTI3ZmM1OTJkN2Jl?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjjYOr0%5FL5AhUugc4BHXXFDRAQkfYCegQIARAF&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/471077941548367) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Monk%E2%80%99s-Hill-Ventures-%26-Investing-into-an-uncertain-era-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Lim-Kuo-Yi-id2859782-id526610809?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBun4P26RNU&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### RIMM, ESG & Investment in Climate Adaptation with Ravi Chidambaram URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/rimm-esg-investment-climate-adaptation-ravi-chidambaram/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:54.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Ravi Chidambaram, CEO and founder of RIMM, joined us in a conversation to discuss ESG and climate adaptation investing across Asia Pacific. Ravi explained the current paradigms in the ESG space and dived deep into different topics such as climate change, water scarcity and carbon credits and where technology is leading. Last but not least, he provided the value proposition behind RIMM and how it helps companies from different sectors to do ESG reporting and aggregates the data for analytics and machine learning. --- > "I think from an investor perspective, the biggest misconception would be to buy into a high score and think the company is truly sustainable because the reality with ESG is the data is self-reported. The data often is limited in terms of the range of disclosures. It's very selective. It's very manipulative because large companies with big CSR or sustainability departments, Can often manage the narrative around ESG better than smaller companies. There are a lot of geographic biases: developing countries tend to get poorer ratings and are usually penalized with a corruption or transparency type discount." - **Ravi Chidambaram** ### Introduction - Ravi Chidambaram, Founder & CEO, [RIMM](https://www.rimm.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and co-founder of [TC Capital](https://www.tccapital.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravichidambaram/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As a first time guest on the show, the first question is always the origin story. How did you start your career? - You have been in the investment banking sector in M&A for a very long time first with Bear Stearns and then with TC Capital which you co-founded. What are your key learnings within that industry? - One side gig you have is that you are an adjunct professor teaching sustainability in the Yale-NUS college which will be transitioned to the NUS college. Can you talk about how you bring the industry thinking to your students with regards to sustainability? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons which you can share with my audience? ### RIMM, ESG and Investment in Climate Adaptation - Reference: “[It’s time to invest in climate adaptation](https://hbr.org/2022/08/its-time-to-invest-in-climate-adaptation?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Parag Khanna and Ravi Chidambaram - To start the conversation, we often hear about the concept of [Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance or ESG ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,%5Fsocial,%5Fand%5Fcorporate%5Fgovernance?ref=analysepodcast.com)in short. Can you explain the concept of ESG and how ESG has percolated into company practices today? - Let’s take an example, companies are trying to reduce carbon footprint by using carbon offsets and yet worldwide sequestration of carbon is less than 1%, how does carbon offsets (or carbon credits) work for companies? - Given all the different initiatives from governments, companies and non-profit organizations to take on climate change with their aim to go net zero by a certain date (and the goal’s aspirational and not a hard target), what are the realistic scenarios that we are going to see in our lifetime? - What is climate adaptation and why should we invest into it right now? - To dive deeper, how does climate change affect agriculture? Can countries still leverage on insurance to hedge against the corps yields every year? - What about water scarcity? Are there examples of companies deploying measures from technology to policies that will resolve these issues? - Given that I am in construction and real estate, I like to hear your thoughts on how the industry as a whole thinks about the build environment. Are there initiatives to think about housing for the next billion of people and also reducing carbon footprint? - A technology question, what are your thoughts on companies deploying blockchains to track and trade carbon credits? - What should be the mental models for companies to think about ESG? - Elon Musk has recently challenged how ESG is measured by the MSCI. What are your perspectives on how we should think about measurement of ESG by companies? - What are the common misconceptions on ESG which people are getting wrong? - I have observed some companies that are focused on the reporting of ESG, and some on trading water and carbon credits. How do you look at the startup space in the ESG? - That comes to one of your current gigs, RIMM, a sustainability platform, what does RIMM do and how does it work for companies? - What are the services that RIMM provides for customers beyond the platform, for example, consulting with companies in specific sector out there to help them figure out the ESG roadmap? - How do companies leverage on RIMM to develop and deploy their ESG strategies? Can you give an example of how the management team can use it to track their sustainability efforts? - What does great look like for RIMM in the next 3-5 years? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Ravi's recommendations: 1/ [Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves](https://www.amazon.com/Regenesis-Synthetic-Biology-Reinvent-Ourselves/dp/0465075703?ref=analysepodcast.com) by George M Church and Edward Regis and 2/ [The Dawn of Everything](https://www.amazon.sg/Dawn-Everything-New-History-Humanity/dp/0374157359/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by David Graeber & David Wengrow. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rimm-esg-investment-in-climate-adaptation-with-ravi-chidambaram?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rimm-esg-investment-in-climate-adaptation-with-ravi/id914868245?i=1000577413234&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtnUab0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2cdN5PkqHurQjC2XYIYMi1?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/rimm-esg-investment-in-climate?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/rimm-esg-investment-in-climate-adaptation-with-ravi-chidambaram-206137120?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MjMyNjhiYmUtZTZlZi00YjQ4LWFhZjMtOTdiNTc3YjNmNmEw?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjwg9y0-uP5AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/411524181083737) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/RIMM%2C-ESG-%26-Investment-in-Climate-Adaptation-with-Ravi-Chidambaram-id2859782-id525238964?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Youtube](https://youtu.be/Y6gaBkZ%5FZvg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The State of Digital Across Asia Pacific in 2022 with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-digital-across-asia-pacific-with-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:54.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp, CEO and founder of Kepios shared his perspectives on the Digital 2022 report and broke down the key takeaways from the report specific to Asia Pacific. Simon provided the context and explained how trust in news across different channels is measured and understood and at the same time, debunked the key assertion that Facebook is dying. He also dived deep on Tik Tok's global influence and discuss how the digital report will include web3 from now to the next decade. --- > "The reality is you've got the same person using multiple platforms. Now you can either then look at that and say, I can show the same ad to the same person, multiple times across different platforms. Or you can say to yourself, I now have the opportunity to reach the same person with different things in different context, at different moments of their lives on different platforms. Ideally you go with a second one, but admittedly, that's a lot more work." - **Simon Kemp** ### Introduction - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of [Kepios](http://kepios.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Since our last conversation a few years back, what have you been up to? ### The State of Digital Across Asia Pacific in 2022 - [Digital 2022](https://wearesocial.com/sg/blog/2022/02/digital-2022/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Reference: [July Global Statshot Report](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-july-global-statshot?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Given that we are in the middle of the year 2022, what is the global state of digital adoption globally and in Asia Pacific? - Are we reaching the inflection point of digital growth? - One interesting part of the report is the understanding of how users access news. Can you briefly provide an overview of the media channels used for news? - What are the social platforms that are used to access digital news? Is there a regional bias given the tools available, for example, only WeChat or Toutiao for China? - How do you measure trust in news? - What can we learn from the use of social media as a source of news? - What are the key uses of social apps in 2022? Are they different from the past decade? - The age-old question: is Facebook declining or is it just a myth based on your recent July snapshot? - In Asia Pacific, how is the battle between Facebook and Tik Tok shaping out? - Do you think that Meta’s relentless copying of Tik Tok with Instagram will bear fruit in the end? - How is advertising growing on Tik Tok? How is it different from advertising coming from Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? - Which platforms do most people use for videos? Is it Tik Tok, Instagram or YouTube? - I notice that the report has now covered cryptocurrency. What are the key indicators that you look for in covering this new space? - The awareness of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is an interesting one. How are people relating to NFTs and do they see it differently than the other spot tokens out there like Ethereum and Bitcoin? - What are the key things that you will be looking out for the rest of 2022? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Simon's recommendations: [Articles](https://www.economist.com/search?q=Tom+wainwright&ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Tom Wainwright](https://mediadirectory.economist.com/people/tom-wainwright/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in [the Economist](https://www.economist.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). 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We began with Gwen's backstory and how she end up in the crypto industry. Then she dived deep into the current evolution of the BNB chain and how they are bringing builders to the ecosystem. Last but not least, she offered her thoughts on how the industry is changing, the different modes of financing a web3 company in equity, tokens or both and what is required to onboard the next billion into the web3 world in the next three years. --- > "I think imperative that as an ecosystem, blockchain Web3 ecosystem, we're all growing together. I would love to see , more bridges with BNB chain and other blockchains as an example, so that you have a much more seamless tech base. And then more importantly, when crypto mass adoption really takes off again, underlying tech people will not need to know what's underlying tech. For us, I think that's important if we can be part of the core infrastructure supporting this new web3 paradigm, that would be amazing for us. If we have more decentralized apps and more use cases and more depths and more web 2 organizations building on BNB chain, that will be really amazing." ### Introduction - Gwendolyn Regina, Investment Director at [BNB Chain](https://www.bnbchain.org/en?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Binance](https://www.binance.com/en?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@gwendolynregina](https://twitter.com/gwendolynregina?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwendolynregina/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - Given that you have a pretty diverse and non-linear background, how did you eventually end up in the crypto industry? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? - What is your current role and coverage in Binance? ### The BNB Chain & Investing in Web3 - To help our audience, as many of us know that Binance is probably the top cryptocurrency exchange globally, can you provide an overview & role of the BNB chain & its relation with Binance which is the amalgamation of Binance Chain & Binance Smart Chain? (Ref: [Introducing BNB Chain](https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/introducing-bnb-chain-the-evolution-of-binance-smart-chain-421499824684903436?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - What does MetaFi mean in the context of the BNB chain? What are the application areas which it seeks to cover? - What are the key features of the BNB Chain and what does it mean for the developers to build on the BNB chain? - How does it distinguish itself from the other chains out there? - What is a typical day like for you as a venture capitalist from a corporate outfit? - I understand the BNB has dedicated $1 billion to grow the ecosystem and where are the areas that the capital is deployed to? - Can you talk about the Most Valuable Builder (MVB) incubation program? How do startups get access to the incubation program? - How does the incubation program assist the startups and founders building on the BNB chain? - What is your current investment thesis in evaluating web3 startups that come to you and are building on the binance chain? - What are the traits of the startup founders and teams that you look for when evaluating them for investments? - Can you give a few examples of interesting projects which the BNB chain has funded so far? - What are the most exciting trends that you are seeing in the web3 space, specifically in DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi, NFTs areas? - Are we moving towards a multi-chain world with different specializations or a world where a few key blockchains would lead the way like what BNB or ETH does? - How does the landscape play out in Web3 in terms of business models such as play to earn or customer acquisitions such as memes and airdrops? Are we going to see more shifts in how these mechanisms are? - One disagreement I have with other investors is that you cannot slap a web2 interface into a web3 world. What are your thoughts on this space? - What are your thoughts on funding companies with equities, tokens or a mix of both? Does DAO governance issues as we observed recently in some makes it difficult for investors to put money in? - Given that we are in the midst of an evolving bear market, what is your advice to crypto or web3 startups on how they should navigate through these tough times? - What does great look like for the BNB chain and the investment fund in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Gwen's recommendations: Ray Dalio, [Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail](https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the importance of following your passions - dancing and monologue. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). 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The conversation began with how DeFi has emerged unscathed after the crypto contagion unleashed by the UST-Terra-Luna collapse. Rawson dived deep into why there is a macro case for DeFi, the current evolution of DeFi protocols from Aave to Frax and what we should look out for as new DeFi innovations are hovering around the corner for the next crypto super cycle. Last but not least, he offered the mental models and challenges for regulators to think about in DeFi regulation. --- > "Once you reach scalability in blockchain, it should be portable over to decentralized rails. Just like the vast majority of business models that could be built over the internet ,have transitioned to the internet because it's a more effective means of deployment. I think at scale, you'll see the vast majority of financial use cases, which is, a completely digital domain move over to these new rails. But some of the early applications that we've seen emerge are in the basic building blocks of financial services" - Rawson Haverty ### ### Introduction - Rawson Haverty, co-founder of [Reflection Digita](https://reflectiondigital.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com)l ([@Rawson\_Haverty](https://twitter.com/Rawson%5FHaverty?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rawson-haverty-83b37626/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) & co-host of Soulbound podcast ([Podcast Link](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2004966?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@SoulBoundAsia](https://twitter.com/SoulBoundAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - I started reading your emerging newsletter before it was transformed into the digital reflections newsletter. When you were in Temasek, what brought you into the crypto space? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? - You have recently started a podcast called “Soulbound” and can you talk about what you discuss on that podcast with your co-host? ### Decentralized Finance: Past, Present & Future - Given that we are right in the midst of a crypto bear market, what are your thoughts on the recent crypto crash with the Terra-Luna-UST collapse followed by the insolvency of several lenders: Celsius and Voyager and the billion dollar hedge fund, 3 Arrows Capital and what are the key learnings which we can learn in this cycle? - The one interesting thing is that decentralized finance or what we called DeFi remain robust in the midst of this current crypto meltdown. Arthur Hayes made this comment, which I find relevant in our conversation here: “When you remove trust from the equation and rely purely on transparent lending standards executed by impartial computer code, you get a better outcome. This is the lesson to be learned.” Can you provide my audience an introduction to define what DeFi is? - What features does DeFi protocols have that distinguish it from traditional (or centralized) finance? - Why did DeFi hold up incredibly well? - What is the macro case for DeFi? \[Reference: [The Macro Case for DeFi](https://reflectiondigital.substack.com/p/the-macro-case-for-defi?)\] - Does the arbitrage between DeFi and the different countries interest rates eventually reach an equilibrium or will the creation of a metaverse based on a digital economy will continue that arbitrage? - Can you provide examples from the DeFi landscape? - To dive deeper into the lending protocols, you pointed in a paper that there are three buckets for lending protocols: 1/ Over-collateralized on-chain protocols (\~ US$\~50B total value locked - at one point (TVL), 2/ off-chain centralized lenders (> US$20B in active loans) and 3/ awkward O2O hybrids (\~US$2.b in TVL), what are the mechanisms that can bring the on-chain to off-chain for lending in the real world? \[Reference: [DeFi & the next frontier: On-Chain to Off-Chain (O2O) lending](https://dochub.com/reflectiondigital/pqb0g5YRqy5Qz6yRJ2nx67/reflection-digital-on-chain-to-off-chain-o2o-lending-may-5-2022-pdf?dt=SwvxSrzhoML2JWKP5K-Q&ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - One interesting thing is to look at MakerDAO that seems to be standing in for central banks. Can you elaborate further on how MakerDAO works and how they manage to do a US$7.8m loan to Tesla and their recent partnership with maple? - Perspectives on Sam Bankman-Fried's recent effort to bail out the crypto lending institutions in distress that are reminiscent of JP Morgan's efforts in 1908\. - What is the role of stablecoins in DeFi and also in the current times of instability due to inflation and the Russia-Ukraine war? \[Reference: [Stable Coins in Unstable Times](https://docsend.com/view/ajcbq2dd22yunxqn?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - Discussion on whether bitcoin will be the medium of exchange from the rest of the world where China will have its own digital currency (CBDC) and the potential possibility if there is co-opting of USDC by the US government. - Why is regulating DeFi still a difficult challenge for regulators out there? - What are the needed mental frameworks for regulators to provide regulation on DeFi? - What do you think that the crypto extinction events would be for DeFi? - What are the current trends in DeFi that you are most excited about, given that it’s a time to build with the bear market happening for crypto? What are the most interesting innovations that you want to see in the next wave? \[Reference: [The Fourth Wave](https://reflectiondigital.substack.com/p/the-fourth-wave?)\] ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Rawson's recommendations: "[The Clash of Civilizations & the Remaking of World Order](https://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civilizations-Remaking-World-Order-ebook/dp/B000R1BAH4/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Samuel Huntingdon, [Bourgeois Equality](https://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Equality-Capital-Institutions-Enriched-ebook/dp/B01D9WANCA/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Deirdre McCloskey, [The Brothers Karamazov](https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Karamazov-Fyodor-Dostoevsky/dp/0374528373?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Fyodor Dostoervsky - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). 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We dived deep how the ongoing contagion cascaded to the insolvency of Celsius and the shutdown of a prominent crypto hedge fund: Three Arrows Capital and explored what it means for the crypto market globally. Last but not least, we discuss the potential extinction events for cryptocurrencies and how investors can navigate this new bear market with new web3 entrepreneurs and investors in the next few years. --- > "The reason for that is that all the businesses in crypto are tied primarily to trading and speculation of crypto rather than any productive use cases. So there are some businesses that generate real cash flow, and those are the ones that I focus on at my hedge fund in my portfolio. But even those largely generate revenue from other crypto businesses. So until crypto has more ties to real world productive use cases and has more dollar generation tied to real world activity, it will continue to have this highly internally reflexive nature. As crypto trading goes up, there's more revenue in the system. As crypto trading goes down, there's less revenue in the system and that's not sustainable. It's very circular." - Cosmo Jiang ### Introduction - Cosmo Jiang ([@cosmo\_jiang](https://twitter.com/cosmo%5Fjiang?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cosmojiang/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Head of Strategy, Skolem, Member of [Global Coin Research](https://globalcoinresearch.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (GCR) and host of Liquid - Web3 investing Podcast by GCR ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/liquid-web3-crypto-investing/id1543419198?ref=analysepodcast.com)), and founder of crypto fund Nova River - How did you start your career? - I understand that you have worked in both hedge fund and private equity in your past life. Can you talk about how that experience shaped you when you entered crypto space? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? - Can you talk about the Liquid Podcast which you host for GCR? - You are starting a crypto hedge fund Nova River - what is the core strategy? ### The Crypto Contagion - To start this conversation, I want to set up the fundamentals for my audience to understand before we dive into the recent crypto meltdown that happened. Can you first share what crypto hedge funds like 3 Arrows Capital and Alamada Research do and how do they deploy their capital to trade? Which exchanges do they typically deploy their capital? - In some cases, these funds borrow from lending institutions, for example, Genesis, BlockFi and Celsius. Can you explain how they provide loans and guarantee yields for the hedge funds to trade? - Now we establish the relationship between the lending institutions and the hedge funds, then we come to the crypto or blockchain protocol. Can you define what an [algorithmic stablecoin](https://www.coindesk.com/learn/algorithmic-stablecoins-what-they-are-and-how-they-can-go-terribly-wrong/?ref=analysepodcast.com) like UST and how do they collateralize to maintain the peg? - Can you also explain how crypto protocols like ETH, Solana, Avalanche, Near or Terra work with DeFi protocols such as Aave, Compound, MakerDAO generate yields and provide lending? - Why are the interest for the yields so high as we have seen for Terra around 19.5% for the anchor protocol? - One month before the depegging, the founders of Terra used their Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) to make a purchase of bitcoin. What’s the purpose of the purchase? - What are the circumstances that led to UST being depegged and subsequently engineered the death spiral for Luna and Terra? Reference: [the jump crypto analysis](https://jumpcrypto.com/the-depegging-of-ust/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - What is the immediate impact of the UST depegging? When Luna fell to near zero, how did the Terra team led by Do Kwon do? - Which institutions were burnt by the Terra-Luna-UST collapse? How does this trigger the contagion? - So, why did the contagion spread to Celsius, and to a few others who limit withdrawals for example, Babel Finance in Hong Kong, Finblox and others in play? - What does insolvency mean for a lender, for example, Celsius and BlockFi? - Of course, in the process, this took out 3 Arrows Capital, which Ryan Selkis from Messari pointed out starts from their GBTC trade, followed by the Terra-UST-luna collapse and then the ETH/stETH? \[See tweets by Ryan Selkis from Messari\] - The silver lining is that Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) in FTX went in and bailed out BlockFi and Voyager. Of course, we now hear the investors, for example, Anthony Pompliano, who’s the host of the POMP podcast, are putting a counter bid for BlockFi, because the investors are being burnt in the process. With the contagion going on, what are the implications moving forward? - This week has shown that even Genesis suffered from the 3AC contagion and also 3AC has been reprimanded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It seems that it all came from the first GBTC trade that 3AC started to have problems with. It also coincides that the SEC has rejected Grayscale to turn GBTC into a spot ETF. What does it mean for the general crypto market? - The thing about the crypto market is that it’s highly speculative. Currently, BTC is at $21k (\~70% down against ATH), and ETH (\~75.1% against its ATH). What do you think are likely extinction events that will destroy the market? - How should a retail investor or an institutional investor navigate the crypto down-market or pending crypto winter? - Interesting references: 1/ Arthur Hayes, ["Number 3"](https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/number-three-511f334d8fae?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Luna Brothers Inc](https://blog.bitmex.com/luna-brothers-inc/?ref=analysepodcast.com), 2/ Tweets from Kevin Zhou from [@GaloisCapital](https://twitter.com/Galois%5FCapital?ref=analysepodcast.com) who first flagged the issues on Terra/Luna/UST and took a short position, 3/ Twitter spaces conversation by Ryan Selkis from [@MessariCrypto](https://twitter.com/MessariCrypto?ref=analysepodcast.com) \- [3 Arrows Liquidation Uncertainty](https://twitter.com/bernardleong/status/1538017051037470720?s=20&t=RYKazGNm89Q9VGxdsTgjCA&ref=analysepodcast.com), ### Closing - Any recommendations which has inspired you recently? - Cosmo's recommendations: - How can my audience find you? **Author's note:** *BL is an investor to Global Coin Research.* ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-crypto-contagion-with-cosmo-jiang?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crypto-contagion-with-cosmo-jiang/id914868245?i=1000569063982&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtFl9uY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Re8s8SDcNf4zhIFwy5RDM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-crypto-contagion-with-cosmo-jiang?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-crypto-contagion-with-cosmo-jiang-204674228?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/Mzg3NTI1MTEtNzNhZC00MzU4LTg1MzAtN2JjZjZiNzJjMTli?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQqYfFyeX4AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Crypto-Contagion-with-Cosmo-Jiang-id2859782-id511069897?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Fundnel, Valuation & Liquidity of Private Markets in Southeast Asia with Kelvin Lee URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/fundnel-valuation-liquidity-of-private-markets-in-southeast-asia/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:52.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Kelvin Lee, CEO and co-founder of Fundnel, joined us in a conversation to discuss how the company is helping to bring liquidity into the private markets and transforming the funding landscape across Southeast Asia. Kelvin shared his insights and the mental models behind valuations and liquidity events for the startups in the private markets. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on the recent economic downturn with the funding drying up for both startup and crypto markets and what it would mean in the near term. --- > "The core purpose of exchanges must be to create jobs. If it's not creating jobs, if it is really just trading derivatives, where is the value creation? If it's not encouraging the next generation of investors, allowing them to put money behind companies that they relate to and are supporting because these companies are solving problems that will impact us in the next 10 & 20 years." - Kelvin Lee ### Introduction - Kelvin Lee, Co-founder and CEO, [Fundnel](https://fundnel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelvin-lee-dw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What are the interesting career lessons you like to share with my audience? ### [Fundnel](https://fundnel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Valuation & Liquidity of Private Markets in Southeast Asia - Before we start our conversation on the story of Fundnel, it will be great to baseline our conversation to the understanding of private and public markets. To start, can you define the private and public markets and explain why there exists the great divergence between these two markets, given there is friction for any investor out there to press a button and buy a stock, say Tesla or a private company, say Biofourmis or Shopback in Southeast Asia? - What is the inspiration behind Fundnel and what are the key problems which your business platform seeks to address? - What are the early days like when you first started the business 7 years ago? - How do you convince people that there is a private market? - Who are the customers of Fundnel and how do they access Fundnel? Do they need to be accredited before investing into private companies there? - Can you talk about the investors who have backed Fundnel so far and how they have helped you in the process? - Can you share some highlights of Fundnel and your recent launch of a new fund with BRI Ventures to jumpstart Indonesian startup investment? - How does Fundnel source the deals for the investors to buy in? - One function for Fundnel is in the private markets where it unlocks liquidity for startup founders and employees, how does the platform help to unlock that liquidity? - While this type of events are becoming common in the US through Carta or Second Market, what’s the frequency like in Southeast Asia or Asia Pacific? - If I am a founder of a private company, and want to initiate a liquidity unlock event, how should I approach Fundnel and what are the things I need to think about before coming to you, for example, price discovery? - For private markets, what are the mental models for valuation as it feels like an art in startups below series B and a science after series B to mezzanine or pre-IPO stage? - What are the trends for private markets in Southeast Asia? Are startup founders and employees understanding the new options opening to them, from different exit options, for example, SPACs or direct listing? - With the recent rate hikes to curb rising inflation, the market has triggered an economic downturn. Most VCs are now deliberately turning off their taps and letting the startups either rise or go under water, given that they have the upper hand on valuation now. What will be your advice to entrepreneurs and capital allocators out there? - What does great look like for Fundnel in the next decade? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Kelvin's recommendations: "[Backable](https://www.amazon.com/Backable-Surprising-Behind-People-Chance/dp/0316494518?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Carlye Adler & Suneel Gupta & The Billion Dollar Code ([Netflix show](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/81074012?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/fundnel-valuation-liquidity-of-private-markets-in-southeast-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fundnel-valuation-liquidity-of-private-markets-in/id914868245?i=1000568282410&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsooiOI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/63LDCaTbYUIkUHW8JXhuTb?si=25ded5c1c9c746ed&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/fundnel-valuation-liquidity-of-private-markets-in-southeast-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/fundnel-valuation-liquidity-of-private-markets-in-southeast-asia-204518556?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YzI4Yzg5ZTYtMmJmMC00OTFmLTkzMDktZGUxODIwNTRiZjk3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwig2K3Rv9X4AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Fundnel%2C--Valuation-%26-Liquidity-of-Private-Markets-in-Southeast-Asia-id2859782-id509325014?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### ### Ion Mobility & the Electric Vehicles market in Southeast Asia with James Chan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/ion-mobility-the-electric-vehicles-market-in-southeast-asia-with-james-chan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:52.000Z Fresh out of the studio, James Chan, CEO and founder of Ion Mobility to discuss his company and his goal to bring about a sustainable and green future to Southeast Asia with the electric motorbike. James dived into his background as a former civil servant, an investor and now an entrepreneur. He explained the market opportunity for the EV market in the region and how Ion Mobility is building out not just the product with their first product: Ion Mobius, but the distribution and manufacturing supply chain to enter into the high growth markets in the region. Last but not least, James shares what great means for Ion Mobility in the future. --- > "I always think about the pandemic - this Thanos -level finger snap, where everyone's brought back to square one. During this difficult past two years, all the norms are thrown out of the window. It makes for a very interesting period to fundraise, with not much to show for it. A lot of people have said that I'm crazy to make this leap, but I say it's the best possible time to be building because everyone's back to square one. At the end of the day, it's very important to pay due respect to luck and timing. Any entrepreneur tells you that luck is not a function of his or her outcome must be joking." - James Chan ### ### Introduction - James Chan, CEO & Founder, Ion Mobility ([@m0t0chan](https://twitter.com/m0t0chan?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/motochan/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - We start with every first time guest on their origin story. How did you start your career? - All the way before Ion Mobility, what are the interesting perspectives moving from the investor to the entrepreneur point of view? - What are the most interesting career lessons you can share with my audience? ### [Ion Mobility](https://ionmobility.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the Electric Vehicles Market in Southeast Asia ([@IonMobilityAsia](https://twitter.com/IonMobilityAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ionmobility/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - To start, I want to help my audience to understand the electric vehicle opportunity. Can you talk about the electric vehicle market and establish why the electric motorcycle industry is interesting to where Ion Mobility positions itself in the Southeast market? - What was the inspiration behind setting up Ion Mobility? - What is the vision and mission of Ion Mobility? - As I understand that Ion Mobility focuses on the electric motorcycle and energy storage solutions, can you provide some color to how these product lines shape the businesses? - One can think of Tesla as a similar company to Ion Mobility in the car space and Elon Musk has a “secret plan” to make Tesla work by creating three lines of vehicles in its inception. What is James Chan’s secret plan to make Ion Mobility work? - Can you talk about the story of Ion Mobius, the electric vehicle which was conceptualized, designed and assembled in Singapore over the past 18 months? What features are you building into the motorbike that differentiates from the rest? - Manufacturing and distribution of hardware whether it’s a motorbike or phone are complicated and requires how the supply chain works. Can you talk about how Ion Mobility will have to work to get your manufacturing to scale as you get more demand from the market? - Distribution of hardware is the other problem. How do you sell the vehicles locally in the markets you operate in, for example Indonesia? Are there tweaks to the business model which you need to do? - Fundraising for a company like Ion Mobility is a challenge as well. How much have you raised so far and who are the investors in the round? - How do you convince your investors to invest in a hardware company given that a lot of them I know are afraid of the hardware challenges? - Given that you are an investor previously, how do you communicate and get advice from your board in your current role as CEO Ion Mobility? - What does great look like for Ion Mobility in the next 5 years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - James' recommendations: "[48 Laws of Power](https://www.amazon.com/48-Laws-Power-Robert-Greene/dp/0140280197?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Robert Greene, "[The Dictator's Handbook](https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics-ebook/dp/B06XBY3XJV?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/ion-mobility-the-electric-vehicles-market-in-southeast-asia-with-james-chan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ion-mobility-the-electric-vehicles-market-in/id914868245?i=1000567604461&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtDHHG0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/28Y9te4kfuwlOWZUACt45J?si=f4RT7FEgQ4CRpTXEbtnfmQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/ion-mobility-the-electric-vehicles-market-in-southeast-asia-with-james-chan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/ion-mobility-the-electric-vehicles-market-in-southeast-asia-with-james-chan-204344278?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZDk0OTZiMjgtMjQ3ZS00ZTEyLTliZWUtYzYwZmFlMjU5Mjk3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjQgN3Ol8b4AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Ion-Mobility-%26-the-Electric-Vehicles-market-in-Southeast-Asia-with-James-Chan-id2859782-id507561275?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### ### The Zilingo Debacle with Ka Kay Lum URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-zilingo-debacle-with-ka-kay-lum/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:51.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Lum Ka Kay, deputy editor of The Ken joined us in a conversation to discuss the recent debacle for the Southeast Asia company, Zilingo and the fallout between the board and the former CEO, Ankiti Bose. Ka Kay shared the chronology of events that led to the firing of the CEO and the public fallout and examined what the endgame would look like for Zilingo. --- > "To me. The role of a board should be a sounding board to founders. It's very hard for us to assume that founders know everything which is why the company's directors should be a voice of reason in everything that happened. The board isn't just made up by a single person, basically various people with different line of thoughts. So why has nobody bring this up at all? I have no idea. In fact, that is what every investor that I've spoken to for this story questioned this." - Ka Kay Lum ### Introduction - Ka Kay Lum ([@kakayy](https://twitter.com/kakayy?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ka-kay-lum-b7b45bb7/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Ken](https://the-ken.com/sea/writers/kakaythe-ken-com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Deputy Editor, The Ken Southeast Asia. - How did you start your career? - How did you end up in The Ken? - What’s your current role and coverage in The Ken currently? What are the topics which you cover for the region? - What are the career lessons which you can share with my audience? ### The Zilingo Debacle - Reference: [Zilingo’s fight to survive, with or without CEO Ankiti Bose](https://the-ken.com/story/zilingo-fight-to-survive-with-or-without-ceo-ankiti-bose/?r%5Fedition=2&ref=analysepodcast.com) (The Ken) - A quick introduction: Zilingo is a B2B fashion commerce startup, founded by Ankiti Bose and Dhruv Kapoor. - Let’s get the chronology from the beginning, who are the people behind Zilingo and what is the company about? - How does the business work for Zilingo with the merchants on their platform? - Who are the key investors behind Zilingo and what does their current market capitalization table (or captable) look like? - How did they end up being valued at USD$970m in their last round of financing? - Can you provide the chronology on how Ankiti Bose, CEO and co-founder of the company was suspended on 12 April and subsequently fired on 20 May 2022? - What are the different perspectives to the whole event from Ankiti Bose and her co-founder, the board of directors, customers and partners? - Are the allegations to the CEO true from the reporting that includes subordination and financial irregularities? Ankiti Bose has gone to the [Straits Times](https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/this-is-my-life-this-is-my-reputation-zilingos-ex-ceo-ankiti-bose-speaks-out-after-her-firing?ref=analysepodcast.com), a local outlet in Singapore and [claimed in the video](https://youtu.be/bYJNgzq4rBM?ref=analysepodcast.com) that she did not see the final report that led to her being suspended and fired. How viable is her defense and what does it mean for the company going without her? - There is a silver lining from the whole debacle centered on an acquisition that Zilingo made in a Sri Lanka company called nCinga. What does this company do and how can their capabilities revive the fortunes of Zilingo? - What is the endgame for Zilingo as a company now given that their debtors recalled their 40m loan and what will happen to their assets like nCinga? Are there any options for the company other than shutting down or being acquired? - Given that corporate governance has been the center of this conversation, why has the board not taken action as the company has stopped submitting the financials since 2019? - One common thread that seems to be a media narrative from India to Southeast Asia from other outlets, for example, Morning Context ([How Sequoia’s Shailendra Singh pushed out Zilingo’s Ankiti Bose ](https://themorningcontext.com/internet/how-sequoias-shailendra-singh-pushed-out-zilingos-ankiti-bose?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and not promoted by The Ken is that Sequoia Capital has leveraged corporate governance as a weapon to oust founders from their companies, for example, [Ashneer Grover from BharatPe](https://the-ken.com/story/shaky-and-shady-bharatpes-problems-go-beyond-ashneer-grover/?ref=analysepodcast.com). To be fair to Sequoia Capital, the VC firm has a stellar reputation and is probably one of the top VC firms in the world with Apple, Google, Stripe and many top startup companies under its belt. What are the facts on the ground and do you see this narrative hold any water in the conversation specifically for the Southeast Asia and India market? \[Reference: [Sequoia Capital Good Governance Post](https://www.sequoiacap.com/india/article/corporate-governance-the-cornerstone-of-an-enduring-company/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - I understand that you have covered SPACs and VC remote deal making in Southeast Asia previously. What are your thoughts on the recent economic downturn from inflation, Ukraine war and supply chain issues? - Will we see a lot of startups starting going under water in the next few months? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Ka Kay's recommendations: [The Hungry and The Hairy](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/81416233?ref=analysepodcast.com), Korean Netflix Documentary - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-zilingo-debacle-with-ka-kay-lum?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-zilingo-debacle-with-ka-kay-lum/id914868245?i=1000566778611&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsxfrXo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5q6ACfKtMU8AMQR424vmKB?si=0SuwnFgiQNuha62yS3fm5g&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-zilingo-debacle-with-ka-kay-lum?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-zilingo-debacle-with-ka-kay-lum-204150296?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NGU3ZmE5YWMtYmViYi00MThiLTk1OGUtNTU2OTJmOTZmOWQ2?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjQ783EzrT4AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Zilingo-Debacle-with-Ka-Kay-Lum-id2859782-id505495857?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The XA Network & Angel Investor Landscape with Alap Bharadwaj, Tony Zameczkowski & Belinda Ong URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-xa-network-angel-investment-landscape-in-southeast-asia-belinda-ong-alap-bharadwaj-tony-zameczkowski/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:51.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Belinda Ong, Alap Bharadwaj and Tony Zameczkoski joined us to discuss the XA network and their role in angel investor landscape for Southeast Asia, and how the angel investing scene has evolved over the decade. We dived deep into why angels are crucial to the ecosystem and help startups to reach escape velocity before the entry of venture capital. Last but not least, they share the process in how XA network onboards their members and assist their startups upon making the decision to invest in the companies. --- > "From an evolution standpoint, I feel strongly about the fact that more participants, more diversity and more evolution is always a good thing. I am looking forward to like what comes next. Because if we are to be the most dynamic Internet ecosystem in the world, we need to now start to create opportunities for younger folks to participate in angel investing for certain communities that have historically been left out of angel investing and to bring them in as well. If we get there, I think we will be one of the healthiest ecosystems in the world." - Alap Bharadwaj ### Introduction - Introduction of guests from XA Network: Belinda Ong ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/belinda-ong/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Alap Bharadwaj ([@alapjb](https://twitter.com/alapjb?ref=analysepodcast.com) ,[ Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alap-bharadwaj-b241704/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Tony Zameczkowski ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyzam/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Let’s do a quick introduction of yourselves and what you are currently doing in your professional lives and within the XA network (Let me know if you need to get disclaimers out of the way.) - Can you talk about your roles within the XA network? ### [XA Network](https://xanetwork.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Angel Investor Landscape in Southeast Asia - To baseline our audience, can you briefly provide a definition of what constitutes an angel investor and their impact within the startup ecosystem? - How did you both decide to become angel investors? - Let's start from a high level view: how has angel investing evolved in Southeast Asia or Asia Pacific like in the last decade? - As angel investors, what are the indicators that you look for before investing into a startup? - Reversing the question, what are the red flags that you look for as well? - What is the mental model for valuation for angel investors when it comes to investing in early stage startups? - With the current downturn, and given that YCombinator and Sequoia capital have sent out their memos to founders that there will be a liquidity crunch and investors holding back, what would be your memo for the Southeast Asia founders as well? - What is the inspiration behind the XA Network? - How does one get into the XA network? What are the criteria used to evaluate the members? - Fast forward to today, what are the key achievements for the XA network? - Can you talk about the investment theses within the XA network? What are the key verticals or segments that the XA network invests in? - What is the process like for startups to engage the XA network and seek investment from the angels there? - How does the XA network help the founders and their startups once the angels invest into them? - What are the most interesting startups which are part of the XA network? - What does the anti-portfolio look like for the XA network? What would you have done differently? - What are your perspectives in the Southeast Asia ecosystem, specifically when it comes to geographical expansion and the different macroeconomic conditions across the key six countries? - What are the key trends that you have observed in the Southeast Asia market that provide some indication of how it will evolve in the next few years? - What does great look like for the XA network? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Tony's recommendations: "[The Power Law](https://www.amazon.sg/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Disruption/dp/0241356520?ref=analysepodcast.com)" Sebastian Mallaby and [14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/81464765?ref=analysepodcast.com) from Netflix - Alap's recommendations: [The Black Swan](https://www.amazon.sg/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Fragility/dp/081297381X?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Nassim Taleb paired with Daniel "[Thinking, Fast and Slow](https://www.amazon.sg/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576/?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Daniel Kahneman and the new Disney+ show "[Obiwan Kenobi](https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/show/obi-wan-kenobi?ref=analysepodcast.com)". - Belinda's recommendations: "[Secrets of Sand Hill Road](https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Sand-Hill-Road-Venture/dp/059308358X?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Scott Kupor and [Super Founders](https://www.amazon.com/Super-Founders-Reveals-Billion-Dollar-Startups-ebook/dp/B08HLZZT6G?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Ali Tamaseb, [Love, Death + Robots](https://www.netflix.com/sg/title/80174608?ref=analysepodcast.com) Netflix - How do my audience find you? **Disclosure:** *BL is currently a member of the XA network and have invested in Championfy and CoderSchool via the network.* ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-xa-network-angel-investor-landscape-with-alap-bharadwaj-tony-zameczkowski-belinda-ong?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-xa-network-angel-investor-landscape-with/id914868245?i=1000564441600&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuUnxyc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/14ztYgu7PVSM5g1u20CZMG?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-xa-network-angel-investor-landscape-with-alap-bharadwaj-tony-zameczkowski-belinda-ong?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-xa-network-angel-investor-landscape-with-alap-bharadwaj-tony-zameczkowski-belinda-ong-203579523?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZDI5MDM2YmMtMGJmMi00NGU2LTk1OWYtODc0NTFkNjdkNmE4?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjy5aqM1oX4AhXXM1kFHUOND%5FwQkfYCegQIARAF&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-XA-Network-%26-Angel-Investor-Landscape-with-Alap-Bharadwaj%2C-Tony-Zameczkowski-%26-Belinda-Ong-id2859782-id499717086?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Chain Debrief, Enlightened Rats, Metajam & Crypto Crash with Jacky Yap URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/chain-debrief-enlightened-rats-metajam-crypto-crash-with-jacky-yap/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:50.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jacky Yap, founder of Chain Debrief, joined us to discuss the inspiration, the mission and vision of the crypto media company. We dived into how Chain Debrief focus on crypto education moving towards a learn to earn model, their NFT products with the first collection of Enlightened Rats and the recent major NFT event in Singapore: Metajam. Last but not least, Jacky offered his perspectives on the crypto crash instigated by the UST/Luna/Terra collapse. --- > "We teach people about all things crypto, like we do a lot of stuff like how to do an uniswap, how to get your first NFT, which exchange is the cheapest for you? We're in a business of education and a resource and people do what they will with the information that we provide them. That's the inspiration behind changing people." - Jacky Yap ### Introduction - Jacky Yap, founder at [Chain Debrief](https://chaindebrief.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackyyapp/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@jackyyapp](https://twitter.com/Jackyyapp?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - You are also the founder of a well-known media outlet called [Vulcan Post](https://vulcanpost.com/sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) prior to setting up Chain Debrief, can you talk about its evolution after you move to Chain Debrief full time? - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? ### Chain Debrief, [Enlightened Rats](https://enlightenedrats.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Metajam](https://metajam.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Crypto Crash - To start, what is the inspiration behind Chain Debrief? - What is the vision and mission for Chain Debrief? - What does great look like for Chain Debrief? - Who is the audience for Chain Debrief? - What are the products and services provided by Chain Debrief to the customers? - Enlightened Rats is the first NFT collection launched by Chain Debrief. How did the concept come about? - What does it mean for a NFT collector owning an Enlightened Rat? - How do you work with other NFT collections in marketing in conjunction with Chain Debrief? - What is the mental model for NFT creators before embarking on selling them on Opensea? - From Enrats, we see the evolution of NFT collections that leads to the Metajam Asia event. Can you talk about the Metajam event, and even the NFT pass which your team has created for the audience out there? - What are the interesting collections that you have seen so far for NFTs presenting in the Metajam event? - How are you scaling this event across the region? - What are your thoughts on NFT collectors need to understand provenance as a way to value the art and does NFT collectors need to be in certain communities to gain value from buying them? - The last week was really tough for all the crypto investors and builders out there. Can you talk about the [UST / Terra / Luna collapse](https://chaindebrief.com/insights-from-luna-crash-debrief-with-insiders/?ref=analysepodcast.com) which seemed to be the Lehman moment for crypto and how did that happen? - We have seen all algorithmic stablecoins fail in the past few years. Why did crypto hedge funds and investors still fall for this? - What are the implications with the UST / Luna crash for the builders of the Terra chain, the exchanges like Binance and investors out there? - What does this mean for investors and startups moving in the web3 space? - Is there a contagion that will spread from this event, for example, there is the USDT issue given that there are many USDT/UST pairs in the market? - What are the lessons which we can learn from this whole crypto crash? - Do you think that there will be regulation for stablecoins moving forward? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Jacky's recommendations: 1/ Ethereum and 2/ NFT markets. - How can my audience find you? **Disclosure:** *BL is currently an investor to Chain Debrief through a syndicate via Sharon Paul.* ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/chain-debrief-enlightened-rats-metajam-crypto-crash-with-jacky-yap?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chain-debrief-enlightened-rats-metajam-crypto-crash/id914868245?i=1000562421661&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuBJHDA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7lnaC953mayJya1hXOMmj0?si=w2X41sWVQ2GUw77%5FaZLHpA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/chain-debrief-enlightened-rats-metajam-crypto-crash-with-jacky-yap?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/chain-debrief-enlightened-rats-metajam-crypto-crash-with-jacky-yap-203298712?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MjUyY2Y5ZjMtMjBkNy00ZjI1LTg5M2QtMGIyZGYxMGU1M2U2?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjgpuOl0ur3AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Chain-Debrief%2C-Enlightened-Rats%2C-Metajam-%26-Crypto-Crash-with-Jacky-Yap-id2859782-id496388183?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Two Corporate Cultures & Angel Investing in Southeast Asia with Yaw Yeo URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/two-corporate-cultures-angel-investing-in-southeast-asia-with-yaw-yeo/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:50.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Yaw Yeo, an angel investor joined us to discuss his experiences on working in two high growth technology companies from the US and China covering the Asia Pacific region. He shared the similarities and differences between technology companies from the US and China and how they perceived the Southeast Asia market. Last but not least, Yaw shared his perspectives as an angel investor in Southeast Asia and reflected on the changing landscape of angel investing in the last decade. --- > "If you look at the tech universe revolves around the U S and China, I spent a lot time almost 10 years in the \[Silicon\] valley ecosystem. But I haven't really seen the China technology ecosystem. So I was really curious on how it works, how is it like, how is it different? There was like a great opportunity for me to learn and see how it worked from the inside." - Yaw Yeo ### Introduction - Yaw Yeo, angel investor and extended leadership with the XA Network ([@yawyeo](https://twitter.com/yawyeo?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yawyeo?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career before your adventures with a US and Chinese tech company? - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? ### Two Corporate Cultures & Angel Investing in Southeast Asia - To start our conversation, can you share about your former roles in [Twilio](https://www.twilio.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Alibaba Cloud](https://my.alibabacloud.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? - Let’s start from the US company experience first, how did you land your role with Twilio and what are the early days like? - Thru Twilio, you led their expansion in Asia Pacific, what is it like working with a US company operating in Asia? - For market expansion, you will need to work with the product and sales team. How do US companies approach Southeast Asia and do they think about localization and feedback from the ground? - What have you learned from working in a high growth company like Twilio? - Then you moved to Alibaba Cloud after Twilio. How did you end up in Alibaba Cloud and what is your motivation in joining the company? - Does product management in Chinese companies differ from their US counterparts given that they tend to serve their large domestic market: China? - What is it like working with a Chinese tech company in Southeast Asia? How different is it compared to if the same counterpart of you has worked in China? - We have heard of the 996 culture in Chinese companies. Does that culture extend out of China into Southeast Asia? - What are their strengths and weaknesses when trying to expand geographically in the region? What would they need to do differently in winning the market? - Given that you are a prolific angel investor in the Southeast Asia space, can you share the verticals and types of startups that you look out for? - What are the traits which you index from startup founders and their teams that will be a leading indicator for you to invest in them? - How do you think that the angel investing scene has changed in the last decade? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Yaw's recommendations: 1/ Inside Tik Tok [Part 1](https://gingerriver.substack.com/p/inside-tiktok-zhang-yimings-great) and [Part 2](https://gingerriver.substack.com/p/inside-tiktok-zhang-yimings-great-976) in English and [whole article in Chinese](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1Dv17rDRto%5F1i%5FLdHEVARA?ref=analysepodcast.com) (with [Yaw's linkedin post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6928977496075894784/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), 2/ Trevor Noah's [Full Speech at 2022 White House Correspondents' Dinner](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzXC16otRfM&ref=analysepodcast.com) and his book "[Born a Crime: Stories from a South African childhood](https://www.amazon.com/Born-Crime-Stories-African-Childhood/dp/0399588191?ref=analysepodcast.com)" - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/two-corporate-cultures-angel-investing-in-southeast-asia-with-yaw-yeo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/two-corporate-cultures-angel-investing-in-southeast/id914868245?i=1000560968856&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFs2hKFU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6U3MXzACJ3W7meHvmgeakt?si=WQRrKJERRkK7GAI4tJvbVA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/two-corporate-cultures-angel-investing-in-southeast-asia-with-yaw-yeo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/two-corporate-cultures-angel-investing-in-southeast-asia-with-yaw-yeo-203145345?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NTFjOWI0YTYtYTJkMS00ZGY2LTkyM2YtZmE3OGZiNjk4NzE0?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQvbKE6dv3AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Two-Corporate-Cultures-%26-Angel-Investing-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Yaw-Yeo-id2859782-id494592117?country=gb&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Solana with Raj Gokal URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/solana-with-raj-gokal/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:50.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana joined us in a conversation to share the backstory behind how the blockchain emerged and is currently one of the leading blockchains in the market. Raj dived deep into the mechanisms behind the protocol and explained why the speed of transactions generated new decentralized applications on the blockchain. He also addressed on the outages and cybersecurity challenges for Solana, and offered his perspectives in what great looks like for Solana in the future. --- > "We have an intuition that at like a hundred million users with self custody signing their own transactions every day at those numbers, a hundred million and a billion, those are where there's going to be big unlocks and unexpected use cases that pop up in the way that people coordinate their resources together may make shared decisions together and align interest again, and participate in new forms of global capital markets together." - Raj Gokal ### Introduction - Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana ([@rajgokal](https://twitter.com/rajgokal?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajgokal/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), board member of Solana Foundation and co-founder of Solana Labs - To start, we always like to dive into the origin stories of our guests. From reading and listening to your past interviews in preparation, I know that you started in the healthcare space and then moved into blockchain space, which is a big jump. So, how did you start your career and end up becoming one of the co-founders of Solana? - What are the interesting career lessons which you can share with my audience? ### [Solana](https://solana.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - The place which I want to start with: What is the inspiration behind building Solana and how did your co-founder, Anatoly and you come together to build this blockchain that is built to enable scalable, user friendly apps? - Fast forward to today, what is the vision and mission of Solana? - Can you talk about your current role in Solana Foundation and Solana Lab? What is your typical day like in Solana? Can you tell us about the Solana foundation, Solana labs and Solana ventures? How do they work to build the ecosystem for Solana? - To help my audience to understand why Solana is different from the other blockchains, I would like you to define two terms in what make Solana different from the blockchains out there. Solana runs on a combination of two mechanisms: proof of stake (PoS) and proof of history (PoH). Can you provide a high level view on how these mechanisms work for Solana? - The differentiation between Solana and other blockchains is the speed and the way to quantify it is using transactions per seconds. For context, bitcoin processes 4 transactions per second, ethereum 15 transactions per second and Solana can process 65,000 transactions per second. To help my audience, how does speed factor into why blockchains need to get right in order for the blockchain ecosystem to be successful? - Other than setting the foundation for the blockchain technology, Solana broke out last year with more and more developers adopting the technology to build decentralized apps (or DApps). For example, FTX chooses Solana to build Serum, the high speed non-custodial derivatives exchange? What are the key applications or areas that you have seen Solana developers building on? - Other than decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs, have you seen any recent interesting applications from the Solana ecosystem? - I understand that Solana pay is recently launched. How does it work and what benefits are meant for the broader ecosystem and to the world? - Last year, we observed Solana outages and some critics attribute this to the fact that Solana sacrifices decentralization in order to achieve the speed. What are the critics getting wrong about the outages and what have you and your team in Solana learned from those outages? - There have also been cybersecurity hacks in the crypto world, for example, the recent Ronin bridge hack which costs Sky Mavis or Axie Infinity approximately $500-600 million dollars and also the Solana hack for about $320m. The word on the street is on the security of cross-chain bridges. What do you think about the hack and what are the steps taken by the Solana team to improve security? Can we still trust cross-chain bridges for the industry wide? - The developer community is growing for Solana globally. Specifically for Asia Pacific where I am based, what are you most excited about in this region with regards to the adoption of Solana? - What does great look like for Solana? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/solana-with-raj-gokal?%5Fga=2.184521638.1890372629.1651366358-698447949.1632352086&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solana-with-raj-gokal/id914868245?i=1000559214937&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtx%5FDUo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1LsMjHCO8ePOVUaG00nLBu?si=T3odjjl2SvCr3VVClYRo-g&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/solana-with-raj-gokal?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/solana-with-raj-gokal-202804773?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/Njc5YjQ0NzktZjkzNi00ZTU0LWEwNGMtNmU5MWFjMjhlY2Rl?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiIwuDqlL33AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Solana-with-Raj-Gokal-id2859782-id490687616?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Forge Ventures & Early Stage Investing in Southeast Asia with Tiang Lim Foo URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/forge-ventures-early-stage-investing-in-southeast-asia-tiang-lim-foo/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:49.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Tiang Lim Foo, co-founder and partner of Forge Ventures shares the story of how he started the seed stage venture firm and his perspectives on early stage investing in Southeast Asia. He dived into a deeper discussion of the rise of early stage investors within the key countries in the region and how the whole venture investing space is transforming with web2 and web3 in transition. --- > "As a seed fund, we will always be small. ... and that's done with the intent of building towards product market fit. we talk a lot about product market fit in startup land. We don't really talk about it enough and in venture land, It's really hard to deploy a billion dollars in capital if you're focusing on seed. Intentionally is a feature. It's not a bug. If we're doing our job right, we'll continue to raise the same fund size, relatively small speaking, and just be great at pattern recognition at seed pre product market fit and staying really focused that way to be the best in our niche is the way we think about it. " - Tiang Lim Foo ### Introduction - Tiang Lim Foo, co-founder & partner, Forge Ventures ([@tianglim](https://twitter.com/tianglim?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlfoo/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Although you have been on the show previously together with Smithy, I thought that a good place to start the conversation by having you tell your origin story. How did you start your career? - Why did you decide to shift from an operator role to be an early stage investor? - What are the career lessons you can share with the audience? ### [Forge Ventures ](https://forge.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com)& Early Stage Investing in Southeast Asia - What is a typical day for a venture investor like you? - What is the inspiration behind Forge Ventures? - What is the vision and mission of Forge Ventures? - Who else is in Forge Ventures other than yourself? How did you come together to build this fund? - Do you have an investment thesis specific for the fund itself? - What are the verticals that you typically invest in? - What are the traits of founders or patterns in startup teams that you index that you are likely to make the investment? - What are the red flags which you would watch out for? - From the creation of the fund till now, what are the examples of companies which you have invested so far? - What is your mental model in thinking about valuation of startups in Southeast Asia as a region? - Given the scene has changed so much in the last decade, has the early stage model evolved as well? Do you see more and more early pre-seed stage startups are likely to first spring up from their current countries and then go to seed stage funds for funding? - Is it possible now to just think of startups diving deeper within the country itself, for example, Indonesia, Thailand or even Vietnam alone? - What else is currently lacking in the Southeast Asia entrepreneurship ecosystem that you wish that can be solved, for example, regulation, common market? - As the fund has focused on startups in the web 2 world, how do you look at the current web3 phenomena springing up in the region? - What does great look like for Forge Ventures? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Tiang's recommendation: Clayton Christensen, James Allworth and Kate Dillon "How will you measure your life?" - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/forge-ventures-early-stage-investing-in-southeast-asia-with-tiang-lim-foo??ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/forge-ventures-early-stage-investing-in-southeast-asia/id914868245?i=1000558370204&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuC1Tcs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4mFXfXEtEpYidaOwySAEYi?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/forge-ventures-early-stage-investing-in-southeast-asia-with-tiang-lim-foo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/forge-ventures-early-stage-investing-in-southeast-asia-with-tiang-lim-foo-202581538?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NWFiMDUxYzUtMjQwNS00YmFjLTk1MjgtNzA0ODZiMGJkMTA5?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiwrv%5FP0af3AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Forge-Ventures-%26-Early-Stage-Investing-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Tiang-Lim-Foo-id2859782-id488575096?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Don't Quit Your Day Job with Aliza Knox URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/dont-quit-your-day-job-with-aliza-knox/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:49.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Aliza Knox joined us to discuss the inspiration and key themes behind her new book "Don't Quit Your Day Job". We began the conversation on Aliza's observations on how the technology business and startup ecosystem have shifted in the last decade within Asia Pacific, during her stints with Google, Twitter and Cloudflare. Last but not least, we discuss how her book can help people out there to think about career growth and progression in the midst of the pandemic and the Great resignation. --- > "I have lots of different people that I go to and I think that board of directors is really important. It's not the only social capital, but that's social capital primarily outside of your work, out of your specific job, that's important for you to build over time so that you get outside perspectives. If nothing else, sometimes in your workplace, you get very locked into a certain way of thinking or a certain style. And it's important to get perspective from." - Aliza Knox ### **Introduction** - [Aliza Knox](https://www.alizaknox.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Author of “[Don’t quit your day job](https://www.alizaknox.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, tech executive and non-executive director and senior advisor to Boston Consulting Group (BCG) ([@alizaknox](https://twitter.com/alizaknox?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alizaknox/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - We last spoke when you were leading Twitter APAC. What has transpired since then till now? - Over the past decade, there's been a big shift in the tech ecosystem where you are also an angel investor in tech startups here, what are your thoughts on the evolution of the tech ecosystem in Asia Pacific and where do you think that this is heading towards? ### Don't quit your day job by Aliza Knox ([Website](https://www.alizaknox.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Quit-Your-Day-Job/dp/0730396592?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - You can take a person off from being an entrepreneur but you can never take the entrepreneur off the person. Because I started off as an entrepreneur and walked over to the corporate world for the past decade, I often want to quit my day job and do whatever I want. Please do not tell my employer and I am joking of course. So, why should I not quit my day job? - What is the inspiration behind writing this book? - What are the key themes of the book? - Who is the intended audience of the book? - What are the key takeaways which you want the readers to get from your book? - Where do you draw the stories in the book from? - Does the six mindset shifts you have introduced are affected by culture? If so, how should one adapt them? For example, Japanese and Korean culture are very different from those in Southeast Asia. - Every career change can be a difficult endeavor for anyone, what is your advice for people who are contemplating changes? - How does one build their social capital? You mentioned that one should assemble their own personal board of directors. How does one do that? - Everyone seeks out mentorship and help from other senior people, what should be the mental model for the person seeking mentorship out there? - The past two years have changed many in terms of how they view work, and it feels like the pandemic is settling towards an endemic stage, and people are going back to work. What are your prescriptions for people thinking about making changes for their lives or going back to the offices? - What are the parts that you have written but you did not include into the book? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Aliza's recommendation: Bob Iger, "The Ride of a Lifetime" - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/dont-quit-your-day-job-with-aliza-knox?%5Fga=2.194932717.1528666378.1649973401-698447949.1632352086&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dont-quit-your-day-job-with-aliza-knox/id914868245?i=1000557652336&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFszb7uo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3NquTiCSpoARaikblNESF1?si=6eiPZBPuQPWKnPhyXDwyEw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/dont-quit-your-day-job-with-aliza-knox?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/dont-quit-your-day-job-with-aliza-knox-202382453?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MzIwNmI2MjAtN2FiYi00M2IzLWI0ZjQtZDMyMGYxY2FmZDc2?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjT9Z6mypT3AhVZj4QIHaqLBtcQkfYCegQIARAF&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Don't-Quit-Your-Day-Job-with-Aliza-Knox-id2859782-id486089533?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Iterative Capital & Building the Entrepreneurial Community in Southeast Asia with Brian Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/iterative-capital-building-the-entrepreneurial-community-in-southeast-asia-with-brian-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:48.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Brian Ma, partner at Iterative Capital and founder at Divvy Homes, joined us in a conversation on the current venture fund in Southeast Asia and shares his perspectives on how the fund is building their entrepreneurial community in Southeast Asia. We dived deep into the beginnings of Brian's career and how both his co-founder, Hsu Ken Ooi and he set up the venture firm and accelerator in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last but not least, Brian shared his perspectives on the Southeast Asia landscape and what great means for Iterative Capital moving forward. --- > "So literally we have this planned out, we have a ten-year plan and in ten-year plan, we want to be able to deploy about $2 billion in AUM. We think it's possible to fund a lot of companies in the early stages for all emerging markets. All those emerging markets have the same problem, which is there in this phase of rapid economic development, tons of founders wants to come out. So we want quite a lot of capital into seed stage companies." - Brian Ma ### Introduction - Brian Ma, Partner & co-founder at [Iterative Capital](https://www.iterative.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) | Founder at Divvy Homes ([@zealoustiger](https://twitter.com/zealoustiger?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/zealoustiger/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - Given that you have been a co-founder of various start-ups: Decide.com acquired by Ebay, Weave Networking and then Divvy Homes, what are the common threads that you can draw in how you think about starting up and building these companies? - What are the interesting career lessons you can share with my audience? ### [Iterative Capital](https://www.iterative.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Building the Entrepreneurial Community in Southeast Asia - What is the inspiration behind Iterative Capital and why have you geared your investment thesis to Southeast Asia? - How did you assemble the initial team to set up Iterative in Southeast Asia? - What are the leading indicators that the Iterative team index in both founders and their startups? - Reversing the question, what are the red flags which you will look for not to invest? - What are the key categories or industry verticals that Iterative Capital invests in? - How does Iterative Capital operate as an accelerator and venture capital fund for startups in the region? - How do you work with the startups and what is the process to help them to prepare for the demo day? - You started the first cohort from Summer 2020 right in the beginning of the pandemic and ran about 4 cohorts till winter 2022\. What are the highlights for Iterative and what have you achieved so far? - What did not work for Iterative Capital and what would you have done differently? - What distinguishes Iterative Capital differently from the rest of the accelerators in the market? - We are seeing more and more Southeast Asia startups going to YCombinator in Silicon Valley and getting valuation premium from the local venture capital firms. What do you think about the ongoing change in the accelerator and venture capital landscape as they are also changing? - What do you think about the founders in Southeast Asia vs what you have seen in Silicon Valley? - Unlike the US market, geographic expansion is not a simple exercise as the infrastructure from payments to logistics differs from country to country, what will be the playbook to help the startups expand across the region? - What does great look like for Iterative Capital? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Brian's recommendations: Exploring the discord channels and materials on Web3\. - How can my audience find you? **Author's note:** *Bernard is currently an investor in [CoderSchool](https://www.coderschool.vn/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) thru the [XA Network](https://xanetwork.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) which is incubated earlier by Iterative Capital and my wife's startup, [Esevel](https://esevel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) is in the current batch of startups under Iterative Fund.* ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/iterative-capital-building-the-entrepreneurial-community-in-southeast-asia-with-brian-ma??ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/iterative-capital-building-the-entrepreneurial/id914868245?i=1000556603341&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsFgDnU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/53RzJBPIhW25vEjzILw8FY?si=hN2ZwP59STGqmvAkaMeejQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/iterative-capital-building-the-entrepreneurial-community-in-southeast-asia-with-brian-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/iterative-capital-building-the-entrepreneurial-community-in-southeast-asia-with-brian-ma-202166643?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MWU3MjU2ZTItNjZhMS00YTJjLWEzZTgtZjNjYjllMjQwZGY5?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjY%5FPzRxIP3AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Iterative-Capital-%26-Building-the-Entrepreneurial-Community-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Brian-Ma-id2859782-id483950996?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### GajiGesa and Fintech for the Unbanked across Southeast Asia with Vidit Agrawal URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/gajigesa-and-fintech-for-the-unbanked-across-southeast-asia/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:48.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Vidit Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of GajiGesa discuss the backstory of the fintech company focusing on developing financial services for the unbanked across Southeast Asia, starting from Indonesia. The conversation with Vidit's background with high growth tech companies: Uber and Stripe and he shared his perspectives on he invests as an angel investor. Vidit dived deeper into the unbanked market and how GajiGesa aims to solve that challenge, and offered his mental model in how one should think about geographical expansion across Southeast Asia as an entrepreneur. --- > "First, I think happy employee and employer partners, for us, great customer experience is important. Secondly, technology driven products that improve the lives of the workers across the region. That's great tech. And happy and motivated gajiGesa team with a lot of career growth opportunities. That's a great team. So I've put great under these three buckets." - **Vidit Agrawal** ### Introduction - Vidit Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of GajiGesa ([@vidagrawal](https://twitter.com/vidagrawal?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/viditagrawal/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since you are here for the first time, how did you start your career? - From Uber to Stripe, what are the things you have learned in high growth companies that can be brought to building startups? - What are the interesting career lessons you can share with my audience? - As a known angel investor, what are the leading indicators that you use to evaluate your investment decisions on startups? ### GajiGesa & Fintech for the Unbanked in Southeast Asia - What is the inspiration behind GajiGesa? - What is the vision and mission of GajiGesa? - Before we dive deeper into the company, can you baseline what an unbanked customer is in an emerging market such as Indonesia? - As I understand that GajiGesa focuses on offering Earned Wage Access (EWA) and other services for workers in Indonesia, can you describe the market opportunity and how GajiGesa serves these customers? - How many employers are currently on the GajiGesa platform in Indonesia and what is the onboarding process like? - What are the key services that GajiGesa provides them once they are on the platform? - What is the business model for GajiGesa since you don’t charge interest rates or require collateral? - Does your platform evolve towards providing credit scoring for the unbanked given that the platform can construct the profile of the users through their wages on the platform? - GajiGesa has recently raised a US$6.6m pre-series A round, how was the round assembled and who are your key investors? - Given that you have raised the new round, what are the key things that the company will be focusing on? - What are your thoughts on the fintech space in Southeast Asia and how does one think about go-to-market strategy in emerging markets such as Indonesia and Philippines? - Do you see a convergence of technologies such as cryptocurrencies or web3 with fintech? - What do you think about geographical expansion in Southeast Asia? For some founders, serving the Indonesian market alone is enough. How do you shift gears to get into another market? - What does great look like for GajiGesa? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Vidit's recommendations: "[Never split the difference](https://www.amazon.sg/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-Depended/dp/1847941494/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Chris Voss, "[High Growth Handbook](https://www.amazon.sg/Stripe-Press-High-Growth-Handbook/dp/1732265100/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=24ENZASOFLWWX&keywords=high+growth+handbook+by+elad+gil&qid=1648695231&sprefix=growth+elad+%2Caps%2C246&sr=8-1&ref=analysepodcast.com)" by Elad Gil - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/gajigesa-and-fintech-for-the-unbanked-across-southeast-asia-with-vidit-agrawal?%5Fga=2.17568185.1057195750.1648690124-370189321.1638343742&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gajigesa-and-fintech-for-the-unbanked-across/id914868245?i=1000555778086&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFt7bBaU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/04VfkEPm09Ate86YdTW2hC?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/gajigesa-fintech-for-the-unbanked-across-southeast-asia-with-vidit-agrawal?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/gajigesa-and-fintech-for-the-unbanked-across-southeast-asia-with-vidit-agrawal-201909495?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZjNiOWUwYjAtMjFiNS00NWQwLTg4YzctNDg0NzJjMjczZWNi?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjAusvDp-%5F2AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/GajiGesa-and-Fintech-for-the-Unbanked-across-Southeast-Asia-with-Vidit-Agrawal-id2859782-id481316330?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Insignia Ventures and the Southeast Asia Entrepreneurial Ecosystem with Tan Yinglan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/insignia-ventures-and-the-southeast-asia-ecosystem-tan-yinglan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:47.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Tan Yinglan, founding managing partner from Insignia Ventures Partners joined us in a conversation to share the backstory, vision and mission of his venture firm and offered his insights on the Southeast Asia entrepreneurial ecosystem. He started with the inspiration behind the venture firm and discuss how he indexes founders and startup teams to fund. Last but not least, he discuss where venture capital is heading towards in Southeast Asia. --- > "... One of our mantra is we don't build good companies. We build great companies. I think the beauty is that we have seen enough companies to realize what great looks like. For us, we have a high bar. So one of the metrics that we mention a lot is how many founders with the means to do so that we back will invest again in Insignia?" - **Tan Yinglan** ### Introduction - Tan Yinglan, Founding Managing Partner, [Insignia Ventures Partners](https://www.insignia.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@yinglantan](https://twitter.com/yinglantan?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yinglantan/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - For our first time guests, we want to know their origin story. How did you start your career? - In your career journey, what are the key lessons you learned that you can share with my audience? - From your start from facilitating the building of a fund in the Singapore government to Sequoia Capital to now, how do you see venture funding in each of these different setups? ### [Insignia Ventures Partners](https://www.insignia.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the Southeast Asia Ecosystem - My question for all venture capitalists who come on the show, what is a typical day like you? - What is the inspiration behind setting up the Insignia Ventures Partners? - What is the mission and vision of Insignia Ventures Partners? - What are the stages of the companies in their life cycle the fund invests in? - Do you have an investment thesis specific for the fund itself? - What are the verticals that you typically invest in? - What are the traits of founders or patterns in startup teams that you index that you are likely to make the investment? - What are the red flags which you would watch out for? - How does the fund help the entrepreneurs to achieve their goals? What are the support that you provide for them? - What is the mental model in thinking about the valuation of a company when you invest in them? - Can you share some interesting companies that Insignia has invested in, for example, I have seen some interesting ones like Carro and Ajaib? - What do you think about the exits for the companies you have funded? - One thing we do not discuss is, what is a good process in managing LPs given that the Southeast Asia ecosystem is growing and getting more sophisticated? - How does the fund see the Southeast Asia market? How do you guide entrepreneurs to navigate geographic expansion because there are six countries with different cultures and systems which they need to adapt to? - Where do you think venture capital is heading in Southeast Asia? - What does great look like for Insignia Ventures Partners? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Yinglan's recommendation: ["The Power Law"](https://www.amazon.com/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Making/dp/052555999X?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Sebastian Mallaby, [Made in America](https://www.amazon.com/Sam-Walton-Made-America/dp/0553562835/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Sam Walton (Walmart founder), [Amp it Up](https://www.amazon.com/Amp-Unlocking-Hypergrowth-Expectations-Intensity/dp/1119836115?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Frank Slootman - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/insignia-ventures-and-the-southeast-asia-entrepreneurial-ecosystem-with-tan-yinglan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/insignia-ventures-and-the-southeast-asia/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvGf4cI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/29KPs1WTRHQnOcJNQesXvP?si=F8WxoSrwTWCNxFm2rLHxyw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/insignia-ventures-and-the-southeast-asia-entrepreneurial-ecosystem-with-tan-yinglan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/insignia-ventures-and-the-southeast-asia-entrepreneurial-ecosystem-with-tan-yinglan-201626985?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZjU4ZmU4ZjMtMjMyNy00NGNjLWE0OTgtNDUzM2Q0NjhlYTdh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjg24eWj9v2AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Insignia-Ventures-and-the-Southeast-Asia-Entrepreneurial-Ecosystem-with-Tan-Yinglan-id2859782-id478790776?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Great Protocol Politics with Parag Khanna URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/great-protocol-politics-with-parag-khanna/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:47.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Parag Khanna, CEO of Climate Alpha & celebrated author of "Move" joined us in a discussion to explain why the 21st century belongs to the Internet and not to any great power nations out there. We discussed his recent popular article "Great Protocol Politics" that he co-authored with Balajis Srinisavan and we dived deep into the weeds how technology such as web3 and cryptocurrencies will be important in reshaping society and monetary systems and what it means globally in the next decades to come. --- > "But what I would want everyone to take away from this is that you have the geopolitics, the geoeconomics and the geo technology as a triangle, three corners of this triangle. A successful society, a power, a great power is going to be one that is fluent in all three of those languages that focuses on building capacity in all three of those areas and looking for the linkages and synergies between their technological innovation or economic power and their military power and state capacity." - **Parag Khanna** ### Introduction - [Parag Khanna](https://www.paragkhanna.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@paragkhanna](https://twitter.com/paragkhanna?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/pub/parag-khanna/28/381/689?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ personal site](http://paragkhanna.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Founder and Managing Partner of [Futuremap](https://futuremap.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com), CEO of [Climate Alpha](https://climatealpha.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and author of “[Move](https://www.amazon.com/Move-Forces-Uprooting-Parag-Khanna/dp/1982168978?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, “[The Future is Asian](https://www.amazon.com/Future-Asian-Global-Twenty-first-Century-ebook/dp/B07F148BBX/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=2Q5I7I850AQ2I&keywords=The+future+is+asian&qid=1647672609&s=books&sprefix=the+future+is+asian%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C363&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com)”, “Technocracy in America”, “Connectography” and “The Second World”. - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - Having you here, I cannot help but ask you, as an observer of global trends in geopolitics and mobility, what are your thoughts on the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine? - What do you think the endgame would look like for Ukraine and Russia? ### [Great Protocol Politics](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/11/bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-web3-great-protocol-politics/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (in [Foreign Policy](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/11/bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-web3-great-protocol-politics/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), co-authored with [Balaji Srinivasan](https://twitter.com/balajis?ref=analysepodcast.com) - What is the inspiration behind the collaboration that led to this article? - The central thesis of the article, if I have interpreted correctly, is that there is the third way to the global order which is brought about by technology. We have often seen technology as an enabler, rather than being a force by itself to enter into geopolitical order. What has changed in how we perceive current geopolitical order? - What are the mental models that we need to rewire in order to see how geopolitics are transitioning into one of techno-politics? - Network proximity is now on par with physical geography. Given that we have balkanized Internet systems like the Great Firewall of China and even Russia shutting down internet access. Given that satellite Internet like starlink by SpaceX or One Web are coming around in the sidelines, can this network proximity triumph over physical geography? - The central bank fiat currencies are currently competing with the cryptocurrencies leveraging on decentralized finance (or what we called DeFi) that circumvent the geographical boundaries of financial markets. Even with the central bank digital currencies where China will launch soon, and now Biden’s executive order has initiated a study of such which I predict will co-opt one of the current stablecoins to be part of the system, what are the potential scenarios on the outcome of this digital monetary competition? - Of course, for the first time, we have real digital ownership with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are we naturally moving towards bits reshaping atoms? - A common perspective that a lot of people do not understand web3, is that we shift from valuing companies to valuing economies. In fact, I would put forward the assertion that the “unicorn” for web3 is not a billion dollar company but a trillion dollar economy. It also means that the international rule of law is shifting to become a rule of code. How do we think about property rights from that point of view? - With technology, are we really going to decentralize power away from the US and China? China has banned bitcoin and cryptocurrencies while the US is embracing it. Will we see a multipolar world? - Despite the digital revolution and exponential growth of technology, we are still limited by geopolitics with countries holding both military and economic power and the people who have the power are not likely to let technology companies or protocols rise. It made me recall a science fiction book “Daemon” by Daniel Suraez where a dead CEO of a company unleashed chaos from a decentralized world with weapons attacking people with power, and bringing about a new world order. Can technopolitics co-exist with great power politics? - What will the world look like if it is completely dominated by technopolitics? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/great-protocol-politics-with-parag-khanna?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/great-protocol-politics-with-parag-khanna/id914868245?i=1000554546363&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsbocjU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Gv7BvSOpKvCPLrKPCV5wD?si=uTGkAL3wRzqjVFZ5soa%5FQw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/great-protocol-politics-with-parag-khanna?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/great-protocol-politics-with-parag-khanna-201523333?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NzBmNTc3MGYtYzBhMi00MzcyLTk2MmMtMjkxYzcyZWVmMTlk?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwio9rrC09H2AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Great-Protocol-Politics-with-Parag-Khanna-id2859782-id477663938?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Una Brands and the Ecommerce Aggregator Supply Chain in Asia Pacific with Kiren Tanna URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/una-brands-ecommerce-aggregator-supply-chain-asia-pacific-kiren-tanna/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:47.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Kiren Tanna, chief executive officer and co-founder of Una Brands joined us in a conversation to discuss the e-commerce aggregator company and their business footprint across Asia Pacific. We started with Kiren's background working in ecommerce startups before Una Brands and then deep dived into how Una Brands have built their presence prominently & quickly within the last year. He also shared how the whole ecommerce aggregator supply chain works, from how they approached a seller for an acquisition, valuing the seller's ecommerce brand all the way to sale and then scaling the brand across the region. Last but not least, he shared what great will looks like for Una Brands in the years to come. --- > "As well as in terms of profitability, we've been able to grow the brands as well as make them more profitable. So having a track record really matters because as part of our purchase consideration, we also share the upside with sellers. So with us, the investor, we're able to extract the maximum upside from the brand and be the right stewards of the brand. That's something which we spend a lot of time building. Those capabilities and having that reputation, which then sets us apart and helps us win many deals in competitive situations." - **Kiren Tanna** ### Introduction - Kiren Tanna, Co-Founder and CEO of [Una Brands](https://www.una-brands.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirentanna/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@kirentanna](https://twitter.com/kirentanna?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - We always start with the origin story for our guests who come on the first time. How did you start your career? - Prior to Una Brands, what is the experience that you gain from the entrepreneurial ventures you have undertaken? - What are the lessons in your career journey that you like to share with my audience? - Before we go into the main conversation, can you baseline for my audience what an ecommerce aggregator is? ### [Una Brands](https://www.una-brands.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & the Ecommerce Aggregator Supply Chain in Asia Pacific - To start, can you introduce Una Brands and the current vision and mission as an ecommerce aggregator? - What is the market gap that Una Brands as an ecommerce aggregator seeks to address and how has been the journey so far? - What is the geographical business footprint for Una Brands? - Who are the investors behind Una Brands? - An interesting way to have this conversation is to look at the supply chain for the ecommerce aggregator from identifying the brands to scaling the business after seller exit. How do your team in Una Brands assess whether a brand has the potential to scale? What are the factors to consider when acquiring a brand from a seller? - How does Una Brands convey its value proposition to a seller before acquiring their business? - From a seller’s perspective, what do they need to prepare before putting their business to a sale by Una Brands? - Once the decision is made to sell the brand over to your company, what is the mental model behind putting a valuation on exit? - After acquiring a couple of brands, what worked and what did not work? What would you have done differently? - Once the seller hands over the brand to Una Brands, what happens from there and how do you help the brand to scale? - What are the challenges that Una Brands as an aggregator have to cope with while scaling given that you have expanded across nice markets and built a team of > 150 employees across Asia Pacific in a single year? - Given that Una Brands has entered China, can you share how unique the Chinese market is given its own plethora of ecommerce platforms and aggregators? - What are the key decisions that you need to get right in order to say that your business has successfully expanded into China? - What distinguishes Una Brands from the other aggregators in the market, be it global like Thrasio or regional like Rainforest? - How do you see the ecommerce aggregator landscape and what are the key trends that you expect the landscape to change within the next few years? - What does great look like Una Brands in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - Kiren's recommendation: Tony Hsieh, "Delivering Happiness" - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed & edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/una-brands-and-the-ecommerce-aggregator-supply-chain-in-asia-pacific-with-kiren-tanna?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/una-brands-and-the-ecommerce-aggregator-supply-chain/id914868245?i=1000553779544&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsLtA60?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7wXtQBJtsqMUDbv85i4jOX?si=1ow227tjQxO9Nja7a1Mt0g&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/una-brands-and-the-ecommerce-aggregator-supply-chain-in-asia-pacific-with-kiren-tanna?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/una-brands-and-the-ecommerce-aggregator-supply-chain-in-asia-pacific-with-kiren-tanna-201341716?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NTcyNjIxNjEtYzliMi00NjNmLWIxNjItNzFjZTJmZDFkOTNj?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiozcD7jsD2AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Una-Brands-and-the-Ecommerce-Aggregator-Supply-Chain-in-Asia-Pacific-with-Kiren-Tanna-id2859782-id475449338?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Community in a Box with Mark Birch URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/community-in-a-box-with-mark-birch/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:46.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Mark Birch, global startup advocate from Amazon Web Services (AWS) joined us in a conversation to discuss his new book "Community in a Box" and the key initiatives to engage startups and developer communities globally from New York to Asia Pacific through AWS. We start from Mark's background and discuss the inspiration, key themes and main takeaways on how to build event-driven professional communities. Last but not least, he discuss how to build the community flywheel and provided the aspiration to what a great community would look like in the future. --- > "The key theme is you can be incredibly successful with the community, but you have to be intentional. Oftentimes what happened in my experience of observing other communities is that people would get really excited at the beginning. They would do a whole lot of work. And then after hosting, maybe three events, the enthusiasm would die and they wouldn't do anything else. So it was actually easy for people to start. It's not very easy to grow and scale, and that's why I talk a lot about intentionality" - **Mark Birch** ### Introduction - Mark Birch, Global Startup Advocate, [Amazon Web Services](https://aws.amazon.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (AWS) ([@marksbirch](https://twitter.com/marksbirch?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/startupmark/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - In your career journey, what are the key lessons that you can share with my audience? - What are you currently doing in Amazon Web Services? - As you are in Singapore, what are you currently doing here this week? ### Community in a Box: How to Build Event-Driven Professional Communities ([Main Site](https://www.community-in-a-box.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08JNFRLP3/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Engaging Startup Communities with AWS - To start, what is the inspiration behind writing “Community in a Box”? - What are the main themes and key takeaways for the book? - Who is the intended audience for the book? - Let’s start from the why, why do companies need to build event driven professional communities? - Why do most companies fail to build communities? What are the red flags that community builders need to look out for? - What is the role and responsibility of a community organizer? - How does the community foster a set of values? Do the organizers need to start with a few and then evolve them as they grow? - What are the metrics that drive growth for a community? How do we measure if a community is successfully engaging the world out there? - From Web1 to Web3, what are the best practices that are consistent with the way how great communities are built and what are the major differences between these different waves of technology change? - One key challenge for communities is monetization. I am curious, how should community organizers think about this and what are the practical steps to take? - What are the key digital tools that community organizers need to have to build the community? - As a global startup advocate, how do you engage startups? - What are the programs which startups can tap on to work with AWS? - One interesting initiative when I was there, and we collaborated at least once on was the use of Clubhouse. Can you talk about the initiative and what have you learned as a tool to engage communities? - How does a community flywheel happen? How do organizers sustain that flywheel given that communities might stagnate at some point? - What does a great community look like for you? ### Closing - Any recommendations which have inspired you recently? - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/community-in-a-box-with-march-birch?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/community-in-a-box-with-march-birch/id914868245?i=1000552990922&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFv8wpl8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/49PRjv0FpcNuA5RBGSH8g6?si=tkTN0zxmTamaHEHyRfeD-Q&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/community-in-a-box-with-mark-birch?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/community-in-a-box-with-march-birch-90945575?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NTYwNzNkZDMtNmU1OC00YzI0LTk1MzEtYzBmOTVkMDI4ZWJl?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiwuLWboq72AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en-GB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Community-in-a-Box-with-March-Birch-id2859782-id473354477?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### South China Morning Post's Digital Transformation Journey with Gary Liu URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/south-china-morning-posts-digital-transformation-journey-web3-gary-liu/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:46.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Gary Liu, chief executive officer of South China Morning Post (SCMP) joined us in a conversation on the digital transformation journey and where it is heading in a web3 world. We began the conversation with Gary reiterating the important role that SCMP plays as a bridge between China and the rest of the world. From there, he shared the early days and reflected on the key lessons from the first phase of their digital transformation with a focused video strategy. Continuing on, Gary shared SCMP's move into the Web3 world with the [ARTIFACTs ](https://artifact.scmp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)NFT project and how it jumpstarts the next phase of the digital transformation. Last but not least, he shared what great looks like for SCMP in the next 3-5 years. --- > "I believe that we have made great change. I think five years is going to be the same, I think in five years when we look back, even if it doesn't look that way, as we build piece by piece, we will be a technically advanced, user-first global news organization that is sustained by a diversified revenue model." - **Gary Liu** ### Introduction - Gary Liu, Chief Executive Officer, [South China Morning Post](https://scmp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Since our last conversation, the relationship between the United States and China have deteriorated with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. From your perspective, where do you see the future of SCMP and its place to bridge the gap of understanding between the Western world and China? ### South China Morning Post's Digital Transformation Journey - Since your appointment as the CEO of SCMP, you have betted on tech to power the [digital transformation of SCMP](https://splicemedia.com/stories/scmp-data-ai?ref=analysepodcast.com). To start, how was the early days like, for example, assembling the team and building different digital components that led to the current state? - What worked and what did not work for the [digital transformation journey](https://wan-ifra.org/2017/11/how-the-south-china-morning-post-became-a-digital-powerhouse/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? - What would [you have done differently](https://generationt.asia/leaders/gary-liu-south-china-morning-post-scmp?ref=analysepodcast.com) for the parts that did not work out? - One interesting milestone is that SCMP reached [1 billion youtube views](https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/how-south-china-morning-post-reached-one-billion-lifetime-youtube-views/s2/a761942/?ref=analysepodcast.com) within 3 years and grew its subscribers from 27k to 1.5 million. How is the video strategy developed and what are the key decisions that the team has gotten right in building this success? - When we last spoke in person, you were in Singapore and that was before COVID-19 pandemic, there are clear indications that [you are setting to expand your footprint in Southeast Asia](https://www.marketing-interactive.com/qa-with-scmp-ceo-gary-liu-asia-expansion-and-digital-ambitions?ref=analysepodcast.com). Did the pandemic slow down the expansion plans and is the intent still towards geographic expansion of SCMP across Asia Pacific? - References: (1) [SCMP’s Gary Liu on year of challenges from protests, pandemic](https://wan-ifra.org/2020/07/scmps-gary-liu-on-year-of-challenges-from-protests-pandemic/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (WAN Ifra, June 2020), (2) [South China Morning Post CEO Gary Liu on navigating a perilous time for Hong Kong](https://digiday.com/media/south-china-morning-post-ceo-gary-liu-navigating-perilous-time-hong-kong/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Digiday, July 2020) and (3) [SCMP’s new digital subscription offer targets world beyond Hong Kong](https://www.inma.org/blogs/reader-revenue/post.cfm/scmp-s-new-digital-subscription-offer-targets-world-beyond-hong-kong?ref=analysepodcast.com) (INMA, Sep 2020) ### Moving South China Morning Post to a Web3 world - Since I have you here, I want to segway into a conversation about SCMP and Web3\. I want to baseline our conversation first for our audience out here: how do you define web3 and the metaverse? - Which are the elements of web3 that you find the most interesting and compelling to the media space, for example, non-fungible tokens or NFTs? - As a CEO, how do you think about [your strategy for SCMP with web3](https://wan-ifra.org/2021/04/the-great-reset-how-leading-publishers-are-gearing-up-for-a-post-covid-world/?ref=analysepodcast.com) being a potential disruptor to both technology and media space, moving from a centralized world back to a decentralized world? - ***References:*** (1) [The Era of NFT, Development & Future](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNYNk9yTDlY&ref=analysepodcast.com) (30 Sep) - Gary’s keynote at Game On Summit, (2) [Why a 118-Year-Old Newspaper Launched an NFT Project](https://unfinished.com/news/why-a-118-year-old-newspaper-launched-an-nft-project/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (12 Oct) Gary’s keynote at Unfinished NYC and (3) [Predictions for digital journalism: tech, newsletters, climate and multimedia](https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/predictions-for-digital-journalism-tech-newsletters-climate-and-multimedia/s2/a887044/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Journalism.co.uk, Dec 2021) - Can you talk about the [ARTIFACTs project by SCMP](https://corp.scmp.com/scmp-introduces-artifact-non-fungible-token-standard-for-recording-accounts-of-history-and-historical-assets-on-the-blockchain/?ref=analysepodcast.com) that relates to non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) in short? In fact there is a [whitepaper](https://artifact.scmp.com/whitepaper.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [FAQs](https://artifact.scmp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com#tag-faq) written on the project too. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind this project? - How does [ARTIFACTs provide the standard in recording history](https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3141565/south-china-morning-post-launches-artifact-nft-standard-letting?ref=analysepodcast.com), given that it is a metadata standard and smart contract for historical NFTs? - How does the ARTIFACTs standard define the historical significance of an asset? - One interesting aspect of [ARTIFACTs by SCMP](https://artifact.scmp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), is the choice of using [the Flow blockchain](https://corp.scmp.com/scmp-to-release-historical-news-archives-as-nfts-on-flow/?ref=analysepodcast.com) where you will release historical news archives as NFTs. For those who do not know, Flow is a layer one blockchain that delivered the NFTs: Cryptokitties and NBA Top Shots. What is the motivation behind the choice of Flow and will you consider the other blockchains for example, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Solana that are also popular with NFTs? - Recently, I have Yat Siu, co-founder and Chairman of Animoca Brands on the show talking about his perspectives on digital ownership and NFTs. Can you share about the [recent partnership](https://www.animocabrands.com/south-china-morning-post-partners-with-the-sandbox?ref=analysepodcast.com) you are doing with the Sandbox on creating cultural experiences for the metaverse? - What does great look like for the South China Morning Post in the next three to five years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Gary's recommendations: Reading the South China Morning Post. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/south-china-morning-posts-digital-transformation-journey-with-gary-liu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/south-china-morning-posts-digital-transformation-journey/id914868245?i=1000552094694&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvyQ5oQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/34Hu8EDAMC6Ny1J2QhCXEw?si=Tt%5FHlyAKQRaaLFvtBd5MHw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/south-china-morning-posts-digital-transformation-journey-with-gary-liu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/south-china-morning-posts-digital-transformation-journey-with-gary-liu-90724402?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZWZkZTllMWEtNTg3MC00MDMxLTljZWMtNDNlNjkxNDNkZjU3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwi4l9jSi5j2AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/South-China-Morning-Post's-Digital-Transformation-Journey-with-Gary-Liu-id2859782-id470917170?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Global Coin Research & Web3 101 with Joyce Yang, Jin Kang & Daniel Kim URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/global-coin-research-web3-101-with-joyce-yang-jin-kang-daniel-kim/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:45.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Joyce Yang, Jin Kang and Daniel Kim from Global Coin Research discuss the Global Coin Research DAO and its investment focus in Web3\. We start with the vision and mission of the GCR DAO and then move into an in-depth conversation on web3 discussing the varying valuations of web3 companies, the choice of blockchains by web3 startups and where this is all moving towards at this instant of time. --- > "I want GCR to build its brand verbally from the founders that we support. And we don't even ever have to promote ourselves at any point, it's that founders are able to recognize our value- add, or introduce us to projects and identify our unique position, that we can support them in ways that VCs or crypto investors cannot do. It's something that I think will really speak to the hard work that we do without ever having to promote ourselves." **\- Joyce Yang** ### ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### Introduction - To start the conversation, introducing Joyce, Jin Kang and Daniel from [**Global Coin Research**](https://globalcoinresearch.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) **DAO** ([@GlobalCoinRsrch](https://twitter.com/GlobalCoinRsrch?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Discord](https://discord.com/invite/globalcoinresearch?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - **Joyce Yang** ([@JoyceInNYC](https://twitter.com/JoyceInNYC?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yonghuanyang/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Community, Global Coin Research - **Jin Kang** ([@TheJinKang](https://twitter.com/TheJinKang?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jin-kang-091a6735/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Deal Lead, Global Coin Research - **Daniel Kim** ([@mikleinad](https://twitter.com/mikleinad?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-kim-49b6a71a9/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Building, Global Coin Research **Global Coin Research and Web3 101** - We know Joyce from our previous conversations and it has been two years back, and to start with Joyce, what is Global Coin Research and as far as I understand that it’s now a DAO? Can you talk about the mission and vision of DAO **\[Joyce\]** - Jin and Daniel, it’s your first time on the show, do you want to give a short introduction of yourselves and your background and how did you both end up with GCR and what you are doing there? **\[Jin & Dan\]** - To baseline our listeners, can each one of you give your point of view about what web3 is? **\[Everyone\]** - Can you offer some quick explanations of the following terms: DeFi, NFTs, Zero Knowledge proofs, Rollups, layer 2, on ramp and off ramp? - **Joyce:** [DeFi](https://ethereum.org/en/defi/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [NFTs](https://ethereum.org/en/nft/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - **Jin:** [Zero-Knowledge proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge%5Fproof?ref=analysepodcast.com) / [rollup](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) - **Dan:** Layer 2, on ramp, off ramp - What is the major difference between web2 and web3 companies? **\[Dan\]** - What are the key applications of Web3, for example, DeFi, NFTs or blockchain protocols? **\[Jin\]** - Which are the areas of Web3 do GCR invest into? **\[Joyce, Jin\]** - Given that GCR has been investing into Web3 (or formerly we call it Crypto a few years back), what are the most interesting investments you have made? **\[Everyone\]** - \[Discussion\] Does the choice of Ethereum, alt-layer 1 chains ([Solana](https://solana.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Avalanche](https://www.avax.network/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and layer 2 chain ([Arbitrum](https://arbitrum.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Optimistic](https://www.optimism.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Polygon](https://polygon.technology/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) have an impact on play to earn crypto gaming or any DeFi application? For example, in Asia Pacific, we are seeing more Polygon adopters, and some Solana adopters? - \[Discussion\] How does the DAO work as compared to a private company? Are there differences and how does the company govern? **\[Dan\]** - \[Discussion\] Currently, there are [3 models of financing](https://reflectiondigital.substack.com/p/tokens-part-ii-ponzinomics-or-the?) for web3 projects, (1) full equity like a company, (2) mixture of equity and tokens and (3) full [tokens](https://reflectiondigital.substack.com/p/tokens-part-1), which model do you think that startup founders in the space should move towards or does it really depend on the project itself? **\[Dan\]** - \[Discussion\] What do you think about the valuation of the companies in web3? Should we value them as companies or economies? **\[Jin\]** - \[Discussion\] What are the key indicators when you look at the tokenomics of the company? - \[Discussion\] Are there any differences between web3 deals in Asia Pacific vs US and Europe? **\[Jin\]** - \[Discussion\] How do we think of governance for the web3 company from the POV of DAO or company? **\[Dan\]** - \[Discussion\] What does the price of a token mean for the investors who receive them during the token generation event (TGE) or ICO? - \[Discussion\] There have been movements of people from the major tech companies (Google, Amazon and Facebook) into web3 recently, is that similar to the period of 2017-2018 just before the crypto winter? **\[Joyce?\]** - \[Discussion\] I have been seeing a lot of deals in the Asia Pacific and I have already invested in 4 web3 or crypto companies and being a supporter of GCR, one prevailing pitch I get from web2 people going into web3, is to bring the web2 interface into web3, but we have learned that web3 applications are totally not web2, if you look at DeFi, and play to earn games, what are your thoughts on trying to slap a web2 view into web3? **\[Jin\]** - \[Discussion\] Moxie’s article “[My first impressions of Web3](https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)” has been interesting, where are the most interesting problems in the space at the moment? **\[Dan\]** - How do anyone who is interested in Web3 contact GCR and get involved? **\[Joyce?\]** - What does great look like for GCR in the next year? **\[Joyce?\]** **Closing** - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - How do my audience find you? **Author's Note:** *Bernard Leong is a supporter of the GCR DAO. BL might have taken positions in web3 DAOs and companies, hence this is not financial advice and if you want to invest, please do your own research.* ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/global-coin-research-web3-101-with-joyce-yang-jin-kang-daniel-kim?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/global-coin-research-web3-101-with-joyce-yang-jin-kang/id914868245?i=1000551636156&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuWvCJg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5FfTNauipztVn2yATp8Yvx?si=Im0ZznWoSs2Xsvclfri50Q&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/global-coin-research-web3-101-with-joyce-yang-jin-kang-daniel-kim?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/global-coin-research-web3-101-with-joyce-yang-jin-kang-daniel-kim-90608244?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MzQxODFmNTctZDUzMy00N2NhLWJhMTAtZWU4ZWZiMGIyM2I2?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiA1brS8Iz2AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Global-Coin-Research-%26-Web3-101-with-Joyce-Yang%2C-Jin-Kang-%26-Daniel-Kim-id2859782-id469528236?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Pace Enterprise & the Future of Finance in Asia Pacific with Turochas Fuad URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/pace-enterprise-the-future-of-bnpl-and-fintech-in-asia-pacific-with-turochas-fuad/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:45.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Turochas "T" Fuad, CEO and co-founder of Pace Enterprise joined us in a conversation to discuss his latest venture, Pace Enterprise and dived deep into the weeds of the "Buy Now, Pay Later" (or BNPL) space. He shared his thoughts on why BNPL can lead to sustainable companies and not just being a feature of a fintech company. Last but not least, Turochas offered his perspectives on how the different accelerating trends: fintech, decentralized finance and web3 are converging towards a coherent future of finance. --- > "If the goal is to really democratize finance of businesses and consumers imagine that Mastercard and Visa has built an interchange network to facilitate payments across the globe. What if Pace can establish a similar global interchange network for digital financing, covering a myriad of services to consumers, businesses, and even financial institutions, basically building the digital financing engine that lives on the cloud powered by blockchain on a web3 infrastructure and serving the needs of future consumers, businesses, and even financial institutions down the road." - **Turochas Fuad** ### ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### Introduction - Turochas “T” Fuad, CEO and co-founder of Pace Enterprise ([@turochas](https://twitter.com/turochas?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/turochas/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation between then and just before the start of this new venture with Pace Enterprise, what were you up to and any lessons you have learnt that you might want to share with others who aspire to be an entrepreneur like yourself? ### [Pace Enterprise](https://pacenow.co/??ref=analysepodcast.com) - To baseline everyone for the conversation, it will be great to introduce the buy now pay later space or what people called BNPL and why it is such an interesting area that many have ventured into the space, given the recent 29 billion buyout of Afterpay in Australia by Square which was founded by the ex-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey? - A great way to start this, is that I recalled that you often put the word “mob” behind your last two startups: travelmob and spacemob before they are acquired. This time, you took a different approach in the naming. What is the inspiration or the origin story behind Pace Enterprise? - What is the mission and vision of Pace Enterprise? - What is the market that Pace Enterprise is addressing? - How does the Pace app work for the normal consumer and the merchant? - What is the business model behind the Pace app that allows a consumer to spread purchases into 3 interest-free installments? - The discussion on how Pace Enterprise leverages on real time data analytics and machine learning to understand their customer. - There are some people who believe that BNPL is a feature rather than a company, because there are wallets in the region, for example, Grab or Gojek Pay, Fave or the super app within the country itself. I believe that you must have seen something different with your sterling track record. What is your mental model on this point of view? - Who are the [key investors to Pace Enterprise](https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/garage/buy-now-pay-later-startup-pace-snags-us40m-funding-to-tap-japan-korea-taiwan?ref=analysepodcast.com)? (Vertex Ventures, Alpha JWC in Indonesia, Atinum Partners in South Korea, Marubeni Ventures, UOB Ventures, Genesis Alternative Ventures AppWorks). - What has Pace done to address the regulatory agency’s concerns of rising debt from younger people who tend to use BNPL services? - We have observed that different BNPL players earlier than Pace are acquired, for example, Hoolah was acquired by Shopback and Octifi, a y-combinator startup that was being acquired by Latitude Pay. What do you think about the consolidation of the industry in general and what it means for Pace moving forward? - One interesting read I got from McKinsey on the[ BNPL and the five different business models to compete](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/buy-now-pay-later-five-business-models-to-compete?ref=analysepodcast.com) article, I thought it is interesting to talk about that in the US, point of sale financing services in the US has grown significantly during the COVID period, They proposed 5 different offerings that integrates across the purchasing journey of the customer: integrated shopping apps, card linked installment offerings, off-card financial offerings, virtual rent to own models, vertical focus larger tickets play and SME sales financing. What do you think about these models and how can they be adapted to Pace’s regional play? - Pace adapting their payments hyperlocally in Japan thru the konbini stores (convenient stores). - What are the trends in the fintech and payments space that you observe in the Asia Pacific region? - What does great look like for Pace Enterprise in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Turochas' recommendation: [Australian Open 2022](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%5FAustralian%5FOpen?ref=analysepodcast.com) Men's Final - how [Rafael Nadal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael%5FNadal?ref=analysepodcast.com) overcome 2 sets of loss and went on to [win the championship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%5FAustralian%5FOpen%5F%E2%80%93%5FMen%27s%5Fsingles?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/pace-enterprise-the-future-of-finance-in-asia-pacific-with-turochas-fuad?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pace-enterprise-the-future-of-finance-in-asia/id914868245?i=1000550926581&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuyoh2g?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6aq4fRBbydFeD2D0jqrn2E?si=w4uV2X6vQbaTf89UeBmk5A&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/pace-enterprise-the-future-of-finance-in-asia-pacific-with-turochas-fuad?si=85194c42ea56447f8baf579586b73e94&utm%5Fsource=clipboard&utm%5Fmedium=text&utm%5Fcampaign=social%5Fsharing) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/pace-enterprise-the-future-of-finance-in-asia-pacific-with-turochas-fuad-90438737?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MzhmMjMwMmMtZTQ1ZC00ZGIxLWFlNzUtODc5MGFiZWJhYTAz?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwikroegqfz1AhWxK1kFHSbYAu8QkfYCegQIARAF&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Pace-Enterprise-%26-the-Future-of-Finance-in-Asia-Pacific-with-Turochas-Fuad-id2859782-id467660565?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Rainforest & the rise of Ecommerce Aggregators in Asia Pacific with JJ Chai URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/rainforest-and-the-rise-of-ecommerce-aggregators-in-asia-pacific-with-jj-chai/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:44.000Z Fresh out of the studio, JJ Chai, CEO and co-founder of Rainforest, joined us in a discussion on his company, a leading eCommerce aggregator that focuses on brands and products for the modern mum and offered his perspectives on the rise of ecommerce aggregators in Asia Pacific region. We dived into how JJ shared the vision and mission of Rainforest and their customer focus for the ecommerce aggregator. From there, we broadened the conversation with JJ explaining how ecommerce aggregators work with platforms such as Amazon and their playbook in selecting the right brands to acquire, scale and distribute. Last but not least, JJ offered his perspectives on how the landscape of ecommerce aggregators will change in the next couple of years globally. --- > But fundamentally the core of the business, at least the way we see it, is that, we need to be great operators of these brands as a start, in fact the best operators for these brands. For us here, it's about looking into ways to be differentiated around how to run those brands better than anyone else, and definitely better than the last owner. - **JJ Chai** ### ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### Introduction - Chai Jia Jih, CEO and co-founder of [Rainforest](https://www.rainforest.life/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@jjchai.eth](https://twitter.com/JJChai?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/jiajih?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - It has been a long time since we last spoke. At that point, you were in Airbnb, and then you moved to Carousell and xto10x Southeast Asia for a while. My first question, how was the experience in helping the founders of a rising startup to scale a company? - Given that you are recently profiled in t[he Ken](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/southeast-asias-investors-are-up-against-the-very-founders-they-invest-in/?ref=analysepodcast.com) as one of the founders who are active prolific angel investors by night in Southeast Asia, how do you select companies to invest in and what are the traits or red flags you found in teams before you decide to make that investment? ### [Rainforest ](https://www.rainforest.life/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the rise of Ecommerce Aggregators in Asia Pacific - What is the inspiration behind Rainforest? - What is the mission and vision of Rainforest? - How did you assemble the team and bring this mission and vision to life? How do their skillsets help to bring the company together? - Congratulations on your recent $36m round led by Nordstar with Insignia Partners (Source: [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/05/founded-by-former-carousell-ovo-and-fave-execs-rainforest-raises-36m-to-aggregate-asia-pacific-amazon-marketplace-sellers/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), can you talk about the investors who have been part of your company’s journey and how they are helpful in building out this venture? - Given that Rainforest adopts the Amazon-centric approach taken by Thrasio, Branded Group and Berlin Brands group, which are well-known and high profile ecommerce aggregators, can you talk about the market opportunity and broadly, what is the thinking process behind acquiring ecommerce brands in the region and then aggregate them to achieve economies of scale? - For Rainforest so far, what are the categories which the brands you have acquired tend to fall under? - Based on an interesting research done by [Shiv Kapoor on Amazon Aggregators](https://joincolossus.com/research/amazon%5Faggregators.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com): breakdown research from the Business Breakdowns podcast, Amazon third party aggregators raised $10 billion in capital till date and at least 80 active companies worldwide doing this, my first thought will be, what is the value proposition for Rainforest to acquire these third party sellers? - What is the playbook to become an ecommerce aggregator? I understand that Thrasio uses a 503-point checklist to evaluate every acquisition. - How do ecommerce aggregators differentiate themselves from each other? - Of course, we live in Asia, and there are other ecommerce platforms similar to Amazon: Taobao or T-Mall owned by the Alibaba Group in China, Rakuten in Japan and Coupang in South Korea, does extending the brands under Rainforest help you to hedge the risk against Amazon or how tough is to do the extension (or maybe, just doing Amazon third party retail is good enough?) - The naive view from people looking at this space is that since you own a plethora of brands, you can cross-sell or upsell your brands. Is that assertion true or are there really synergies or you just have to build one brand at a time? - How has COVID-19 pandemic’s supply chain impact affected your business? - What are the risks of the business? One point of view is that there might be coordination friction where you might coordinate the integration of disparate collections of brands that are not interrelated and instead of getting economies of scale, you get a hodgepodge of confusion. How do you deal with this kind of risk? - What are the current trends that you see are happening in the ecommerce aggregator space? - What is expected to change going forward in the aggregator space? - What does great look like for Rainforest in the next few years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - JJ Chai: [CEO Excellence](https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-on-books/ceo-excellence?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[an upcoming book by McKinsey\] by [Carolyn Dewar](https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/carolyn-dewar?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Scott Keller](https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/scott-keller?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Vikram Malhotra](https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/vik-malhotra?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is mixed edited by [Geoffrey Thomas Craig](http://gthomascraig.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](http://linkedin.com/gthomascraig?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rainforest-the-rise-of-ecommerce-aggregators-in-asia-pacific-with-jj-chai?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rainforest-the-rise-of-ecommerce-aggregators-in/id914868245?i=1000550274883&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFt5jGuU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3xCSMm0yWk0OEWsTJvPhDv?si=US0WIKhaTUOxc4HnsoNeQw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/rainforest-the-rise-of-ecommerce-aggregators-in-asia-pacific-with-jj-chai?si=c75b00b716c444d8a16447ab28428aec&utm%5Fsource=clipboard&utm%5Fmedium=text&utm%5Fcampaign=social%5Fsharing) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/rainforest-the-rise-of-ecommerce-aggregators-in-asia-pacific-with-jj-chai-90276240?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NTY3MTgzZDktZmI3Ny00NjBlLWE5OWItZDkxZGUxYWJhYzcx?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjg0476ge31AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Rainforest-%26-the-rise-of-Ecommerce-Aggregators-in-Asia-Pacific-with-JJ-Chai-id2859782-id465827165?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### AppWorks & Investing in Web3 with Jamie Lin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/appworks-investing-in-web3-with-jamie-lin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:44.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jamie Lin, chairman and partner of AppWorks, an accelerator and venture capital form shares the backstory of the company and how it started his investments across Taiwan and Southeast Asia and grew to its present state today. Jamie shares the investment thesis of the firm and the key traits of entrepreneurs and verticals which they can invest into. Last but not least, Jamie shares his perspectives in how venture capital will be transformed by web3 and offers his point of view on how AppWorks will position itself in this new era. --- > "So as of today, I think the choice between DAO and equity is how bullish you are in the project. So if you're thinking that companies launching its first or second project, there's still a highly likelihood that it's not gonna be hugely successful and you want to bet on the entire life cycle of the company, then right now, maybe equity is still a better tool. If you're really bullish on the project, but you're not as bullish on the company that maybe the DAO is a better way to go." - Jamie Lin ### ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### Introduction - Jamie Lin, Chairman and Partner, [AppWorks](https://appworks.tw/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@MrJamieLin](https://twitter.com/MrJamieLin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamielin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [personal blog](https://mrjamie.cc/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As you are on Analyse Asia for the first time, we want to dive into your origin story, how did you start your career? - From your career journey, what are the key lessons you can share with my audience? - Given that you are a venture capitalist, what is a typical day like for you? ### [AppWorks](https://appworks.tw/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Introduction: AppWorks is both an accelerator and a venture capital firm in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Started in 2009, the fund has a total of US$212m assets under management, with three funds to date, with the recent fund III of US$150m. - What is the inspiration behind AppWorks and what is the origin story of how it evolves to the present state? - Coming to today, what is the vision and mission of AppWorks? - What are the areas of investments that AppWorks focus on and what are the ticket sizes for the investments you place in companies, as I understand that the firm does from seed, series A to C. - What is the investment thesis of AppWorks? What are the verticals which you are looking into? - Why did the fund decide to expand from Taiwan into Southeast Asia? - Does the fund now have an office within Southeast Asia? - How does the Appworks accelerator work? How would a founder be selected to go into an accelerator and will the VC fund follow on from there? - Can you provide examples of companies in both Taiwan and Southeast Asia under your portfolio? - What are the red flags which will deter you from investing in them? - What does great look like for AppWorks for the next 5 years? ### Investing in Web3 (Blockchain, DeFi & NFTs) - To baseline this part of the conversation, what do you define Web3 given there are cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies, decentralized finance and NFTs? - One interesting feature of Web3 is the concept of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), where even the investors can form decentralized funds like Friends with Benefits DAO. Do you think that this will uproot the current VC fund model which is more ideal for the current web2 model? - What are the most interesting trends in Web3 which will shape your investment thesis in 2022 and beyond? - As I have done a couple of web3 investments, there are different models to fund the Web3 entity: 1/ the equity model with the web3 entity being a company, 2/ the token + equity model with the company able to have a token generation event (or what they call ICO) or 3/ go full token model. How do you look at these different ways of investing in a web3 company? - Even the exits are becoming interesting for a web3 company, if the company goes into token generation, there needs to be a strategy to manage the VC firm’s treasury and how the tokens will be distributed to the LPs. That makes it interesting as the successful funds in Web3 tend to have a combination of hedge fund and VC fund structure, what are your thoughts on that? - What are the most interesting problems that you believe Web3 will solve and change how the current Internet industry is moving towards? ### Closing - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/362%5Fappworks%5F%5Finvesting%5Fin%5Fweb3%5Fwith%5Fjamie%5Flinmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/appworks-investing-in-web3-with-jamie-lin/id914868245?i=1000548214358&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuErUf4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ExFwilnSp4UPF041vAkg7?si=IPR5Q30PTWuoy8OXbq8WSg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/appworks-investing-in-web3-with-jamie-lin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/appworks-investing-in-web3-with-jamie-lin-89784470?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/694160954907927) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NTkyZjBmOTItOTg0MS00N2NjLTk2MGUtZjQxYjQxNzFhYWY3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjI5%5FfZi7v1AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/AppWorks-%26-Investing-in-Web3-with-Jamie-Lin-id2859782-id459926902?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Meta & What the Metaverse Opportunity means for Asia Pacific with Dan Neary URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/meta-what-the-metaverse-opportunity-means-asia-pacific-dan-neary/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:44.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Dan Neary, Vice President for Meta (formerly Facebook) APAC joined us for an interesting conversation on the company’s re-brand, vision for the metaverse and why this may the biggest opportunity for businesses in Asia Pacific. In the conversation, Dan describes how Meta is helping to build the metaverse & talks about how the current ecosystem of communities, creators, commerce will converge with the next computing platform and create a completely new generation of experiences. Last but not least, he also shares how Meta is working with small businesses to support their digital transformation journey and get them future-ready. --- > "The important thing is, look, our mission hasn't changed. We're still focusing on helping people connect and finding communities and, and grow businesses. We've just very clearly put a stake in the ground around what we believe is the future. And more and more that's going to take place in the metaverse." - Dan Neary ### ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### ****Introduction** - Dan Neary, Vice President of Asia Pacific, Meta (or previously known as Facebook) ([@danneary](https://twitter.com/danneary?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danneary/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - As it is in our tradition to ask our first time guests, how did you start your career? - What are the key lessons from your career journey that you can share with my audience? - Before we start the conversation on the main subject of the day, I like to baseline our conversations with a key understanding of two concepts: creators’ economy and metaverse. Can you provide a definition of what these two concepts mean to the general audience out there? ### [Meta](https://about.facebook.com/meta/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (or formerly [Facebook](https://facebook.com/)) in Asia Pacific - Meta is now the new brand that encompasses Facebook and the other key services for example, Whatsapp, Instagram and Oculus. Can you briefly share Meta & the company’s vision for the metaverse? - What does this new vision of building the metaverse for Meta mean for Asia Pacific? - Given that Asia Pacific is different from the other regions in the world, what has Meta done to localize their services in the region? - We lived for the past two years in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. How did Meta help small and medium businesses to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the efforts with partner education programs and ensure vaccination confidence with communities in Asia Pacific? - How have the different services from Meta: e-commerce, video and augmented reality or virtual reality aka AR/VR evolved and what are the key trends we have observed in Asia Pacific? - What are your perspectives in the adoption of AR/VR given that Facebook has embraced remote working due to the acceleration caused by the COVID-19 pandemic? - How does Meta help to build the community of developers in Asia Pacific and jumpstart the creators economy? - What are the tools that creators can now leverage to reach their audience and build their businesses on top of them? - Can you provide real examples of how content creators have built value through Meta? - Specifically in the Asia Pacific region, can you talk about the efforts specifically in Asia Pacific that Meta is making to tackle the inundation of information and [reduce misinformation](https://about.fb.com/news/tag/misinformation/?ref=analysepodcast.com) to the people and communities within Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp? - How are you working with the regulatory authorities in the region? What are the complexities in navigating the difficulties of dealing with misinformation? - What does great look like for Meta in the Asia Pacific region for the next three years? - Since we are at the start of 2022, what are you looking forward to this year? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? (For example, a book, podcast, game or movie)? - How do my audience find you? (please feel free to plug your social media tools and your company’s as well) ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/361%5Fmeta%5F%5Fwhat%5Fthe%5Fmetaverse%5Fopportunity%5Fmeans%5Ffor%5Fasia%5Fpacific%5Fwith%5Fdan%5Fnearymp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meta-what-the-metaverse-opportunity-means-for-asia/id914868245?i=1000547308608&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtN9BH0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/21GhBTTTtE5fEMm4opTYrs?si=To0P9fwqQW2OsidOC4ZJXg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/meta-what-the-metaverse-opportunity-means-for-asia-pacific-with-dan-neary?si=a9817d45245a4a989ec272754ed4bd44&utm%5Fsource=clipboard&utm%5Fmedium=text&utm%5Fcampaign=social%5Fsharing) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/meta-what-the-metaverse-opportunity-means-for-asia-pacific-with-dan-neary-89559530?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/617312952655874) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NDA0NTQ0ODQtODM5Yi00ZDg4LWFjMjktMjhlZmJkZjQ2MWIy?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwj455rf5KP1AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Meta-%26-What-the-Metaverse-Opportunity-means-for-Asia-Pacific-with-Dan-Neary-id2859782-id457271139?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The State of China in 2021 with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-china-in-2021-with-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:43.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Shai Oster, the Asia Bureau Chief for The Information returns for the sixth year to discuss the state of China in 2021\. Shai reviewed his predictions in 2021 and offered his perspectives on what surprised him the most on China tech from the regulatory tsunami from the Chinese government to dwindling funding of the startup ecosystem. We discuss how the Chinese economy is undergoing major transformation and whether we have a China tech ecosystem in 2022\. Last but not least, Shai Oster provided glimpse of what is to come for 2022\. --- > "There's definitely decoupling happening in terms of tech. And I actually was really skeptical of the coupling until this year. And I'm like, wow, you're really going to be seeing it. But on the other hand, the financial services sector is opening up much more this year than before." - **Shai Oster** ### ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### ****Introduction** - ****Shai Oster ([@beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Asia Bureau Chief in [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)** ### State of China in 2021 - What did you get right and wrong about your predictions on China for the year 2021? - We have already covered the Chinese tech giants from Alibaba to Bytedance being regulated by the Chinese government in early October this year. They have been reprimanded by the Chinese government with their anti-competitive behaviour slapped with record fines and CEOs moving up to executive chairman positions. Will we have a clearer picture of the Chinese tech giants going into 2022? ### Startups and Venture Capital in China 2021 - We saw [the recent drop of 65% in fundraising for China’s venture investors](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinas-venture-investors-see-65-drop-in-fundraising-for-startups?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com). What is driving this drop? What impact does it have for the startup and venture capital scene in China? - Does it mean that we will not see record valuations in China? - Moving forward, what industries will be hot for venture capital? ### Chinese economy - Moving forward, how will the Chinese economy evolve? Is it turning insular or expanding across Asia Pacific? - What are the danger signs which we need to watch out for in the Chinese economy? - [Chinese ad rates are now more expensive than the US](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinese-ad-rates-already-pricier-than-u-s-soared-this-year?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com), how did that happen? ### Global Companies in China - Recently, it’s reported in The Information that [Apple has a secret US$275b deal with Chinese authorities over 5 years](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chinese-authorities-apple-ceo-signed-275-billion-deal-with-them?rc=fk3gq1&ref=analysepodcast.com). Is this more a general operating model or cost of doing business in China for global companies? - How will China leverage their position against the US companies given the current anti-China attitude from the US government? - What are your predictions for China next year in 2022? ### Closing - Anything that has recently inspired you? - Shai's recommendations: Yuval Noah Harari "Sapiens" & "Home Deus" and ["Jerusalem: A History" by Simon Sebag Monteflore](https://www.amazon.sg/Jerusalem-Biography-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/1780220251/ref=asc%5Fdf%5F1780220251/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/360%5Fthe%5Fstate%5Fof%5Fchina%5Fin%5F2021%5Fwith%5Fshai%5Fostermp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-state-of-china-in-2021-with-shai-oster/id914868245?i=1000546674655&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFty37sY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZeLYMPFqmcZZmpxP44h45?si=RgMA4gcqQ7mP7UE26CijpA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-state-of-china-in-2021-with-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-state-of-china-in-2021-with-shai-oster-89394374?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/926088721429685) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OWQ5NGIwMmItMzgyMC00YTJhLWFiNGQtMTljZTRkNGM2YmM1?sa=X&ved=0CAgQuIEEahcKEwiY3-3Zi5L1AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-State-of-China-in-2021-with-Shai-Oster-id2859782-id455431122?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Yield Guild Games & the Crypto Gaming Metaverse with Gabby Dizon URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/yield-guild-games-the-crypto-gaming-metaverse-gabby-dizon/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:42.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games (YGG) joined us in a conversation to share the origin story of YGG and how it builds the guilds with community managers and players to bring financial inclusion globally with play to earn crypto gaming. Gabby explained the role of YGG and how play to earn is transforming the gaming industry and what it means for the industry moving forward. Last but not least, Gabby offers his perspectives in the metaverse and what it means for the Web3 movement going forward. --- > "You're actually helping people, escape, lockdown, escape, poverty, and most of all, you're providing equal economic access to crypto based economies anywhere in the world. So now you don't have to be super crypto or tech savvy. What you really need is an internet connection in a device, in a crypto wallet, and you can start earning money. And if you don't know how to do that, your community managers are there to help you how to do it." - Gabby Dizon ### ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### ****Introduction** - Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games ([@gabusch](https://twitter.com/gabusch?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabbydizon?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - As it is our tradition for first time guests to tell their origin story, how did you start your career that eventually led you to just before Yield Guild Games? - What are the key lessons from your career journey that you can share with my audience? ### [Yield Guild Games](https://yieldguild.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Whitepaper](https://yieldguild.io/YGG-Whitepaper-English.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - BL’s intro: Yield Guild Games or YGG, is a play to earn gaming guild bringing players together to earn via blockchain based economies. Founded in the Philippines within Southeast Asia and recently, it has raised US$4.6m from the famous Silicon Valley firm, Andreessen Horowitz. - To start, since my audience are mainly outside crypto, my first question to you: how do you introduce Yield Guild Games and its vision and mission to the man on the street and to the traditional gaming community? - Reading your whitepaper, YGG is a decentralized autonomous organization or what people call DAOs these days for investing in non-fungible tokens or NFTs used in virtual worlds and blockchain based games, can you explain what a DAO is and how does YGG utilize that structure to further its value proposition? - There is the YGG token, what is the function of the token and what does it mean for the person to hold a YGG token? - YGG builds around the ecosystem of what we now know is play to earn games, for example, Axie Infinity and I just have Aleksander, one of the co-founders on the show, can you explain what play to earn game means in the context of blockchain gaming and give examples of the different games where YGG operate in? - Based on the investment memo by Andressen Horowitz, they stated, “*With 4,700+ scholars, and over $8.6 million earned, YGG is now paying out over $1 million weekly and already proving to be an unstoppable force for good.*”, can you explain the concept of scholars in YGG, how does a scholar start in YGG and then earn as part of your ecosystem? - How do you scale the scholarship program through the use of community managers? What are they empowered to do? - As the COVID-19 pandemic swept Philippines last year, nearly 7.3 million people lost their jobs, can you talk about the story how you lend out your Axies that led to them able to earn a living during that period of time? - Since YGG made investments into play to earn games, for example, Axie Infinity, League of Kingdoms, Guild of Guardians, can you explain your investment thesis and given the plethora of blockchain games popping up every week, how do you decide who to invest in, buy their tokens and NFTs? - How sustainable is the play to earn model for ordinary people who come into gaming? Will there be a world where a lot of people are doing this for a living? - In your point of view, how do you see the concept of the metaverse and how does YGG fit into that metaverse? - Given more traditional players like Ubisoft, Activation-Blizzard or even Disney are entering the space through learning about NFTs, do you foresee a world that gaming communities will become interoperable instead of being siloed into their own worlds? - Are we going into a world of Ready Player One and do you foresee VR and AR that will supercharge the play to earn ecosystem? - What does great look like for YGG in a few years time? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Gabby's recommendations: [Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow%5FCrash?ref=analysepodcast.com), anything on [Web3 and DAOs](https://a16z.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-web3-Readlng-List.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? (please feel free to plug your social media tools and your company’s as well) ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/359%5Fyield%5Fguild%5Fgames%5F%5Fthe%5Fcrypto%5Fgaming%5Fmetaverse%5Fwith%5Fgabby%5Fdizonmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/yield-guild-games-the-crypto-gaming-metaverse-with/id914868245?i=1000546189202&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFszqrB8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/37mspfJjC8T9zraKG33nsx?si=1HtakbhhTEOY-c9PnnVYpQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/yield-guild-games-the-crypto-gaming-metaverse-with-gabby-dizon?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/yield-guild-games-the-crypto-gaming-metaverse-with-gabby-dizon-89287861?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/959027534709262) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/OGM5NzE2MWItOTY4OC00OTlhLWI4N2YtYTcwNjQ2ZjM4ZTAx?sa=X&ved=0CAgQuIEEahcKEwjg4Oe4zIP1AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Yield-Guild-Games-%26-the-Crypto-Gaming-Metaverse-with-Gabby-Dizon-id2859782-id454062735?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Axie Infinity & the Play to Earn Metaverse with Aleksander Larsen URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/axie-infinity/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:42.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Aleksander Larsen, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sky Mavis, the studio behind the first successful blockchain game, Axie Infinity, joined us to discuss the origin story of the company and how it jumpstarted the NFT and play to earn games to life. Aleksander shared the early days of Axie Infinity and explained why they ended up building the Ronin side chain to launching the decentralized exchange, Katana. Last but not least, Aleksander offered his thoughts on how Axie Infinity will contribute to the metaverse conversation in the years ahead. --- > "And right now the internet is the metaverse to an extent. The only difference here is that it's not truly decentralized and you didn't have ownership on the internet before now you have ownership through the blockchain. So that means that the internet is now becoming more metaverse like, because people can own their own assets. They can interact with the blockchain through their web explorer for the front ends to where the metaverse are right now." - Aleksander Larsen ### ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### ****Introduction** - Aleksander Larsen, co-founder of Sky Mavis, the company behind the leading crypto game, Axie Infinity ([@Psycheout86](https://twitter.com/Psycheout86?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/psycheout86/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - As it is our tradition for first time guests to tell their origin story, how did you start your career that eventually led you to just before Sky Mavis? - What are the key lessons from your career journey that you can share with my audience? ### Axie Infinity and the Play to Earn Metaverse - [Axie Infinity ](https://axieinfinity.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)is a trading and battling game launched in 2018 created by Sky Mavis, a gaming studio from Vietnam in Southeast Asia. One key innovation is based on the concept of a blockchain-based play to earn model, which could create more aligned incentives between game creators and game players for the long-term. The company has recently raised US$152 million at a nearly $3 billion valuation led by the famous Silicon Valley venture capital firm: Andreessen Horowitz (Reference: [Venture Beat](https://venturebeat.com/2021/10/06/sky-mavis-raises-152m-at-nearly-3b-valuation-for-axie-infinity-play-to-earn-nft-game/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - To start, what is the inspiration behind Axie Infinity and how did you and your other co-founders come together and build it into its present form? - Before the Axie Infinity team reached rocket-like growth, what are the early days like and what are the key things the team have done to hit the tipping point? - Can you share the concept of what play to earn means, and how it means money flows through the Axie Infinity ecosystem? - How does this play to earn model enable financial inclusion? Can you talk about how AXS helped gamers in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic? - Can you describe at a high level on the game mechanics of Axie Infinity for anyone out there who wants to get into playing the game? - Can you explain why there are the two tokens: Axie Infinity token (AXS) and Smooth Love Potion aka SLP and their functions that power the entire ecosystem? - How do non-fungible tokens aka NFTs enter into Axie Infinity? - Specifically, AXS leverages the Ronin blockchain which you have to build from scratch. Can you talk about the rationale behind why your team decided to build your own chain instead of relying on the ethereum chain? - How do other partners, for example, Yield Guild Games (YGG) build on top of your system? - Recently, you launched Katana, a decentralized exchange or DEX where players can gain liquidity easily or trade on the Ronin side chain. Why not leverage on the existing DEXes out there instead of building one? - In your perspective, how do you see the concept of metaverse from the perspective of Axie Infinity? - One common fear in most games is that early adopters or players gain an advantage in power level before everyone comes into it. This creates a power level instability which we often talk about even in games I used to play for example, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: the Gathering and World of Warcraft. I do recall that Magic: the Gathering figured out how to deal with this type of instability. Do you think that this type of instability will become an issue for Axie Infinity in the future? - What does great look like for Axie Infinity in the next three years? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? (For example, a book, podcast, game or movie)? - Aleksander's recommendations: [Age of Empires IV](https://www.ageofempires.com/games/age-of-empires-iv/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Dune by Frank Herbert](https://www.amazon.com/Dune-Frank-Herbert/dp/0441172717?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/358%5Faxie%5Finfinity%5F%5Fthe%5Fplay%5Fto%5Fearn%5Fmetaverse%5Fwith%5Faleksander%5Flarsenmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/axie-infinity-the-play-to-earn-metaverse-with/id914868245?i=1000545465368&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvWmh50?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/51JlOc2eJ6JnL7C175nHf0?si=0HOhkSh6TeeAr2S88uqKKw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/axie-infinity-the-play-to-earn-metaverse-with-aleksander-larsen?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/axie-infinity-the-play-to-earn-metaverse-with-aleksander-larsen-89134235?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/595825828199643) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YzJiYzIyYWQtM2ZlMS00NGJiLTg3MTMtNjM1MDY1NWM4NTBm?sa=X&ved=0CAYQuIEEahcKEwjIj9-As%5FH0AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Axie-Infinity-%26-the-Play-to-Earn-Metaverse-with-Aleksander-Larsen-id2859782-id452211037?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Evergrande's endgame with Ren Liqian URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/evergrandes-endgame-with-ren-liqian/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:41.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Ren Liqian from Wisdom Asset Management, joined us to discuss the fallout from the likely default of Evergrande, a Chinese real estate conglomerate and what it means for the Chinese economy and the rest of the world. Liqian started the conversation with her background and her analysis of the Chinese market specifically in the real estate and technology sector. She debunked the misconceptions of Evergrande from Western media similar to the Lehman contagion during the 2008 financial crisis and explained the likely outcomes of Evergrande if it ever defaults. Last but not least, she shed light on how State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration, a Chinese government body that are working behind the scenes on the Evergrande situation similar to other conglomerates in trouble such as HNA and Huarong. --- > "I will say that in the end, the Evergrande situation will be similar, particularly to like HNA group. So I think right now they have not filed for an event bankruptcy cases. Yet their hope is still can can muddle through. But in the end, the likely end of Evergrande is going to turn out to be much more similar than people realize." - Ren Liqian **Editor's note:** *We recorded this conversation in early November, and hence it does not include the recent news on [Evergrande's default](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-12-10/next-china-evergrande-finally-defaults?ref=analysepodcast.com).* ### **Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### **Introduction** - Ren Liqian, Director of Modern Alpha at WisdomTree Asset Management ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/liqian-ren-6a70246/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@liqian\_ren](https://twitter.com/liqian%5Fren?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since it is your first time on the show, how did you start your career? - What is your current role and coverage in WisdomTree Asset Management? ### Evergrande's endgame and its impact to the Chinese & global economy - Intro to Evergrande by BL: Evergrande is one of China's largest real estate developers and is a conglomerate, based in Shenzhen and listed in Hong Kong. It employs 200k people and indirectly sustains 380 million jobs. Founded by Xu Jiayin, it made its money through building residential property. The group has invested in[ electric vehicles](http://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/27/investing/evergrande-new-energy-vehicle-stock-intl-hnk/index.html?ref=analysepodcast.com), sports and theme parks. It even owns a food and beverage business, selling bottled water, groceries, dairy products and other goods across[ China](https://www.cnn.com/china?ref=analysepodcast.com). - Why is Evergrande as a conglomerate getting so much spotlight as compared to the tech companies in China recently? - Can you provide a comprehensive overview of the real estate industry, and the guidelines known as the “three red lines” issued by the Chinese government? - Why has the problem exacerbated till now? - There are unhappy citizens who are protesting in front of the Evergrande offices in China. How are they affected by the whole situation? - What is the Chinese government’s position on Evergrande? They have asked the founder and CEO to use his net worth to pay the current debts. - There are similar examples of Chinese conglomerates such as HNA Group, Anbang and Huarong which have encountered similar problems in taking on too much debt with the Chinese government. How did the Chinese government help to resolve the situation for these cases? - One thing which the Western media did not cover is the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration (or SASAC in short) or 国资委 and their role in dealing with the Evergrande issue? Can you elaborate what this agency is and how have they been managing the debacles of these private conglomerates (including HNA and Huarong) with the local provincial governments, for example Shenzhen behind the scenes? - Excluding Chinese media, what are the things that the media outside of China get right and wrong about Evergrande, for example, being a contagion similar to the Lehman collapse in 2008? - [What is the likely end for Evergrande](https://www.wisdomtree.com/blog/2021-09-23/whats-the-likely-end-for-evergrande?ref=analysepodcast.com) based on the present situation? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Liqian's recommendations: Chinese history & literature books and calligraphy. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:**The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/357%5Fevergrandes%5Fendgame%5Fwith%5Fren%5Fliqianmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/evergrandes-endgame-with-ren-liqian/id914868245?i=1000545034571&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFui%5FYXs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ea2RxbAjMf8RR2aQhZEej?si=-QuRk7FCR96TfeH3QQyFhw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/evergrandes-endgame-with-ren-liqian?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/evergrandes-endgame-with-ren-liqian-89030985?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/235112058738849) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZjFiODNhMDQtN2MwOC00NGFkLWI5NWQtMzc2ZGY0NzI1OWUz?sa=X&ved=0CAgQuIEEahcKEwjwhv7mx-X0AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Evergrande's-endgame-with-Ren-Liqian-id2859782-id450954496?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Move with Parag Khanna URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/move-with-parag-khanna/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:41.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Parag Khanna, founder and managing partner of Futuremap and celebrated author of various books, joined us to discuss his new book "Move" and explain why mobility is destiny. Parag started from the future in 2050 and worked backwards to explore the various scenarios in how mobility of talent will be in the midst of geopolitical tensions and climate change. Last but not least, Parag translated what it means for Asia Pacific moving forward based on its current trajectory and global technology shifts. --- > "So I look at every single one of those categories of mobility, of migration and everything to electric VTOL aircraft and the impact that will have on the future of urban design. That is part of the individual experience of mobility in the future as is of course climate migration, fleeing countries, where there is simply not a drop of water left. All of those are drivers of our future mobility, depending on who you are and where you are." **\- Parag Khanna** ### Here are the links and show notes for this episode: ### Introduction - [Parag Khanna](https://www.paragkhanna.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@paragkhanna](https://twitter.com/paragkhanna?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/pub/parag-khanna/28/381/689?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ personal site](http://paragkhanna.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Founder and Managing Partner of [Futuremap](https://futuremap.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and author of “Move”, “The Future is Asian”, “Technocracy in America”, “Connectography” and “The Second World”. - Since our last conversation two years back and in between, we have the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing of US Presidents from Trump to Biden, what have you been up to since we last spoke? ### [Move by Parag Khanna](https://www.paragkhanna.com/move/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Move-Forces-Uprooting-Parag-Khanna/dp/1982168978/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?dchild=1&keywords=move+parag+khanna&qid=1616489120&s=books&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Simon and Schuster](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Move/Parag-Khanna/9781982168971?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Parag Khanna's "Move" is one of the [best political books of 2021 rated by Financial Times](https://www.ft.com/content/13e77e22-8815-4721-930f-8b94351c4b29?ref=analysepodcast.com). - I want to start differently in discussing your new book “Move” with the start of your prologue which asks the provocative question, “Where will you live by 2050?”, from the recent Conference of the Parties or COP26 meeting on climate change, what is your assessment on the different groups of people from frontier, emerging and advanced economies living in that time? - Working backwards till today, given nationalism has been on the rise since the last decade and the rising geopolitical tensions across different nation states and the US, do you think that we are moving towards an anti-globalization world or put it another way, will nations restrict the movement flow of talent in the fear of a demanding populace? - The main theme of the book is to establish that mobility is destiny, building on your earlier point of view that connectivity is destiny. Can you establish the baseline on what mobility means for the individuals? - In the book, you have build a 2x2 diagrams based on the two axes of migration and sustainability and construct four potential scenarios in which path the world will take: “New Middle Ages”, “Regional Fortresses”, “Northern Lights” or “Barbarians at the Gate”, what is the mental model behind these scenarios? - Globalization has been a major theme in the past three decades, and was often seen as the solution that brings people together, but instead, we see that advanced societies have regressed. Can these problems be mitigated if we will be able to manage the current crises and move humanity to another period of peace? - What happens to the southern continents from India, Australia to South America? How are we going to see 1.2 billion people moving out of these fast becoming areas that are not habitable due to climate change? - What will happen to the Asia pacific regions in their current trajectory and talent flow specifically to China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia? - When talent meets opportunity, migration will occur. What does it mean for the expat today with lockdowns and rising tensions with local populace even in expat friendly countries from Dubai to Singapore? - Is there a hope for a “global passport” that allows talent to be anywhere? - What are your thoughts on remote work, given that COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital technologies such as zoom? - That comes back to the question which I usually ask first, what inspired you to write the book? What are the key themes and main takeaways which you want the reader to gain out of the book? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Parag's recommendations: Traveling to see what is really happening and experience. - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/356%5Fmove%5Fwith%5Fparag%5Fkhannamp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/move-with-parag-khanna/id914868245?i=1000544638040&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFshsuhU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0CAff2qFRM8GV8Nysitx3I?si=PowAI8otSH6EAryD6NwA1g&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/move-with-parag-khanna?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/move-with-parag-khanna-88938533?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/647825476371919) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MWUyZTBmZmYtZjAzZC00M2NiLTlhODQtNjI2NWY4M2UyYWFj?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjAvLiLu9v0AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Move-with-Parag-Khanna-id2859782-id449791958?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Why Cloud Computing & SAAS are different in China with Lillian Li URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/why-cloud-computing-saas-is-different-in-china/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:41.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Lillian Li, founder of the Chinese Characteristics newsletter joined us in a conversation to explain why cloud computing and software as a service (SAAS) are different in China as compared to the rest of the world. Lillian began her origin story in why she started the newsletter and approach the Chinese market. Then we dived deep into the weeds of the Chinese enterprise market and explore why the Chinese tech companies found it difficult to build enterprise software and drive adoption in global expansion specifically in the Asian markets. Last but not least, Lillian explores how the Chinese cloud computing sector and SAAS model will evolve in the future to adapt to the changing world out there. --- > "In China, when you talk to someone about SASS. They typically link it with a type of software architecture rather than the payment recurrent payment theme. So that's one thing. And cloud computing is more understood as cloud adoption rather than using a last platform." **\- Lillian Li** ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### Introduction - Lillian Li ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lillianmli/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@lillianmli](https://twitter.com/lillianmli?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Substack](https://lillianli.substack.com/)), Founder, Chinese Characteristics Newsletter - How did you start your career? - What brought you to China and eventually set up the Chinese Characteristics Newsletter? - From your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? - What are the key topics which you cover on Chinese Characteristics? - How do you look at the Chinese market now? Is it just a giant Galapagos island with its own evolution distinctly different from the rest of the world or otherwise? Why Cloud Computing and SaaS are different in China - References: [The State of Chinese cloud computing 1](https://lillianli.substack.com/p/the-state-of-chinese-cloud-part-i), [2](https://lillianli.substack.com/p/state-of-chinese-cloud-part-ii), [3](https://lillianli.substack.com/p/the-state-of-chinese-cloud-part-iii) (the last two requires subscription) - Let’s baseline our understanding on cloud computing and SaaS. For the rest of the world outside China, we are familiar with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as examples for cloud computing and Salesforce as examples for SaaS solutions, how do you define cloud computing and SaaS broadly and then apply the lens where their Chinese counterparts have evolved with their own characteristics? - Which are the key cloud computing platforms in China as in Southeast Asia, we are aware of AliCloud and Tencent Cloud, but what about the rest which may or may not have started their geographic expansion? - For Alibaba and Tencent, I understand that Ding Talk is analogous to how Slack is for enterprises, and there is also a Wechat for work. How are these communications services different from their US counterparts? - Are there equivalents for Salesforce (CRM), Twilio (developer APIs), Databricks (analytics and AI - I find Bytedance’s volcanic engine or Byteplus - known to the rest of the world similar) in China? - In your perspective, why do Chinese giants struggle to build enterprise software? Can you offer some examples in the process? Ref: [Why Chinese tech giants struggle to make enterprise software](https://lillianli.substack.com/p/why-chinese-tech-giants-struggle) - We are moving towards a decoupled supply chain world where we will live in 2 systems: Chinese and US. We have seen this in navigation systems (GPS vs Beidou). The Chinese tech companies expanding their cloud services will need to adapt their tools to the rest of the world. What are your thoughts on how they can improve their current offerings to push adoption for the rest of the world or will they be expanding where the other Chinese enterprises are? - How do you rate the future of cloud computing and SaaS in China and will they evolve differently from their US counterparts? ### Closing - Any recommendations that have inspired you recently? - Lillian's recommendation: Ray Huang, "[1587, a Year of No Significance](https://www.amazon.com/1587-Year-No-Significance-Dynasty/dp/0300028849?ref=analysepodcast.com)" - How can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/355%5Fwhy%5Fcloud%5Fcomputing%5F%5Fsaas%5Fare%5Fdifferent%5Fin%5Fchina%5Fwith%5Flillian%5Flimp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-cloud-computing-saas-are-different-in-china-with/id914868245?i=1000544161244&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtuuFq0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3emoyR4Gr1Mr5GeujjUeOn?si=WP6exx9fS0uBN2R-fqB7kA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/why-cloud-computing-saas-are-different-in-china-with-lillian-li?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/why-cloud-computing-saas-are-different-in-china-with-lillian-li-88819066?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/5060714847280614) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MDY0NTkzYzMtMzY2ZS00Yzk5LWE1ZjYtMDAzMjVmNjBlYmM3?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwiQ8s6x3tD0AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Why-Cloud-Computing-%26-SAAS-are-different-in-China-with-Lillian-Li-id2859782-id448539571?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Xfers and the launch of StraitsX XSGD with Liu Tianwei URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/xfers-and-the-launch-of-xsgd-with-liu-tianwei/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:40.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Liu Tianwei, CEO and co-founder of Xfers, sit down for a discussion on the origin story of Xfers and shares the backstory in how the company has managed to launch their StraitsX exchange with the first stable coin XSGD in Southeast Asia. Tianwei dived deep into the weeds in how the team put together the white paper from concept to launch with key applications in DeFi and worked with the regulators and partners to launch the stable coin into action. Last but not least, he shared his perspectives on the ongoing convergence between cryptocurrency and fintech. --- > "So I think from a market perspective, Southeast Asia is still in its early stages. We probably do not have that much of that to have so many stable coins. End of the day circulation and liquidity is everything. So the one that is pretty much have the most adoption and since the circulating and support will be the one that most, probably 90% of everything will happen at." **\- Liu Tianwei** ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### Introduction - Liu Tianwei, CEO and co-founder of Xfers (or Fazz Financial Group) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tianweiliu/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@Tian\_wei](https://twitter.com/tian%5Fwei?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What are the interesting lessons in your career journey that you can share with my audience here? ### Xfers - What is the mission and vision of Xfers? - What is the origin story of Xfers? What is the problem which you are solving for the customer today? - Xfers is part of the YCombinator 2015 batch in Silicon Valley. Can you talk about how that experience helped your team to build Xfers to what it is today? - Who are the investors of Xfers? - What are the products and services that customers would be able to access with Xfers? - What is your geographic footprint currently in Southeast Asia? - What does great looks like for Xfers in the next three years? ### The story of StraitsX Singapore Dollar aka XSGD ([Whitepaper](https://assets.website-files.com/600e34cbaf525c42912af8b6/60a4f099acf0ecc4c78965bb%5FStraitsX%20-%20Whitepaper%5FV1.1.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Based on my understanding in reading your white paper, StraitsX is the first stablecoin initiative with a focus in Southeast Asia, and explores the migration of centralized ledgers which document fund flows onto distributed ledger technology (aka DLT). So, it allows people or organizations to transact using 1 for 1 collateralized and denominated in their native ASEAN fiat currencies. The recently launched XSGD token is fully collateralized one for one by Singapore Dollar and can be redeemed for 1 SGD. This is similar to USD Circle or USD Tether or Dai in the US. - To start the conversation, what is the motivation behind StraitsX? - What are the use cases that XSGD solve for the market? - As I am a long time Xfers user, I have a XSGD and did a successful transaction of $50 to my metamask wallet on the first day. Why is the limit at $50? - Can XSGD be used in decentralized finance or DeFi similar, for example liquidity pools and lending? - What is the process like for your team to put together the StraitsX initiative from the white paper all the way to launch? - Creating a stable coin is not easy and requires the monetary regulatory bodies from respective countries, for example, what are the key things that XSGD have done to assure that there is oversight? - What is the calculus behind the choice of supported blockchain protocols which I understand that there is support for Ethereum and Zilliqa? Will it be open to other layer 1 blockchains which want to build on XSGD? - How do you work with some of your key partners, for example, Coinhako, Gemini and Uniswap? - Will you create stable coins for other currencies in Southeast Asia, a stablecoin version for the Malaysia Ringgit or Indonesia Rupiah? - We see that China will be launching their digital cryptocurrency, the digital Yuan, and I believe that it’s a matter of time that many countries will either launch their own cryptocurrencies including Singapore (with their Pulau Ubin project under MAS), will there be a plethora of sovereign digital currencies in the market and eventually they subsume initiatives like StraitsX? - How do you see the fintech and cryptocurrency space evolving in Southeast Asia? What are the conditions that you think must exist when fintech and cryptocurrency converge at some point? ### Closing - Any recommendations (a book, podcast, movie or TV series) that have inspired you recently? - Tian Wei's recommendation: Peter Thiel, "Zero to One" - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/354%5Fxfers%5Fand%5Fthe%5Flaunch%5Fof%5Fstraitsx%5Fxsgd%5Fwith%5Fliu%5Ftianweimp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/xfers-and-the-launch-of-straitsx-xsgd-with-liu-tianwei/id914868245?i=1000543490537&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvijI%5FY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/210q1ptYQFiTmcwx81Mw0q?si=YjPMDG8bSMG90iY042KTiQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/xfers-and-the-launch-of-straitsx-xsgd-with-liu-tianwei?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/xfers-and-the-launch-of-straitsx-xsgd-with-liu-tianwei-88656685?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/472338947609900) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmIzNDcxNTQtYTdiMC00ODc5LWE1ODEtZWI3NzY5Y2EzZGNj?sa=X&ved=0CAgQuIEEahcKEwjg5OjolMD0AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQLA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Xfers-and-the-launch-of-StraitsX-XSGD-with-Liu-Tianwei-id2859782-id446535918?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Daraz & the growth in South Asia with Bjarke Mikkelsen URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/daraz-bjarke-mikkelsen-south-asia/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:40.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Bjarke Mikkelsen, CEO and founder of Daraz, joined us to discuss the origins of the e-commerce marketplace and the key trends on technology and business across South Asia in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bjarke shed light on the backstory on how Daraz was eventually acquired and fully owned by Alibaba Group. Last but not least, he shared his perspectives on the business trends in South Asia and explained how the businesses in region is poised to grow along with Daraz. --- > "The way we've designed our strategy in the way of the businesses that we need to create sustainable value, and we need to do something good for the communities and the markets that we operate in. That is the best way to create shareholder value." - Bjarke Mikkelsen ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ### Introduction - Bjarke Mikkelsen, CEO and founder of Daraz ([Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarke-mikkelsen-b24b101?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What are the key lessons you have learned through your own career journey and can share it with my audience out there? ### Daraz - Can you share the mission and vision of Daraz? - What do the early days of Daraz look like before it evolved to a technology company that focuses on e-commerce, logistics, payment infrastructure and financial services? - Can you share the story of how Daraz was eventually acquired by Alibaba Holdings and what are the key takeaways from the acquisition? - What is the current evolution of Daraz as part of Alibaba’s growth strategy in the South Asia region? - What does great look like for Daraz in a decade’s time? ### Business Trends in South Asia - Can you define what constitutes the South Asia region and what are the key markets in this region? - How should investors and industry watchers view South Asia as an emerging digital economy market excluding India? - Given the investment made by China from the One Belt One Road initiative, how is the South Asia market transforming with the infrastructure build up? - What are the key startups and investors within the region? - What are the key verticals rising from the region, for example, can you talk about how the fintech space has evolved in the region? - How has Daraz contributed to the South Asia ecosystem? - What are your thoughts on the future of the region? ### Closing - Any recommendations (a book, podcast, movie or TV series) that have inspired you recently? - Bjarke's recommendation: ["The Ride of a Lifetime" by Bob Iger](https://www.amazon.com/Ride-Lifetime-Lessons-Learned-Company/dp/0399592091?ref=analysepodcast.com) and ["The Importance of Living" by Lin Yutang](https://www.amazon.com/Importance-Living-Lin-Yutang/dp/0688163521?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/353%5Fdaraz%5F%5Fthe%5Fgrowth%5Fin%5Fsouth%5Fasia%5Fwith%5Fbjarke%5Fmikkelsenmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daraz-the-growth-in-south-asia-with-bjarke-mikkelsen/id914868245?i=1000542885889&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvqIdCs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4bqnhZAEr5LFhyQDPo8rLj?si=mMFnSJ1XRkm07JaBSQWzXw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/daraz-the-growth-in-south-asia-with-bjarke-mikkelsen?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/daraz-the-growth-in-south-asia-with-bjarke-mikkelsen-88522251?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/639899317385889) - [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ZmY5MGIxYmQtM2VmMS00MGMxLTlkYjMtN2M1NWIxZTYyYmU1?hl=en-SG&ved=2ahUKEwiHgeGJxa%5F0AhW8gtgFHXkxAakQjrkEegQIAhAF&ep=6&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Daraz-%26-the-growth-in-South-Asia-with-Bjarke-Mikkelsen-id2859782-id444784528?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Animoca Brands and the Open Metaverse with Yat Siu URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/animoca-brands-and-the-open-metaverse-with-yat-siu/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:39.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands joined us in a conversation about the story of the company and offered his perspectives on true digital ownership, blockchain gaming, NFTs and the open metaverse. Yat Siu started the conversation with his backstory and how he eventually spun off the company Animoca Brands from the parent company to focus on blockchain gaming. Last but not least, he share his thoughts on the open metaverse and what it means for true digital ownership and play to earn in the crypto gaming space. --- > "The open Metaverse, from our perspective, is the real Metaverse, because you can then have ownership. Once you have ownership, you care to keep it because it's precious and meaningful to you, but if you don't own anything, then you actually don't care to protect it because you're just simply a guest. And I think this is part of why we are so excited about non fungible tokens as digital property rights." - **Yat Siu** ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** **Introduction** - Yat Siu, Co-founder, Executive Chairman and managing director of Animoca Brands ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yatsiu/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ysiu](https://twitter.com/ysiu?ref=analysepodcast.com), [personal blog](https://ysiu.medium.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Before we discuss the key topics of the day, I am aware that you have an illustrious career with Outblaze and Atari before Animoca Brands. Hence I want to start with my first question: How did you start your career? - What are the key lessons you have learned through your own career journey and can share it with my audience out there? **Animoca Brands and the Open Metaverse** - A quick introduction: Animoca Brands, ranked in the Financial Times list of [High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021](https://www.ft.com/high-growth-asia-pacific-ranking-2021?ref=analysepodcast.com), is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification. Animoca Brands develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including the [REVV token](https://revvmotorsport.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [SAND token](https://www.sandbox.game/?ref=analysepodcast.com); original games including The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes; and products utilizing popular intellectual properties including Formula 1®, Marvel, WWE, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Doraemon. Animoca Brands’ portfolio of blockchain investments and partnerships includes Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), Dapper Labs (CryptoKitties and NBA - Shot), OpenSea, Harmony, Bitski, and Alien Worlds. Of course, it has recently raised what is considered for the Chinese as the lucky Chinese number of [$88,888,888 for a billion valuation](https://venturebeat.com/2021/05/13/animoca-brands-raises-88-million-at-1-billion-valuation-to-capitalize-on-game-nfts/?ref=analysepodcast.com) which include Kingsway Capital, RIT Capital Partners (formerly Rothschild Investment Trust), HashKey Fintech Investment Fund, AppWorks Fund, LCV Fund, Huobi, Octava, Ellerston Capital, Perennial, Axia Infinity Ventures, SNZ, Liberty City Ventures, Metapurse, and other investors. Two days back, Animoca Brands raised another [$65m at 2.2B valuation](https://venturebeat.com/2021/10/20/animoca-brands-raises-65m-at-2-2b-valuation-from-ubisoft-and-others/?ref=analysepodcast.com) from well-known players: Ubisoft (game maker) and Sequoia China. How did that happen? - What is the mission and vision of Animoca Brands? - Animoca Brands is spun off from Animoca which started in 2010, and what was the inspiration behind the company? - How did it eventually evolve into the current state? - In your medium post “[Toward the Future Economy](https://ysiu.medium.com/toward-the-new-future-economy-292a7c394c5?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, you highlighted Animoca Brands as “one of the very first mainstream game companies that identified and acted upon two important opportunities in gaming presented by blockchain technology: **true digital ownership** and **play-to-earn**.” To start, can you define what true digital ownership and play to earn mean in the gaming industry? - What are the drivers that led you to identify these two key trends earlier than most gaming companies out there? - Can you talk about the context in how Animoca Brands have contributed to these two major trends: true digital ownership and play to earn? - As Animoca Brands have been early in their investments with Opensea, Axie Infinity (AXS) and Dapper Labs, who are behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot, how do you decide to invest them in an early stage and what have you learned from these successful investments which have come of age this year with the NFT boom? - In your view, how do you define the concept of the metaverse? What are the key ingredients that constitute what a successful metaverse looks like? - Can you talk about different games from Animoca Brands that extends the narrative of the metaverse, for example, the F1 Delta Time where it is a racing game for players to compete for SAND, GAMEE, REVV tokens and the Sandbox, where user generated content builds a metaverse? - Will NFTs or gaming tokens from play-to-earn economies be interoperable in the future? - Do you think the “Ready Player One” world where the current play to earn economies will mesh together with augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) in the future? - What does great look like for Animoca Brands in a decade’s time? **Closing** - Any recommendations (a book, podcast, movie or TV series) that have inspired you recently? - Yat Siu's recommendation: Twitter feed checking out #NFTs and daily interactions with the NFT community. - How do my audience find you? **Additional note:** *Yat Siu's profile photo is credited to Kevin Abosch.* ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/352%5Fanimoca%5Fbrands%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fopen%5Fmetaverse%5Fwith%5Fyat%5Fsiump3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/animoca-brands-and-the-open-metaverse-with-yat-siu/id914868245?i=1000542028680&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuLdqGE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/33YkHiiHbHvQkCeYfBoJYC?si=7yooDjkbSIKeOa7fc%5Fcceg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/animoca-brands-and-the-open-metaverse-with-yat-siu?si=3a4ba7475eaa47bb931a5b06c85363b5&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/animoca-brands-and-the-open-metaverse-with-yat-siu-88321278?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/401184368371959) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MGU2NzAyZDEtZDcwNC00ODdlLTg0NWMtZGZlNWFlMjlhMTBm?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjQx4%5F3vJv0AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCg&hl=en-GB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Animoca-Brands-and-the-Open-Metaverse-with-Yat-Siu-id2859782-id442189223?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Evolution of Media Coverage in Asia with Terence Lee and Jon Russell URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/evolution-of-media-coverage-in-asia-with-terence-lee-and-jon-russell/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:39.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Terence Lee and Jon Russell, two editors from well-known technology news outlets, joined us in a roundtable to discuss the evolution of media coverage in Asia in the past decade and offered their perspectives on what the future of media coverage would look like in the next decade. We discuss how different newsrooms deal with scoops and tip offs from sources, handle the right to reply with companies who are affected by the breaking news and the challenge of covering companies in Asia. --- > "Usually the rule of thumb is that: we are very careful with anonymous sources. The bar that we set is that if the source has direct knowledge of what's happening, that is usually credible. If you see a message from the CEO, if it's something like hearsay, or this person give us something from that person, we have a lot more to be careful and broadly speaking, that's how it works." - **Terence Lee** > "So there's a very fine balance between doing things properly and mostly trying to make sure that you've got this lead in the right." **\- Jon Russell** **Disclaimer before discussion:** BL has ownership of Tech In Asia indirectly and Jon and Terence do not represent the opinions and views of the media outlets which they work for as we reflected on how media coverage has been evolving in Asia. ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** **Introduction** - **Terence Lee, Editor in Chief from [Tech in Asia](https://techinasia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)** ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/terenceleejx/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@terenceleejx](https://twitter.com/terenceleejx?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Tech in Asia Profile](https://www.techinasia.com/profile/terence-lee?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - **Jon Russell,** **Editor, Southeast Asia, [The Ken](https://the-ken.com/sea/?ref=analysepodcast.com)** ([@jonrussell](https://twitter.com/jonrussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://th.linkedin.com/in/jmarussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ Newsletter](http://jonrussell.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ba97f7320d4d550688a17209a&id=9f5d1c81f2&ref=analysepodcast.com#%5F=%5F),[ Personal Site](http://insidethenoodlebowl.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Ken Profile](https://the-ken.com/sea/writers/jonrussell/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Introduction to Terence Lee and his role in Tech In Asia given it’s his first appearance on Analyse Asia podcast. **Evolution of **Media Coverage in Asia R**oundtable D**iscussion** - Given that both of you have covered the Asia region for relatively a decade, what has changed over the course of the decade? Have both the corporate communications and the press become more sophisticated? - In building your own teams, how do you establish the mechanisms, for example, researching a story, publishing a story and dealing with the backlash from the published story? - How do you decide to cover a specific company or story about the people in the company? - How does fact checking work when the story moves towards something that can be damaging to the company? - Are there ethical guidelines from the newsroom point of view? Can you outline some steps which you use for verification and validation? - Many companies send press releases to the tech press, hoping that the press covers their story with their talking points. Can you provide your thoughts on what companies should do when they send this information out? - Can you talk about one or two examples about actual incidents where you fact checked and publish something that was factual? What would you have done differently in each of those situations? - When you publish an expose or something damaging to a rising company or a company in the midst of financing, what are the mechanisms to engage the company for a response? - The difference between the US and the rest of the world is the first amendment and the libel or defamation laws favor the companies against the press in Asia Pacific. How do Asian media outlets cope with the challenges of providing evidence? What should they do or not do? - The Peter Thiel vs Gawker case - What are your thoughts if a billionaire can leverage the same mechanism to shut down a press in Asia Pacific? **Closing** - Recommendations, anyone? - Terence's recommendation: [Matthew Ball's Metaverse Primer](https://www.matthewball.vc/the-metaverse-primer?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Jon's recommendation: [The Athletic](https://theathletic.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can our audience find both of you? Please feel free to plug your respective subscription packages. ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/351%5Fevolution%5Fof%5Fmedia%5Fcoverage%5Fin%5Fasia%5Fwith%5Fterence%5Flee%5Fand%5Fjon%5Frussellmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/evolution-of-media-coverage-in-asia-with-terence-lee/id914868245?i=1000541112792&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsZRtNo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Gs50byikD6tfjtGc9YsRl?si=VuRxvvhSTeWSuzgLD1oP6w&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/evolution-of-media-coverage-in-asia-with-terence-lee-and-jon-russell?si=c9b4fd5fdbae45e5b9463919b94c2869&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/evolution-of-media-coverage-in-asia-with-terence-lee-and-jon-russell-88133584?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/917621528951152) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NjExMjQzYzAtNDlkNy00ZGMwLTlhYzUtZDI5NDFiZTg1NmUx?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjAk6mj9oj0AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Wise-and-Fintech-in-Asia-Pacific-with-Venkatash-Saha-id2859782-id439055599?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Wise and Fintech in Asia Pacific with Venkatesh Saha URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/wise-and-fintech-in-asia-pacific/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:38.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Venkatesh Saha, CEO Wise (or Transferwise) Asia joined us to discuss the geographical footprint and key business activities in Asia Pacific. We started with Venkatesh sharing his background story on how he came to join Wise. From then on, he dived deeper into the key business of Wise within the region and shared his perspectives on the current fintech trends in Asia. --- > So it's not just existing users who went deeper and got more comfortable and tried more products, but it's brought many new people who would have been forced to think about digital ways of living their lives. So I think that's the first thing that acceleration. The second thing, which has been a happy coincidence, is that a few years ago, government started taking fintech more seriously. - **Venkatesh Saha** ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** **Introduction** - Venkatesh Saha, CEO Wise (or formerly Transferwise) Asia ( [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkateshsaha/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@venkateshsaha ](https://twitter.com/venkateshsaha?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - How did you end up with Wise? - What are the lessons you can share on your career journey with our audience? **Wise in Asia Pacific** - Can you offer an introduction to Wise in Asia Pacific? - Who are the founders of Wise and what is the origin story? - Who are the customers for Wise? - How does it work for consumers out there who want to do remittances? How does it differentiate from traditional players such as Western Union? - What are the business models for Wise? - How has Wise evolved till today? - What is the current geographic footprint of Wise in Asia Pacific? Does it include China? - What are the key partnerships for Wise in Asia Pacific? **Trends in Fintech** - What are the key trends, specifically payments in Asia Pacific? - How are the traditional players and new upstarts thinking about the whole space? - What are the key technology disruptions hovering around the payments space? **Closing** - Can you recommend anything (book, movie, podcast or tv series) that have recently inspired your life? - Venkatesh's recommendations: ["Grit" by Angela Duckworth](https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-book/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do our audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) and the episode is edited by Thomas Craig. - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/350%5Fwise%5Fand%5Ffintech%5Fin%5Fasia%5Fpacific%5Fwith%5Fvenkatash%5Fsahamp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wise-and-fintech-in-asia-pacific-with-venkatash-saha/id914868245?i=1000540687563&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvVlE6I?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Yb4F1jooC0cefSEK3fOdu?si=dTng%5FodGSfeRopJvwGBH5A&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/wise-and-fintech-in-asia-pacific-with-venkatash-saha?si=cf841110d9854577bf64391311aa27db&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/wise-and-fintech-in-asia-pacific-with-venkatash-saha-88032811?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/281381337226814) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YzE2MjNkNjAtNjRhNC00NTU5LTlhYWQtYmIyNDdhNTA5NGEz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjo6MzWyv3zAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/Wise-and-Fintech-in-Asia-Pacific-with-Venkatash-Saha-id2859782-id439055599?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Connecting the Next 2.5 Billion with Scott Beaumont URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/connecting-the-next-2-5-billion-with-scott-beaumont/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:38.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Scott Beaumont, President Asia Pacific from Google joined us for an interesting conversation on why, what and how it takes to connect the next 2.5 billion people online in Asia. He discuss how COVID-19 has accelerated the digital adoption in Asia Pacific and broke down the key opportunities on how entrepreneurs can innovate and build their start-ups on the dynamics in the region. Last but not least, Scott offers his perspectives on the emerging technology trends and where they are heading from AI to quantum computing. --- > If we're going to create equitable progress throughout Asia, then we need to make sure that everybody's got access to that technology. The demographics in Asia are astonishing. Since COVID began, so 2019, in the last two years, we've seen about 217 million people come online for the first time, so a whole new Indonesia which is really quite remarkable. What we want to do is make sure that they've got access to that technology, that they know how to use it, and that the products and services that they can leverage are meaningful to them. - Scott Beaumont ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** ****Scott Beaumont, President, Asia Pacific, Google ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbeau?ref=analysepodcast.com))** - How did you start your career? - What brought you to Asia Pacific and eventually to your current role? - From your career journey, what are the key lessons that you want to share with our audience? **Getting the Next 2.5 Billion Online** ([Nikkei Asia Review](https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/How-to-get-Asia-s-next-2.5-billion-people-online?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Why is it important to bring the next 2.5 billion online specifically for Asia Pacific? - What are the drivers that allow us to bring the next 2.5 billion online? - How has COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the movement to bring people online? - What are your takeaways from the COVID-19 pandemic as an acceleration experiment that transformed how we work, for example, work from home thru video conferencing, digitization of documents and migration from on-premises to cloud and what surprises you most during this period? - Google has been front and centre in the initiative of bringing people online but also ushering them towards economic prosperity, for example, the next billion initiative. Can you talk about how Google has contributed, for example, with Android, Google Pay, Google Play store, digital ads used by small and medium businesses? - While we are at the cusp of enabling people online, given the geopolitical factors for example, the evolving relationship between US and China, misinformation spreading specific to the COVID-19 pandemic, what would be the best ways that we can help people out there to be able to gain access the right information, rather than inundating with information? - If we rewind 20 years back before this new decade, the technology is often started from the US and then exported to the rest of the world. Given the progress of technology for example, how China cracked digital payments with Wechat Pay and Alipay, Japan innovated with consoles from Wii to Switch, South Korea and Taiwan continuous innovation with semiconductors, do you think that a global company will be able to initiate and develop products from Asia Pacific and then export to the rest of the world? - What would be your advice to startups out there who want to build from Asia Pacific and leverage the market here for the next 2.5 billion? - In your perspective, technologies are constantly evolving. We have seen DeepMind AI, the rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects (or Web3) we call them and even quantum computing (as I understand that Google has recently achieved [quantum supremacy - ref Nature,](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03213-z?ref=analysepodcast.com) being the first to perform a calculation that would be practically impossible for a classical machine). What are your thoughts on how these technologies will come into play or have the potential to disrupt the technology industry of today? **Closing** - Can you recommend any books, podcasts, movies or something which have inspired you recently? - Scott's recommendations: [Nothing is Impossible: America's Reconciliation with Vietnam by Ted Osius](https://tedosius.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Michael Lewis](http://michaellewiswrites.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)' books: The Big Short, The Blind Side, Money Ball and [The Premonition](https://www.amazon.com/Premonition-Michael-Lewis/dp/0393881555/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?dchild=1&keywords=the+premonition%2C+lewis&qid=1611606573&s=books&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do your audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/349%5Fconnecting%5Fthe%5Fnext%5F25%5Fbillion%5Fwith%5Fscott%5Fbeaumontmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/connecting-the-next-2-5-billion-with-scott-beaumont/id914868245?i=1000539880156&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuhHhII?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fvXDvT4wBjq9f7hdaKEIB?si=XmuGW4zrQTeWoJEPtWoOKQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/connecting-the-next-25-billion-with-scott-beaumont?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/connecting-the-next-2-5-billion-with-scott-beaumont-87830611?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/4461771867271016) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NzM3OTcwZTEtMTgwYS00YjljLWE1ZDAtZGIyODZlMmUzYmNm?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjw9vHBxurzAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCg&hl=en-GB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/channel/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-id2859782?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Southeast Asia Exit Landscape with Michael Lints URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-southeast-asia-exit-landscape-with-michael-lints/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:38.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Michael Lints from Golden Gate Ventures discuss the Southeast Asia exit landscape for startups and what it means for investors all over the world. We discuss Michael's career and investment thesis as to what strengths and red flags he search in founders and start-ups. We dived deep into the exit landscape and explain how SPACs, direct listings and M&As will impact the startup ecosystem across Southeast Asia. --- > At every single investor meeting, literally every single LP meeting. I got the same question. What is the exit landscape look like in Southeast Asia? The issue was that most exits were relatively small to other markets. The largest exits were at like around $200 million dollars. If you compare that to India or China, that's just a very small number. Every single LP was concerned that it's an emerging market. There's lots of happening under early stage, but at some point when we need liquidity as LPs and then where would that come from? - **Michael Lints** ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** **Introduction:** Michael Lints ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhlints/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Medium](https://medium.com/adversus?ref=analysepodcast.com) \- Adversus blog, [@michaellints](https://twitter.com/michaellints?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Partner, [Golden Gate Ventures](https://www.goldengate.vc/team?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How did you start your career? - Eventually, what brought you to Southeast Asia? - In your career journey, what are the key lessons you would like to share with my audience? - As a partner from Golden Gate Ventures, what is your role and coverage? - How has the firm grown since I last spoke to Justin in early 2019? - Do you have an investment thesis? - How do you decide if you want to invest in a team with a product? - What are the red flags that deter you from investing in them? - What are the most notable investments and exits (if any) you have done in your years as a partner with Golden Gate Ventures? **Southeast Asia Exit Landscape ([PDF](https://www.insead.edu/sites/default/files/assets/dept/centres/gpei/docs/golden-gate-ventures-insead-sea-exit-landscape.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com), [blog post](https://medium.com/adversus/the-southeast-asia-exit-landscape-d42156fe23ae?ref=analysepodcast.com)) by Golden Gate Ventures and INSEAD** - What is the motivation behind the report and the intended audience? - What are the methodologies used by the team to bring the report together? - What are the key takeaways from the report? (Please summarize the top 3-5 observations and I will dive deeper into them) - What are the key drivers for the current exit landscape? - What are the key predictions based on an earlier report you have done in 2016-2017 and what has changed? - As more startups reach the unicorn stage, do they become acquirers and what is the calculus for them to be potential exits for new startups? Can there be a situation where they can eliminate too much competition? - How about the corporate venture funds? What are their objectives and how do they affect the exit market? - Are we observing new later stage funds in Southeast Asia? Where is that coming from? - How are the LPs looking at Southeast Asia? Do they see it as a common market or do they understand the nuances? - Projecting three years from today, where do you see the exits are, for example, mergers and acquisitions, public listing or SPACs? - One key observation brought out in a recent report from [The Ken is that SPACs seem to be the main exit strategy for key companies](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/southeast-asia-cautiously-enters-a-spac-tacular-era/?ref=analysepodcast.com) for example, Grab and potentially Go-To (Gojek and Tokopedia). What are your thoughts on SPAC as an exit strategy? What are the potential drawbacks? - What is the future for startups and the VC funds in this decade? **Closing** - Can you recommend any book, movie, podcast or something else that inspire you recently? - Michael's recommendation: [Jerry Colonna's "Reboot" ](https://www.reboot.io/book/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/348%5Fthe%5Fsoutheast%5Fasia%5Fexit%5Flandscape%5Fwith%5Fmichael%5Flintsmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-southeast-asia-exit-landscape-with-michael-lints/id914868245?i=1000539458798&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvISJ2I?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ud4B6QxOTokX49RoQgLvi?si=4i1-wgnbQt22qvil8uiImA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-southeast-asia-exit-landscape-with-michael-lints?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-southeast-asia-exit-landscape-with-michael-lints-87732350?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/433151164978515) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NTRjZGI2ZGMtNjI0ZS00NTViLWEwZjUtOGE1OGMxMWQ5YWY5?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwi4lLKs3N%5FzAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en-GB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/channel/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-id2859782?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### China Internet Report 2021 with John Artman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/scmp-china-internet-report-2021-john-artman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:37.000Z In episode 347, John Artman, technology editor from South China Morning Post (SCMP) discuss the dawn of a new era for China technology from the annual SCMP China Internet Report 2021\. We dived deep into three key topics: the tightening regulation and new legislation introduced by the Chinese government on anti-trust, data protection and usage and how it differs from GDPR by the European Union; the aggressive geographic expansion of Chinese tech into Southeast Asia and the exploitation of private domain traffic on e-commerce in China. --- > Historically, the Chinese government make these really big moves, and they make an example of one or two companies and then they move on. Then maybe in a couple of years, they'll come back and they'll make examples again. When we're looking at some of these unfair practices, on the one hand, we do have some very visible and very public moves against the technology industry. But I think that, over time, it'll be interesting to see, how compliant some of these platforms are. - **John Artman** In conjunction with this episode, SCMP is providing a 30% off to the Analyse Asia audience for the CIR Pro report with the promo code: **ANALYSEASIACIR**. It won't apply until you go to the checkout page. This will be valid for 2 months till 30 Nov 2021\. Here is [the link where you can purchase the report with the promo code embedded](https://research.scmp.com/discount/ANALYSEASIACIR?redirect=%2Fproducts%2Fchina-internet-report-2021-pro-edition&ref=analysepodcast.com). ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** **Introduction** - John Artman ([@knowsnothing](https://twitter.com/KnowsNothing?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jartman/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [SCMP profile](https://www.scmp.com/author/john-artman?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Technology Editor, South China Morning Post - Since your last conversation with Carol, what have you been up to? [**China Internet Report 2021 by SCMP**](https://multimedia.scmp.com/infographics/china-internet-2021/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw18WKBhCUARIsAFiW7JzYjqmJdms13%5FgZwrP92xmiH3op0%5Fau6H%5F5euuSBgjXTzzw9krvXtQaAmDBEALw%5FwcB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL to introduce the report 2021 with the key takeaways and some key numbers. - With the tightening regulation from the Chinese government on the Chinese tech companies, is 2021 the year where we shift into a new era for the industry and if so, what should we expect moving forward? - As China is tightening regulations on multiple fronts, let’s start with the anti-trust where you see Chinese regulators are taking aim at big tech’s bad behavior. What are the key drivers that prompted the Chinese government to move at such a rapid pace? - For my audience out there, can you dive deep into the unfair practices made by the Chinese tech giants in the day to day activity? - What has the Chinese government done to stop the unfair practices? - The Chinese government has made significant movements to reform fintech and crush the cryptocurrency landscape. Let’s examine the regulatory angle. Can you talk about one or two policy objectives and discuss its implications to the landscape and impact on fintech companies? - One interesting piece I have extracted reading the report and I have not seen it done elsewhere, is how China has accelerated the timeline with the legislation progress and an illustrated timeline to how US, European Union and China have evolved their legislation on data protection. Can you dive deep into China's three pillars relating to data protection: Critical Information Infrastructure (CSL), Personal Information processed outside of cyberspace (PIPL) and DSL (any other record of information in electronic or other forms)? - What is the difference between Chinese laws and GDPR? - To end, what is the Chinese government’s perspective on cryptocurrency given that they have legislated against bitcoin mining and recently declare all cryptocurrencies to be illegal with the emergence of digital yuan? - Given the tightly regulated domestic market in China, the Chinese tech companies will be spending their efforts on geographic expansion. From the report, Southeast Asia (where I lived) seemed to be the destination where they are heading. There’s an implicit view from the investors to how they invest in the following order: China, India and Southeast Asia. What has changed to make Southeast Asia appealing? - What have the tech giants been doing in Southeast Asia for the past year? - How are the Chinese startups for example, Shein, adapting in their geographic expansion? What are they doing differently? - One interesting aspect of the report which I believe is poorly covered by the western media, is the growing focus on private-domain traffic. Can you introduce what private-domain traffic is and what are the key platforms driving this approach? - How does e-commerce work with private domain traffic? Can you give an example of a brand which has successfully leveraged this approach to grow? - What will be one key area of interest (which is not in the free report) and what are the key takeaways? - Given 2021 is such a landmark year for Chinese tech companies, what should we be expecting before the SCMP China Internet 2022 report? (Last question) **Closing** - Any recommendations that you want to share with our audience that have inspired you recently? - John's recommendations: SCMP China Internet Report 2021, Dune movie in 2021 and Foundation in Apple TV+. - Where can our audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/347%5Fchina%5Finternet%5Freport%5F2021%5Fwith%5Fjohn%5Fartmanmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtKvH-Y?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7laBDOfolav8Dx8oohpFDW?si=sGdS2guvRDioiqs2uqbMyA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/china-internet-report-2021-with-john-artman?si=3afd2cbc979f4b28868e8008f2528018&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/china-internet-report-2021-with-john-artman-87599026?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/400958774916215) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/NDk1OTM5NjgtZTlhMS00ZDNlLTgyNjUtMThiODU0MzJhMmZi?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIwquot93zAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCg&hl=en-GB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/channel/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-id2859782?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Technology Past, Present & Future with Benedict Evans URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/technology-past-present-future-with-benedict-evans/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:37.000Z In episode 346, Benedict Evans shares his perspectives on the history and trends of technology. Benedict explores the different narratives spanning across the mobile wars between Apple & Google, generational shifts in digital transformation of enterprises, the challenges of app stores and digital advertising & privacy. Last but not least, he asks the key questions on what's next for technology. --- > There's some industries where 10 years time is the next product cycle. There's some industries where, you know what your rent's going to be in 10 years time. There's other technology: 10 years is right on the edge of science fiction. You really don't know what you know, anything beyond 10 years, you really don't know what's going to happen, except there'll be more stuff. - **Benedict Evans** ****Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** **Introduction** - Benedict Evans ([@benedictevans](https://twitter.com/benedictevans?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Blog](https://www.ben-evans.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Newsletter](https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Venture Partner of Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First & Independent Analyst. Co-host of **Another Podcast** ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/another-podcast/id1535359773?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/2Uu2IFxc4DdjbTGHsCWLT8?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? **Technology Past, Present and Future** - Reference: [Mainframes, Machine Learning (ML) and Digital Transformation](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/8/31/mainframes-machine-learning-and-digital-transformation?ref=analysepodcast.com) - From your background as a student of history, my first question to you: what are the key lessons you have drawn from the subject matter? - How does it help to frame your perspectives in looking at technology history lessons and trends happening from the past decade to today? - We have passed a decade since the beginnings of Apple iOS and Google’s Android. I remembered a time where some analysts argued that Google’s android strategy will subsume Apple and consequently, Apple would be doomed based on past history with the Microsoft and Intel strategy for PCs. Of course, history doesn't repeat itself but rhymes. The answer turned out to be different. What did the analysts get wrong and what did Apple do to avert their fate in the previous incarnation? - If I were to think about cars then, so there are a lot of car makers and there's Tesla, what stops maybe apple, someday coming into the car business, or even Google coming into the car business, what would be the set of questions that are asked to say, this is a new trend? - Let’s look at digital transformation for enterprises given that I have been on both the buy and sell side. I often explained to people that everyone loves transformations but they hate to change. I remember that we used to hear, “Nobody gets fired for buying a IBM”, then something changed, and today, I suppose, “Nobody gets fired for buying a cloud or AI vendor”. How do generational shifts in software happen for enterprises and how do we identify the turning points typically for businesses to shift with the technology available, for example, on-premises to cloud computing or automation to mass customization with machine learning? - Can we reduce the current paradigm of digital transformation for a company to just a set of microservices solving a set of workflows in a specific department/industry and a network layer that captures the workflows of the ecosystem? Is it the way how you unbundle every bundle them that will actually unleash the killer app? - Whether it’s crypto (or web3), biotech (in the form of mRNA and CRISPR), augmented reality and virtual reality, there is a turning point or a killer app emerges that changes the game. What are the ingredients that will potentially jumpstart any of these industries? - Reference: [Does app store rules matter?](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/7/8/app-store?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Apple has been inconsistent with their app store rules which led to their current challenges. How did these inconsistencies arise and subsequently evolve towards the current situation? - Is Apple’s anti-trust’s situation its own doing or what are the key conditions for the regulators to argue that they are being anti-competitive? - What are your thoughts on the recent app store issues arising from Japan [\[link\]](https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/01/apple-announced-new-settlement-with-japan-allowing-developers-to-link-to-external-website/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Korea \[[Link](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/31/south-korea-first-country-to-curb-google-apples-in-app-billing-policies.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)\]? - What do you think that they would have done differently to avoid the outcome? - Reference: [Ads, Privacy and Confusion](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/8/27/understanding-privacy?ref=analysepodcast.com) - With the destruction of cookies and privacy coming to the Internet in a big way (given that Apple has started to do this since the Tim Cook era), is the entire industry confused about where it is heading or do they at least have some consensus on the issue? - You have broken down this confusion into three key questions which simplify the conversation and I briefly summarize them in this way: 1/ can we achieve the underlying economic aims of online advertising in a private way? 2/ what counts as ‘private’, and how can you build ‘private’ systems if we don’t know? 3/ the competition between the proposals of privacy vs the competition proposals on the table ending up with no consensus. - Let’s start with the first one, is data the new oil or the new sand as Tim O’Reilly puts it? In the case of the advertiser (Coca Cola, Toyota) and the platform (Facebook, Google), are their goals aligned with the introduction of privacy? - What are the best mechanisms for ensuring that we have our privacy? You mentioned that one clear one is to disclose what you are doing and get consent. What’s the problem with the model? Are there any alternative models you can think of? - For the last question, are there models that can resolve the competition between the proposals of privacy and the competition proposals? To reframe it another way, is the walled garden approach the cause that we can’t have privacy and digital advertising at the same time? - Here’s just the left-field question: the crypto industry often touts that Web3 will solve the ads and privacy issues with a public blockchain with the following poor man’s model of Google crypto search: imagine a user does a crypto version of search with a search token, he gets paid as part of the proof of work consensus, the advertisers pay the blockchain protocol for distributing the ads and by virtue, crypto protocols are governed by smart contracts, censorship-resistant and maintains privacy thru cryptography. Do you think that the crypto model can be one of the models which will resolve the conflict between ads and privacy? **Closing** - Do you have anything to recommend from books, podcasts, movies or anything that inspires you recently? - Benedict's recommendation: [Nature's Metropolis - Chicago and the Great West](https://wwnorton.com/books/Natures-Metropolis/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by [Bernard Leong](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro and end music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/346%5Ftechnology%5Fpast%5Fpresent%5F%5Ffuture%5Fwith%5Fbenedict%5Fevansmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-past-present-future-with-benedict-evans/id914868245?i=1000538274896&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuaEENs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4TJuKA952q63eGCOd9OFvd?si=EZrSKKToST6OzolbeaVbBA&dl%5Fbranch=1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/technology-past-present-future-with-benedict-evans?si=0e1a0d7d1c2e4049b9b1b339ca432b10&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/technology-past-present-future-with-benedict-evans-87447390?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1074665729780423) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/MTcwM2UzZTYtNmI3Yi00Y2Y4LTg4ZWUtODc0ZTRhMzY2ODdh?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjIwquot93zAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQCg&hl=en-GB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/channel/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-id2859782?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### What just happened to the Tech Giants in China? with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/what-just-happened-china-tech-giants-2021-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:36.000Z In episode 345, Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from the Information joined our returning host, Bernard Leong to answer the most important question in Asia, "What just happened to the Chinese tech giants?" We dived deep on why they are facing a regulatory crackdown and its downstream impact not just to Chinese tech CEOs stepping down from their jobs but also to the successful US companies from Apple to Tesla that are based in China. --- > "What Alibaba and Tencent have done is created national banking infrastructure. In China, national infrastructure is a national security. It's like highways, it's like power. And if huge amounts of your economy are being transacted behind closed doors effectively, through a private enterprise, that's not okay for the Chinese government." - Shai Oster, The Information **Here are the links and show notes for this episode:** **Introduction** - **Shai Oster** (@[beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Asia Bureau Chief in [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Since our last conversation two and half years back, what have you been up to? **What just happened to the Chinese Tech Giants?** - \[Opening statement\] BL to provide the chronology of Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, Pinduoduo, JD, the government’s regulation of the edutech and gaming industry followed by the courts declaring 996 is illegal, and then the first question: What just happened? - There are commentaries written that the Chinese government is finally waking up to regulate these companies as China is sliding to the “gilded age” similar to the US (in the 1900s). Do you agree with that point of view? - Let’s start with anti-trust, given that both Chinese and US governments are actively pursuing the tech giants in their respective countries. What is the definition of anti-trust for the Chinese government on Chinese tech giants? - Key tech giants such as Tencent and Alibaba have been fined by the State Administration for Market Regulation in China over their monopoly. From their perspective, how have the Chinese tech companies abused their power and why is there a sudden urge to enforce regulations against them? - After watching all the different issues, I have observed the pattern in China and it goes in the following order, and I will use the recent 996 clampdown given that I agree with the Chinese government on their position (and this has happened in Japan and Korea in the 1980-1990s and took a long time to allow their work environments evolve towards a better state). First, they put an opinion in China Daily and ask nicely to the tech companies, “please look into this and do something about it”. Next, the tech companies (maybe with the exception of Tencent) will do nothing about it and finally, we will run a bulldozer all over you either charging the Chinese tech companies that 996 is illegal under labor law. Why have the Chinese tech companies reacted so slowly? - In the past few months, we have seen the founder-CEOs of Chinese tech giants stepping down (and try to imagine Mark Zuckerberg stepping down from Facebook). Here’s the list: Richard Liu (JD), Colin Huang (Pinduoduo) and Zhang Yi Ming (Bytedance). Is the pressure getting onto them? Will we see more CEOs taking that position, for example, Pony Ma (Tencent) and Wang Xing (Meituan)? - I want to get the Chinese perspective by separating out the different threads and diving deep into them. We will go in the following order: Tencent, Didi, Alibaba (or Ant), Meituan, ByteDance, Pinduoduo, JD and the edutech startups such as Zuoyebang and VIP Kid. - \[Tencent\] If you look at the tech giants, whenever we read an important opinion from China Daily that criticizes the tech companies, they are the first to react. For example, the Chinese newspaper has labelled gaming as “spiritual opium” which have connotations to the Opium Wars fought in 1839-1842, they have reacted by providing parental controls. But obviously, it’s not enough. Moving forward, what can Tencent do to cope with the increasing demand that China does not want their citizens to indulge in the gaming or esports business? - \[Alibaba\] Let’s start with Ant Financial. Ever since their IPO stalled, Alibaba Group has been under intense pressure. FT has reported that they will break up Ant’s Alipay and force Ant to separate from its main business the company’s two lending units — Huabei, which is similar to a traditional credit card, and Jiebei, which makes small unsecured loans — into a new entity and bring in outside shareholders. What are the major changes that we are expecting with Ant Financial? - \[Alibaba\] In a year’s time, how do you look at the businesses for the Alibaba Group: ecommerce, cloud computing (Alicloud) and financial services (Ant)? - One of the key criticisms of the tech companies is that they are focusing on consumer technologies that are not aligned with where the government wants to go specifically in deep tech, for example, semiconductors, quantum computing and spaceship building. - \[Didi\] What is the current status of Didi after the Chinese government took them off the app stores and investigated them for the data breaches? - \[Edutech Startups\] Can I ask why the Chinese government has nuked their entire edutech industry? What are the underlying factors that drove them to this decision? - \[Venture Capital\] What happens to the VCs who are heavily invested in the edutech space in China? With the new regulations, where are the VCs and private equities placing their bets? - Are the Chinese tech companies focusing on overseas expansion from now on? For example, Bytedance is in talks to borrow up to $5 Billion to fund their overseas expansion. - Does the future look bleak for US tech companies based in China, for example, Apple, Tesla and LinkedIn? - Where are we now with the Chinese tech companies? Is the worst over or is this just at the beginning? - What would Chinese technology space look like when the dust settles? **Closing** - Since this is our first conversation after I stepped down for a while, I remember that you made an interesting observation on the tech company I used to work for. Of course, I still love the company even after I departed. Every now and then, when I bump into my ex-colleagues, and tell them a wise friend of mine made this quote to me, they wholeheartedly agree. So, I am giving you the microphone. Do you want to tell them what your advice to me is: \[which I believe that it should be minted into a NFT\]? - Any recommendations of books, movies or podcasts that inspire you recently? Shai's recommendation: [Dune Movie 2021](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune%5F%282021%5Ffilm%29?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [TSMC by Acquired FM Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tsmc/id1050462261?i=1000534514877&ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? **References:** - Shai Oster, [How China is asserting control of the tech sector](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-china-is-asserting-control-of-tech-sector?ref=analysepodcast.com), The Information - [Beijing to break up Ant’s Alipay and force creation of separate loans app](https://www.ft.com/content/01b7c7ca-71ad-4baa-bddf-a4d5e65c5d79?ref=analysepodcast.com), Financial Times - [Companies including Tencent Holdings each fined $77,000 over monopoly](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1222529.shtml?ref=analysepodcast.com), Global Times - [Sequoia Capital’s China Affiliate Launches Hedge Fund for Health, Biotech Stocks](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sequoia-capitals-china-affiliate-launches-hedge-fund-for-health-biotech-stocks?ref=analysepodcast.com), The Information - Martin Peers, [The Real Lesson of Didi’s stock drop,](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-real-lesson-of-didi-global-s-stock-drop?ref=analysepodcast.com) The Information. - Juro Osawa, [ByteDance in Talks to Borrow Up to $5 Billion to Fund Overseas Expansion](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/bytedance-in-talks-to-borrow-up-to-5-billion-to-fund-overseas-expansion?ref=analysepodcast.com), The Information ****Podcast Information:** The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: ["Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian](https://open.spotify.com/track/282R6Lvm9nLtpx8AzUwJe0?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/345%5Fwhat%5Fjust%5Fhappened%5Fto%5Fthe%5Ftech%5Fgiants%5Fin%5Fchina%5F%5Fwith%5Fshai%5Fostermp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-just-happened-to-the-tech-giants-in-china-with/id914868245?i=1000537791432&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvH2uHk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0HSw30QQYxFx3xpxGS4egP?si=smzDPfSSSkSUyCC88hnPxw&dl%5Fbranch=1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/what-just-happened-to-the-tech-giants-in-china-with-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/what-just-happened-to-the-tech-giants-in-china-with-shai-oster-87339406?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2684091475067804) - [Castbox FM](https://castbox.fm/episode/What-just-happened-to-the-Tech-Giants-in-China--with-Shai-Oster-id2859782-id430350356?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ODhmYjVmNGQtNzIyMy00YzBlLTk5ZDEtN2MxZGQyZjc1ZmNi?sa=X&ved=0CAYQuIEEahcKEwjYwYv5lpTzAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en-GB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Tencent & China's Gaming Crackdown with Josh Ye URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/tencent-chinas-gaming-crackdown-with-josh-ye/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:36.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Josh Ye, tech reporter from South China Morning Post (SCMP) joined us to discuss the evolution of Tencent, the tech giant in China specifically with respect to the recent gaming crackdown by the Chinese government. Josh discussed the impact of the regulations to the entire gaming industry and how Tencent will focus their efforts towards overseas expansion. Last but not least, he presented the future of the gaming industry in China. --- ****Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Josh Ye ([@therealjoshye](https://twitter.com/therealjoshye?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-ye-630512b4/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [SCMP Profile](https://www.scmp.com/author/josh-ye?ref=analysepodcast.com)) South China Morning Post - How did you start your career? - What’s your current role and coverage for SCMP? - What are the lessons you can share on your career journey with our audience? - [Tencent](https://www.scmp.com/topics/tencent?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the crackdown of gaming companies in China - For our audience, Tencent is a well-known Internet company, the T in BAT and they are a major force in areas including digital communications with WeChat, payments with Wechat pay, and of course esports and the gaming industry. They are a key investor or owner to a few major gaming studios in the world: Riot Games (100%), Supercell (84%), Leyou (100%), Epic Games (40%). - With that being said, can you provide an overview of their influence in the gaming industry within China and the rest of the world? - Recently, the Chinese government has launched a heavy crackdown on big tech in China. How has Tencent been affected by the regulatory crackdown in the process? - What is the Chinese government’s rationale for the crackdown in the gaming industry? - Specifically in the gaming and esports space, how has Tencent responded to the criticisms, for example, China Daily editorial has branded gaming as “spiritual opium”? - Has Tencent’s actions, for example, cutting kids’ playing time appeased the Chinese government? - How does Beijing’s crackdown on Tencent’s gaming business impact their gaming businesses worldwide? Is it just lowering the access of the global gaming studios into China or are there any unintended consequences? - A rising tide can lift or sink all boats. So, how about the other gaming giants in China, for example, Netease and Bilibili? How will they be affected by this crackdown? - Given the limits set by the Chinese government, where do you think Tencent will focus their efforts on, moving forward? - Closing - Do you have something to recommend like a book or podcast? - Where can our audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tencent-chinas-gaming-crackdown-with-josh-ye/id914868245?i=1000536335472&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/00wGJSyEM3aoqZHIedhZVB?si=4432c68e61e1471a&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/344%5Ftencent%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fcrackdown%5Fof%5Fgaming%5Fcompanies%5Fin%5Fchina%5Fwith%5Fjosh%5Fyemp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/ODhmYjVmNGQtNzIyMy00YzBlLTk5ZDEtN2MxZGQyZjc1ZmNi?sa=X&ved=0CAYQuIEEahcKEwjYwYv5lpTzAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en-GB&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtf2YkM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/tencent-and-the-crackdown-of-gaming-companies-in-china-with-josh-ye?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/704505403839057) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/tencent-chinas-gaming-crackdown-with-josh-ye-87005915?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Tencent-%26-China's-Gaming-Crackdown-with-Josh-Ye-id2859782-id425892432?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### [Transcript] Technology Past, Present and Future with Benedict Evans URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/transcript-technology-past-present-and-future-with-benedict-evans/ Last updated: 2026-04-03T03:53:32.000Z Benedict Evans discuss the key themes in technology from past to future: mobile, digital transformation, app stores and privacy. _This post is for subscribers only._ ### Uber in Asia Pacific & The Future of Mobility with Pradeep Parameswaran URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/uber-in-asia-pacific-the-future-of-mobility-with-pradeep-parameswaran/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:35.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Pradeep Parameswaran, President – Mobility from Uber APAC joined us in a conversation on Uber’s continued focus on mobility in Asia Pacific and the future of mobility. We begin the conversation with Pradeep sharing his background and the key lessons learnt from his career journey. Following that, he dived deep into Uber’s footprint in Asia Pacific excluding Southeast Asia and China and focus on the challenges and opportunities in expanding Uber’s mission into new and uncharted areas. Last but not least, he also offered his thoughts on the future of mobility specifically on autonomous and electric vehicles and the likely impact to transportation in the near future for Asia Pacific. ****Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - [Pradeep Parameswaran](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pradeep-parameswaran-232992/?originalSubdomain=in&ref=analysepodcast.com), President – Mobility, Uber APAC - How did you start your career? - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with our audience? - ****Uber in Asia Pacific** - To start, can you briefly talk about Uber and your role and coverage in Uber for Asia Pacific? - What are the current businesses (Uber transport, Uber eats) from Uber operating in Asia Pacific? - What are the current challenges for Uber operating in countries such as Japan, Korea, India and Taiwan due to COVID-19? - How does Uber cope with the regulatory requirements from the different transportation regulators in the region? - Are there any new businesses from the US that might expand into Asia Pacific, for example, Uber Freight? - Other than China and Southeast Asia which Uber has sold their stakes to either Didi in China or Grab in Southeast Asia, Uber is currently operating in the rest of Asia Pacific, what are your thoughts on the recent Grab US$40B SPAC with Altimeter? - ****The Future of Mobility for Asia Pacific** - How do you think that the transportation business will change in the next few years? - Given the advances of self-driving cars, do you think that China and the US will leapfrog ahead of the rest in terms of adoption? - Where do you think Uber’s role with autonomous vehicles in the future? - Closing - Do you have something to recommend like a book or podcast? - Pradeep’s recommendation: “Range” by David Epstein - Where can our audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uber-in-asia-pacific-the-future-of-mobility/id914868245?i=1000529230983&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ruzNoD5aq0A2uAZLMc8nL?si=FUDnzthTREmbQrhv45FyKQ&dl%5Fbranch=1&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/343%5Fuber%5Fin%5Fasia%5Fpacific%5F%5Fthe%5Ffuture%5Fof%5Fmobility%5Fwith%5Fpradeep%5Fparameswaranmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YzEyYWYzZGItY2Q2My00ZDExLWE5MzYtYzcxYzNlZjc2NWYz?sa=X&ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwjgtLL44uzxAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFt2wJQA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/uber-in-asia-pacific-the-future-of-mobility-with-pradeep-parameswaran?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/592214168431233) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/uber-in-asia-pacific-the-future-of-mobility-with-pradeep-parameswaran-85498858?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Uber-in-Asia-Pacific-%26-The-Future-of-Mobility-with-Pradeep-Parameswaran-id2859782-id405839724?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### The Grab SPAC with Jon Russell & Nadine Freischlad URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-grab-spac-with-jon-russell-nadine-freischlad/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:35.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Jon Russell & Nadine Fresischlad from The Ken joined us to discuss the 40 billion Grab SPAC (and largest in the world till date) and its impact to the entire Southeast startup ecosystem. Kicking off the conversation, Jon and Nadine analysed why Grab decided to take the SPAC route, summarize the key takeaways from the current businesses to where future growth engines will come from. They discuss what it means for Uber, the investors, the employees, the startup and venture capital ecosystems across Southeast Asia. Last but not least, they examine what it means for their rivals competing in the Indonesia market: Goto and Sea Group. ****Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - ****Nadine Freischlad,** Writer, The Ken ([@nfreischlad](https://twitter.com/nfreischlad?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nfreischlad/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Ken Profile](https://the-ken.com/sea/writers/nadinethe-ken-com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [newsletter](https://tinyletter.com/nfreischlad?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and ****Jon Russell,** Editor, Southeast Asia, The Ken ([@jonrussell](https://twitter.com/jonrussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://th.linkedin.com/in/jmarussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ Newsletter](http://jonrussell.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ba97f7320d4d550688a17209a&id=9f5d1c81f2&ref=analysepodcast.com#%5F=%5F),[ Personal Site](http://insidethenoodlebowl.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Ken Profile](https://the-ken.com/sea/writers/jonrussell/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you both been up to? - ****Grab SPAC and its impact to Southeast Asia** - References: 1/ [The ripple effects of Grab’s US$40 bn record SPAC listing](https://the-ken.com/story/the-ripple-effects-of-grabs-us40-bn-spac-listing/?r%5Fedition=2&ref=analysepodcast.com) by Jon and Nadine in the Ken; 2/ [Grab’s Nasdaq debut to test its US$40 billion valuation, set roadmap for Spac hopefuls](https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/grabs-nasdaq-debut-to-test-its-us40-billion-valuation-set-roadmap-for?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Straits Times, 3/ [Singapore’s Grab to List in U.S. in $40 Billion SPAC Deal](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-13/singapore-s-grab-to-list-in-u-s-in-record-40-billion-spac-deal?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Yoolim Lee, Bloomberg, 4/ [Gojek co-CEO to head app giant GoTo after merger with Tokopedia](https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/technology/gojek-co-ceo-to-head-app-giant-goto-after-merger-with-tokopedia?ref=analysepodcast.com) via Business Times Singapore and 5/ [Grab’s IPO Explained: Would I invest in this SPAC (Altimeter Growth Corp)](https://financialhorse.com/grabs-ipo-explained-would-i-invest-in-this-spac-altimeter-growth-corp/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? via Financial Horse. - Before we start with Grab’s $40B valuation SPAC, let’s talk about what we know from before, we know that from Uber’s S-1 form a few years back that Grab has to go public by 2023 with Uber in the US taking a 27% stake in the company, so going public for Grab has been on their roadmap and our radar for a while now. - Let’s first help the audience to set the scene: 1/ What is a SPAC and how does it differ from a traditional initial public offering (IPO)? 2/ Which US entity SPAC is Grab merging with and who are their backers or sponsors? 3/ What are some potential problems for the company by merge with the SPAC? - Grab and Altimeter have released a selection of documents that reveals the state of their various businesses (mobility, food delivery and financial services). What are the most interesting findings for both of you? - Across the different business lines, where will the growth engines come from given the low margins for the mobility business and subsidies to keep the drivers on the Grab network? - Let’s examine the impact, starting with Uber, what are the upsides via the Grab SPAC? - Who are the investors from Grab’s earlier round other than Uber that will stand to gain? - What is the impact of Grab’s SPAC merger towards the Southeast Asia region as a whole, specifically to the startup and VC ecosystem? How does it align with the other interesting news in the region, for example, SEA Limited, the singaporean company public in the US having theirmarket capitalization going above US$100B and the upcoming Gojek and Tokopedia merger to Goto? - Grab’s key war will be in Indonesia, and Gojek’s merger with Tokopedia to Goto is likely to happen within the year, what does that mean for the competition in the Indonesian market? - Can Grab take on Goto or will they still need to bleed to win market share? - One of the key takeaways is that Anthony Tan, one of the Grab co-founders, has 2% stake in Grab but holds 60% of the voting shares on the board, what does that mean for the shareholders and the employees over all? - Where do you see Grab’s future lies beyond the SPAC? - Closing - Can you both recommend a book, podcast and something which has recently inspired your life? - Jon: The news media on Southeast Asia within the past few years. - Nadine: Esther Perel , “[How’s Work](https://howswork.estherperel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” podcast - How can my audience find both of you? ****Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-grab-spac-with-jon-russell-nadine-freischlad/id914868245?i=1000521873257&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ZFfo4l6czs8IJOA30Drtd?si=wLcL4Wt0SYeR79FNUitCxw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/342%5Fthe%5Fgrab%5Fspac%5Fwith%5Fjon%5Frussell%5F%5Fnadine%5Ffreischladm4a?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmVmNDZiNjktMjZhYS00MWUwLWE4YzYtN2MyMGRlOTFmY2My?sa=X&ved=0CAcQuIEEahcKEwi4rO%5FT4aPtAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtgO2pY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-grab-spac-with-jon-russell-nadine-freischlad?in=analyseasia/sets/analyse-asia-2&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-grab-spac-with-jon-russell-&-nadine-freischlad/95bf2299-43d8-44a9-9305-32396c195a19?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/979402866130553) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-grab-spac-with-jon-russell-nadine-freischlad-83981375?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Grab-SPAC-with-Jon-Russell-%26-Nadine-Freischlad-id2859782-id382867375?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### The Two Sessions in China 2021 with Zhou Xin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-two-sessions-in-china-2021-with-zhou-xin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:35.000Z Fresh out of the studio, in episode 341, Zhou Xin, political economy editor from South China Morning Post, joined us in a conversation to discuss the Two Sessions in China for the year 2021, and what it means for the rest of the world. Zhou Xin dived deep into the key agenda for the Two Sessions for 2021 and how the Chinese government will focus on in the next 5 years from technology development to boosting the small and medium businesses segment in China. We discuss the implications on how the Chinese economy impacts the rest of the world for the year ahead. --- **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Zhou Xin, Political Economy Editor, [South China Morning Post](https://scmp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/xin-zhou-26a73610/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [SCMP Profile](https://www.scmp.com/author/zhou-xin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - What’s your current role and coverage for SCMP? - What are the lessons you can share on your career journey with our audience? - Two Sessions in China and what it means for business & technology - Can you start by explaining what the two sessions in China are about and what is the significance of the session in context to the outside world? - How long are the Two Sessions and what was on the agenda for 2021? - Can you briefly discuss the key takeaways for the two sessions with respect to the economic 5 year plan and how it impacts businesses and technology development in China? - One of the big changes is that they revise their GDP growth rates to 6% instead of the 8-9%, what is the rationale behind this revision? - Where are the key areas China will focus on with respect to technology? - Is it in the realm of semiconductors, quantum computing or other areas of interest? - How are they planning to encourage innovations among enterprises and optimize their supply chains? - With regards to the businesses, the Chinese government will increase lending by big banks to small businesses by more than 30 per cent this year. What are the implications to the macroeconomic situation in China? - At the same time, the Chinese government will continue fintech clamp down with respect to what happened with Ant Financial. Where are they with their own anti-trust regulations? Do we foresee more coming with the fintech companies in China? - What are some of the other larger trends that business decision makers should be aware of? For example, aging population, green or new energy, - What are the implications of the policy proposals in Two Sessions 2021 to the rest of the world? What should other countries look out for? - Closing - Can you recommend anything interesting which has inspired your life recently? - Zhou Xin’s recommendation: 苏東坡新传 by 李一冰 - Where can our audience find you? **Special offer for our readers:** SCMP has kindly offered a one-month free discount for 1-year subscription plan to all listeners of Analyse Asia podcast. Go to [https://sc.mp/Analyse-Asia](https://sc.mp/Analyse-Asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) and enter the promo code: ANALYSEASIA, T&Cs details available at [sc.mp/promo-code](https://sc.mp/promo-code?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-two-sessions-in-china-2021-with-zhou-xin/id914868245?i=1000518681848&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/08R93bA1QGJtu5IVntPMWd?si=m9kR-r6QRNS1paivY2sp%5Fg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/341%5Fthe%5Ftwo%5Fsessions%5Fin%5Fchina%5F2021%5Fwith%5Fzhou%5Fxinmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmVmNDZiNjktMjZhYS00MWUwLWE4YzYtN2MyMGRlOTFmY2My?sa=X&ved=0CAcQuIEEahcKEwi4rO%5FT4aPtAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsDckho?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-two-sessions-in-china-2021-with-zhou-xin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-two-sessions-in-china-2021-with-zhou-xin/a57380df-f1f4-4910-adac-67c9ea416f9d?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/967147820761188) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-two-sessions-in-china-2021-with-zhou-xin-83485350?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Two-Sessions-in-China-2021-with-Zhou-Xin-id2859782-id376608058?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](https://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### The potential Gojek-Tokopedia merger with Rama Mamuaya URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-potential-gojek-tokopedia-merger-with-rama-mamuaya/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:34.000Z Fresh out of the studio, in episode 340, Rama Mamuaya from DailySocial in Indonesia joined us to discuss a potential merger between Gojek, Indonesia’s largest ride-hailing app and Tokopedia, the largest ecommerce site in Indonesia, and what it would mean for the most important market in Southeast Asia as well as their key rivals: Grab and SEA Group with Shopee. Rama introduced the backstory of Tokopedia, and discuss the dynamics on how Tokopedia and Gojek would merge under a SPAC backed by Peter Thiel and Richard Li. He provided the key reasons to why Grab and Gojek will not merge and offered his perspectives on how this will mean for the future of Indonesia startup scene. ****Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Rama Mamuaya ([@rampok](https://twitter.com/rampok?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmamuaya/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder and CEO of[ Dailysocial](https://dailysocial.id/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@dailysocial](https://twitter.com/dailysocial?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since your last conversation with Analyse Asia, what have you been up to? - How has the Indonesia startup scene changed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020? - The rumored Gojek-Tokopedia merger - While our audience is often familiar with Grab and Gojek and their ongoing war in the ride-hailing, food delivery and financial payments space, can you by first, provide an introduction to Tokopedia, which we know, is one of the leading ecommerce providers in Indonesia? - Who are the founders and the investors behind Tokopedia? How has the company evolved since SoftBank and Alibaba’s 1.5B investment into the company years back and a recent investment from Temasek at 500M? - What are the key businesses under Tokopedia and how does the company monetize? - In Dec 2020, it was reported that Tokopedia were considering going public through a SPACs-merger with Bridgetown Holdings (NASDAQ:BTWN) backed by Peter Thiel and Richard Li. The estimated valuation of the post-merger company is between 8 and 10 billion USD. Do you think that Tokopedia will IPO through a SPAC(Special Purpose Acquisition Companies)? \[Lead into the conversation on Gojek merger with Tokopedia\] - It has been three years since you are here to discuss Gojek. Can you briefly introduce the company, Gojek and to a certain extent, discuss the other companies such as Gopay which has emerged from the company? - How has Gojek evolved since the departure of its founder, Nadiem to become the minister of education and culture under Jokowi’s presidency? - Gojek has been involved in potential merger talks with Grab and Tokopedia. Let’s start with Grab first. The synergies with Grab are probably the best based on their similarities, and the merger will bring the wars of ride-hailing and food delivery to an end. From your perspective, between Grab and Gojek, which side would benefit more from the merger and why? - Based on [a recent article](https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/garage/merger-talks-between-grab-and-gojek-off-the-table?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Business Times Singapore, the merger talks have fallen apart. What are your thoughts on why these two groups could not come to an agreement? Is it due to the long term animosity between both companies. - Pivoting back to the conversation, why is Tokopedia a better suitor for Gojek instead? - If it is going to happen, how would a Tokopedia-Gojek merger work? - Does that mean that future companies in Southeast Asia similar to Grab will have no way to enter Indonesia similar to what’s happening with China & to some extent, India as well? - How do you see Gojek and Tokopedia’s future prospects and what does the merger mean for the Indonesia tech community in the longer term? - Closing - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impacted your work and personal life recently? - Rama’s recommendations: Analyse Asia Podcast (Thank you, Rama), Freakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt and “Alibaba: the house that Jack Ma built” by Duncan Clark - How do my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-potential-gojek-tokopedia-merger-with-rama-mamuaya/id914868245?i=1000515765788&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/134231129?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GqXVNi9ZChXHPhbAD1jAe?si=pyqN%5FQSZQXyM0Jtbr0uirg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/340%5Fthe%5Fpotential%5Fgojek-tokopedia%5Fmerger%5Fwith%5Frama%5Fmamuayamp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmVmNDZiNjktMjZhYS00MWUwLWE4YzYtN2MyMGRlOTFmY2My?sa=X&ved=0CAcQuIEEahcKEwi4rO%5FT4aPtAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFs0ynK4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-potential-gojek-tokopedia-merger-with-rama-mamuaya?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-potential-gojek-tokopedia-merger-with-rama-mamuaya/7e0a9dbb-e221-4c2c-8b32-976fdb919a0b?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/2834806316793281) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-potential-gojek-tokopedia-merger-with-rama-mamuaya-82916553?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-potential-Gojek-Tokopedia-merger-with-Rama-Mamuaya-id2859782-id370443538?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### China AI Deep Dive: Computer Vision Report 2020 with John Artman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/china-ai-deep-dive-computer-vision-report-2020-with-john-artman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:34.000Z Fresh out of the studio, in episode 339, John Artman, the technology editor of South China Morning Post (SCMP) joins us on a conversation with China AI Deep Dive: Computer Vision Report 2020 published by SCMP research. We began the conversation with John’s reflections on the year of 2020 during the pandemic and then dived deep into the report, where John provide a comprehensive overview of the computer vision market in China with the four dragons: SenseTime, Megvii, CloudWalk and Yitu and what the tech giants in China are focusing on in the same sector. John also discuss the implications of the US-China tensions as to how it impact the CV market and offered his thoughts on where the key players will focus on, given the impending regulatory measures introduced by the Chinese government on data privacy and anti-trust. --- **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - John Artman ([@knowsnothing](https://twitter.com/KnowsNothing?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jartman/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [SCMP profile](https://www.scmp.com/author/john-artman?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Technology Editor at South China Morning Post - First of all, happy new year! Congratulations on your move from Technode to SCMP although I know it happened a while back. I’m sure a lot of listeners are quite familiar with your work for TechNode so they must be very curious, just like myself, about the work you’re doing in your new role and what areas you will be covering for SCMP. - What are your reflections on 2020 in context of your move during the COVID-19 pandemic? - [China AI Deep Dive: Computer Vision Report 2020](https://research.scmp.com/discount/ANALYSECV?redirect=/products/china-ai-deep-dive-computer-vision-report&ref=analysepodcast.com) (We have a promo code which you can use to get a 20% discount: ANALYSECV) - To start, can you provide an overview of what computer vision is as part of a field in artificial intelligence and what are the key areas of research in this space (for example, autonomous vehicles, security, claims processing or eKYC)? - Can you talk about the key factors in how computer vision as an area has accelerated its development specifically in China? - How should one envisage the computer vision market? What is the state of venture funding for computer vision for Chinese startups? - In the report, you discussed the four dragons of CV in China: SenseTime (商汤）, Megvii（旷视）, CloudWalk （云从）and Yitu（依图）. Can you talk about each one of them and where their key strengths and focuses are with respect to computer vision? - How about the tech giants in China, for example, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent? Are they also working on computer vision and what are the aspects they’re focusing on? - In the space of autonomous driving, Baidu Apollo is one of the key leaders in the space, have they found a path to monetization and create the next wave for their company’s growth? - How are the Chinese regulators looking at computer vision? Are there any legislative efforts to prevent the misuse or abuse of the technologies involved? - Given the US ban of Chinese technologies and prohibition of sale of key technologies, for e.g. semiconductor chips which are important for computer vision problems with computing at the edge or IoT, where do you see these four dragons of CV going? Will they focus on international expansion or inward expansion within China or will they venture into other emerging markets where China has a strong influence, like Africa for example? - What is one of the key interesting nuggets which you believe that the audience will get when they purchase the actual report? - Where are the areas of computer vision and broadly AI you see that China will focus on for the next one to three years? - Closing - Any recommendations that you want to share with our audience that have inspired you recently? - John’s recommendation: “[After the Digital Tornado: Networks, Algorithms and Humanity](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/after-the-digital-tornado/B746434A076A9EC7FD10AF12D69E6EA4?ref=analysepodcast.com)” edited by Kevin Werbach, from Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania - Where can our audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/sg/podcast/china-ai-deep-dive-computer-vision-report-2020-john/id914868245?i=1000507203285&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](http://Episode 339: China AI Deep Dive: Computer Vision Report 2020 with @knowsnothing from @SCMPTech @SCMPNews via @Himalaya%5Fapp https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/129819000?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink #China #AI #podcast) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4RY3JSlq2XhIf8FowgOdWK?si=AtXZ0QHzQEKmdengJC5byw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/339%5Fchina%5Fai%5Fdeep%5Fdive%5F%5Fcomputer%5Fvision%5Freport%5F2020%5Fwith%5Fjohn%5Fartmanmp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmVmNDZiNjktMjZhYS00MWUwLWE4YzYtN2MyMGRlOTFmY2My?sa=X&ved=0CAcQuIEEahcKEwi4rO%5FT4aPtAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvVPW04?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/china-ai-deep-dive-computer-vision-report-2020-with-john-artman?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/china-ai-deep-dive-computer-vision-report-2020-with-john-artman/33bd6b2f-06cd-495a-ad75-61261aafcdd2?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/190262349553853) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/china-ai-deep-dive-computer-vision-report-2020-with-john-artman-81250693?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/China-AI-Deep-Dive%3A-Computer-Vision-Report-2020-with-John-Artman-id2859782-id350305192?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](https://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Reflections and Predictions on China and SoftBank in 2020 with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/reflections-and-predictions-on-china-and-softbank-in-2020-with-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:33.000Z Fresh out of the studio, in episode 338, Shai Oster, the Asia Bureau chief for The Information is back on his annual review with us again to discuss the state of China technology giants and SoftBank in the time of COVID-19 pandemic and predict what is to come in 2021\. Starting the conversation, Shai reviewed the predictions he made in 2019 and explored the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on how they played out in 2020\. From there, Shai reflected on the year that dominated the headlines in 2020: the diffusion of the China-US tensions to other regions: India and Australia against China tech giants, Tik Tok’s problems in the US, Ant’s botched IPO and SoftBank’s attempt to go private. Last but not least, Shai offered his predictions for 2021 and what is to come for the Chinese technology giants and SoftBank for the year ahead. --- **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - **Shai Oster** ([@beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Asia Bureau Chief in [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - So since your last appearance on the show, what have you been up to? - **2019 Predictions:** - China & US: Trump’s impeachment - China economy: growth - Tiktok will retreat from US, scale back & renew focus china, maybe India, Southeast Asia and Africa: accurate - Huawei - The shift of Chinese money to other markets - **2020 Events that shook China and SoftBank: The China-US tensions have exacerbated and percolated to other regions now** (and that includes Australia and India) to Chinese companies: 1/ India banning 47 apps including Wechat, Tik Tok and many apps from China and 2/ Australia and US banned Wechat. - Let’s go to India first, given that the major unicorns are invested by Chinese tech giants, for example, PayTM by Alibaba, and the rise of local giants such as Reliance Jio backed by a strong US consortium: Facebook, Google, Silver Lake Partners, KKR, how do you see the challenges moving ahead for Xiaomi, which is dominant in India as well? - How do you think the Biden administration will handle the current tensions with China? - In the year ahead, do you think China will come down hard on US companies that are heavily invested here, like Apple or Starbucks Coffee? - Currently, the Chinese government has directed the local companies to be self-reliant, and specifically in the semiconductor industry, does that mean that we will see the decoupling of the supply chain accelerate much quicker? - Given that Tencent owns a few major gaming companies, for example, Epic, and with the recent lawsuit between Apple and Epic, do you see a possibility that the US government will pressure Tencent to divest their holdings in the US? - **Tik Tok’s problems in the US and elsewhere:** First, Kevin Mayer, the former CEO of DisneyPlus was poached and then became the CEO of Tik Tok US and Group COO, and subsequently resigned in July 2020, given the Trump’s administration insistence that the company has to be sold. Finally, after talks with rumors that Microsoft might acquire the entity completely, the eventual decision is that Oracle becomes the beneficiary of being an investor (along with Walmart) for Tik Tok US to ensure that data resides in the US. - What are your thoughts on Tik Tok’s current situation in the US? - Can ByteDance grow further given that there is so much pushback from other markets? - Where do you see ByteDance’s growth markets are? Will be they turn inwards towards domestically or expand to other markets where the push back is lesser, for example, Southeast Asia? - **The Botched IPO of Ant Financial and what’s going to be next?** - The Chinese government has ended Ant Financial’s IPO with direct interference from President Xi as reported by various outlets. What are the causes in your opinion as to why the IPO ended up not happening? - What are the implications for Alibaba Group as a whole with Ant Financial not able to IPO? - What must Ant Financial do in order to convince the authorities to allow them to IPO? - The billion-dollar question: Will Ant Financial eventually IPO? - A lot of people did not realize that the Ant Financial IPO has left a lot of money on the table in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, do you think that the companies which are going to IPO in HKSE will benefit from this event? - Does this offer a lesson to how Chinese tech companies should conduct themselves? Which companies do you think might run into trouble with the state? - **COVID-19 Pandemic:** - Which tech companies in China are the major beneficiaries of the COVID-19 pandemic? - China has managed the COVID-19 pandemic much better than the US. What are the implications to the Chinese economy from now with the various successful vaccines, for example, Pfizer vaccine being approved? - **SoftBank in 2020 and its current strategy to go private** - After the Wework debacle, SoftBank has gone on a few different directions: 1/ Selling their Alibaba stake, 2/ Sell ARM to NVDIA and Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, 3/ Ran a stock market gambit with futures in tech, 4/ [DoorDash’s IPO giving them 10B gain ](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/DoorDash-IPO-delivers-billions-for-SoftBank?ref=analysepodcast.com)that will write off Wework’s investment, and 5/ quietly buying back shares to go private? - How do you assess SoftBank’s performance in 2020 and do you think that with DoorDash’s success, will SoftBank Vision Fund 2 happen? - Has SoftBank’s enormous influence on the tech industry waned after WeWork’s debacle? Where do you think that they will spend the remainder of the $100B Vision Fund on? - Do you think that SoftBank will go private according to [Tim Culpan’s analysis](https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/son-may-outmaneuver-private-equity-in-softbank-buyout-strategy?ref=analysepodcast.com) on Masa’s strategy? Do you think that SoftBank will manoeuvre and make a comeback after being private? - 2020 is now closing to the end, what are your predictions for 2021 so that we can have a future conversation a year from now? - Closing - Any recommendations? - Shai’s recommendations: Rui Ma and Ying Ying Lu, [Techbuzz China podcast](https://www.techbuzzchina.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and subscribe to [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with the key breaking news it broke in 2020. - How does our audience find you? **Editor’s note**: Our team in Analyse Asia thanked our audience for your support and wished everyone a Happy New Year 2021\. The episode is recorded in the last week of 2020. **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com#episodeGuid=925418a2-3e46-4fb0-9b57-1eca2dbd01a6) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/126980329?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1UpG4Iusn1rOusWmUU18no?si=M0N6aw9fT7eRtmcKF04Yaw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/reflections-and-predictions-on-china-and-softbank-in-2020-with-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmVmNDZiNjktMjZhYS00MWUwLWE4YzYtN2MyMGRlOTFmY2My?sa=X&ved=0CAcQuIEEahcKEwi4rO%5FT4aPtAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsvgIFc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/reflections-and-predictions-on-china-and-softbank-in-2020-with-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/reflections-and-predictions-on-china-and-softbank-in-2020-with-shai-oster/8ef8d056-e177-4c86-9dfc-596937a8405c?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/2718034041841610) - [Facebook Page](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/reflections-and-predictions-on-china-and-softbank-in-2020-with-shai-oster-80535409?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Reflections-and-Predictions-on-China-and-SoftBank-in-2020-with-Shai-Oster-id2859782-id341434780?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](https://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### The Ant Group's Botched IPO with Rui Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-ant-groups-botched-ipo-with-rui-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:33.000Z In episode 337, Rui Ma from TechBuzz China podcast joined us in a conversation to break down what just happened to Ant Group’s IPO and why it was halted at the eleven hour by the Chinese government. At the start of the conversation, Rui Ma shared the back story and explained how Ant Financial have built their business from the escrow and payments app to now a vast financial business with lending and investment services included. Last but not least, Rui Ma dived deep into the regulatory landscape and offered the different scenarios to when Ant Group might be able to IPO in the future. ****Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Rui Ma, Creator & Host of [Tech Buzz China podcast](https://supchina.com/series/techbuzz-china/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Pandaily produced by SupChina ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ruima](https://twitter.com/ruima?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation in April 2020, what have you been up to? - Ant Group and why China slams the brakes on their IPO - Before we start talking about the IPO, let’s understand the company a little bit more. Can you talk about how Ant Group was initially started as Alipay by Jack Ma and then became Ant Financial? I believe there was a huge controversy about the founding of Alipay as well right? - What is the current ownership of Ant Group like and who are the key stakeholders? - Can you talk about the many branches of business that they offer and how these businesses are structured? For example, the lending & investment business? - Alipay is just one of the different products which sits within Ant Group. There are other products, for example, Zhima Credit, Huabei, Jiebei, MYBank, Ant Insurance, etc. Can you talk about how these products are organized by the different businesses within Ant Financial? - Ant Financial changed their name to Ant Group in June 2020 wanting to stress that they’re not just a finance company but a tech company. Why do you think they wanted to shift away from this kind of branding and do you believe in this rhetoric? - How has Ant Financial worked within the regulatory landscape in the financial services sector in China? - But as we all know, one day after the US Elections on Nov 4, the Chinese government halted the IPO. What happened and what is the current status of Ant IPO? - If the Ant IPO did take place, what would have been the prospects of growth for the company? - What are the implications of Ant Financial’s botched IPO towards the Alibaba Group? - Do you think that they will be going public in the next half a year or beyond? - Closing - Can you recommend something that has inspired you recently? - Rui Ma’s recommendation: [Esther Perels, Where Should We Begin podcast](https://whereshouldwebegin.estherperel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can my audience find you? ****Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ant-groups-botched-ipo-with-rui-ma/id914868245?i=1000502986188&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/126016008?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7oBVOXFoj3TUvzJTXtU5jS?si=dvtWfGcLR7O%5FDW-4Y0agvw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-ant-group-s-botched-ipo-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmVmNDZiNjktMjZhYS00MWUwLWE4YzYtN2MyMGRlOTFmY2My?sa=X&ved=0CAcQuIEEahcKEwi4rO%5FT4aPtAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvKj1oM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-ant-groups-botched-ipo-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-ant-groups-botched-ipo-with-rui-ma/53f97503-22ba-48db-b8e9-5bc5ae0b6ae0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/329379271371702) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-ant-groups-botched-ipo-with-rui-ma-80281893?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Ant-Group's-Botched-IPO-with-Rui-Ma-id2859782-id338073832?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### The SCMP China Fintech Report 2020 with Eugene Tang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-scmp-china-fintech-report-2020-with-eugene-tang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:32.000Z In episode 336, Eugene Tang, business editor from the South China Morning Post (SCMP) joined us to discuss the China Fintech Report 2020 where he dissect the latest important trends in the fintech market. Eugene started the conversation with a story of his career and interesting learnings in his journey. From there, he dived into the key themes of the China Fintech Report 2020, from explaining how the fintech space in China are currently dominated by the tech giants in China, the impact of AI in the industry and most important, what the new digital cryptocurrency launched by China would mean for its domestic economy and the rest of the world. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Eugene Tang ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugene-tang-%EF%BC%88%E9%84%AD%E5%B0%9A%E4%BB%BB%EF%BC%89-84b25327/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Business Editor, South China Morning Post (or SCMP in short) - What is your current role and responsibilities as the business editor for South China Morning Post? - How did you get started in your career? - In your career journey, what are the key learnings you can share with our audience? - [China Fintech Report 2020 by SCMP](https://research.scmp.com/discount/ANALYSEASIA?redirect=/products/china-fintech-report-2020&ref=analysepodcast.com) (Promo Code for 20% off: [ANALYSEASIA](https://research.scmp.com/discount/ANALYSEASIA?redirect=/products/china-fintech-report-2020&ref=analysepodcast.com)) - What are the key themes for the China Fintech Report 2020? - What is the intended audience for the report? - Let’s start with the key observations, in the report, the tech giants in China for example, Alibaba Group, Tencent and Baidu and JD and Ping An are currently leading in the fintech race. Can you explain how these companies have built their digital only banks and help to broaden economic development with micro loans to customers and extending credit to SMEs? - What are the underlying technologies in China Fintech that have helped to propel their advances in the past few years, for example in the payments space? - How do you see artificial intelligence (AI) influence fintech growth? Can you provide any examples that are stated in the report (for example MYBank and Daokou Fintech)? - Global expansion for Chinese fintechs has been ongoing in the recent years. Can you expand on how fintech in China can help different parts of the world, specifically in broadening financial inclusion? - Can you discuss the state of blockchain technology in China and the vision for China to establish the first central bank issued digital currency? - What are the implications for the Chinese economy as of when and if the digital currency is launched? - What are the regulatory shifts for Chinese fintechs? - What are the new rules in play that will change the landscape in the next year? - Recently, the Ant IPO has been delayed because of the clash with the financial regulatory body in China. Can you offer your perspectives on the issue? - What will be the key challenges for Chinese Fintech in the year ahead? - Closing - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything which have inspired you recently? - Eugene’s recommendation: [Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets by US Congress](https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition%5Fin%5Fdigital%5Fmarkets.pdf?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can your audience find you? Editor’s Note: SCMP has kindly offered a [20% discount for the China Fintech Report 2020](https://research.scmp.com/discount/ANALYSEASIA?redirect=/products/china-fintech-report-2020&ref=analysepodcast.com) to all listeners of Analyse Asia podcast and please click on this link and enter the promo code: [ANALYSEASIA](https://research.scmp.com/discount/ANALYSEASIA?redirect=/products/china-fintech-report-2020&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-scmp-china-fintech-report-2020-with-eugene-tang/id914868245?i=1000500527636&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/123812646?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7DXXPIKbr1op77fT8B7gHW?si=CutuC95ERM2L9lrijymEfA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-scmp-china-fintech-report-2020-with-eugene-tang?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmFseXNlYXNpYS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw/episode/YmVmNDZiNjktMjZhYS00MWUwLWE4YzYtN2MyMGRlOTFmY2My?sa=X&ved=0CAcQuIEEahcKEwi4rO%5FT4aPtAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsOmrVQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-scmp-china-fintech-report-2020-with-eugene-tang?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-scmp-china-fintech-report-2020-with-eugene-tang/4051cde4-c7f2-4437-98ed-0f0726576a77?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/2500970510027859) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://Episode 336: The @SCMPNews #China #Fintech Report 2020 with Eugene Tang via @stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-scmp-china-fintech-report-2020-with-eugene-tang-79746663 #podcast) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-SCMP-China-Fintech-Report-2020-with-Eugene-Tang-id2859782-id331656391?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [The SCMP China Fintech Report 2020 with Eugene Tang](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-scmp-china-fintech-report-2020-with-eugene-tang?ref=analysepodcast.com "The SCMP China Fintech Report 2020 with Eugene Tang") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/336\_The\_SCMP\_China\_Fintech\_Report\_2020\_with\_Eugene\_Tang.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/336%5FThe%5FSCMP%5FChina%5FFintech%5FReport%5F2020%5Fwith%5FEugene%5FTang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Google e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2020 Report with Stephanie Davis URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-google-e-conomy-southeast-asia-2020-report-with-stephanie-davis/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:32.000Z In episode 335, Stephanie Davis, Vice President of Google Southeast Asia, joined us in a discussion on the latest e-Conomy Southeast Asia (SEA) report and dissect the latest digital trends and discuss how the different industries are moving under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stephanie started on the key themes, takeaways and intended audience for the report and broke down the key verticals which have benefitted during the COVID-19 pandemic and which industries have faced the strongest headwinds, for example travel. Last but not least, Stephanie offered an optimistic outlook to what 2021 will look life given the uncertainty ahead. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Stephanie Davis, Vice President, [Google](https://google.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Southeast Asia ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-davis-59917a/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - What is your current role and responsibility in Google? - How did you start your career and end up in Singapore? - In your career journey, what are the key learnings you can share with our audience here? - [e-Conomy Southeast Asia (SEA) 2020 by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company](https://economysea.withgoogle.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - This is the 5th year of the e-Conomy report, and it is assembled by Google, Temasek (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and a key investor to many startup unicorns from China to Silicon Valley) and Bain & Co (one of the well-known consulting firms). To start the conversation, what are the key themes from the e-Conomy 2020 report this year? - Who are the intended audience of the 2020 report? - Southeast Asia has often been touted as the next geographical region after China and India. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated the headlines of every nation in the world, and has acted as a catalyst to digital growth & transformation. How has COVID-19 pushed the population of Southeast Asia to come online or accelerated this process, and where is this new growth coming from? - What are the three key verticals which have benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic? - Given that most of the world is still caught in a lockdown, you’re probably WFH as well, what is both the quantity and quality for digital engagement of users in the Southeast Asia region? - Has the economic growth in Southeast Asia slowed down? Which countries within Southeast Asia have shown growth and which ones have slowed down? - Can you talk about how ecommerce has thrived this year and what kind of headwinds do you see in the coming year? - As more people go digital in the years to come, we see that fintech, entertainment and gaming will continue to grow, where do you see the behaviour and activity of different stakeholders such as consumers, businesses, and regulators within this ecosystem? - One of the sectors that is gravely affected this year is, of course, the travel industry. Where do you see the signs of recovery? - The Chinese word for crisis consists of 2 characters that mean danger and opportunity, and as Einstein has once said, “In the midst of every opportunity, lies great opportunity.” So what are the two verticals that have emerged this year? - Temasek is a co-publisher of the report, they’re Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and a key investor of many startups from China to Silicon Valley, so how do you see the startup space evolving with regards to deal activity, diversification of portfolios by investors from private equity to venture capital? - What is the outlook for businesses in the year ahead? Should we be optimistic given that the pandemic has both accelerated digital transformation but also shut down many businesses at the same time? - Closing - Do you have any recommendations (for example, books, podcasts, videos or articles) which you can recommend to our audience? - Stephanie’s recommendations: Podcasts 1/ [Mental Health, Disability and the Invisible 9%](https://www.communitybusiness.org/latest-news-publications/episode-3-mental-health-disability-and-invisible-9?ref=analysepodcast.com), 2/ [How Authority and Decision Making differs across Cultures](https://hbr.org/podcast/2017/07/how-authority-and-decision-making-differ-across-cultures?ref=analysepodcast.com), 3/ [Transgender Inclusion](https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/09/cultivate-a-trans-inclusive-workplace?ref=analysepodcast.com); Books: [How to be an anti-racist by Ibram X. Kendi](https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525509283?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/google-e-conomy-southeast-asia-2020-report-stephanie/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/122395662?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2QdcKkwqOd8E4N0ytJwiEr?si=AelreZQgQSmnvA5IXHuh4Q&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-google-e-conomy-southeast-asia-2020-report-with-stephanie-davis?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsEotO4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-google-e-conomy-southeast-asia-2020-report-with-stephanie-davis?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-google-e-conomy-southeast-asia-2020-report-with-stephanie-davis/abaadb94-26b2-4a58-82b1-9e03fa2a7364?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/697248780917866) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/show/analyse-asia/episode/the-google-economy-southeast-asia-2020-report-with-stephanie-davis-79406758?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Google-e-Conomy-Southeast-Asia-2020-Report-with-Stephanie-Davis-id2859782-id327167443?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [The Google e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2020 Report with Stephanie Davis](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-google-e-conomy-southeast-asia-2020-report-with-stephanie-davis?ref=analysepodcast.com "The Google e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2020 Report with Stephanie Davis") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/335\_The\_Google\_e-Conomy\_Southeast\_Asia\_2020\_Report\_with\_Stephanie\_Davis.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/335%5FThe%5FGoogle%5Fe-Conomy%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5F2020%5FReport%5Fwith%5FStephanie%5FDavis.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Attention Factory: The Story of Tik Tok & China’s ByteDance with Matthew Brennan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/attention-factory-the-story-of-tik-tok-chinas-bytedance-with-matthew-brennan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:32.000Z In episode 334, Matthew Brennan returned to discuss his new book “Attention Factory: The Story of Tik Tok & China’s ByteDance”. Matthew began with the inspiration and the key themes behind the first English book specifically focused on ByteDance, observing the rise of the company. He discuss the backstory of Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance and how he learned from his past experiences to build Toutiao first before embarking on Douyin that eventually led to Tik Tok. Last but not least, Matthew debunked the common misconceptions on Tik Tok and ByteDance, explained how their business models work and offered a glimpse to the challenges ahead for the company in the near future. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel and author of “ ([chinachannel.co](http://chinachannel.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@mbrennanchina](https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) - As the highest recurring guest on the podcast, it’s great to welcome you back. First question: what have you been up to since our last conversation? - “Attention Factory – The Story of Tik Tok and China’s ByteDance” by Matthew Brennan - What is the inspiration behind writing this book? - What are the key themes for this book? - Who are the major audiences that you want to target in this book? - Tik Tok and ByteDance are often characterized by Western commentators and media as a threat to Facebook, Twitter and even to the US government itself. What are the key misconceptions about Tik Tok and ByteDance? - Probably this is the first book which dives in depth into the background of Zhang Yiming, the founder of Bytedance, and the surprise is that he used to work for China’s twitter clone, Fanfou (started by Wang Xing, now founder and CEO of Meituan-Dianping) and was shut down by the authorities. Can you elaborate more on his background and his stint as a CEO with another startup called 99Fang before coming to ByteDance? What has 99Fang taught Zhang Yiming in the process? - After he resigned from 99Fang, he started ByteDance and it was not with Tik Tok that he started his foray. He did Toutiao, can you talk about the design concepts and what Toutiao taught the ByteDance team? - One can think of the success of Tik Tok in three stages: Douyin in China, acquisition of Musical.ly and then expanding globally across the decade of 2010 to 2020\. Let’s start with Douyin first, how did the app cross the chasm to drive users? - Tencent has tried to challenge Douyin on the homeground with Weishi, what did they get wrong and why have they failed to challenge Tik Tok? - What are the key business models for Tik Tok and Douyin from ByteDance? How does the app bring revenues to the company? How are the apps localized or globalized to ensure a better user experience? - There are different ways to look at Tik Tok. One interesting insight was from Eugene Wei’s recent article “[Tik Tok and the Sorting Hat](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, where Tik Tok does not need the social graph but rather rely on the recommendation engine algorithm to push the interests of the user, which makes Tik Tok a more direct competitor to Youtube. What are your thoughts on how one should think of Tik Tok as a mobile app or social network or video network? - Probably, we should talk about what happened to Tik Tok in the US this year. They have hired Kevin Mayer, former head of Disney+ and then Donald Trump threatened to shut them down, and first there was supposed to be an acquisition from Microsoft, but ended up with Oracle and Walmart clinching a partnership deal. Can you share your thoughts on what happened and where this is likely to go before & after the US elections? - What are the key challenges you see for ByteDance in the coming year? - Closing - Do you have any recommendations that have recently inspired you? - Where can our audience find you and your new book “Attention Factory”? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/attention-factory-story-tik-tok-chinas-bytedance-matthew/id914868245?i=1000496759562&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/120582466?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fl6Et0Nn1TOW5H12GEgiy?si=Fpr4PdqoT-iyb3z83Zh8aQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/attention-factory-the-story-of-tik-tok-china-s-bytedance-with-matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtD-o%5Fg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/attention-factory-the-story-of-tik-tok-chinas-bytedance-with-matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/attention-factory-the-story-of-tik-tok-&-chinas-bytedance-with-matthew-brennan/0a63cbc9-b4d4-44b6-b8ab-529aad05441c?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/476534566657997) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=79025994&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Attention-Factory%3A-The-Story-of-Tik-Tok-%26-China%E2%80%99s-ByteDance-with-Matthew-Brennan-id2859782-id321488698?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [Attention Factory: The Story of Tik Tok & China’s ByteDance with Matthew Brennan](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/attention-factory-the-story-of-tik-tok-chinas-bytedance-with-matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com "Attention Factory: The Story of Tik Tok & China’s ByteDance with Matthew Brennan") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/334\_Attention\_Factory\_\_The\_Story\_of\_Tik\_Tok\_\_China\_s\_ByteDance\_with\_Matthew\_Brennan.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/334%5FAttention%5FFactory%5F%5FThe%5FStory%5Fof%5FTik%5FTok%5F%5FChina%5Fs%5FByteDance%5Fwith%5FMatthew%5FBrennan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Tech Giants, Secondary Exits & Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia with Nadine Freischlad URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/tech-giants-secondary-exits-kopi-kenangan-in-indonesia-with-nadine-freischlad/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:31.000Z In Episode 333, Nadine Freischlad, writer from The Ken, joined us in a conversation on the influence of both US and Chinese tech giants in the third most important market in Asia Pacific: Indonesia, the secondary exits spanned by venture capitalists and founders in Southeast Asia and the story of Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia. We began the story with Nadine’s journey from startups to The Ken, and why Indonesia is an interesting and hot market after India and China. We discuss the influence of tech giants from US and China in Indonesia and how Google has fired the first salvo with bringing their cloud platform in Jakarta. Following on, Nadine explained why venture capitalists in Southeast Asia are exiting in secondary markets. Last but not least, she discuss why Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia will not follow in the footsteps of Luckin Coffee. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Nadine Freischlad, Writer, The Ken ([@nfreischlad](https://twitter.com/nfreischlad?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nfreischlad/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Ken Profile](https://the-ken.com/sea/writers/nadinethe-ken-com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [newsletter](https://tinyletter.com/nfreischlad?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - - How did you start your career? - What brought you to Asia and eventually to write for The Ken? - Why are you in Indonesia and why is Indonesia the most interesting market in Southeast Asia? - **Influence of US & China Tech Giants in Indonesia** - - - Reference: “[Google’s Kormo, AI Hurdles & Indonesia’s job recruitment nightmare](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/googles-kormo-ai-hurdles-and-indonesias-job-recruitment-rigmarole/?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, “[Google fires first volley in Indonesia’s cloud wars](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/google-fires-first-volley-in-indonesias-cloud-wars/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[Facebook, Paypal’s payments play a super app-ortunity for Gojek](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/facebook-paypals-payments-play-a-super-app-ortunity-for-gojek/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - Can you describe how the US tech giants, for example, Google, Facebook and Paypal, have built their influence in Indonesia? - Google has recently launched a job recruitment site called Kormo in Indonesia, can you explain why that came about and what Google wants to achieve out of Kormo? - In terms of cloud infrastructure, Google is the first to enter the market before Amazon and Microsoft, does it hurt local hosting providers? - Facebook and Paypal have invested in Gojek (along with Google and Tencent), how does that supercharge Gojek’s ambitions to be a super app in their war against Grab? - While the US tech giants have invested into Indonesia’s top unicorns, what are the Chinese tech giants doing in Indonesia? - Given the recent pushback from India and US on Tik Tok, will the Indonesian government follow suit with the influence of chinese apps in Indonesia? - **Secondary market for Southeast Asia startups** - - - Reference: [Southeast Asia’s startups surf a secondary wave](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/southeast-asias-startups-surf-a-secondaries-wave/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Given the number of exits from startups are few and far between in Southeast Asia, how are investors justifying their returns to the LPs (limited partners)? - We do not see a lot of IPOs in Southeast Asia. Can you talk about how VCs managed to generate liquidity by secondary shares sales and elaborate how the secondary share sales work? - Are there platforms where the secondary shares sales can be transacted between investors, employees and founders of the startup? - Are there sources of friction generated between founders of startups & their investors (VCs, PE firms) on the secondary sales shares given that it will disrupt the capitalization table (or cap table in short) of the company? - Do you see secondary shares sales as an important mechanism for VCs and PE firms to generate liquidity? Is this similar to how Silicon Valley VCs and angel investors sold their shares to SoftBank two years back? - **Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia** - - Reference: [“Kopi Kenangan wants to walk in Luckin’s path, not in its shoes”](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/kopi-kenangan-wants-to-walk-in-luckins-path-not-in-its-shoes/?ref=analysepodcast.com#comment-20706) - Can you briefly describe the company Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia? - Indonesia is a coffee country most well known for the javanese coffee beans, how is the coffee culture in Indonesia and how does it help Kopi Kenangan to reach its customers? - How has Kopi Kenangan as a business scaled up in the recent year for example, their number of retail outlets and customer reach? Are they having any issues of massive burn? - Can you explain the unit economics of Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia and contrast this with Luckin Coffee in China? (Refer to Part 2 of [The Anonymous Report](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LKOYMpXVo1ssbWQx8j4G3-strg6mpQ7F/view?ref=analysepodcast.com) on Luckin Coffee’s flawed unit economics) - In your perspective, what makes Kopi Kenangan able to move away from the shadow of Luckin Coffee given the latter’s recent scandal? - Closing - Can you recommend your book, podcast and something which has recently inspired your life? - How can my audience find you? **Editor’s Note:** *Our apologies as there were some issues during the recording on Nadine’s end. Hence you will hear a little background noise towards near the end during the Kopi Kenangan part of the conversation. We will hope to improve our recording with our guests in the future* **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-giants-secondary-exits-kopi-kenangan-in-indonesia/id914868245?i=1000492667965&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/116541554?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/25R1GoGSXybzZvKrlkCDkI?si=aIZ0VnpLS5avqpXHOkdLDQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/tech-giants-secondary-exits-kopi-kenangan-in-indonesia-with-nadine-freischlad?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFvGTj4c?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/tech-giants-secondary-exits-kopi-kenangan-in-indonesia-with-nadine-freischlad?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/tech-giants-secondary-exits-&-kopi-kenangan-in-indonesia-with-nadine-freischlad/ebac20f0-fa23-485f-a3af-896378e0bb20?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/793853588044527) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=78058958&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Tech-Giants%2C-Secondary-Exits-%26-Kopi-Kenangan-in-Indonesia-with-Nadine-Freischlad-id2859782-id310809300?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [Tech Giants, Secondary Exits & Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia with Nadine Freischlad](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/tech-giants-secondary-exits-kopi-kenangan-in-indonesia-with-nadine-freischlad?ref=analysepodcast.com "Tech Giants, Secondary Exits & Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia with Nadine Freischlad") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/333\_Tech\_Giants\_Secondary\_Exits\_\_Kopi\_Kenangan\_in\_Indonesia\_with\_Nadine\_Freischlad.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/333%5FTech%5FGiants%5FSecondary%5FExits%5F%5FKopi%5FKenangan%5Fin%5FIndonesia%5Fwith%5FNadine%5FFreischlad.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Beyond the Smartphone & COVID-19's Forced Experiments with Benedict Evans URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/beyond-the-smartphone-covid-19s-forced-experiments-with-benedict-evans/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:31.000Z In episode 332, continuing our last conversation with Benedict Evans, we discuss the major topics that are dominating the global technology landscape. First, Benedict dissect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and explain how the forced experiments will shift the immediate future where we work and interact with each other. Moving forward, he discuss what lies beyond the smartphone, specifically touching on VR and AR and analyzed why other technologies such as AI and blockchain are lurking in the background. Finally, he offers his perspectives on our expectations on technology with the dawn of 5G. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Benedict Evans ([@benedictevans](https://twitter.com/benedictevans?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Site](https://www.ben-evans.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Essays](https://www.ben-evans.com/essays?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Newsletter](https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Venture Partner of Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First & Independent Analyst - COVID 19’s Forced Experiments - Reference: [COVID and forced experiments](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/4/13/covid-and-forced-experiments?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Presentations](https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations?ref=analysepodcast.com): Tech and the New Normal & Tech in 2020: Standing on the shoulders of giants and [What comes after Zoom?](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/6/22/zoom-and-the-next-video?ref=analysepodcast.com). - The COVID 19 have accelerated digital transformation in the past three months more than the last 5 years for certain industries. What are the forced experiments which COVID-19 can help us to understand the evolution of technology, for example, Zoom for video conferencing and what it has and has not solved for us? - Beyond the Smartphone - Reference: [Should you care about the 5G?](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/1/16/5g-if-you-build-it-we-will-fill-it?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where is the smartphone in the S-curve: the beginning, the middle or the late stage? - If we slice and dice the other platforms in the horizon: IoT (or ambient computing), VR or AR, they don’t seem to show the scale that smartphones can extend in terms of their adjacencies. What are the signs that you will identify to show that the smartphone platform is in the decline? - What do you think that the contribution of 5G is to the entire telecommunications industry? - Closing - Do you have anything from book, article, movie or podcast to recommend to our audience that have inspired you recently? - Benedict’s recommendation: History of Germany economy in the 1930s-1940s. - How can our audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond-smartphone-covid-19s-forced-experiments-benedict/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Himalaya - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1p9Te3Oin3iEUQFg9lFL7D?si=APyo2T6eSouptr72FN6VoQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/beyond-the-smartphone-covid-19-s-forced-experiments-with-benedict-evans?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsbAQ8I?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/beyond-the-smartphone-covid-19s-forced-experiments-with-benedict-evans?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/beyond-the-smartphone-covid-19-s-forced-experiments-with-benedict-evans/5f7923c0-e860-47a6-ac68-9f855f3ded37?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/744850593033149) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=77501726&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Beyond-the-Smartphone-%26-COVID-19's-Forced-Experiments-with-Benedict-Evans-id2859782-id304294010?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [Beyond the Smartphone & COVID-19’s Forced Experiments with Benedict Evans](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/beyond-the-smartphone-covid-19s-forced-experiments-with-benedict-evans?ref=analysepodcast.com "Beyond the Smartphone & COVID-19's Forced Experiments with Benedict Evans") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/332\_Beyond\_the\_Smartphone\_\_COVID-19s\_Forced\_Experiments\_with\_Benedict\_Evans.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/332%5FBeyond%5Fthe%5FSmartphone%5F%5FCOVID-19s%5FForced%5FExperiments%5Fwith%5FBenedict%5FEvans.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Technology Regulation, App Store & Global Decoupling with Benedict Evans URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/technology-regulation-app-store-global-decoupling-with-benedict-evans/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:30.000Z In episode 331, Benedict Evans, the independent analyst and venture partner from Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First, joined us in the first of the two episodes to discuss the major topics that are dominating the global technology landscape. We began the conversation with his recent stint with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in Silicon Valley and the key takeaways during his stay there. Then we dived deep into the key topics which dominate the global technology landscape: tech regulation of the major Internet giants, the app store conversation featuring Fornite vs Apple and the decoupling of the global supply chain with China and India. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Benedict Evans ([@benedictevans](https://twitter.com/benedictevans?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Site](https://www.ben-evans.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Essays](https://www.ben-evans.com/essays?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Newsletter](https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Venture Partner of Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First & Independent Analyst - When we had the first conversation with you, you were a partner in the renowned Silicon Valley venture capital firm, [Andreessen Horowitz](https://a16z.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), the first question for us, what are the key takeaways thinking about technology from the lens of a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley? - Since you have moved back to the United Kingdom, what have you been up to? - Tech Regulation and App Stores - Reference: [Regulating Technology](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/7/23/regulating-technology?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Would breaking up big tech work? What would?](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/10/would-breaking-up-big-tech-work?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [App Stores, Trust & Anti Trust](https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Let’s start with the recent movement in the US by the Congress to call for the break up of the four major tech companies: Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple and potentially restricting their M&A activity. We have the leaders of these four tech companies brought before the Congressional hearings. - From looking at the hearings, what does the regulators get right and wrong about big technology companies and insist that the only way is to ‘break them up’? - Can we learn from history on how we should think about breaking up big technology companies? For example drawing on what they did to Standard Oil during the gilded age in the 1900s in the U.S.? - The decoupling of global supply chains - Currently, China’s market is 3x times larger than the US. The Indian market is teaming up with US companies to move their supply chain out from China to India, for example, Apple. Will the Chinese and Indian Internet outsize the US market so that it is no longer the axis of innovation and technology growth in the next few decades? - Do you think that the future of the Internet is going to be “balkanized”: China, India, Europe, US and the rest of the world? - Will the decoupling of supply chains between China and the US change the way the technology sector will evolve in the next few decades? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com#episodeGuid=fdb85bfb-cdff-41dd-90c9-ef3cca6e29a0) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/113043554?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1kyaphcOlUhjlMZSxtqRpw?si=e6DlQIFsSv62Y6%5FvLwsqgw&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/technology-regulation-app-store-global-decoupling-with-benedict-evans?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuRBiow?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/technology-regulation-app-store-global-decoupling-with-benedict-evans?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/technology-regulation-app-store--global-decoupling-with-benedict-evans/8dd19ff2-b8f2-4749-af3e-7e3791488bc7?country=US&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/1373150482881352) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=77317661&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Technology-Regulation%2C-App-Store-%26-Global-Decoupling-with-Benedict-Evans-id2859782-id302099219?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [Technology Regulation, App Store & Global Decoupling with Benedict Evans](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/technology-regulation-app-store-global-decoupling-with-benedict-evans?ref=analysepodcast.com "Technology Regulation, App Store & Global Decoupling with Benedict Evans") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/331\_Technology\_Regulation\_App\_Store\_\_Global\_Decoupling\_with\_Benedict\_Evans.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/331%5FTechnology%5FRegulation%5FApp%5FStore%5F%5FGlobal%5FDecoupling%5Fwith%5FBenedict%5FEvans.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### China Internet Report 2020 with Gareth Nicholson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/china-internet-report-2020-with-gareth-nicholson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:30.000Z In episode 330, Gareth Nicholson, deputy technology editor on the technology desk from South China Morning Post (SCMP), joined us to discuss the China Internet Report 2020 and its impact to the rest of the world. We discuss the key major trends: the impact of COVID-19 on China tech and how it transform food delivery, the accelerated self-reliance of Chinese companies due to the US and China tensions, the year of 5G for mass adoption in the Chinese domestic market, live streaming and ecommerce, and finally, why the Chinese companies are now moving their US listings back to China. Last but not least, Gareth shared the key trends that he will watch out for in 2021. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - [Gareth Nicholson](https://www.scmp.com/author/gareth-nicholson?ref=analysepodcast.com), deputy Technology Editor on the Technology desk, South China Morning Post. - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - China Internet Report 2020 by [South China Morning Post](https://www.scmp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Now let’s talk about the report. It’s SCMP’s 3rd annual report, what are some of the key sections and themes that the China Internet report has always focused on? - As we understand that SCMP has been delivering the China Internet Report every year since 2016, what are the key themes which the report have discussed every year till now? - I love how the report starts off with ‘China in a glance’ which provides readers with a general background of the Chinese internet space. The graphic comparisons for the China vs US internet landscapes are helpful. For example, I didn’t know that China has about 3 times the number of internet users at 904M in comparison to US’s almost 300 million (298M). Can you provide us a snapshot on how the Chinese Internet is now compared with respect to the US? - Who are now the key players within the Chinese tech ecosystem, as we notice that Baidu has dropped down to number 11? - Trend #1: Impact of COVID-19 to China Tech Sector - What is the impact of COVID-19 on China’s tech sector? - How did the Ministry of Industry & Information Technology in China respond to COVID-19 pandemic? with plans along the 5 themes: building a strong infrastructure network, applying digital technology in all sectors, enhancing data security, strengthening tech innovation and optimizing broader industry development? - Trend #2: China Accelerated Self-Reliance on Tech - With the ongoing tension escalating between the US and China, how is China doing on the path of becoming technologically self-reliant? - What are some of China’s major challenges? - What is the impact of this move to self-reliance for Huawei and other Chinese companies? - Where are the competencies that Chinese tech firms will need to develop to bridge the gap between them and the US? - Trend #3: The year of mass adoption for 5G - Is this the year for mass adoption for 5G? - What will be the impact of 5G for Chinese tech in the next two to three years? - Trend #4: Live Streaming’s 3rd Phase in China - What are the 3 phases of livestream in China and what’s after the 3rd phase? - Trend #5: China companies listing back at home (Hong Kong and Shanghai) - We are seeing a lot of Chinese companies looking to list in HK or Shanghai. Do you see this a part of the great trend due to the tensions between the US and China? - At the same time, we see accounting scandals for example, Luckin Coffee and TAL education and this leads to more scrutiny to Chinese companies, do you think that more and more chinese companies will delist from the US and move back to China? - What topics are covered in the pro-report as compared from the free report? - Closing - How do our audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/china-internet-report-2020-with-gareth-nicholson/id914868245?i=1000487556354&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/110930133?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0X67gavIxZA6TmeKZ7Tel3?si=-QGE9Q28R5KEclkDP-Vgzg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/china-internet-report-2020-with-gareth-nicholson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFta24yY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/china-internet-report-2020-with-gareth-nicholson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/china-internet-report-2020-with-gareth-nicholson/c47d4375-4071-43cf-a3bc-593a1370f429?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/222936812328113) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=76814413&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/China-Internet-Report-2020-with-Gareth-Nicholson-id2859782-id295795306?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [China Internet Report 2020 with Gareth Nicholson](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/china-internet-report-2020-with-gareth-nicholson?ref=analysepodcast.com "China Internet Report 2020 with Gareth Nicholson") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/330\_China\_Internet\_Report\_2020\_with\_Gareth\_Nicholson.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/330%5FChina%5FInternet%5FReport%5F2020%5Fwith%5FGareth%5FNicholson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Gojek vs Grab in Southeast Asia 2020 Edition with Jon Russell URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/gojek-vs-grab-in-southeast-asia-2020-edition-with-jon-russell/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:29.000Z In episode 329, Jon Russell, editor of The Ken Southeast Asia, joined us in a conversation to discuss the continuing epic rivalry between Gojek and Grab in the era of COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from the perspective of Gojek, we discuss the impact and changes made after the founder’s departure and how they are re-organizing to tackle Grab’s onslaught in Indonesia and expanding out to other parts of Southeast Asia from Indonesia. With new investments from US tech giants, Facebook and Paypal, we discuss how Gojek is shaping itself to be a worthy rival against Grab backed by SoftBank and Alibaba in Southeast Asia. Last but not least, Jon discuss why the media streaming giants of Southeast Asia, HOOQ & iFlix failed to take on Netflix and the key takeaways for unicorn start-ups in the era of COVID-19 pandemic. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:** - Jon Russell ([@jonrussell](https://twitter.com/jonrussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://th.linkedin.com/in/jmarussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ Newsletter](http://jonrussell.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ba97f7320d4d550688a17209a&id=9f5d1c81f2&ref=analysepodcast.com#%5F=%5F),[ Personal Site](http://insidethenoodlebowl.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Ken Profile](https://the-ken.com/sea/writers/jonrussell/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since we have last spoken, you have moved out of TechCrunch and now joined The Ken. Can you talk about The Ken and what is your new role there? - Grab vs Gojek in 2020 - Let’s start from Gojek, a lot of things have happened. Their founder and former CEO, Nadiem Makarim has left the company and become a Minister of Education & Culture under President Jokowi’s cabinet in Indonesia. What’s the impact on Gojek after his departure? (Ref: [Up for Grab? Gojek after Nadiem Makarim](https://the-ken.com/story/up-for-grab-gojek-after-nadiem-makarim/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - They have started the expansion to Southeast Asia last year but it has not grown very well. (Ref: [Gojek’s stunted SE Asia expansion story](https://the-ken.com/story/grab-bed-away-gojeks-stunted-se-asia-expansion-story/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), can you talk about their challenges in expanding out of Indonesia while dealing with Grab who is competing in their backyard? - That being said, they have been doing well on the fundraising front: Gojek has been invested by Facebook and Paypal (Source: [CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/facebook-invests-in-indonesia-gojek.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - What are the [implications to Gojek](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/facebook-paypals-payments-play-a-super-app-ortunity-for-gojek/?ref=analysepodcast.com) as Google, Paypal and Facebook are lining up against Grab? (Ref: [Facebook, PayPal’s payments play a super app-ortunity for Gojek](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/facebook-paypals-payments-play-a-super-app-ortunity-for-gojek/??ref=analysepodcast.com)) - The US tech giants are in Indonesia just as the Chinese tech giants, for example, Meituan-Dianping which is a super app entering the market. What can Gojek and Grab learn from Meituan-Dianping? (Ref: [The Gojek-Grab SE Asia super app battle with a Meituan twist](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/the-gojek-grab-se-asia-super-app-battle-with-a-meituan-twist?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - What is the impact of COVID-19 on Grab and Gojek? - Both Gojek and Grab have done layoffs in the past month. How do you look at the approaches from both companies? ([Grab CEO’s memo](https://www.grab.com/sg/blog/grab-ceo-note/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Gojek’s layoffs](https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/06/24/gojek-lays-off-430-employees-amid-pandemic-impact.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - SoftBank has been taking a hit from Wework and Oyo. What is the downstream impact to Grab based on the current troubles in the Vision Fund? - Is the race to dominate Southeast Asia going down to whether Grab or Gojek wins Indonesia and not the other countries (Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia, Singapore)? - What will the key battleground for Grab and Gojek in the coming 2021? - Impact of COVID-19 to Southeast Asia - You have written a lot of media streaming companies similar to Netflix, for example HOOQ from Singapore and iFlix from Malaysia. The COVID-19 pandemic have led to HOOQ being shut down and iFlix being acquired from Tencent. What are the key learnings from HOOQ’s downfall and iFlix’s acquisition? - What are the key takeaways from the COVID pandemic for Southeast Asia? (Ref: [7 takeaways from Covid-time digital winners and losers in Southeast Asia](https://the-ken.com/sea/story/7-takeaways-from-covid-time-digital-winners-and-losers-in-southeast-asia/?searchTerm=gojek%20grab&ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Closing - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? - Jon’s recommendation: Sarah Frier, “[No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram](https://www.amazon.com/No-Filter-Inside-Story-Instagram/dp/1982126809?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gojek-vs-grab-in-southeast-asia-2020-edition-jon-russell/id914868245?i=1000484367415&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/106220780?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5tD7gogsKKquyWdsYSS7DQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/gojek-vs-grab-in-southeast-asia-2020-edition-with-jon-russell?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFuuloV8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/gojek-vs-grab-in-southeast-asia-2020-edition-with-jon-russell?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/gojek-vs-grab-in-southeast-asia-2020-edition-with-jon-russell/c0a6ed53-5eff-4208-849f-a574cf437ba4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/621114315184766) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=75653902&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Gojek-vs-Grab-in-Southeast-Asia-2020-Edition-with-Jon-Russell-id2859782-id286524622?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [Gojek vs Grab in Southeast Asia 2020 Edition with Jon Russell](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/gojek-vs-grab-in-southeast-asia-2020-edition-with-jon-russell?ref=analysepodcast.com "Gojek vs Grab in Southeast Asia 2020 Edition with Jon Russell") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/329\_Gojek\_vs\_Grab\_in\_Southeast\_Asia\_2020\_Edition\_with\_Jon\_Russell.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/329%5FGojek%5Fvs%5FGrab%5Fin%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5F2020%5FEdition%5Fwith%5FJon%5FRussell.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Pinduoduo on Social Ecommerce & Agriculture with Xinyi Lim URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/pinduoduo-on-social-ecommerce-agriculture-with-xinyi-lim/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:29.000Z In episode 328, Lim Xinyi, senior director for corporate development from Pinduoduo, joined us to discuss the social ecommerce company and its impact on agriculture. Starting from the conversation, Xinyi shared her background and how she came to discover and eventually join Pinduoduo. She discuss Pinduoduo’s current mission and vision and how the company pioneered social ecommerce in China. Last but not least she shared Pinduoduo’s contributions to the agriculture sector in China and how they are helping farmers to get their agricultural produce to the consumers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Lim Xinyi ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/xin-yi-lim/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Senior Director, Corporate Development at Pinduoduo ([@PinduoduoInc](https://twitter.com/pinduoduoinc?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/pinduoduoinc/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Medium](https://medium.com/@pinduoduoinc?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? - In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons you can share with our audience. - [Pinduoduo](https://en.pinduoduo.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)’s Social E-Commerce Model and its impact in agriculture - Can you briefly introduce us to your company Pinduoduo in China and its mission and vision? - How do you explain Pinduoduo as a social e-commerce company to the audience out there? - Before Pinduoduo came into the scene in 2015, the ecommerce industry led by Alibaba and Jingdong (JD) generated a combined revenue of $433B gross merchandise value (GMV), and within 5 years, it skyrocketed from a startup to 57B company with buying base of 585M generating $144B of GMV ([reference from Pinduoduo & the rise of Social E-Commerce by YCombinator](https://blog.ycombinator.com/pinduoduo-and-the-rise-of-social-e-commerce/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and by 2020, it’s the 2nd largest ecommerce platform in China behind Alibaba. Can you talk about how Pinduoduo pioneered the concept of social shopping in China? - What are the features of social shopping that have been introduced by Pinduoduo? (For example, 1/ creating community via team purchase, 2/ Daily Check ins, 3/ Price Chop, 4/ Card program, 5/ mini games and 6/ personalized recommendations referenced in the YC article) - What are the misconceptions from the Western world which Pinduoduo has been mis-understood as a company? - How does Pinduoduo contribute to the agriculture sector in China? ([See reference by Parmesh Shah from World Bank](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/parmesh-shah-1b8b4933%5Fpdd-digital-agriculture-and-e-commerce-activity-6671228400033656832-RpfW?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Why is Pinduoduo well-suited to help farmers and digitize agriculture? - What are the benefits for the farmers in China? - How does Duo Duo Farms help to alleviate poverty and create a sustainable future via the team purchase feature in Pinduoduo? - Can you elaborate about the Duo Duo Farm project in Yunnan and what are the key learnings there? - Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, what have been Pinduoduo’s response to the situation and what you have done to help the farmers to tide over this tough period? - What are the key trends you see in the future of social commerce and does this extend beyond agriculture for Pinduoduo? - Closing - Can you recommend anything (a book, movie or article) which has inspired you recently? - Xinyi’s recommendations: understanding the [Black Lives Matter movement](https://blacklivesmatter.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in the United States. - How do our audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/102339549?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1M0CB4KtZwpuWAV6sQkY6N?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/pinduoduo-on-social-ecommerce-agriculture-with-xinyi-lim?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFu3T4fY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/pinduoduo-on-social-ecommerce-agriculture-with-xinyi-lim?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/pinduoduo-on-social-ecommerce-and-agriculture-with-xinyi-lim/b633145a-77f3-4731-a6da-a9a708b09762?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/285320452523160) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=73451666&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Pinduoduo-on-Social-Ecommerce-%26-Agriculture-with-Xinyi-Lim-id2859782-id280591051?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [Pinduoduo on Social Ecommerce & Agriculture with Xinyi Lim](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/pinduoduo-on-social-ecommerce-agriculture-with-xinyi-lim?ref=analysepodcast.com "Pinduoduo on Social Ecommerce & Agriculture with Xinyi Lim") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/328\_Pinduoduo\_on\_Social\_Ecommerce\_\_Agriculture\_with\_Xinyi\_Lim.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/328%5FPinduoduo%5Fon%5FSocial%5FEcommerce%5F%5FAgriculture%5Fwith%5FXinyi%5FLim.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Samsung Rising Part Two with Geoffrey Cain URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/samsung-rising-part-two-with-geoffrey-cain/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:29.000Z In episode 327, Geoffrey Cain, author of “Samsung Rising” joins us in a two parts conversation on his journey across Asia as a journalist and author and discuss the backstory of his new book behind the Samsung Group and how it rise to be the most powerful Chaebol (large family-owned business conglomerate) in Korea. In the second part of the conversation, Geoffrey discuss Samsung’s complicated relationship with Apple as both a supplier and competitor and how their arrogance and hierarchical culture led to the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. He reveals why he did not include the story of Lee Boo-jin, the daughter of Lee Kun Hee who is often tapped as a potential successor to the Samsung Group and why it is unlikely that there will be a female leader to helm the Samsung Group. Last but not least, Geoffrey offered his perspectives on how Samsung is responsible for exporting culture out of Korea to the rest of the world, particularly the movie Parasite and his thoughts on whether there is a future for another Samsung-like Group emerging in another market out there. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Geoffrey Cain, author of “Samsung Rising”, and also regular commentator on The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Time & The New Republic and former correspondent in The Economist ([Website](https://www.geoffreycain.net/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@geoffrey\_cain](https://twitter.com/geoffrey%5Fcain?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gcain/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Samsung Rising ([Random House](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/537977/samsung-rising-by-geoffrey-cain/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Bite-Apple-Samsungs-Strategy-Conquer/dp/1101907258/ref=tmm%5Fhrd%5Fswatch%5F0?%5Fencoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Apple Books](https://books.apple.com/us/book/samsung-rising/id1449409161?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:30\] - What are your perspectives on Samsung’s dual relationship with Apple, as a supplier of solid state drives and OLED screens for the iPhone while competing with their flagship phones, the Galaxy series phones? \[0:34\] - Samsung Galaxy note 7 fiasco is well covered in the press. In your view in covering that story, what lessons have Samsung learned from that disaster that almost ended their smartphone dominance? \[3:56\] - What are the fundamental flaws that are in Samsung that are not functioning in today’s world? \[8:06\] - The battles within the Lee family for the succession to Samsung’s empire. \[11:28\] - Comments on Lee Boo-jin, the sister of Jay Lee as a potential successor to the Samsung Group, and why it is not included in the book “Samsung Rising” - Samsung’s family connection with the Oscar best movie in 2020 “Parasite” \[22:24\] - Do you think that the success that Samsung has attained after 80 years of work can be replicated in other countries today? \[27:40\] - Closing - Do you have any recommendation of a book, movie, podcast or anything which have inspired you recently? \[32:25\] - Geoffrey’s recommendations: Joe Studwell “How Asia Works”, James Fallows “China Airborne”. - Where do our audience find you? \[33:45\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/100324399?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3DOOX9PvsWFXMmg8kfO7l3?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/samsung-rising-part-two-with-geoffrey-cain?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsjCJSQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/samsung-rising-part-two-with-geoffrey-cain?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/samsung-rising-part-two-with-geoffrey-cain/eb19cca8-8e05-41dd-be85-7c3c01a4d3b1?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/3018419041604852) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/70960531?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Samsung-Rising-Part-Two-with-Geoffrey-Cain-id2859782-id275301190?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [Samsung Rising Part Two with Geoffrey Cain](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/samsung-rising-part-two-with-geoffrey-cain?ref=analysepodcast.com "Samsung Rising Part Two with Geoffrey Cain") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/327\_Samsung\_Rising\_Part\_Two\_with\_Geoffrey\_Cain.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/327%5FSamsung%5FRising%5FPart%5FTwo%5Fwith%5FGeoffrey%5FCain.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Samsung Rising Part One with Geoffrey Cain URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/samsung-rising-part-one-with-geoffrey-cain/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:28.000Z In episode 326, Geoffrey Cain, author of “Samsung Rising” joins us in a two parts conversation on his journey across Asia as a journalist and author and discuss the backstory of his new book behind the Samsung Group and how it rise to be the most powerful Chaebol (large family-owned business conglomerate) in Korea. In the first part of the conversation, Geoffrey discuss the inspiration and the main themes behind “Samsung Rising”, and shares the origin story of Samsung and how they went from an agriculture business to a global technology giant today along with Apple and Huawei by a family owned enterprise spanning three generations. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Geoffrey Cain, author of “Samsung Rising”, and also regular commentator on The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Time & The New Republic and former correspondent in The Economist ([Website](https://www.geoffreycain.net/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@geoffrey\_cain](https://twitter.com/geoffrey%5Fcain?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gcain/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:26\] - How did you start your career? \[0:55\] - What have you learned from covering North & South Korea, China and Cambodia in your career journey? \[8:35\] - In your career journey, what are the key lessons you can share with the younger audience? \[10:55\] - Comments on how the history of Samsung aligns with the story of South Korea’s rise as one of the top economies in Asia. - Samsung Rising ([Random House](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/537977/samsung-rising-by-geoffrey-cain/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Bite-Apple-Samsungs-Strategy-Conquer/dp/1101907258/ref=tmm%5Fhrd%5Fswatch%5F0?%5Fencoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Apple Books](https://books.apple.com/us/book/samsung-rising/id1449409161?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[15:45\] - What is the inspiration behind writing the book “Samsung Rising”? \[16:20\] - Who are the intended audience of the book? \[20:32\] - If you will to summarize the key takeaways of the book, what would they be so that you can spark their interest to learn more? \[22:22\] - Can you talk about the origins of Samsung and what type of businesses that the family behind the company have grown from a small trading company to modern technology giant today? \[25:05\] - What does Chaebol means in South Korea? \[33:05\] - The family behind Samsung have gone through three generations: the founder Lee Byung-chul (or B.C Lee in short), Lee Kun-hee and recently to Jay Lee. Can you talk about how each leader has been different and what their contributions to Samsung have been? \[36:50\] - Can Jay Lee step up for Samsung as his father and grandfather have in the past? \[49:04\] - Jay Lee’s investments in Silicon Valley and how he is thinking about Samsung’s future given that the environment is currently becoming more complex with US protectionism. \[52:00\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/99531281?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Bsdvu13mYvItHksjZeO4U?si=HJ2q62iSTluWiSf0JPvhIQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/samsung-rising-part-one-with-geoffrey-cain?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFsZ66go?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/samsung-rising-part-one-with-geoffrey-cain?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/samsung-rising-part-one-with-geoffrey-cain/d8790803-a321-457f-933b-bc16884bc70e?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/285496442581789) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=70224649&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Samsung-Rising-Part-One-with-Geoffrey-Cain-id2859782-id272758154?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [Samsung Rising Part One with Geoffrey Cain](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/samsung-rising-part-one-with-geoffrey-cain?ref=analysepodcast.com "Samsung Rising Part One with Geoffrey Cain") [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/326\_Samsung\_Rising\_Part\_One\_with\_Geoffrey\_Cain.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/326%5FSamsung%5FRising%5FPart%5FOne%5Fwith%5FGeoffrey%5FCain.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Why Facebook invest in Reliance Jio Platforms with Tim Culpan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/why-facebook-invest-in-reliance-jio-platforms-with-tim-culpan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:28.000Z In episode 325, Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us to dissect the most important deal that rocked the Asian business and technology landscape with Facebook investing 5.7B into Reliance Jio. We began the conversation with Tim to set the context behind the deal and what both Facebook & Reliance Jio Platforms stand to gain from this partnership and their ambitions to win the market with a super app concept that is now popular in China & Southeast Asia. Tim also examined the implications to what it means for the Chinese technology giants from Alibaba to Xiaomi in India and the US technology giants such as Google and Amazon. Last but not least, Tim discuss the recent debacles which SoftBank faced with their investments and whether there is a silver lining for the Vision Fund. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Tim Culpan ([@tculpan](https://twitter.com/tculpan?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-culpan-3a753617/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/columnists/AOZ1cdFX8mo/tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Columnist at Bloomberg \[0:29\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:23\] - [Facebook investment in Reliance Jio](https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/21/facebook-reliance-jio/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and its impact on India \[2:39\] - Ref: [Facebook and Ambani Can Be Happy Together](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-22/facebook-and-ambani-can-be-happy-together?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Tim Culpan and [Why Facebook is betting big in India](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/23/facebook-betting-big-india-investment-reliance-jio/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Ravi Agrawal (Source: Foreign Policy) - To start, Facebook has invested $5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms, a three-and-a-half-year-old subsidiary of the nation’s most valued firm, Reliance Industries, and the biggest telecom operator in the country with more than 370 million subscribers and valued Jio at a pre-money valuation of $65.95 billion, makes Facebook the largest minority shareholder in the Indian telecom network. - To help our audience to start the conversation, what does the telco Reliance Jio do and why they are influential in the India telco market? (Note: Mukesh Ambani is the richest tycoon in India – see AA episode 264 with James Crabtree who profiled him and his family in the book “The Billionaire Raj”) - What is Jio Platforms and Mukesh Ambani, the person behind Jio Platforms and his ownership of Reliance Industries, the largest Indian conglomerate. \[4:38\] - Why did Facebook invest in Jio? \[6:58\] - How will Facebook extend its influence of its platform (and we include Whatsapp and Instagram) across India through this investment in Reliance Jio? \[8:33\] - How would this partnership between Facebook and Reliance Jio Platforms help the small and medium businesses and jumpstart their Jio Mart initiative? \[10:51\] - Does Jio Mart will built or be built into the super app under Whatsapp based on this alliance? \[13:25\] - What does this alliance between Facebook and Reliance mean for the China tech giants (Bytedance, Alibaba via Paytm, Xiaomi and Tencent) in Indian market? \[15:00\] - Will Google and Amazon consider the same path now that Facebook did the investment? \[18:10\] - What does Reliance Jio gain from the alliance with Facebook in India? \[19:51\] - How will ecommerce or the mobile landscape change in India with this alliance? \[21:25\] - What does this mean for China and US tech giants entering into India which is becoming more protectionist in the past two years? \[22:44\] - Will SoftBank’s Vision Fund fail in the end? \[25:31\] - Ref: [Masayoshi Son’s Impatience Just Cost $17 Billion](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-13/softbank-s-oyo-investment-shows-the-perils-of-growth-at-any-cost?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bankers Keep Vision Fund Going With Rubber Bands](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-14/softbank-may-need-lenders-to-get-vision-fund-through-dividends?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Being a Sore Loser Doesn’t Make WeWork’s Neumann Wrong](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-05/wework-s-adam-neumann-suing-softbank-would-be-all-about-settling?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Why did the Vision Fund experience a set of continued problems from its investees such as Wework and Oyo? \[25:54\] - What can we learn from SoftBank’s other failed investments for example, [Zume, the pizza startup](https://medium.com/bloomberg-businessweek/softbanks-375-million-bet-on-pizza-went-really-bad-really-fast-b8aedd85b96d?ref=analysepodcast.com) in the Bay Area? (QOTD: “A visionary founder with a fire hose of money can’t solve every problem.” by Sarah McBride in the article) \[28:42\] - What has happened to companies which have gone public such as Slack and Uber? \[31:06\] - Are there any silver linings for the Vision Fund, for example, Grab, Didi or Bytedance? \[32:43\] - Does the Vision Fund have a future? \[35:50\] - Closing \[37:01\] - Any book or stuff to recommend? \[37:19\] - Tim’s recommendations: dance music in the 1980s, 1990s & 2000s and Youtube - Where can our audience find you? \[38:01\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/96959643?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/41pppChTXSgqqYy890y60v?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/why-facebook-invest-in-reliance-jio-platforms-with-tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+SMFtFeA38?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/why-facebook-invest-in-reliance-jio-platforms-with-tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/why-facebook-invest-in-reliance-jio-platforms-with-tim-culpan/5a69fb21-671d-40f8-8f05-c82b4e6b2a27?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/646885816167506) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=69689438&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Why-Facebook-invest-in-Reliance-Jio-Platforms-with-Tim-Culpan-id2859782-id264217813?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/325\_Why\_Facebook\_invest\_in\_Reliance\_Jio\_Platforms\_with\_Tim\_Culpan.mp3](https://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/analyseasia/325%5FWhy%5FFacebook%5Finvest%5Fin%5FReliance%5FJio%5FPlatforms%5Fwith%5FTim%5FCulpan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Anonymous Report that brought down Luckin Coffee with Rui Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-anonymous-report-that-brought-down-luckin-coffee-with-rui-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:27.000Z In episode 324, Rui Ma, co-host of Tech Buzz China podcast and a trusted voice on China Tech joined us on a conversation to dive deeper on the anonymous report that unveiled Luckin Coffee’s recent debacle. We start with a quick history of Luckin Coffee with Rui Ma breaking down the backstory on how Luckin Coffee’s alleged fraud came to light and the impact after the fallout. Rui Ma dived deeper beyond the original story with an analysis of the anonymous report entitled “Luckin Coffee: Fraud + Fundamentally Broken Business”. Last but not least, she discussed the implications of Luckin Coffee’s debacle and how investigative reporting and corporate activism will impact the public listings of Chinese companies in the US. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Rui Ma, Creator & Host of [Tech Buzz China podcast](https://supchina.com/series/techbuzz-china/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Pandaily produced by SupChina ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ruima](https://twitter.com/ruima?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:26\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:30\] - **Luckin Coffee Debacle \[1:36\]** - **Disclaimer:** *The information provided here by our host and guest are not here to encourage buying or selling any equities mentioned here and investing is strictly our audience’s own responsibility. So, please do your homework.* - Origins of Luckin Coffee has been covered by [Matthew Brennan in Episode 279](https://analyse.asia/2019/01/01/episode-279-luckin-coffee-vs-starbucks-in-china-with-matthew-brennan/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and it was starting to challenge Starbucks Cafe in China two years back. - Highly recommended: Rui Ma and Ying Ying Lu in Techbuzz China [Episode 65 (Extra Buzz Special): Luckin’s luck ran out](https://overcast.fm/+TmYdrcdF8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - To help our audience, Luckin Coffee (瑞幸咖啡) started off with the on demand delivery model and did not have physical stores similar to Starbucks. Then it started scaling up by burning investment cash and building physical stores. The investors came from a variety of sources (according to [CB Insights](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/luckin-coffee-funding?ref=analysepodcast.com)): venture capital (JOY Capital), asset management fund (BlackRock), private equity (Centurium Capital), China International Capital Corporation or CICC (investment bank) and GIC (the sovereign wealth fund in Singapore). - Let’s start from today and work backwards to what happened that led to alleged fraud of Luckin Coffee being announced by the company. - How was alleged fraud for Luckin Coffee come to public attention? (Source: Luckin Coffee’s [filing of 6K](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1767582/000110465920042189/a20-14831%5F1ex99d1.htm??ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[3:04\] - What was the alleged fraud about and how much has been uncovered? \[4:23\] - Who are the people behind the alleged fraud? \[5:27\] - What is the impact given the announcement of the alleged fraud by Luckin Coffee, from [stock crashing](https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3078194/luckin-coffee-chinas-starbucks-wannabe-plunge-nasdaq-after?ref=analysepodcast.com) to customers rushing to claim their coffee? (Source: SCMP) \[7:08\] - Luckin Coffee has been a strange story in China. What is the business model that led to them going public? \[9:11\] - **The Anonymous Report titled “[Luckin Coffee: Fraud + Fundamentally Broken Business](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LKOYMpXVo1ssbWQx8j4G3-strg6mpQ7F/view?ref=analysepodcast.com)” \[11:40\]** - Citing the Extra Buzz Newsletter #7: “The report was very extensive 89 pages, utilized 92 full time, 1418 part time staff on the ground who recorded 11,000 hours of video, which is almost 3 years worth of store days covering 620 stores in 38 different cities.” - Basically, it is this report that fanned the flames for Luckin Coffee in their present state. However, there’s a lot of confusion of who did the report, for example, [燃财经 Rancaijing](http://click.revue.email/mps2/c/HwE/ps1xAA/t.30t/2rGkZSKiTyWNPUd4-NATiA/h25/gqrZtW0-2BzSEnWA8c-2Fw-2BZY-2F7EBWooP8C0RpJnrc1Pg9Gy8nVqq9VJ9zuVIC0sMWqidJ3kcxYUHxRRlbP-2Fy8i9-2F0S87JQW4MTdI2UJkni0b3Hj1OzbkB2SpaVWtNZ1P79ULdSCLdQDpjDU5qVn0dXNm4qywZk786-2F7cwZcOBDn4l2PonR-2BdyHQ1hb9g66wInc9gyhtjnbH2yh75e81j2IvZsqGFO4yfQITbk0GH5DQTTc-3D/HSqB?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Muddy Waters leeched off from the report (and somehow Western Media mistakenly attributed to them). So, the first question, what are the key facts behind the report? \[12:24\] - The report have two interesting parts titled “The Fraud” and “The Fundamentally Broken Business Model”. Let start from the first part “The Fraud”, what are the key smoking gun evidence and red flags cited that led to the alleged fraud claim in the report? - What are the business model flaws cited in the report that claims that Luckin Coffee has the fundamentally business model? \[15:16\] - Let’s zero in to one key red flag from the “Fraud” section: “Number of items per store per day inflated by 69% in 2019 3Q and 88% in 2019 4Q, supported by 11,260 hours of store traffic video”, can you explain how the report presents its investigation and use the numbers to get to the conclusion? \[18:44\] - The anonymous report took a very strong look at the unit economics of Luckin Coffee (Business Flaw #3) at page 78: what are the key arguments from the report that establish that Luckin Coffee is not able to be profitable? \[20:40\] - With such a construction of an elaborate report and this entire episode can be turned into a “Billions” TV series episode (by Showtime), the $1m dollar question: who is behind the report and what is their motivation behind it? \[24:06\] - **Aftermath** - Who benefits from the entire Luckin Coffee’s debacle? \[25:44\] - The hedge funds - Starbucks in China, given that 30% of their revenues came from China before Luckin’s entrance to challenge them. - One interesting consequence of this Luckin Coffee episode, is the quality of investigative reporting for corporate fraud in China. The anonymous report took a lot of effort in constructing the actual picture by people going undercover to find out the actual numbers. We notice that this is getting better whenever each scandal pops up in the market. Does that mean that we will see more of these exposes? \[27:16\] - What are your first thoughts when the report was first released into the public? \[30:00\] - Do you think that how Chinese companies should do to dispel myths or being challenged about their businesses? \[31:48\] - What do you think that the US investor learn from this episode? \[33:30\] - Do you think that the English and US media have reported the Luckin Coffee narrative properly? \[35:47\] - **Closing \[37:52\]** - Rui Ma’s recommendation: Dan Grover “[How Chinese Apps Handled COVID-19](http://dangrover.com/blog/2020/04/05/covid-in-ui.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - Carol’s video on how millennials cope with COVID-19 with the apps on their smart phone. **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/94762382?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4fZ5VI3LP7htbx2efhzH1V?si=YhbcIhhGQo2C--%5FE5M5qMA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-anonymous-report-that-brought-down-luckin-coffee-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQz6jeM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-anonymous-report-that-brought-down-luckin-coffee-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-anonymous-report-that-brought-down-luckin-coffee-with-rui-ma/16945af9-aaf6-4b89-addc-d782f4ae972c?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/532962377640649) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=69120498&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Anonymous-Report-that-brought-down-Luckin-Coffee-with-Rui-Ma-id1121832-id255287428?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [analyseasia](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com "analyseasia") · [The Anonymous Report that brought down Luckin Coffee with Rui Ma](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-anonymous-report-that-brought-down-luckin-coffee-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com "The Anonymous Report that brought down Luckin Coffee with Rui Ma") [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/324\_The\_Anonymous\_Report\_that\_brought\_down\_Luckin\_Coffee\_with\_Rui\_Ma.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/324%5FThe%5FAnonymous%5FReport%5Fthat%5Fbrought%5Fdown%5FLuckin%5FCoffee%5Fwith%5FRui%5FMa.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### SparkLabs Connex with Charles Reed Anderson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/sparklabs-connex-with-charles-reed-anderson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:27.000Z In episode 323, Charles Reed Anderson, our long time guest of the show and host of TechBurst Asia joins us to discuss his latest venture, SparkLabs Connex, a new accelerator program for smart city technologies under the SparkLabs Group. Before diving deep into the new venture, Charles discuss the challenges of smart city rankings and how they did not reflect the reality of what is happening on the ground. Then he began to discuss the rationale of SparkLabs Connex and why it is time to start an accelerator program specifically on smart city technologies. Last but not least, he break down how the global program works, offered his perspectives on what types of entrepreneurs he would seek to fund and address how SparkLabs Connex will operate in a COVID-19 world. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Charles Anderson ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/charlesreedanderson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Charles Reed Anderson and Associates](http://charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), host of [TechBurst Asia](https://charlesreedanderson.com/techburst-asia-podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://podcasts.apple.com/is/podcast/techburst-asia-podcast/id1492573784?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1BpaO2GWyQqalpeWX2q82c?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@techburstasia](https://twitter.com/techburstasia?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and now general partner for [SparkLabs Connex](http://www.sparklabsconnex.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[0:24\] - What have you been up to since we last spoke? \[1:10\] - You have recently written an article about [smart city rankings](https://charlesreedanderson.com/lies-damned-lies-smart-city-rankings/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and why the rankings do not reflect reality. Can you talk about why this is the case? \[1:40\] - [SparkLabs Connex](http://www.sparklabsconnex.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[5:45\] - Can you briefly introduce your new venture SparkLabs Connex from the SparkLabs Group? (Source: [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/27/sparklabs-group-launches-connex-an-accelerator-program-for-smart-city-technology/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[6:00\] - There are already a lot of incubators and accelerators across different geographies, but very few have succeeded. Why do you think that this is the time to start another one? \[7:57\] - What are the industry verticals or technologies that SparkLabs Connex is looking into? (5G, IoT, Smart Cities)? \[9:15\] - How does the model work for SparkLabs Connex and how does it work with the ecosystem, for example, partners? \[10:50\] - Why are the vendors willing to work with you as many accelerators have been building partnerships across industries? \[13:44\] - How does SparkLabs Connex work for entrepreneurs? \[15:05\] - What are the traits of startup founders that you will seek to invest in? \[17:05\] - What are the types of technologies which you will specifically look into as you invest in the space? \[22:00\] - Omate: elderly care watch from Shenzhen and expand in France \[22:40\] - Can you share the stories of early applicants into the program? \[24:40\] - Can you share the geographical profiles of startups in SparkLabs Connex and whether there are preferences over some geographies? \[25:40\] - Are there any additional things which you want the applicants to know? \[27:40\] - Given the recent coronavirus outbreak, do you think that it will slow down the growth of IoT and 5G in the market? \[28:25\] - How about technologies in IoT and 5G which might have come up during the COVID-19 outbreak? \[29:55\] - Press releases: - [SparkLabs Group launches Connex, an accelerator program for smart city technology](https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/27/sparklabs-group-launches-connex-an-accelerator-program-for-smart-city-technology/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (TechCrunch) - [SparkLabs Connex, a New IoT, Smart City & PropTech Accelerator, Unites the Supply & Demand sides of the Technology Ecosystem to Accelerate Access to Innovation](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/sparklabs-connex-a-new-iot-smart-city-proptech-accelerator-unites-the-supply-demand-sides-of-the-technology-ecosystem-to-accelerate-access-to-innovation-1028944822?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Business Insider) - Closing \[32:30\] - Charles recommendations: Parag Khanna’s “The Future is Asian” - Where can we find him? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/91969315?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5X5XIuhidmXarO8GbiJEtM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/sparklabs-connex-with-charles-reed-anderson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRUqfPI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/sparklabs-connex-with-charles-reed-anderson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/sparklabs-connex-with-charles-reed-anderson/cd19847f-2525-4d77-b9a1-3e87bea0c04f?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/600466950547985/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=68757578&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/SparkLabs-Connex-with-Charles-Reed-Anderson-id1121832-id250208057?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/323\_SparkLabs\_Connex\_with\_Charles\_Reed\_Anderson.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/323%5FSparkLabs%5FConnex%5Fwith%5FCharles%5FReed%5FAnderson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### BiliBili in China with Rui Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/bilibili-in-china-with-rui-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:26.000Z In episode 322, Rui Ma from Techbuzz China joined us to discuss Bilibili in China and discuss how the video site has grown from a niche community of anime lovers to its now proclaimed “Youtube of China”. Starting from the origin story, Rui Ma traced the backstory in how Bilibili came to be and how the site has diversified their monetisation revenues from esports, ecommerce to advertising. Last but not least, she discuss how Bilibili balances its current growth strategy against the patience of the community behind after going public. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Rui Ma, Founder of Euzen Labs and Host of [TechBuzz podcast](https://www.techbuzzchina.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Pandaily produced by SupChina & [Extra Buzz Newsletter](https://www.techbuzzchina.com/newsletter/signup?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ruima](https://twitter.com/ruima?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:28\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:31\] - [Bilibili](https://www.bilibili.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in China \[1:19\] - Can you talk about the origin story of Bilibili and how it has become a platform for fans who are experts in certain niches such as anime in China? \[1:40\] - Who are the founders of Bilibili? \[5:08\] - What are the monetization models for Bilibili? \[7:55\] - How much that Bilibili has ventured into e-sports after acquisition of an e-sports team? \[10:24\] - What are the major similarities & differences between Bilibili and Youtube?\[12:50\] - User experience on Bilibili – bullet comments \[15:44\] - Most popular phrases that come from bullet comments in 2019 – AWSL \[17:30\] - Can you describe how users actually register and get themselves memberships on the Bilibili? How is this different from public social networks out there such as Facebook, Wechat? \[18:45\] - What are the interesting partnerships that Bilibili has done so far for example, New Year Gala with Xinhua Agency and ecommerce with Taobao (Alibaba)? \[21:02\] - Do you think that the Bilibili model can be exported to the US, India or Southeast Asia? Are there already examples of similar models out there? \[22:55\] - The balance between growth and user community interests in Bilibili \[26:30\] - Other references: Check out Techbuzz China’s [Episode 57: Bilibili – The YouTube of China?](https://www.techbuzzchina.com/episodes/ep-57-bilibili-the-youtube-of-china?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Closing \[28:30\] - Anything if you want to recommend that inspire you recently? \[28:35\] - [David Epstein “Range”](https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized-World/dp/0735214484?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[29:01\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/89905918?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Ps409M8bDBlGp8mymFegK?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/bilibili-in-china-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTwCA24?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/bilibili-in-china-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/bilibili-in-china-with-rui-ma/92c957ca-ff8d-4380-a83f-c50e62608f80?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/540615442704656/videos/306695506962863) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=68402943&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/BiliBili-in-China-with-Rui-Ma-id1121832-id245185632?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/322\_BiliBili\_in\_China\_with\_Rui\_Ma.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/322%5FBiliBili%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FRui%5FMa.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### China AI Report 2020 by SCMP with Gareth Nicholson & Sarah Dai URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/china-ai-report-2020-by-scmp-with-gareth-nicholson-sarah-dai/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:26.000Z In episode 321, Gareth Nicholson and Sarah Dai from South China Morning Post discuss the recently launched China AI Report 2020\. In the interview, Gareth and Sarah share the key themes and intended audience for the report and offered their perspectives to how artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved in China. We examine the key drivers behind the growth of AI in China and how China is solving the talent pipeline given it’s an evolving technology and what we should expect in the next few years. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - **[Gareth Nicholson](https://www.scmp.com/author/gareth-nicholson?ref=analysepodcast.com)** **, ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gareth-nicholson-16001b23/?ref=analysepodcast.com))** senior news editor on the Technology desk and **[Sarah Dai](https://www.scmp.com/author/sarah-dai?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@sarah\_dai](https://twitter.com/sarah%5Fdai?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-dai-91191248/?ref=analysepodcast.com))**, senior reporter from South China Morning Post (SCMP) - Can you talk about your roles in SCMP and what do you do? - **[China AI Report 2020](https://sc.mp/china-ai-report-20-pr?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [South China Morning Post](https://www.scmp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)** - What are the key themes for the report? - Who is the intended audience for the report? - What key drivers are behind the growth of AI in China? - If we look at the Chinese market on AI, how do we size the market? - Are there any cultural differences between US and China in their attitudes towards AI? Do they push how the AI technology has evolved in China? - What are the key verticals where AI are dominating in China? - Which are the AI startup unicorns in China which we need to watch? - How does China solve the talent pipeline for AI given that it is an evolving technology? - Unlike the US, China has the hardware advantage that accelerates AI computations. How do they augment the AI market and how are they viewed by investors? - What are your perspectives on the different verticals of AI in China? - Autonomous Driving - Finance - Healthcare - Retail - Smart Cities - Smart Homes - Manufacturing - Where do you think that the Chinese AI industry will evolve towards in the future? - Closing - Where can our audience find the [China AI Report 2020](https://sc.mp/china-ai-report-20-pr?ref=analysepodcast.com) by South China Morning Post? (Do note that there is a 20% off till the end of the month if you click on [this link](https://sc.mp/china-ai-report-20-pr?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Where can our audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/88634399?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2TWjxOYIYAgXfqtsNGSSEA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/china-ai-report-2020-by-scmp-with-gareth-nicholson-sarah-dai?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTMOsP8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/china-ai-report-2020-by-scmp-with-gareth-nicholson-sarah-dai?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/china-ai-report-2020-by-scmp-with-gareth-nicholson-and-sarah-dai/6c8b425f-7b9f-447a-8ff2-15629649577a?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/203520960990656/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=68023451&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/China-AI-Report-2020-by-SCMP-with-Gareth-Nicholson-%26-Sarah-Dai-id1121832-id240426156?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/321\_China\_AI\_Report\_2020\_by\_SCMP\_with\_Gareth\_Nicholson\_\_Sarah\_Dai.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/321%5FChina%5FAI%5FReport%5F2020%5Fby%5FSCMP%5Fwith%5FGareth%5FNicholson%5F%5FSarah%5FDai.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The COVID-19 Coronavirus and its impact from China to Asia Pacific Part 2 with Carol Yin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-covid-19-coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-china-to-asia-pacific-part-2-with-carol-yin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:26.000Z In this episode, Carol Yin and guest host Deng Yuying, CEO of Esevel continues their conversation on the COVID-19 coronavirus and examines its impact from China to Asia Pacific. They discuss the latest updates on how the coronavirus has now spread to Korea, Japan, Italy, Iran and US, while examining how different industries from tourism, airlines ,ecommerce, pharmaceutical and health supplies are affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Last but not least, they analyzed the short, middle and long term impact of the virus and break down the different scenarios on where this may lead in the upcoming months in 2020. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Carol Yin ([@carolyujiayin](https://twitter.com/carolyujiayin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Host of Analyse Asia and guest host Deng Yuying, CEO of [Esevel](https://esevel.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@yuyingdeng](https://twitter.com/yuyingdeng?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuyingdeng/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:55\] - The Wuhan Coronavirus and its impact to Asia Pacific Part 2 \[1:00\] - What has been the recent updates in China with respect to the COVID-19 virus? \[1:07\] - Since our last conversation, what has happened with the Coronavirus globally? (US, Italy, Korea and Japan) \[2:35\] - Which countries have closed their borders to China now in both flights and immigration? \[3:25\] - Business Impact of COVID-19 in China and Asia Pacific - How about the foreign multinationals such as Tesla, Foxconn and Apple where they are highly dependent on the Chinese supply chain? (Reference: [Apple](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/27/21156458/apple-ceo-tim-cook-reopening-factories-china-coronavirus-outbreak?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[5:00\] - Can you talk about the countries in Asia Pacific which are affected? \[7:21\] - Japan: Schools are closed and the likelihood of cancellation of the Tokyo 2020 olympics - Korea: How [Korea has suddenly reported a surge in cases](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/coronavirus-south-korea-cases-surge-as-australia-bans-iran-arrivals?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Southeast Asia: Indonesia and Thailand \[11:02\] - Let’s examine the short, middle and [long term](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/business/economy/companies-coronavirus-economy.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) impact for industries in detail \[12:35\] - Tourism \[12:55\] - Airline Industries: There is a possibility of airlines going bankrupt as Cathay Pacific and [Singapore Airlines](https://onemileatatime.com/singapore-airlines-ceo-pay-cut/?ref=analysepodcast.com) have announced paycuts for their staff. \[15:30\] - What are the industries benefited from the coronavirus? \[16:30\] - Technology industry: Gaming industry (Tencent), Ecommerce (Alibaba), Zoom – remote working \[16:50\] - Pharmaceuticals and medical supplies (shortage of masks and sanitizers) \[18:50\] - What should we expect in the next couple of weeks and months? \[19:30\] - McKinsey Report: [COVID-19 – Implications for Business Report](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business?ref=analysepodcast.com) on 27 Feb 2020 **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/88045478?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2udMlRRjqJFMmUUGKDQKLo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-covid-19-coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-china-to-asia-pacific-part-2-with-carol-yin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQQoCww?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-covid-19-coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-china-to-asia-pacific-part-2-with-carol-yin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-covid-19-coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-china-to-asia-pacific-part-2-with-carol-yin/a423b5af-117d-42f5-bc54-3a9e3a35e6a1?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/137876077550079/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=67852667&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-COVID-19-Coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-China-to-Asia-Pacific-Part-2-with-Carol-Yin-id1121832-id237918941?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/320\_The\_COVID-19\_Coronavirus\_and\_its\_impact\_from\_China\_to\_Asia\_Pacific\_Part\_2\_with\_Carol\_Yin.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/320%5FThe%5FCOVID-19%5FCoronavirus%5Fand%5Fits%5Fimpact%5Ffrom%5FChina%5Fto%5FAsia%5FPacific%5FPart%5F2%5Fwith%5FCarol%5FYin.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The COVID-19 Coronavirus and its impact from China to Asia Pacific with Carol Yin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-covid-19-coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-china-to-asia-pacific-with-carol-yin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:25.000Z After a long hiatus, in Episode 319, our host Carol Yin takes the seat to discuss the recent COVID-19 coronavirus and examine the impact of the pandemic to the rest of Asia Pacific and globally in two part series. In the first part of the series, together with the guest host, Yuying Deng, Carol related her experience living through the challenging times in China before and after the COVID-19 virus broke out. We discuss the origins of the virus, the measures in how the Chinese government are dealing with the outbreak, the outpour of grief from the Chinese over Dr Li Wenliang’s death and broke down the major misconceptions perpetuated by media outlets. **Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):** - Carol Yin ([@carolyujiayin](https://twitter.com/carolyujiayin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-yin-b2a2491b/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Host of Analyse Asia and guest host Deng Yuying, CEO of [Altizen](https://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@yuyingdeng](https://twitter.com/yuyingdeng?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuyingdeng/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - The COVID-19 Coronavirus ([WHO site](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and its impact to Asia Pacific (Reference: [Nikkei Asia Review](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Cover-Story/Coronavirus-Economic-contagion-is-already-rippling-through-Asia?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - A view of how the pandemic with the COVID-19 virus started before and after the outbreak made public and during Chinese New Year from Carol’s perspective \[0:52\] - To start, let’s take a chronological approach to the whole incident, how did the coronavirus originated in Wuhan and started spreading across Asia Pacific and other parts of the world? \[8:49\] - Wuhan is a major transportation hub and the city is of the size of Pittsburgh in the US. Did the Chinese New Year holidays catalyse the spread of the virus due to the large scale movement of people within China? \[12:58\] - How about the virus? Where did it originate? How does it compare to the SARS situation in 2003 or similar outbreaks? \[14:54\] - What are the symptoms for someone who contract the coronavirus and how do we know if we suffer from flu or the coronoavirus? \[17:15\] - What has the Chinese government done so far in China? \[19:10\] - How are the small and medium businesses in China coping with the outbreak? \[26:21\] - What is the situation within Wuhan itself and the rest of China? \[27:15\] - What are the misconceptions that the rest of the world have with regards to the coronavirus? \[30:46\] - What is it like now living in Shanghai and dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak? \[33:00\] - When are things likely to go normal in China such that the Chinese government will stop the pause button currently with their response to the situation? \[36:03\] - [Dr Li Wenliang’s death and why the Chinese were outraged by his death](https://www.ft.com/content/a82d1cac-4909-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441?ref=analysepodcast.com). (Source: Financial Times) \[37:00\] - As of today (and recording is accurate as of 9 Feb 2020), how many cases are confirmed in China and the rest of the world? \[40:40\] - The impact of COVID-19 on groceries deliveries \[45:25\] - Misinformation in the Internet across the world [with tech platforms struggling to deal with them](https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/31/21115589/coronavirus-wuhan-china-myths-hoaxes-facebook-social-media-tiktok-twitter-wechat?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Wechat, Twitter) \[46:40\] - Wechat fact checking platform against Twitter’s no fact checking. **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/86892761?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1QphrtCYFBU5CfRskXQ4xD?si=qr8Wp54wSDGwRla68Ef8ow&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-covid-19-coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-china-to-asia-pacific-with-carol-yin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtS6Wzm4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-covid-19-coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-china-to-asia-pacific-with-carol-yin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-covid-19-coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-china-to-asia-pacific-with-carol-yin/f525f4ff-d57b-4174-9270-51c176484efb?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2754207978019465/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=67530220&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-COVID-19-Coronavirus-and-its-impact-from-China-to-Asia-Pacific-with-Carol-Yin-id1121832-id233366468?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/319\_The\_COVID-19\_Coronavirus\_and\_its\_impact\_from\_China\_to\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Carol\_Yin.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/319%5FThe%5FCOVID-19%5FCoronavirus%5Fand%5Fits%5Fimpact%5Ffrom%5FChina%5Fto%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FCarol%5FYin.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The State of China & SoftBank in 2019 with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-state-of-china-softbank-in-2019-with-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:25.000Z Shai Oster, the Asia Bureau Chief from The Information reviews the year of 2019 on how the technology giants in China and SoftBank have fared and offers his annual predictions to what will be happening in 2020\. Shai reviewed his 2018 predictions and ranked how each of them have gone for 2019\. In addition, he offered his perspectives on how Huawei and ByteDance will face constant challenges in their overseas expansion and whether SoftBank will raise their 2nd fund and the downstream impact from their debacle with Wework trickling down to Oyo, Didi and Grab in 2020\. Last but not least, Shai throws forward what he thinks will happen in 2020. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Shai Oster ([@beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Asia Bureau Chief in [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - So since your last appearance on the show, what have you been up to? - 2018 predictions - Didi to IPO in end 2019. - ByteDance will continue to grow and fight Facebook in Southeast Asia, but will not IPO. - Ant Financial’s path to IPO is not clear. - What will happen to Xiaomi with their overseas expansion? - First-quarter of scary growth in China and followed by the wave of government stimulus in China. - State of China and SoftBank for 2019 - What are the few events which you feel that 2019 has shifted the trajectory for SoftBank and Chinese tech giants? - Event 1: The US and China Relationship: There is obviously a lot of tension between the two countries, and a display of that tension can be seen in what has happened to Huawei in the last year. There was the trade ban that is forcing US companies like Google & Qualcomm to stop providing to Huawei & also the FCC ban that stops the use of government fund to purchase equipment from Huawei. It seems like Huawei is always in the news these days, from their product launches, to their lawsuits, and also the recent employee detainment allegations. - How has Huawei been doing and coping with all the challenges they’re facing in the U.S.? - Do you think that the Huawei CEO has been responding well to the critics? - What is the future of 5G for Huawei across the world? - Event 2: The SoftBank debacle with Wework and Vision Fund 2 - We all know that WeWork is not what used to be, so has Vision Fund 1 reached the peak with Wework’s collapse? - How has that changed the way how the public markets have perceived the startup unicorns given that Uber have not performed well for their IPO and Wework failed to even go public? - Will Oyo in India be the next on a similar trajectory with Wework? - Will SoftBank be able to raise the 2nd Vision Fund in 2020? - Are the other unicorns backed by SoftBank in danger, for example, Bytedance and Grab? - Event 3: The public markets for Chinese Tech Startups - Alibaba has just popped in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, after Xiaomi and Meituan-Dianping, do you think that HKSE will be the Chinese tech startups’ port of call for IPO? - With the chaos in Hong Kong and investors moving their assets from Hong Kong to Singapore, do you foresee that the HKSE will lose its pole position as a financial hub and what it means for chinese tech giants planning to go IPO? - Other long term implications & effects to businesses & tech companies? - Event 4: Bytedance - Will Bytedance end up in the same predicament similar to Huawei? - Bytedance is also getting pushback in India, does that mean that the overseas growth potential for this company will end? - Event 5: Overseas expansion for Chinese Tech Titans - Will the Chinese Tech Titans focus on Southeast Asia, India and the rest of the world instead of continuing its trajectory to put a foothold in the US? - Can they compete with Google, Amazon and Facebook in these nascent markets? - What will be your predictions for 2020 and what are the key things you will be watching out for? - China & US relationship in 2020 - China economy - Tiktok will retreat from US, scale back & renew their focus on China, India, Southeast Asia & Africa - Huawei - Shift of Money out of China and US into Southeast Asia and India from VCs and PE funds. - Closing - How do my audience find you? - Check out [the Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)‘s new app: [“Tech Top 10” ](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tech-top-10-by-the-information/id1485459932?ls=1&ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/82442789?Influencer%5Fuid=64857&Share%5Ffrom=Web&Share%5Fto=copylink&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5HEIr5ZK29s4spvdejvdBZ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-state-of-china-softbank-in-2019-with-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTSSWcE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/the-state-of-china-softbank-in-2019-with-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-state-of-china-and-softbank-in-2019-with-shai-oster/2749a9a6-3107-4839-be5d-8a9c3068d780?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2468182873455021/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=66276345&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-State-of-China-%26-SoftBank-in-2019-with-Shai-Oster-id1121832-id215718196?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/318\_The\_State\_of\_China\_\_SoftBank\_in\_2019\_with\_Shai\_Oster.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/318%5FThe%5FState%5Fof%5FChina%5F%5FSoftBank%5Fin%5F2019%5Fwith%5FShai%5FOster.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Shift to the East with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/shift-to-the-east-with-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:24.000Z Simon Kemp, founder and CEO of Kepios joined us to discuss the recent Digital 2019 Q4 Global StatShot Report and share the major observations in how Asia Pacific has shifted social media from the west to the east. Starting from the report, Simon shares the key major observations including Asia’s rising, Tik Tok vs Facebook and how 5G will shape mobile and social media in 2020\. Last but not least, Simon offers his predictions on the digital world as he looks forward to 2020. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of [Kepios](http://kepios.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - We met during the live show in Singapore and many thanks for coming on as one of our three mysterious guests on the show. Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? - Shift to the East: [We Are Social Q4 Report](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2019-q4-global-digital-statshot?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Q4 2019 StatShot Report](https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2019-q4-global-digital-statshot?ref=analysepodcast.com). - Reference: The [DataReportal library of free reports](https://datareportal.com/library?ref=analysepodcast.com) - What are the key major trends that you have observed globally and then specifically to the Asia Pacific? - In this Q4 report, you talk about Asia’s rising, can you break down what the key observations are? - How has been the growth in social media like in Asia Pacific: is it growing, stagnating or declining? - Based on the recent backlashes on Facebook, does the data show that the social media site has been on a decline? And are other platforms owned by Facebook such as Whatsup & Instagram been affected? - What about Tik Tok? How has their growth in Asia Pacific like? - Do you think that Tik Tok will face significant headwinds in the US similar to Huawei? - Specifically, the top apps in the Asia Pacific are no longer just confined to China but also in Japan and Korea as well, is it a foreshadowing of a longer trend? - What are some new social media sites/apps/networks that you are monitoring that no one else is looking at in the region? - How is 5G transforming China & Asia Pacific in this quarter? - What should we be looking forward to in 2020? - Closing - Do you have recent recommendations of books or anything else to share? - Simon’s recommendations: [Danny Denhard’s newsletter](https://mustreads.substack.com/), - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/79977600?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4wVZDl3ZTL9NR4Rm79tdyl?si=dxuv8cN7QgCY-WbVANa1TQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/shift-to-the-east-with-simon-kemp?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTQY-m4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/shift-to-the-east-with-simon-kemp?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/shift-to-the-east-with-simon-kemp/d04e9a3a-c50f-4a03-bb21-5426017ac9f6?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/448486319072959/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=65865185&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Shift-to-the-East-with-Simon-Kemp-id1121832-id208543063?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/317\_Shift\_to\_the\_East\_with\_Simon\_Kemp.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/317%5FShift%5Fto%5Fthe%5FEast%5Fwith%5FSimon%5FKemp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Tech Titans of China with Rebecca Fannin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/tech-titans-of-china-with-rebecca-fannin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:24.000Z Rebecca Fannin, author of “Tech Titans of China” and founder of Silicon Dragon Ventures joined us for a conversation to discuss her new book and offered her perspectives on how China will reshape the world with their breed of tech giants: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and many more. Rebecca began with the story of her career and how she came to cover Chinese technology companies from its earliest days. She discussed the major themes of her new book, and how the current trade tensions will shape China’s path in the technology space and why we need to start thinking of China as originators of technology rather than the misconceptions that they are copycats. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Rebecca Fannin ([@rfannin](https://twitter.com/rfannin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-fannin-533128/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Author of “[Tech Titans of China](https://www.amazon.com/Tech-Titans-China-challenging-innovating-ebook/dp/B07MJ5Y7B4?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and Founder of [Silicon Dragon Ventures](https://www.silicondragonventures.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:16\] - As a young person who also works for a media company, I must ask, how did you start your career? \[0:32\] - What advice would you give to young people looking to be a tech reporter or a media entrepreneur? \[3:55\] - You have started covering China tech much earlier than most people with your first book “Silicon Dragon”, what are the major key misconceptions you have observed in how other parts of the world cover China? \[5:30\] - As you have interacted with many key entrepreneurs such as Robin Li and Jack Ma, who is the most interesting entrepreneur in China who you have interviewed so far? \[7:13\] - Tech Titans of China: “How China’s Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, & Going Global” \[10:30\] - What are the main themes of the book and who are the intended audience? \[10:40\] - We have known the Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent or BAT in short that are core key companies in China similar to Amazon, Google and Facebook in the US. How are they different? \[13:20\] - From copiers to now originators, what are the key turning points for China to become a technology power in the world? \[15:45\] - Is the government and their regulations the key reason why the tech giants in the US do not manage to penetrate into China? What are the other key reasons as to why the US tech companies have so many problems entering China? \[17:50\] - If China has not banned Google, Facebook or Twitter, would these companies have succeeded? \[20:10\] - We are increasingly seeing the decoupling of China and the US technology sector given the current US-China trade war. Do you think that the global supply chain which powers tech companies from both countries will break apart with what happened to ZTE and Huawei? \[22:17\] - How does China have evolved in these three key areas \[22:19\]: - Ecommerce \[22:22\] - AI \[25:18\] - Drones and robots given that they have the most established and well developed manufacturing ecosystem in Shenzhen while US manufacturing has declined over the past three decades \[27:58\] - Where do you see the future of Chinese tech for China and will it start spilling to the rest of the world given its nascent influence in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa? \[29:17\] - Which tech giants in China are currently interesting from your perspective? \[31:20\] - Closing \[33:42\] - How can my audience find you? \[33:52\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/79977600?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5wK2M4JQqvvKkKpskfl953?si=XSQETOdLT4a5FlrBxkxCdQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/tech-titans-of-china-with-rebecca-fannin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQusLdc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/analyseasia/tech-titans-of-china-with-rebecca-fannin?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/tech-titans-of-china-with-rebecca-fannin/0f783608-0f88-4caa-8c54-10bfcbd6b69f?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/483505288951066/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=65685184&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Tech-Titans-of-China-with-Rebecca-Fannin-id1121832-id206648725?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and originally created by Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/316\_Tech\_Titans\_of\_China\_with\_Rebecca\_Fannin.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/316%5FTech%5FTitans%5Fof%5FChina%5Fwith%5FRebecca%5FFannin.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Should we replace Baidu with Bytedance in BAT China? with James Hull URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/should-we-replace-baidu-with-bytedance-in-bat-china-with-james-hull/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:23.000Z James Hull from Hullx and co-host of China Tech Investor podcast joined us in a discussion on whether we should replace Baidu with Bytedance in the BAT China. Starting with the question, James dived deep into the business structures of Baidu and Bytedance and examined whether Baidu has lost their edge as one of the three tech giants of China. In the same conversation, James offered his perspectives on how Bytedance will replace Baidu in the future. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - James Hull ([@jameshullx](https://twitter.com/jameshullx?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshull/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Co-host of [China Tech Investor podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/china-tech-investor/id1440576420?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Founder of [Hullx](https://hullx.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:21\] - Since you have last appeared on the podcast, what have you been up to? \[0:50\] - Should we replace Baidu with Bytedance in the BAT? \[0:56\] - BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) & TMD (Toutiao, Meituan-dianping, Didi) - Let’s start with Baidu. How has Baidu performed as a public company for the past decade? \[2:08\] - What are the key businesses of Baidu? (iQiyi is spun off as a separate company)? \[3:27\] - Baidu’s advances in AI \[4:56\] and in the intelligent audio input interface and speaker sector. \[5:42\] - Is Baidu dependent on the advertising business similar to Google in the US? \[6:51\] - Comparison between Baidu and Bytedance in terms of user information feeds \[9:30\] - Bytedance’s advantage with user feeds and recommendations through Douyin and Toutiao \[11:51\] - Bytedance has been growing exponentially with a 75B valuation from their recent round with SoftBank, now the most valuable startup in the world followed by Didi. How are they performing as a business? \[15:09\] - What are the key revenue drivers for Bytedance? - How are they compared to Alibaba and Tencent? \[18:08\] - What are Baidu’s competitive advantages that you think may allow them to stay competitive within the BAT? \[24:30\] - How Baidu’s search engine competes against Google and the rest of Chinese search engines. \[28:24\] - Should we just replace Baidu with Bytedance in the BAT? \[31:09\] - Interesting [Chinese answer on the question for this podcast](https://www.zhihu.com/question/307728012?ref=analysepodcast.com) (in Chinese) in Zhihu (similar to Reddit and Quora in the US) which Carol has referenced and mentioned in the discussion. - Closing \[37:24\] - Recommendation for a book, movie, podcast, or any consumable content?\[37:24\] - James’ recommendation: “[I love capitalism](https://www.amazon.com/I-Love-Capitalism-American-Story/dp/073521624X/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?keywords=I+love+capitalism+book&qid=1572210522&s=books&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Ken Langone , “[The Great Rebalancing](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Rebalancing-Conflict-Perilous-Economy/dp/0691158681?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Michael Pettis - Carol’s recommendation: [Louis Cha’s or Jin Yong’s martial arts novels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin%5FYong?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How does our audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/76926303?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3gqQncMfyI84ycwnT97ePh?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/should-we-replace-baidu-with-bytedance-in-bat-china-with-james-hull?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQFfV0A?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/34anZCi?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/should-we-replace-baidu-with-bytedance-in-bat-china-with-james-hull/1d949a7d-dc89-493e-bd50-139cbea77840?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/547758602648096/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=64875671&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Should-we-replace-Baidu-with-Bytedance-in-BAT-China%3F-with-James-Hull-id1121832-id198075043?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/315\_Should\_we\_replace\_Baidu\_with\_Bytedance\_in\_BAT\_China\_\_with\_James\_Hull.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/315%5FShould%5Fwe%5Freplace%5FBaidu%5Fwith%5FBytedance%5Fin%5FBAT%5FChina%5F%5Fwith%5FJames%5FHull.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Small Handbook to Asia Cryptocurrency with Joyce Yang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-small-handbook-to-asia-cryptocurrency-with-joyce-yang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:23.000Z Joyce Yang, founder of Global Coin Research, joined us in a conversation about the Asian cryptocurrency market in Asia with our new host, Carol Yin. Joyce and Carol discussed the recent publication by Global Coin Research (GCR) “The Small Handbook to Asia Cryptocurrency: On local ecosystems, trends & regulations” and identified the key important trends and currents in the Asian market, specifically China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Singapore. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Joyce Yang ([@JoyceInNYC](https://twitter.com/JoyceInNYC?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yonghuanyang/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder of [Global Coin Research](https://globalcoinresearch.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:40\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:03\] - [The Small Handbook to Asia Cryptocurrency](https://globalcoinresearch.com/2019/07/23/announcing-global-coin-researchs-newly-launched-guide-gook-on-asia-cryptocurrency-and-blockchain-communities/?ref=analysepodcast.com): On local ecosystems, trends & regulations published by Global Coin Research (GCR) \[4:56\] - Joyce discuss the GCR’s new advisory & venture fund. - How did you and your team in GCR put the handbook together? \[5:08\] - Who are the intended audience? \[8:14\] - What are the main themes of the handbook? \[10:26\] - Are there any common threads on cryptocurrency within Asia? For example, it seems that a lot of Asian countries have banned ICOs. Prolonged bear market, IEO. \[11:22\] - China \[13:25\] - China is probably the most important market for cryptocurrency whether it’s bitcoin and blockchain and have banned ICOs since 2017 and at the same time, reducing bitcoin mining towards zero, what are the key trends in 2019 which you believe that are most important? \[13:46\] - One interesting part on China is that you have broken down the major financial institutions in the Chinese government that everyone dabbling in bitcoin and blockchain must know, which are they and why they are important to the whole ecosystem? \[16:01\] - Are there any major differences between Hong Kong and China when it comes to cryptocurrency? \[17:41\] - Is Hong Kong following China with respect to regulation in blockchain and bitcoin given that it has also banned ICOs now? \[19:41\] - Japan and Korea \[20:34\] - How has the Japanese cryptocurrency market changed after the major theft of bitcoins from Mount Gox in 2014? \[20:49\] - Can you briefly talk about the Japanese blockchain startup ecosystem and also the Japanese enterprises in blockchain? \[22:55\] - Who are the key players from the startup spaces and major enterprises involved in cryptocurrency within Korea? \[24:44\] - Korea is known for the kimchi premium: can you explain what that means in the context of cryptocurrency? \[26:32\] - Singapore and Indonesia \[28:27\] - Indonesia is the largest market in Southeast Asia, can you talk about how the government is viewing cryptocurrency (bitcoin + blockchain)? \[28:29\] - Who are the key players from the startup spaces and major enterprises involved in cryptocurrency within Indonesia? \[29:58\] - How is Singapore looking at regulation in the cryptocurrency market? \[31:05\] - We notice a lot of major cryptocurrency players ([Binance](https://www.binance.com/en?ref=analysepodcast.com)) are based in Singapore, what are its competitive strengths and weaknesses? \[32:54\] - Other interesting Asian markets: Thailand and Vietnam. \[35:02\] - Closing \[36:14\] - How do my audience find you? \[36:28\] - [The Global Coin Podcast ](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-global-coin-podcast-by-joyce-yang/id1399033937?ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/75824884?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4o7y54HZRiVfPl7mMMSUnR?si=-jEpLQMlQGCruhG-xhAgJQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-small-handbook-to-asia-cryptocurrency-with-joyce-yang?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQ5MObM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/319d6yv?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-small-handbook-to-asia-cryptocurrency-with-joyce-yang/6dd9f7ce-8b79-4ad9-840f-23f464619286?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2413438818710042/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Stitcher - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Small-Handbook-to-Asia-Cryptocurrency-with-Joyce-Yang-id1121832-id193408244?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/The\_Small\_Handbook\_to\_Asia\_Cryptocurrency\_with\_Joyce\_Yang.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/The%5FSmall%5FHandbook%5Fto%5FAsia%5FCryptocurrency%5Fwith%5FJoyce%5FYang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Vertex Holdings and Venture Capital in Southeast Asia with Chua Kee Lock URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/vertex-holdings-and-venture-capital-in-southeast-asia-with-chua-kee-lock/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:22.000Z Fresh out of the studio, Chua Kee Lock, CEO of Vertex Holdings and managing partner of Vertex Ventures, Southeast Asia & India joined us in a conversation together with guest host Charles Reed Anderson of TechBurst Asia podcast about the venture capital firm and its footprint across Southeast Asia globally. We start with Kee Lock’s story and how he eventually become a venture capitalist. Following on, Kee Lock discuss Vertex Holdings and Vertex Ventures and how the fund assembles and helps their portfolio of high growth startups such as Grab in the region. Last but not least, Kee Lock discuss the evolution of venture capital in Southeast Asia and India and where it is leading. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Chua Kee Lock, CEO of Vertex Holdings & Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India ( [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kee-lock-chua-663119/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:25\] - How did you start your career? \[0:36\] - In your career journey, what are the words of wisdom you can share with my audience based on your time in Silicon Valley? \[2:18\] - Kee Lock’s thoughts on why people are central to building successful technology companies. \[3:30\] - Vertex Holdings and Vertex Ventures \[5:00\] - Can you give a brief introduction to Vertex Holdings and its relationship with Temasek Holdings? \[5:10\] - What’s a typical day for you like as a VC? \[11:07\] - Can you describe the different funds under Vertex Holdings and their current purposes? Does the different funds reflect the different stages of investment? \[12:45\] - What are the traits of founders and startups which the investment team in Vertex seek? \[14:00\] - What are the interesting companies within the Vertex portfolio? \[16:40\] - [Grab](https://www.grab.com/sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Licious](https://www.licious.in/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Validus](https://validus.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Instarem](https://www.instarem.com/en-au/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How does the Vertex network help the portfolio companies or companies who might be interested to seek funding? \[21:30\] - Vertex has made very interesting investments globally, for example, Grab, Spacemob (acquired by Wework), Mobike (acquired by Meituan Dianping) and many others, how do you work with the founders and what help do most high growth companies need most in the early stage? - Trends in venture capital across India and Southeast Asia \[24:40\] - What are your thoughts on the investment opportunity in India and Southeast Asia? \[25:00\] - Southeast Asia is not a homogeneous market with different countries at different stages of economic development, how does Vertex see their investments when they do their regional expansion? Do you see India with the same challenge? \[26:25\] - Kee Lock’s comments on shortage of tech talent and skills in Asia and how entrepreneurs are solving them. \[28:30\] - Kee Lock’s thoughts on returning technology talent to Asia from Silicon Valley and its impact to startup ecosystems in Asia Pacific for the next few years. \[30:50\] - Does the lack of exits in India and Southeast Asia deter the market opportunity for venture capital to thrive? \[31:35\] - With more global funds entering the region, do you see the potential of an overheated market with valuations going up? \[33:00\] - Where do you see the evolution of venture capital in the next few years? \[35:30\] - Closing \[37:40\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[37:45\] - Kee Lock’s recommendations: Ray Dalio’s “Principles” and Simon Sinek’s “Start from Why” - How do my audience find you? \[39:00\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/66437938?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/391DgLRQPIX1ztYNZ5OsGy?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/vertex-holdings-and-venture-capital-in-southeast-asia-with-chua-kee-lock?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTHIs8c?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2m6EMW9?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/vertex-holdings-and-venture-capital-in-southeast-asia-with-chua-kee-lock/95a850b7-3266-4ad5-9148-6335547ec281?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1161780304018441/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=63755426&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Vertex-Holdings-and-Venture-Capital-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Chua-Kee-Lock-id1121832-id184216888?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by guest host [Charles Reed Anderson](http://charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com), LinkedIn) from [Techburst Asia Podcast](http://charlesreedanderson.com/techburst-asia-podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and produced by Carol Yin and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is fully produced by Carol Yin ([@CarolYujiaYin](https://twitter.com/CarolYujiaYin?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Editor’s note: We thank Charles for helping us to guest host this episode before Carol starts her new role as the producer and host of Analyse Asia after the live show. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/313\_Vertex\_Ventures\_with\_Chua\_Kee\_Lock.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/313%5FVertex%5FVentures%5Fwith%5FChua%5FKee%5FLock.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Taking a break ... URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/all-good-things/ Last updated: 2021-09-24T10:25:38.000Z A short note detailing a major change with the podcast with our creator stepping down as producer and host after episode 312 and where we will go from here. Analyse Asia podcast has been an important side project for me. While there are different motivations in starting the podcast ranging from providing a voice on the business, technology and media community in an Asian perspective to learning to listen to others and capturing information better personally, I often wonder where it will be leading. I thank the audience who have supported the show. I am often humbled by some of the fans of the show who are respectable business leaders in the region and globally. There are many out there who have reached out to help me with guests out there. There are many out there who have met me in real life and introduce themselves as fans. The next group of people I thank, are the guests on the show and I appreciate for them to share their time with me. They have taught me many things and helped me to understand Asia as a region better. Since I have started a new job, there are new personal circumstances that require me to put my attention back to my elderly parents and family while juggling a heavy work load in a new fast paced and high growth environment. I am blessed with the arrival of our third child, Estella and not to forget those two young ones, Evan and Eleanor who are growing up and often wonder about the purpose of the microphone on my work desk at home. Oftentimes, I have been asked how I have managed my workload with the corporate day job as a senior executive, the family and the side project. Finally the work has taken a toil on me over the past three months. As a result, I am taking a long hiatus from Analyse Asia. It means that I have to step down both as a producer and host immediately. Moving forward, I will be stepping down from my duties as the host and producer of the show. My last presence on the podcast is the recent published episode 312\. I will appear one last time for the [live show in Singapore on 5 Sep 2019](https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/analyse-asia-5th-anniversary-singapore-live-show-tickets-63186851574?ref=analysepodcast.com) and it won’t be recorded. It will be a time where I can meet some of you out there. Moving forward, I have asked Carol to take over the podcast from me. The show will be hosted and produced by Carol Yin, who I have started work with early this year. She has been working behind the scenes to help me figure out the next steps to the future of this podcast. Moving from here, she will be driving the podcast as the host and the executive producer. In the transition, I will work with her to put a team around her so that it can move on without me. We will experiment and hopefully take the podcast where it should be. All good things need not come to an end, but they have to move forward without me from here. I thank my family, friends and audience for the support on my side project over the years. The best days of Analyse Asia podcast will be always be ahead of us. yours sincerely, Bernard Leong Creator and former Host & Executive Producer of Analyse Asia ### Wavemaker VC and PropertyGuru Group with Steve Melhuish URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/wavemaker-vc-and-propertyguru-group-with-steve-melhuish/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:22.000Z Steve Melhuish, co-founder of PropertyGuru and partner from Wavemaker VC, shares the lessons of his journey from an entrepreneur with PropertyGuru to now a partner in a venture capital firm. Steve started with the backstory behind on how he founded PropertyGuru and shared the lessons in scaling up the company across Southeast Asia and explained the thinking process and execution behind his transition out of the CEO role in the company. Subsequently, Steve discuss his current gig with Wavemaker VC, and the key traits in companies and founders which he invests on and his current thoughts on the proptech space. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Steve Melhuish, co-founder of [PropertyGuru](https://www.propertygurugroup.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and partner in [Wavemaker VC](https://wavemaker.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemel/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:12\] - How did you start your career? \[0:30\] - In your career journey, what are the most interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? \[5:07\] - [PropertyGuru](https://www.propertygurugroup.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[10:17\] - Can you talk about the backstory when you founded PropertyGuru? \[10:42\] - From the creation of the company till you moving over to be a venture capitalist, what are the most interesting milestones that PropertyGuru? \[14:07\] - What is the rationale for you to step down as CEO and what’s the thinking and execution phase to bring in a professional CEO and make that transition happen? \[22:52\] - How are you involved with PropertyGuru now? \[29:00\] - [Wavemaker VC](https://wavemaker.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[30:00\] - Can you introduce Wavemaker, the venture capital firm in Southeast Asia to my audience? \[30:05\] - What’s your current role and coverage as a venture partner in Wavemaker VC? \[32:31\] - What is a typical day for you as a venture capitalist? \[35:05\] - What are the attributes in founders from startups that you look for before investing in them? \[36:05\] - Which are the interesting verticals that you are now looking into startups for investment? \[39:15\] - Can you talk about your perspectives on the current wave of startups in proptech, and what are the key opportunities there for startups to solve? \[41:10\] - How would you advise a startup to expand into Southeast Asia? \[44:49\] - Closing \[46:30\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[46:39\] - Steve’s recommendation: “Blue Planet 2” documentary by David Attenborough and the movie “Vice”, books such as “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh, “Start from Why” by Simon Sinek, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” by Verne Harnish. **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/65284875?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/19K36aizjdxCkJpr2Oi5IZ?si=nxt7pl8rTau0v%5FAbGRn9Jg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/wavemaker-vc-and-propertyguru-group-with-steve-melhuish?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtT8GMx4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2L18qVl?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/wavemaker-vc-and-propertyguru-group-with-steve-melhuish/54cd4dee-8cb9-44f9-8aef-cdc12887820c?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/423041485224163/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=63384447&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Wavemaker-VC-and-PropertyGuru-Group-with-Steve-Melhuish-id1121832-id178996563?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) until 30 June 2019 and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. This episode is recorded and produced in June 2019. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/312\_Wavemaker\_VC\_and\_PropertyGuru\_Group\_with\_Steve\_Melhuish.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/312%5FWavemaker%5FVC%5Fand%5FPropertyGuru%5FGroup%5Fwith%5FSteve%5FMelhuish.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Leadership and Regional Expansion of DocDoc with Grace Park URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/leadership-and-regional-expansion-of-docdoc-with-grace-park/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:22.000Z Grace Park, co-founder & president of DocDoc joined us in a conversation about leadership and regional expansion of DocDoc in Asia. Grace started the conversation, narrating her background as a military officer with the US army and how she moved subsequently from a military career into a business executive in notable healthcare companies. Grace shared the backstory behind the founding of DocDoc as a leading patient intelligence company from her perspective and offered her perspectives in how she utilized her experience to expand DocDoc regionally across Asia. Last but not least, Grace offered her thoughts on leadership and the importance of how to lead teams to success in different settings. **Editor’s note:** This interview was conducted in June 2019, and recently [DocDoc has raised their series B funding of US$13M](https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/docdoc-raises-us13m-total-funds-hit-us246m?ref=analysepodcast.com). Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Grace Park (Facebook, [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/graceparksirucek/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), co-founder & President of [DocDoc](https://docdoc.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:19\] - How did you start your career? \[1:12\] - Before Docdoc, you have been taken senior executive roles in medical and healthcare sector with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Medtronic, can you talk about what you have done in these companies and how that experience shapes the way in how you operate in Asia Pacific markets? \[4:15\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting life lessons you can share with my audience? \[6:34\] - [DocDoc](https://docdoc.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Perspectives on Regional Expansion of Digital Healthcare in Asia Pacific \[8:08\] - I am curious to know the backstory of Docdoc from your perspective given [Cole has offered the same story in an earlier episode](https://analyse.asia/2019/04/26/episode-295-docdoc-digital-healthcare-asia-cole-sirucek/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Can you articulate the founding story from your perspective and how did that translate to founding of Docdoc? \[8:24\] - Let’s help our audience to refresh their understanding of the company DocDoc, can you describe the company and its vision and mission? \[12:44\] - What is your current role and coverage as the President of DocDoc? \[15:34\] - What keeps you awake at night or gets you excited every morning about DocDoc’s mission? \[16:35\] - Given DocDoc focus on to be the leader in patient intelligence, how do you build the trust and bringing the doctors in DocDoc’s network? From your engagement with the doctors, what are the doctors’ major pain points as providers of medical care in the entire healthcare supply chain?\[17:56\] - You have led in expanding DocDoc’s business across Asia Pacific, can you talk about how you think strategically on the go to market and build the right teams to expand into countries such as Korea and Hong Kong? \[21:56\] - What are the most interesting lessons you have learned in working in a startup environment with DocDoc? What will you have done differently? \[23:15\] - Leadership \[25:37\] - I understand that you are a great student on leadership. What are the books in leadership which have inspired you and further your thinking on the subject? \[26:09\] - Viktor Frankl’s “Man Search for Meaning” - Warren G Bennis “On Becoming a Leader” - Ron Heifetz “Leadership without Easy Answers” - You have an interesting career before Harvard Business School in the US military, and you were based in Korea as an officer, how did the experience shape you as a leader in the military and subsequently in the corporate world? \[28:50\] - In your opinion, what are the most important traits for a leader? \[32:40\] - Do you think that a team learn more by going thru a crisis than going thru the regular motion of the day? \[33:40\] - Do you see a difference between a manager and a leader? \[35:13\] - Can you talk about your style of leadership and how did it come about? \[36:18\] - Closing \[38:22\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[38:35\] - Grace’s recommendations: Eric Topol, “Deep Medicine” and two articles: (a) Tampa Bay Times, “[Heartbroken](https://www.tampabay.com/projects/2018/investigations/heartbroken/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and NY Times [“Listen to What Doctors in ‘times of crisis’ said behind doors”](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/us/children-heart-surgery-takeaways.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? \[41:13\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/64479575?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3K4bWhGMT3XPcMQ97PdpC5?si=1B2F112BSzGvTIcIBupm9A&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/leadership-and-regional-expansion-of-docdoc-with-grace-park?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTU-HFM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2ZMEIK0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/leadership-and-regional-expansion-of-docdoc-with-grace-park/811e3972-6aff-4045-9ee4-e2049b47cdbc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/377880339594538/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=63122270&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Leadership-and-Regional-Expansion-of-DocDoc-with-Grace-Park-id1121832-id176057021?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) until 30 June 2019 and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. This episode is recorded and produced in June 2019. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/311\_Leadership\_and\_Regional\_Expansion\_of\_DocDoc\_with\_Grace\_Park.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/311%5FLeadership%5Fand%5FRegional%5FExpansion%5Fof%5FDocDoc%5Fwith%5FGrace%5FPark.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Venture Capital in Southeast Asia with Justin Hall URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/venture-capital-in-southeast-asia-with-justin-hall/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:21.000Z In episode 310, Justin Hall, partner from Golden Gate Ventures joined us in a conversation to discuss the state of venture capital in Southeast Asia. Justin shared his career journey in how he progressed from an associate to a partner within one of the well-known venture capital firms in Southeast Asia and explained what he has learned over the years from working with startup founders and companies. From there, Justin extended the conversation to offer his perspectives to how the infrastructure has evolved and the importance of exits for startups in Southeast Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Justin Hall, partner in Golden Gate Ventures ([@JVinnyHall](https://twitter.com/JVinnyHall?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinhallvc/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:15\] - How did you start your career? \[0:46\] - Does the Kauffman program help you in advancing your venture capital career? \[2:30\] - Prominent alumni in Kauffman Fellowship within Southeast Asia \[3:15\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting life lessons you can share with my audience? \[4:02\] - [Golden Gate Ventures](https://goldengate.vc/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Venture Capital in Southeast Asia (or ASEAN) \[6:12\] - Can you introduce Golden Gate Ventures to the audience (and yes, just a refresher as I have interviewed Jeff and Vinnie) years back? \[6:34\] - How has the fund evolved since you have started as an associate and eventually now as a partner? Can you talk about some of the successful startups within Golden Gate Ventures portfolio? \[8:01\] - What is your current role in Golden Gate Ventures? \[11:09\] - How do you think about making decisions on whether to invest in startups within the investment committee? \[12:35\] - What is a typical day for you as a venture capitalist? \[14:23\] - What are the industry verticals which you are most excited about in the venture capital space lately? \[16:10\] - Where are the opportunities that you have identified in the logistics space given that last mile delivery is commoditized? \[19:09\] - How about any other interesting verticals other than logistics? \[21:27\] - What do you look for in a startup team when you invest in them? \[23:17\] - We are now at the tail end of the first institutional funding cycle for Southeast Asia but most VC funds in the region have raised at least 2nd and 3rd rounds of funding, how has the VC scene changed since you first started? \[26:15\] - How do you see the signaling risk for startups within the venture capital circle in Southeast Asia? \[29:09\] - How does the infrastructure within the Southeast Asia market has changed from your opinion? Does it enable more or less startup activity? Let’s exclude Singapore given that it is well developed as a city state. \[30:20\] - Recently, in the past two years, there has been a strong interest from tech giants in China and US on Southeast Asia, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the ecosystem from the perspective of startups and venture capital? \[33:40\] - How does a startup founder look at Southeast Asia market? If you are asked to advise a founder in Singapore or in Jakarta to expand into another market, what will be the first advice you give them? \[36:18\] - One major criticism, pointed out by many is the lack of startup exits in the startup ecosystem. How do you define startup exits and what does success in startup exits would mean for Southeast Asia, and if you have any examples, please share them? \[39:38\] - Closing \[43:04\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[43:25\] - Justin’s recommendation: “[Trillion Dollar Coach](https://www.trilliondollarcoach.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Eric Schmidt et al. - How can my audience find you? \[44:54\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/64246342?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2jPpeT2l7G2jXRKyx2s1fP?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/venture-capital-in-southeast-asia-with-justin-hall?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQ1cBJw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2OFDfnN?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/venture-capital-in-southeast-asia-with-justin-hall/fa8ba7e5-eefc-47d0-8bc8-f0d4d41e1b0e?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/350775382529040/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=62994990&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Venture-Capital-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Justin-Hall-id1121832-id174871537?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) until 30 June 2019 and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. This episode is recorded and produced in June 2019. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/310\_Venture\_Capital\_in\_Southeast\_Asia\_with\_Justin\_Hall.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/310%5FVenture%5FCapital%5Fin%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FJustin%5FHall.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Digital Transformation and Real Estate with Wilma Gerber URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/digital-transformation-and-real-estate-with-wilma-gerber/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:21.000Z In episode 309, Wilma Gerber, the chief operating officer for project and development services in JLL Asia Pacific, joined us for a conversation on digital transformation in the real estate industry. Starting from her work in building technology before the iPhone turned the smartphone mainstream to building the 4G network in India which becomes Reliance Jio, she offered the important lessons that explained the intersection of business and technology. Moving forward, she offered her perspectives on the why and how for a successful digital transformation and how it can be applied into a traditional industry for real estate. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Wilma Gerber ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilma-gerber-0a95481/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Chief Operating Officer, Project & Development Services Asia Pacific at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) \[0:18\] - How did you start your career? \[0:40\] - Given that you have worked on technology ideas before these ideas become fashionable, for example, the instant mobile messaging app leads to whatsapp, the mobile music player becomes the iPod and the mobile app store before Apple App Store and Google Play, what are the major lessons that you have drawn from these experiences? \[3:04\] - So you spent your early a career in South Africa and Europe. What brought you to Asia? \[4:35\] - What is like working with Reliance to build out the 4G network for India that jumpstarted the smartphone market for the next 100-200M users? \[6:01\] - After you have worked in technology companies for more than 20 years, for example, building the network in India that is now the 4G network for Reliance Jio, why have you transitioned into real estate? \[7:41\] - Given that new upstarts such as Wework has entered into the real estate and the complexity of the real estate supply chain, why would it be different this round for you in executing a digital transformation in a traditional industry such as real estate? \[9:34\] - Digital Transformation in Real Estate \[10:20\] - Can you briefly introduce JLL to my audience and describe your current role and coverage with JLL? \[10:43\] - How do you define digital transformation and what exactly it entails? \[11:21\] - How has your perception of DX changed since you moved from the vendor to client side? \[12:12\] - How do you define the typical objectives/goals for digital transformation? \[13:32\] - Who should be involved in the digital transformation within the company? \[15:00\] - Do you think that digital transformation is a program or a new way of thinking for a company or business? \[16:02\] - In a digital transformation given that it involves people and culture, what is more important, the transition or education for the organization? - When you start off on a digital transformation initiative, what are the initial steps? \[17:46\] - You have been working on digital transformation initiatives for over 15 years – can you provide an example of a successful digital transformation initiative from the wider market that you find compelling? Wilma discuss the case of DBS bank as a successful example of digital transformation. \[18:50\] - What sets this example apart from the typical digital transformation initiatives? \[21:07\] - What are the major challenges for digital transformation? \[22:00\] - Organisational - Cultural - Financial - Strategic - Technological - In your perspective, how do you think about aligning the different stakeholders in digital transformation? \[23:46\] - What do you mean by leader-led change? \[24:38\] - The importance of culture in digital transformation. \[25:35\] - So now that you’ve been in Real Estate for about 3 years, what are you seeing as some of the industry specific challenges holding back digital transformation? \[26:31\] - If you had to give one piece of advice for someone who is about to undertake a digital transformation initiative from the leadership position, what would it be? \[29:00\] - References: McKinsey article – [Why Digital Strategies fail?](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/why-digital-strategies-fail?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Closing \[29:29\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[29:35\] - Wilma’s recommendation: Adam Grant’s podcast “Work Life”, the Freaknomics podcast and Malcolm Gladwell’s “Revisionist History” podcast. - How do my audience find you? \[30:16\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/63458092?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1G7Cj1bstzlQBDS2cGsTPL?si=N-UYuHs4Qwqd85dccHTsow&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libs](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/digital-transformation-and-real-estate-with-wilma-gerber?ref=analysepodcast.com)yn - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQcaNx8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2XMqtrM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/digital-transformation-and-real-estate-with-wilma-gerber/bef53801-9b7f-4774-9b73-e42dc0569bce?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/633349040481343/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/62627533?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Digital-Transformation-and-Real-Estate-with-Wilma-Gerber-id1121832-id170851956?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) until 30 June 2019 and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. This episode is recorded and produced in June 2019. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/309\_Digital\_Transformation\_\_Real\_Estate\_with\_Wilma\_Gerber.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/309%5FDigital%5FTransformation%5F%5FReal%5FEstate%5Fwith%5FWilma%5FGerber.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Smart Cities Success with Charles Reed Anderson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/smart-cities-success-with-charles-reed-anderson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:20.000Z In episode 308, Charles Reed Anderson joined us to discuss the recent report “Smart Cities Success: Connecting People, Proptech and Real Estate” which he collaborated with JLL. Charles discuss the major findings in the report and examine the role that governments are playing in shaping the concept of smart cities. Continuing the conversation, Charles shares the opportunities and challenges for different countries in Asia Pacific from China to India and offers his perspectives to where we are heading on smart cities globally. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Charles Anderson ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/charlesreedanderson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Charles Reed Anderson and Associates](http://charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[0:17\] - What have you been up to since we last spoke? \[0:29\] - [Smart Cities Success: Connecting People, Proptech and Real Estate report](http://charlesreedanderson.com/smart-cities-success-connecting-people-proptech-real-estate/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Charles Reed Anderson & Associates](http://charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [JLL ](https://www.jll.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)(full [download of the report](https://www.jll.com.sg/en/trends-and-insights/research/smartcitiessuccess?ref=analysepodcast.com) here) \[0:37\] - What are the main themes of the report and its intended audience? \[1:23\] - Can you discuss the findings of the report in brief? \[3:23\] - Why are cities at the center of this conversation from the perspective of challenges? \[6:39\] - How do you define ‘smart city’ in the report? \[7:45\] - What is the role played by real estate space in smart cities? \[9:00\] - Can the vision of smart cities eventually be realized? \[12:25\] - In the report, you have looked at the opportunities and challenges for different countries such as Australia, China, India, Japan and Singapore, what are the interesting points on the cities within these set of countries on delivering smart cities? \[16:03\] - Which smart cities will be interesting to you at this moment? \[19:50\] - Where do we go next for smart cities? \[21:20\] - Closing \[23:22\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[23:39\] - Charles’ recommendation: Reading the transcripts of interviews he did with different people in how they looked at the smart cities. - How do my audience find you? \[24:22\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/63292292?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1xXB2o03R6iS2BxY6yn4Tw?si=NUTKs1AQTDy%5F5QZk0SCorg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/smart-cities-success-with-charles-reed-anderson?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSEaz6c?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2JIEUD0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/smart-cities-success-with-charles-reed-anderson/7e12efe8-dbfd-4d93-91e2-0431ea03dc47?country=AU&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/649798628828231/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/62552053?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Smart-Cities-Success-with-Charles-Reed-Anderson-id1121832-id170138132?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) until 30 June 2019 and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. This episode is recorded and produced in June 2019. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/308\_Smart\_Cities\_Success\_with\_Charles\_Reed\_Anderson.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/308%5FSmart%5FCities%5FSuccess%5Fwith%5FCharles%5FReed%5FAnderson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### South China Morning Post and Perspectives on Media with Gary Liu URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/south-china-morning-post-and-perspectives-on-media-with-gary-liu/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:20.000Z In Episode 307, Gary Liu, the chief executive officer of South China Morning Post (SCMP), joined us to discuss the vision and mission of the media outlet and offer his perspectives on media across Asia Pacific. We started with Gary sharing his career story and how he came to lead SCMP. He discuss the core audience of the media outlet and the new content and innovations that is driving the transformation of SCMP. Last but not least, Gary offered his perspectives on the current trends driving media in the digital age. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Gary Liu, CEO of South China Morning Post \[0:17\] - How did you start your career? \[0:38\] - Can you talk about the backstory in how you come to join SCMP as the CEO? \[1:06\] - In your career journey, what has been the most interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[2:16\] - [South China Morning Post](https://scmp.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[4:01\] - The South China Morning Post aka SCMP is a Hong Kong English language newspaper founded in 1903 and is now owned by the Alibaba Group. In preparing for this interview, I did not realize that both Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp and a well-known Singaporean real estate tycoon, Robert Kuok were past owners of the SCMP as well. - Starting with an introduction, can you summarize what the South China Morning Post (SCMP) do and talk about its current mission and vision? \[4:36\] - Who are the core audience of SCMP? \[7:10\] - Since Alibaba’s acquisition and your hiring, what are the changes that you have brought to the post? \[8:10\] - What are the interesting innovations and products that are now pioneered from SCMP that will be interesting to take the paper forward into the digital age? \[9:34\] - [Ink Stone](https://www.inkstonenews.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [This Week in Asia](https://www.scmp.com/week-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Style](https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Abacus News](https://www.abacusnews.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - What is your thinking process in making a decision if business and editorial groups are at loggerheads and could not come to an agreement? \[13:56\] - How do you define if SCMP is successful in a few years time? \[15:34\] - Perspectives in Media \[17:33\] - As digital disruption has entered into traditional newspaper and media outlets, what are the challenges and where are the opportunities do you see that a traditional outlet can move forward? \[17:42\] - Media outlets, for example, the Guardian & New York Times have shifted their audience from a local or regional to a global one. Do you see regional media outlets such as Nikkei and SCMP going in the same way in thinking about your audience and putting your knowledge about the region as a competitive advantage? \[20:38\] - In your view, what are the most interesting business models and innovation in media that keeps you excited about the space? \[21:59\] - Given that traditional news outlets can be viewed as institutions of trust, are there opportunities in the curation of media rather than discovery of media? \[24:32\] - Where do you think that Asia journalism and news will go towards with the rise of China? \[25:50\] - Closing \[27:42\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[27:50\] - Gary’s recommendation: [“Team of Teams”](https://www.amazon.com/Team-Teams-Rules-Engagement-Complex/dp/B00UVW4RV0?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Chris Fussell, David Silverman, & Stanley A. McChrystal and [Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FThree-Body%5FProblem%5F%28novel%29?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[29:11\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/62516531?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0WKJrWIarVx3cVrED7lGj4?si=9-hK9mVjR3idjA87s8QpGg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/south-china-morning-post-and-perspectives-on-media-with-gary-liu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQyyZZw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2JbA7Kc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/south-china-morning-post-and-perspectives-on-media-with-gary-liu/d6727dd0-f687-4637-8604-9689baf2a210?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2395824223987456/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/62249837?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/South-China-Morning-Post-and-Perspectives-on-Media-with-Gary-Liu-id1121832-id166877073?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) until 30 June 2019 and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. This episode is recorded and produced in June 2019. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/307\_South\_China\_Morning\_Post\_and\_Perspectives\_on\_Media\_with\_Gary\_Liu.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/307%5FSouth%5FChina%5FMorning%5FPost%5Fand%5FPerspectives%5Fon%5FMedia%5Fwith%5FGary%5FLiu.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Tech Cold War with Tim Culpan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-tech-cold-war-with-tim-culpan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:19.000Z In Episode 306, Tim Culpan, columnist from Bloomberg, joined us in a conversation to discuss the tech cold war. Starting from the definition when the event started with US ban on Huawei, Tim explained how the global technology supply chain will be affected in the process from Foxconn, TSMC to Apple. Tim also offered his perspectives on the recent change in leadership within Foxconn, Alibaba’s listing in Hong Kong as a hedge and the impact fo the tech cold war on SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Tim Culpan ([@tculpan](https://twitter.com/tculpan?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-culpan-3a753617/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/columnists/AOZ1cdFX8mo/tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Columnist at Bloomberg \[0:17\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:31\] - The Tech Cold War \[0:58\] - You have recently written that May 19 is an important date for the turn of China and US relationship starting with Huawei placed on the ban, why do you characterize it as [the tech cold war](https://www.bloombergquint.com/opinion/huawei-supply-freeze-points-to-u-s-china-tech-cold-war?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[1:03\] - Is it way past the Thucydides Trap now for US and China? \[3:14\] - With the [US and China trade war breaking the global supply chain](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-26/u-s-china-tech-cold-war-will-force-nations-to-choose-sides?ref=analysepodcast.com), particularly its implications to Huawei, Apple, TSMC, Foxconn and many others involved? \[3:34\] - Is [Alibaba’s upcoming listing in Hong Kong Stock Exchange](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-28/alibaba-s-hong-kong-ipo-is-driven-by-politics?ref=analysepodcast.com) a way to have a hedge against themselves in the US market? \[6:32\] - Let’s start with Foxconn, can you describe the interesting happenings in the Foxconn leadership because of Terry Gou’s decision to run for the Taiwan Presidency and what does it mean for the company? \[9:27\] - Given [your understanding of Terry Gou](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-20/as-president-foxconn-s-terry-gou-won-t-obey-beijing?ref=analysepodcast.com) and if he wins, what will he be like as the Taiwan president? \[11:25\] - Does everyone shares [Masa’s vision with Vision Fund](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-03/masa-finds-not-everyone-shares-his-vision?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[13:50\] - What does the tech cold war means for SoftBank given that the fund invests in both US and China? \[15:51\] - Are we in a peak SoftBank? \[17:29\] - What are your thoughts with [Masa’s recent floating of an idea to float the Vision Fund public](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-12/a-vision-fund-ipo-would-be-a-savvy-way-for-masa-to-get-more-cash?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[18:42\] - What will we be expecting in the next couple of months or what should we look out for with the tech cold war coming? \[19:45\] - Closing \[22:00\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[22:08\] - Tim’s recommendation: The 996 Podcast by GGV Capital & [The Extramilest podcast.](https://extramilest.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Where can my audience find you? \[23:06\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/62470120?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2IvUFB9if3Ltl3y7Zb0vw7?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-tech-cold-war-with-tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtToJivY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/31XXUWM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-tech-cold-war-with-tim-culpan/60dbf923-0951-46ea-8766-c95f61dd1551?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/818328638552888/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=62231934&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Tech-Cold-War-with-Tim-Culpan-id1121832-id166659905?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) until 30 June 2019 and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. This episode is recorded in June 2019. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/306\_The\_Tech\_Cold\_War\_with\_Tim\_Culpan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/306%5FThe%5FTech%5FCold%5FWar%5Fwith%5FTim%5FCulpan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Laws of Human Nature with Robert Greene URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-laws-of-human-nature-with-robert-greene/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:19.000Z In episode 305, Robert Greene, author of the famous “48 Laws of Power”, joined us in a conversation to discuss his latest book “The Laws of Human Nature”. We dived deep in Robert’s background and how he was inspired to write the “48 Laws of Power” and subsequently his other books that led eventually to “The Laws of Human Nature”. We discuss how business leaders can learn to lead in difficult times and how to navigate the current climate of populism by understanding the laws of human nature. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - [Robert Greene](http://powerseductionandwar.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@RobertGreene](https://twitter.com/RobertGreene?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-greene-0294962/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), author of “[The Laws of Human Nature](http://powerseductionandwar.com/books/?ref=analysepodcast.com#TheLawsofHumanNature)”, “[48 Laws of Power](http://powerseductionandwar.com/books/?ref=analysepodcast.com#The48LawsofPower)”, “[33 Strategies of War](http://powerseductionandwar.com/books/?ref=analysepodcast.com#The33StrategiesofWar)”, “[The Art of Seduction](http://powerseductionandwar.com/books/?ref=analysepodcast.com#TheArtofSeduction)”, “[Mastery](http://powerseductionandwar.com/books/?ref=analysepodcast.com#Mastery)” and “[The 50th Law](http://powerseductionandwar.com/books/?ref=analysepodcast.com#The50thLaw)” with 50 cent aka Curtis Jackson. \[0:19\] - How did you start your career? \[1:03\] - What is the inspiration behind your first book “48 Laws of Power” and what is the lesson that you want the reader to understand from the book? \[3:23\] - Are you surprised by the book’s popularity with the business community when it was first launched? \[7:58\] - I often enjoyed the style of how you have presented your books with the principle followed by a story that illustrate the principle, does that mean to you that stories are the best ways to explain difficult concepts such as power, leadership and mastery to your readers? \[9:41\] - Does the choice of historical examples help to have the reader to take detached view on the concepts? \[12:21\] - What are the interesting life lessons you can share with my audience? \[14:07\] - The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene \[15:44\] - How did you decide to write the book “The Laws of Human Nature”? \[16:27\] - What are the major themes behind this book? \[17:56\] - Are the laws of human nature immutable given that our history keeps showing that we often repeat making the same mistakes over and over again the same in essence but different in context? \[21:10\] - Do you see that technology is an amplifier to the laws of human nature rather than an enabler that allows us to break out of them? \[24:49\] - What are the three laws in the book that you believe are important to those who are in business? \[26:58\] - It seems that the geopolitical landscape in the world is starting to shift significantly where most people are becoming more nationalistic and starting to prefer populism over facts, and wealth gaps disparity are getting bigger in the present, how does your book help us to understand the current world as it is now? \[33:22\] - Do you think that there will be any more additional laws of human nature which you will insert into the book in the future? \[36:36\] - Closing \[39:29\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[39:52\] - Robert’s recommendation: Alain De Botton’s “[The School of Life](https://www.alaindebotton.com/the-school-of-life/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” podcast - How can my audience find you? \[41:02\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/62258522?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4q3DWimnosMMTbdspZR6KJ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-laws-of-human-nature-with-robert-greene?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQpeuC8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2Rz967g?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-laws-of-human-nature-with-robert-greene/eba08eee-0bc9-4ac4-b83c-d93883beb5eb?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/842705412767613/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=62158825&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Laws-of-Human-Nature-with-Robert-Greene-id1121832-id165877957?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/305\_The\_Laws\_of\_Human\_Nature\_with\_Robert\_Greene.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/305%5FThe%5FLaws%5Fof%5FHuman%5FNature%5Fwith%5FRobert%5FGreene.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Xiaopeng Motors and the state of EVs in China with Rui Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/xiaopeng-motors-and-the-state-of-evs-in-china-with-rui-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:19.000Z In episode 304, Rui Ma, co-founder of Transformative Technology Academy and co-host of the Techbuzz China podcast joined us in a conversation to discuss Xiaopeng Motors and extending the conversation to analyse the state of electric cars (EVs) market in China. We dived deep to the origins of Xiaopeng Motors with its legendary founder, He Xiaopeng, and how it amassed a huge and massive funding from Alibaba Group and other investors. From there, we bring in the other key players: Nio, WM Motors and Byton into the fray and how Tesla and the traditional automotive companies such as SAIC are approaching the Chinese market. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Rui Ma, Founder of [Transformative Technology Academy](http://transtechlab.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Host of [TechBuzz podcast](https://supchina.com/series/techbuzz-china/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Pandaily produced by SupChina ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ruima](https://twitter.com/ruima?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:19\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:34\] - Can you talk about the [influencer marketing in China](https://overcast.fm/+OrPaHgDbc?ref=analysepodcast.com) on a recent Techbuzz China podcast? \[1:24\] - Rui Ma’s thoughts on the [e-cigrattes market in China](https://overcast.fm/+OrPZrqqEk?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[2:55\] - Xiaopeng Motors and State of EVs in China \[3:34\] - Reference: [TechBuzz China Episode 22 – NIO ](https://overcast.fm/+OrPZqVMTQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Introduction: Xiaopeng Motors is an electric car company who has recently raised US$587M (\~ 4B RMB) in China backed by Alibaba Group and many other prominent investors? \[4:09\] - \[Ref: [Chinese electric car start-up Xpeng raises US$587 million as it gears up to take on Tesla, SCMP](https://www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/2157908/chinese-electric-car-start-xpeng-raises-us587-million-it-gears-take?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [TechBuzz China episode on NIO](https://supchina.com/podcast/ep-22-nio-the-road-ahead-for-chinas-tesla/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] - What is the mission and vision of Xiaopeng Motors? \[5:43\] - Can you talk about He Xiaopeng, the CEO and Chairman of the company and former co-founder / CTO for UCWeb, China’s largest web browser acquired by Alibaba Group over US$4.3B? What is his background before he started Xiaopeng Motors? \[7:35\] - Does Xiaopeng Motors build their own cars? Where and how do they produce their electric cars? \[8:55\] - Recently, they have unveiled their latest car, G3 in CES and the car is priced at US$47K compared to Tesla Model 3 priced at US$30K, can you talk about the different car models which they have done so far or will be doing? \[12:58\] - Can you talk about William Li Bin, NIO’s celebrity founder and how has he managed to create a car company out of powerpoints? What is the rivalry between the EV car companies founders and other tech founders? \[15:18\] - Let’s expand the scope of the EV market in China out, and other than Xiaopeng & NIO, there are also other companies such as WM (or Weima) Motor and Byton, how are these EV cars company differ in how they approach the market? \[19:00\] - Has the Chinese government like the US government during the Obama era been supportive of EVs, and have they offered similar type of incentives for the Chinese consumer? \[22:52\] - What is their business model for Xiaopeng Motors? Is it similar to Tesla or NIO? \[26:07\] - How are EVs viewed and perceived in China? Will the chinese consumer purchase an electric car? \[27:40\] - It’s interesting that Alibaba backed Xiaopeng and Tencent backed NIO and is the EV market another extension or proxy war between the Chinese tech giants and what are their intentions behind the market? \[29:20\] - It seems that the car market is focused on EVs and not autonomous vehicles. Is that a tacit acknowledgement that self driving technologies are not ready for the Chinese market? \[31:10\] - How about the traditional car companies in China who have partnered with VW Group, GM Motors such as SAIC, or non-traditional car companies such as BYD which started off as a battery company and now a car company or new EV companies from the US such as Tesla? How do these players fit into this new EV market within China? \[32:43\] - Closing \[34:47\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[34:55\] - Sam Harris’ book [Waking up,](https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/dp/1451636024?ref=analysepodcast.com) [Waking Up app](https://wakingup.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Making Sense](https://samharris.org/podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com) podcast. - How do my audience find you? \[35:38\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/62135562?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6PTQ2sXbX0OL82nRJ5I0K2?si=Bn3bLfvyQfCaAo8GjVERvQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/xiaopeng-motors-and-the-state-of-evs-in-china-with-rui-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQly0KM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2xc4cnf?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/xiaopeng-motors-and-the-state-of-evs-in-china-with-rui-ma/4c40e8ba-1720-4a45-a73a-7e32c0ec19c1?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/416109072319826/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=62107971&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Xiaopeng-Motors-and-the-state-of-EVs-in-China-with-Rui-Ma-id1121832-id165339694?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/304\_Xiaopeng\_Motors\_\_State\_of\_EVs\_in\_China\_with\_Rui\_Ma.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/304%5FXiaopeng%5FMotors%5F%5FState%5Fof%5FEVs%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FRui%5FMa.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The US Ban on Huawei and Peak Smartphone with Bryan Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-us-ban-on-huawei-and-peak-smartphone-with-bryan-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:18.000Z In Episode 303, Bryan Ma, vice president from IDC joined us to discuss the US ban on Huawei and its implications to the smartphone market across the world. We dived deep to how Huawei will be crippled by being on the US entity list and whether Samsung will make a comeback due to this surprise turn of events. Next, we discuss the major smartphone and PC trends across Asia Pacific, the recent foldables fiasco by Samsung and what the next innovation for smartphones might be on the horizon. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Bryan Ma ([@bryanbma](https://twitter.com/bryanbma?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanbma/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Vice President IDC \[0:18\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:28\] - The US ban of Huawei and its impact \[1:30\] - Can you offer an introduction to the recent [US action on Huawei](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3010986/heres-what-you-need-know-about-us-restrictions-huawei-and-entity-list?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[1:39\] - Upon [Huawei on the United States’ blacklist](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48441814?ref=analysepodcast.com), the action has forced [Google cutting the android support for future devices](https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/19/18631558/google-huawei-android-suspension?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [ARM not going to supply future chipsets](https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/22/18635326/huawei-arm-chip-designs-business-suspension?ref=analysepodcast.com), what are your perspectives on Huawei for both the smartphone and carrier networks business? (Ref: [Reuters on companies list](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-suppliers-factbox/factbox-global-tech-companies-shun-huawei-after-us-ban-idUSKCN1TC1KW?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[2:57\] - Where do Huawei go from here given that they have no problems surviving in their local market but globally they will have challenges moving ahead? \[8:37\] - Bryan’s comments that the US is targeting Huawei on their carrier networks rather than smartphone market. \[12:11\] - If this has not happened, will Huawei become the number one global smartphone player? \[13:24\] - We know that Huawei also build laptops. Have they been successful with those, and how will they be affected by trade tensions too? \[14:27\] - Who are going to benefit from Huawei’s current troubles in the smartphone market? Will Samsung get a comeback? \[16:16\] - Given that Xiaomi is a public company and their structures are pretty transparent, will the other Chinese smartphone makers be affected? \[18:46\] - Effect on Apple in China. \[21:25\] - Peak Smartphone? Major trends in smartphones and PCs \[22:23\] - Based on our last conversation, let’s start with smartphones, what are the current brands that are leading globally? \[23:14\] - From most reports, India is the only major growth engine of smartphones last year, bringing 100M mobile users online. Will that growth continues in the next two to three years from now? \[24:04\] - Are we in the period of peak smartphone? Will smartphones like PCs be commoditized? Will innovations on the smartphone be incremental or are there any tech which we are not aware of on the horizon that will shift the smartphone to the next level? \[25:19\] - Where do the wearables or other technology such as the watch, glass, VR or AR augment the smartphone ecosystem? \[26:47\] - Are the Chinese brands such as Huawei, Oppo & Vivo and Xiaomi leading the way as compare to what Samsung has done in the past few years? - How about Apple? Will their recent sudden decline in China lead iPhone towards a major downturn for them? Given Apple’s turn towards services, what are your thoughts on Apple’s prospects with the smartphone? \[28:20\] - Can you talk about the recent Samsung foldable phone fiasco? - Are foldables really something that users are asking for, and how quickly do you think it will take off? \[29:27\] - What about foldable laptops like the one that Lenovo showed off recently? And dual-screen laptops like the new HP Omen X 2S or the ones that ASUS and Intel showed off at COMPUTEX? \[34:27\] - What are your thoughts on the shift with the iPad in the recent WWDC 2019? \[39:02\] - Closing \[40:12\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[40:21\] - Bryan’s recommendation: Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus, [“Old Town Road” song](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old%5FTown%5FRoad?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? \[42:31\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/61975481?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/03aQLJgGpxWewPbTv20KIP?si=FktSRDH9Sii-P0UGe-eWFQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-us-ban-on-huawei-and-peak-smartphone-with-bryan-ma?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRcHw3Y?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2IrDpK5?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-us-ban-on-huawei-and-peak-smartphone-with-bryan-ma/8c62f27b-ec98-4fb8-88d8-2773d96d844e?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/434627750420952/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/62045750?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-US-Ban-on-Huawei-and-Peak-Smartphone-with-Bryan-Ma-id1121832-id164515486?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is both hosted and edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/303\_The\_US\_Ban\_on\_Huawei\_and\_Peak\_Smartphone\_with\_Bryan\_Ma.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/303%5FThe%5FUS%5FBan%5Fon%5FHuawei%5Fand%5FPeak%5FSmartphone%5Fwith%5FBryan%5FMa.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Landing Pad with Austrade & Perspectives on Southeast Asia with Taliessin Reaburn URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/the-landing-pad-with-austrade-perspectives-on-southeast-asia-with-taliessin-reaburn/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:18.000Z In episode 302, Taliessin Raeburn, the trade commissioner to Singapore with Australia Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) discuss the landing pad program in Singapore and shared his perspectives on business entry into the highly diverse Southeast Asia market. We began with an introduction to Austrade and the landing pad programs across the world and specifically zoom into the recent interesting initiatives achieved by the Landing Pad in Singapore. We discuss how Austrade helps Australian companies and startups to expand and identify the challenges faced by companies in Southeast Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Taliessin Reaburn ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/taliessin-reaburn-784a8123/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Trade Commissioner to Singapore with [Austrade (Australia Trade and Investment Commission)](https://www.austrade.gov.au/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:22\] - How did you start your career? \[0:52\] - What are the most interesting life lessons which you can share with my audience? \[2:34\] - Austrade’s [the Landing Pad Program](https://www.austrade.gov.au/landingpads?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Singapore and Perspectives on Southeast Asia \[3:20\] - As a start, can you describe the mission and vision for the [Austrade (Australia Trade and Investment Commission)](https://www.austrade.gov.au/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and how it operates as a government agency? \[3:37\] - What is your current role and coverage as the trade commissioner to Singapore with Austrade? \[4:47\] - How does Austrade help businesses in Australia come to Asia? \[6:13\] - I understand that Austrade has a program called the Landing Pad, vision to create a platform for local enterprises to collaborate with Australian startups and help them find success in the region, Can you describe the landing pad in a global scale and then specifically down in Singapore on the mandate of the landing pad? \[8:18\] - What does success means for the Landing Pad all over the world or specifically for Singapore? \[12:08\] - Since the launch of the landing pad in Singapore, what are the number of startups that have come here and what industry verticals they are typically in? Can you share 2 or 3 startups within the landing pad in Singapore? \[14:18\] - The landing pad program has also aligned with Singapore’s push in cybersecurity as part of their smart nation program, how do they work? \[16:31\] - How do you look at the Southeast Asia or ASEAN as a whole? How do you differentiate the markets for example, developed, emerging and frontier? \[17:51\] - From a government agency’s perspective, how do you work with your startups to set them up for market entry into the region? What do you look out for from your perspective and from the company’s perspective? \[20:39\] - What are the key challenges for startups typically going into Southeast Asia? \[22:48\] - Closing \[24:41\] - Can you recommend a book or anything else from movie to podcast that has recently impacted my life? \[24:48\] - Taliessin’s recommendation: the movie “Avengers: Endgame” and a novel entitled [“Walkaway” by Cory Doctorow](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40604388-walkaway?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? \[25:33\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/61571156?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5fIayNJDnH30yAhRcoO7DG?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/the-landing-pad-with-austrade-perspectives-on-southeast-asia-with-taliessin-reaburn?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTbKXZQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2XIWHQu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/the-landing-pad-with-austrade-and-perspectives-on-southeast-asia-with-taliessin-reaburn/86971168-c679-4d80-bad2-4fefbc4c1b9f?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1439768322829351/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=61885685&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/The-Landing-Pad-with-Austrade-%26-Perspectives-on-Southeast-Asia-with-Taliessin-Reaburn-id1121832-id162883313?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is both hosted and edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/302\_The\_Landing\_Pad\_with\_Austrade\_\_Perspectives\_on\_Southeast\_Asia\_with\_Taliessin\_Reaburn.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/302%5FThe%5FLanding%5FPad%5Fwith%5FAustrade%5F%5FPerspectives%5Fon%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FTaliessin%5FReaburn.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Tencent Q1 2019 Earnings and Wechat 7.0 with Matthew Brennan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/tencent-q1-2019-earnings-and-wechat-7-0-with-matthew-brennan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:17.000Z In episode 301, Matthew Brennan from China Channel joined us in a conversation to discuss Tencent’s Q1 2019 earnings and how the latest version of Wechat app is now evolving with the consumers and enterprise. We discuss the recent Q1 earnings of Tencent and how the company is moving ahead with the obstacle of getting games approved in China. Then we dive deep into Wechat 7.0, the super app’s latest iteration, the new features and why the Wechat enterprise is not given a serious look from observers outside China. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk podcast ([chinachannel.co](http://chinachannel.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@mbrennanchina](https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) \[0:23\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:35\] - You have just been to a Tencent conference (Thursday May 23) in Kunming, what are the interesting things that have popped up there? \[1:07\] - Who is the intended audience for this conference which you are attending? \[2:50\] - Just a quick one: What are your thoughts on Google and ARM cutting access to Huawei? What is the long term implications given that Huawei is now banned in the US? \[5:58\] - How long does it take for Huawei to start having problems in China with the current ban? Matthew also examined the impact on Huawei in Europe. \[8:33\] - Tencent Q1 2019 Earnings and Wechat 7.0 Release \[10:44\] - Tencent has recently released their [Q1 earnings for 2019](https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/15/tencent-q1-2019/?ref=analysepodcast.com), what are the key highlights for the company? \[11:15\] - Moving forward, it’s a weak quarter, how will Tencent move forward in the next few quarters, particularly on issues relating to gaming where they are at the mercy of the regulators in getting approvals? \[12:58\] - There has been an re-organization in Tencent, what are the key personnel changes? \[14:55\] - During this year’s conference, Allen Zhang, the person in charge of Wechat gave a 4 hour keynote, and you did [an excellent summary](https://chinachannel.co/wechat-founder-allen-zhang-4-hour-presentation-full-notes/?ref=analysepodcast.com) of the event, what are the key messages that he has delivered? \[16:40\] - What is [Wechat 7.0](https://blog.wechat.com/2019/01/18/whats-new-in-wechat-7-0-the-biggest-upgrade-in-four-years/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and what are the biggest changes for the app as compared to the past versions? \[19:36\] - Does the philosophy of Wechat app has an impact to how it has evolved differently from the other social media apps in China? \[23:17\] - Do Wechat starts incorporating AI and other infrastructure upgrades for this 7.0 version? \[25:12\] - How is Wechat 7.0 responding to their potential competition in different types of usage whether it’s ByteDance or Alibaba? \[27:46\] - Why is the Wechat app for enterprise not get talked about in the Western media given the deployment of the app has been quite impressive? \[29:45\] - Does Wechat 7.0 foreshadow a shift in business models for the messaging app? \[34:28\] - Is the narrative of Wechat killers over-hyped in the market? \[36:35\] - Matthew’s thoughtful comments on the possibility of Tencent being caught in the US and China trade war \[39:00\] - Closing\[41:49\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[41:50\] - Matt’s recommendation: [Crazy Capital](https://crazy.capital/faq/?ref=analysepodcast.com#subscribe), a chinese podcast by 2 Chinese VCs. - BL’s recommendation: Xu Dong’s “[Empire of Silver](https://www.amazon.com/%E7%99%BD%E9%93%B6%E5%B8%9D%E5%9B%BD-%E5%BE%90%E7%91%BE/dp/B06XB28G3S/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?crid=1UYT3VZH32FYN&keywords=%E7%99%BD%E9%93%B6%E5%B8%9D%E5%9B%BD&qid=1559979342&s=books&sprefix=%E7%99%BD%E9%93%B6%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C343&sr=1-1&ref=analysepodcast.com)” (Chinese book) - How can my audience find you? \[44:10\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/61189691?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/29zCk8NUpBFpU8T2IlMQnc?si=4I6XM5z3Rkq6L2hIkTTvwA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/tencent-q1-2019-earnings-and-wechat-7-0-with-matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQYQsPQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/31eqBhv?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/tencent-q1-2019-earnings-and-wechat-7-0-with-matthew-brennan/92660190-ab53-4574-8904-f688161245c5?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/676739522770529/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=61754699&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Tencent-Q1-2019-Earnings-and-Wechat-7.0-with-Matthew-Brennan-id1121832-id161458739?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is both hosted and edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/301\_Wechat\_7.0\_with\_Matthew\_Brennan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/301%5FWechat%5F7.0%5Fwith%5FMatthew%5FBrennan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Bernard Leong URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/ask-me-anything-ama-with-bernard-leong/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:17.000Z In our episode 300, our host Bernard Leong will be interviewed on everything under the sun on Analyse Asia. With the interview conducted by Carol Yin, co-producer of the podcast, Bernard started with a couple of major announcements for Analyse Asia. Next, Bernard answered many interesting questions posed from the audience of the show such as: (i) the evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Southeast Asia, (ii) who will win the race between Grab and Gojek, (iii) fun and interesting facts about the podcast from how Bernard selects his guest to getting a prominent guest on the show via a business deal. Last but not least, we discuss where the Analyse Asia podcast is going and an upcoming premium content project. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Welcome Carol Yin, the co-producer of the show as the host of Episode 300\. \[0:37\] - Major Announcements on Analyse Asia podcast \[1:29\] - We will make a significant change in the title of the podcast from “Analyse Asia with BL” to “Analyse Asia”. We are also dropping the episode number from our title starting from this episode. The title change will take some time as we need to make changes on different sites. - Our current host, Bernard Leong will be taking at least 3-6 months break but you will still see every episode from now to the break ends. The reason is that he is currently in personal transition and his family expecting third kid to the family in August 2019\. If there are some major news happening from July to Sep 2019, Carol will be stepping in to host on Bernard’s behalf. - Our premium content project relating to Tencent and we are likely to do a Kickstarter program. BL and Carol will co-produce the show and the voices for the show will be announced later. - 1st Live Show – Wework Singapore on 5 Sep 2019 and need help for Hong Kong live show: We will be charging for the live show and we hope that you can help to bring down some of the costs. - AMA with Bernard Leong ([@bernardleong](https://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com), [personal site](https://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[6:12\] - ([Colin Charles](https://twitter.com/bytebot?ref=analysepodcast.com)): You’re relatively well travelled. How do your travels shape your lens when it comes to analysing Asia? I will presume travel gives you an edge, but what top 3 things have you noted from travels that permeate from or diffuse to Asia? \[6:49\] - ([Uri Wolfovitz](https://twitter.com/WolfovitzUri?ref=analysepodcast.com)) What are the three likely outcomes of the US-China trade war ? Please indicate the winner and loser together with the timeline. \[12:30\] - ([JJ Chai](https://twitter.com/JJChai?ref=analysepodcast.com)): How would one assign weights to the factors that result in startups’ success levels? What share is business model vs sector vs founder(s) vs luck (including externalities)? \[16:29\] - ([JJ Chai](https://twitter.com/JJChai?ref=analysepodcast.com)): What patterns do you see in successful founders in terms of personality traits? \[19:34\] - ([Hian Goh](https://twitter.com/hiangoh?ref=analysepodcast.com)): Who’s going to win, Grab or Gojek? \[20:21\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)) How was the startup ecosystem in Singapore and Southeast Asian when you were involved at SGentrepreneurs.com? (Period is between 2005-2013) \[23:03\] - ([Lisa Enckell](https://twitter.com/enckelli?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Please share a story on how the tech scene had changed in this part of the world since you launched the first episode. (Period is between 2014-2019) \[24:57\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): Why did you decide 5 years ago to launch a podcast? \[28:33\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): What’s your secret sauce for shipping one episode each week? \[30:10\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): How do you build your deal flow of guests? \[31:37\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): How do you reach out to them? How do you identify the best channel, time, blurb to convince them to join? \[32:00\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): How do you select them (heuristics and due diligence)? \[34:34\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): How do you decide if you should invite one more time a guest? \[35:51\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): Who are the 5 people you wish to have one day on your show? \[36:50\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): Where do you see Analyse Asia in 5 years except releasing the 600th episode? \[38:00\] - (Arnaud Bonzom) Would you like to make your podcast a full-time business? \[39:00\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): 3 fun facts about Analyse Asia? \[39:27\] - ([Arnaud Bonzom](https://twitter.com/ArnaudBonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)): What are the 3 podcasts on startups you love listening? \[42:00\] - BL’s recommendation: Acquired Podcast, Startup by Gimlet and Recode Decode, and Carol’s recommendation: How I build this? - ([Wynthia Goh](https://twitter.com/verydeepsleep?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Through 5 years of interviewing the insiders, disrupters, innovators, founders and investors, what has changed over the years and what has stayed the same? \[42:38\] - ([Wynthia Goh](https://twitter.com/verydeepsleep?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Which guests left the strongest impression (for better or worse) and why? \[43:48\] - ([Wynthia Goh](https://twitter.com/verydeepsleep?ref=analysepodcast.com)) If you are to summarize what you have learned from all the people you have interviewed, what would it be? \[45:00\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/60780923?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fwOZupFxcyRwqHNq9WKhF?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/ask-me-anything-ama-with-bernard-leong?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQFePLM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2MyUK8j?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Luminary](https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/bernard-leong/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/fa44d699-0fcb-4c78-aab6-a6e60045cb16?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/photos/a.546142742151926/1127108550722006/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=61495955&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Ask-Me-Anything-%28AMA%29-with-Bernard-Leong-id1121832-id159856949?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is both hosted and edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/300\_Ask\_Me\_Anything\_AMA\_with\_Bernard\_Leong.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/300%5FAsk%5FMe%5FAnything%5FAMA%5Fwith%5FBernard%5FLeong.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Can we invest into technology companies from China? with James Hull URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-299-can-we-invest-into-technology-companies-from-china-with-james-hull/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:16.000Z James Hull, co-host of China Tech Investor podcast and founder of Hullx, joined us to discuss whether we can invest into technology companies from China. We start our conversation with James’ background and how he came to China and work in the realm of investments with different funds and capital groups. James explained how he assembled together a portfolio of technology companies and discuss the major misconceptions about investing into Chinese companies. Last but not least, we dig deeper into the Chinese technology companies in the ecommerce category, Luckin Coffee’s IPO and Tencent’s future prospects in gaming. Editor’s disclaimer: Our discussion pre-dates the ban of Huawei by the US. Further more, our discussion does not constitute as investor advice, and we urge the audience to do their own homework to invest in any companies and be responsible for their own investments. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - James Hull ([@jameshullx](https://twitter.com/jameshullx?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshull/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Co-host of China Tech Investor podcast and Founder of Hullx \[0:20\] - How did you start your career? \[0:35\] - Introduction to [JIC Capital](http://www.jicinv.com/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [CIC](http://www.china-inv.cn/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in China \[3:17\] - You have worked in the realm of investments with different funds and capital groups in China, what’s your experience from your perspective looking into China from a different culture? \[4:42\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons? \[5:34\] - How is the experience of doing the [China Tech Investor](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/china-tech-investor/id1440576420?ref=analysepodcast.com) podcast and what have been the highlights of talking about investing into China tech? \[7:39\] - Can we invest into technology companies from China? \[9:08\] - To start, when you put together a portfolio of technology companies in China or anywhere else, what are the fundamentals and metrics that you look at before even considering investing in them? \[9:18\] - Do you take into consideration on the macroeconomics and long term trends when you think about investing in China companies? \[12:06\] - What are the major misconceptions about investing in China technology companies that you wish more people would understand? \[13:02\] - Given so many companies from China rushing to IPO, are you worried that they are passing their buck from private to public investors given their lack of profitability? \[14:49\] - Does investing in China require a more sophisticated perspective given that you have seen different narratives such as the film [China Hustle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FChina%5FHustle?ref=analysepodcast.com) which really talk about 3 tier companies and not really the ones with good fundamentals? \[16:48\] - Does the quality of the tech companies listing in China, Hong Kong or US make any difference to how you view the company? \[19:27\] - Does the emergence of the new Silicon Valley stock exchange and the power of dual class shares in Hong Kong provide a more nuanced view to how we invest in companies? \[20:19\] - I like to zoom into specifics by first focusing on specific types of companies: \[22:39\] - **Alibaba, JD and Pinduoduo**: How are they different and how do you assess whether these companies are successful or are they current issues which you will start waving a red flag in looking into them? \[23:10\] - **Luckin Coffee:** They have just filed an IPO and you have done an interesting episode with Michael Norris, what are your thoughts on Luckin Coffee? What is the bull or bear case for this company? \[34:01\] - BL’s comments on [recalibration of value in Internet sharing economy companies](https://www.bernardleong.com/2019/05/07/recalibration-of-value-in-the-sharing-economy-internet-companies/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and James’ thoughts on the topic entitled [“Assets: Atoms vs Electrons](https://longhedge.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/assets-atoms-versus-electrons/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” \[36:51\] - **Uber and Lyft:** How have the ride-hailing companies performed so far? Will they be sustainable in the long term? How does that bode for Didi, Grab and Ola? \[42:49\] - **Tencent**: Does Tencent’s success depend on government regulatory bodies now given that they don’t approve games that quickly anymore? Are there other interesting things from Tencent we should look out for? \[45:17\] - Closing \[49:14\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[49:19\] - James’ recommendation: Michael Lewis’ podcast “Against the Rules”, “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran, “The Myth of Capitalism” by Jonathan Tepper - How do my audience find you? \[50:48\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/59974593?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/20FB6hUxRXgtgcgL8cdG83?si=zDz4EEJ2TkmAC92hrkQTWA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtR-4tzo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2HxAejE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/358034684847986/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=60949128&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-299%3A-Can-we-invest-into-technology-companies-from-China%3F-with-James-Hull-id1121832-id156883638?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_299\_\_Can\_we\_invest\_into\_technology\_companies\_from\_China\_\_with\_James\_Hull.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F299%5F%5FCan%5Fwe%5Finvest%5Finto%5Ftechnology%5Fcompanies%5Ffrom%5FChina%5F%5Fwith%5FJames%5FHull.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Employee to Entrepreneur with Steve Glaveski URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-298-employee-to-entrepreneur-with-steve-glaveski/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:16.000Z Steve Glaveski, host of Future Squared podcast and founder of Collective campus, returns to our podcast to discuss his latest book “Employee to Entrepreneur: How to earn your freedom and do work that matters” and offered his thoughts to how the podcasting movement in Asia Pacific is evolving. We dived deep into why and how Steve wrote the book and his thoughts on how one should build the entrepreneurial mindset in his or her career. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - [Steve Glaveski](https://www.steveglaveski.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Founder of[ Collective Campus](https://www.collectivecamp.us/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and host of [FutureSquared podcast ](http://www.futuresquared.xyz/?ref=analysepodcast.com)([@SteveGlaveski](https://twitter.com/SteveGlaveski?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-glaveski-27428510/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:26\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:26\] - How has FutureSquared podcast evolved since our last conversation? \[1:48\] - What are your thoughts on the recent acquisitions made by Spotify in podcasting and where do you see the trends for podcasting across Asia Pacific? \[3:23\] - Podcasting today is akin to blogging in the early 2000s. Do we have to wait for US to consolidate podcasting or are they any trends such as video that might take the next stage? \[6:38\] - [Employee to Entrepreneur](http://www.employeetoentrepreneur.io/resources?ref=analysepodcast.com) book by Steve Glaveski ([Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Employee-Entrepreneur-Earn-Freedom-Matters/dp/0730363864?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[9:11\] - What is the backstory behind writing this book? \[10:04\] - How did the blogging eventually led to a book? \[12:44\] - What is the main theme of the book and who are the intended audience? \[15:13\] - Is freedom really the difference between employee and entrepreneur? \[17:45\] - What are the early steps for an employee to take before taking the leap into being an entrepreneur? \[20:22\] - Can everyone be an entrepreneur or can they just embrace the entrepreneurial mindset? What are the drivers to everyone out there to be an entrepreneur? \[22:53\] - Should everyone have a side project before they start to be an entrepreneur? \[26:04\] - What are the steps for an individual to take from idea to execution? \[28:15\] - How does one use productivity hacks to manage their time so that they can do two jobs at a time? \[32:47\] - How does one deal with procrastination and distractions from the smartphone? \[36:18\] - What’s next after the book? \[39:04\] - The Tim Feriss question: What will be the message you want to put on a billboard? \[40:26\] - Key References during the interview: - [Lemonade Stand](https://www.lemonadestand.rocks/?ref=analysepodcast.com): Entrepreneurship for Kids program which Steve has mentioned across the podcast episode. - [The Case for the 6 Hour Day](https://hbr.org/2018/12/the-case-for-the-6-hour-workday?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Steve Glaveski - [Stop letting push notifications ruin your productivity](https://hbr.org/2019/03/stop-letting-push-notifications-ruin-your-productivity?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Steve Glaveski - Closing \[42:42\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[42:56\] - Steve’s recommendation: “[The Trillion Dollar Coach](https://www.trilliondollarcoach.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Alan Eagle, Eric Schmidt, and Jonathan Rosenberg on Bill Campbell. - How do my audience find you? \[44:32\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/59521978?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5BgagRga2VeSnYGA209KVp?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQDpHXM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2JIUpN4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2356805801229485/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/60728094?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-298%3A-Employee-to-Entrepreneur-with-Steve-Glaveski-id1121832-id154375093?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_298\_\_Employee\_to\_Entrepreneur\_with\_Steve\_Glaveski.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F298%5F%5FEmployee%5Fto%5FEntrepreneur%5Fwith%5FSteve%5FGlaveski.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Gojek vs Grab - Dawn of the Super App with Jon Russell URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-297-gojek-vs-grab-dawn-of-the-super-app-with-jon-russell/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:16.000Z Jon Russell, reporter from TechCrunch, joined us in a conversation about the continuing war between Gojek and Grab with the dawn of the super app. We started our conversation on Honestbee’s recent predicament, the growth in series B-D funding for startups across Southeast Asia and Eduardo Saverin’s B-Capital recent raising of 406M for their fund. Then we dived deep into Grab vs Gojek and their narrative from fundraising valuation to the paradigm of super app, and discuss whether each of them can pull it off with their different strategies from Grab’s financial services to Gojek’s multiple acquisitions in the market. Last but not least, we discuss Uber’s recent IPO S1-filing and their implications to Didi, Grab and Ola and what it means for the Asian ecosystem for the long term. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Jon Russell ([@jonrussell](https://twitter.com/jonrussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://th.linkedin.com/in/jmarussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ Newsletter](http://jonrussell.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ba97f7320d4d550688a17209a&id=9f5d1c81f2&ref=analysepodcast.com#%5F=%5F),[ Personal Site](http://insidethenoodlebowl.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TechCrunch Profile](https://techcrunch.com/author/jon-russell/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Reporter at[ TechCrunch](http://techcrunch.com/author/jon-russell/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:23\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:36\] - What are the major events in Southeast Asia lately: - [Honestbee CEO departure](https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/01/honestbee-fires-ceo-joel-sng/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [their recent problems](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/25/time-maybee-running-out-for-honestbee/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[1:02\] - Series B-D fundraising: [Instarem](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/instarem-closes-41m/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (41M), [CXA Group](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/cxa-raises-25-million/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (25M), [Carousell](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/10/carousell-naspers-olx/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (56M) and [Shopback](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/shopback-raises-45-million/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (45M) – do you see that the Series A and seed stage funding are starting to decline? \[3:56\] - [Eduardo Saverin’s B-Capital raised 406M](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/07/b-capital-first-close-406-million/?ref=analysepodcast.com) – Does that mean that we will see more series B financing? \[5:22\] - Gojek vs Grab: Dawn of Super Apps in Southeast Asia \[6:24\] - Let’s start with their fundraising first, how much money have [Grab](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/grab-6-5-billion/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Gojek have raised so far? \[6:40\] - Has Gojek [actually reached US$10B valuation](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/no-go-jek-isnt-valued-at-10-billion-and-yes-i-am-a-pedant/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and what happened there? \[7:08\] - Of course, with a truckload of cash, they are touting the narrative of the super app. Gojek has more less implemented it successfully in Indonesia & still growing their services, is Grab getting there with the super app? \[9:29\] - There are very few critiques on the super app coming from our friends [Tim Culpan from Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-08/grab?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Michael Smith from Seedplus VC](https://seedvc.blog/2019/03/22/my-take-grab-vs-go-jek-inside-asias-battle-of-the-super-apps-fortune/?ref=analysepodcast.com), do you think that the media narrative is being too over optimistic on the super app? \[11:58\] - Grab has focused a lot on [financial services](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/grab-launches-sme-loans-and-micro-insurance/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in the past few months, what is the strategy there? Will they end up [spinning off their financial arm with Paypal and Ant Financial backing them](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/29/grab-financial-services-ant-financial-alibaba-paypal/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[16:33\] - Why Uber is still in Southeast Asia - Uber still have a HQ in Southeast Asia despite leaving the market, what are they still doing there? \[18:16\] - We have seen the Uber S1 filing for their IPO, so what have we learned about Uber with relation to Didi and Grab? \[20:16\] - What are the implications for Grab and Didi [given Uber owns a significant stake in them](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/02/uber-singapore-apac-hq-southeast-asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? What does that mean for these companies in the longer term? \[23:40\] - Will either Gojek or Grab get Honestbee in the end? \[26:36\] - Closing \[27:20\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[27:22\] - Jon’s recommendation: Doing daily exercise with a run and the [Flux app](https://justgetflux.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? \[28:12\] - Announcement of Analyse Asia 5th Anniversary Live Show in WeWork Singapore, 6.30 pm on 5 Sep 2019 in Singapore \[28:41\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/59192211?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0AZVp8KjPllzXiNYjp9C2L?si=2nD6kih5S8uNHzb5hgswmQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQL3d9U?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2VpuGjM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2032571630377430/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=60607287&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-297%3A-Gojek-vs-Grab-Dawn-of-the-Super-App-with-Jon-Russell-id1121832-id152325771?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_297\_\_Gojek\_vs\_Grab\_-\_Dawn\_of\_the\_Super\_App\_with\_Jon\_Russell.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F297%5F%5FGojek%5Fvs%5FGrab%5F-%5FDawn%5Fof%5Fthe%5FSuper%5FApp%5Fwith%5FJon%5FRussell.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Disrupting Japan with Tim Romero URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-296-disrupting-japan-with-tim-romero/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:15.000Z Tim Romero, chief technology officer for TEPCO Ventures and host of “Disrupting Japan” podcast, joined us in a discussion on the entrepreneurial technology ecosystem of Japan. We started with Tim’s background and how he built his podcast to discuss startups & innovation in Japan. Subsequently, Tim dived deeper into the current evolution of the Japanese startup ecosystem, highlighting the key verticals from space, robotics and consumer Internet, the cultural changes that have taken place in the past few years and discuss how the small and medium businesses will be the most interesting companies to look out for Japan’s next breakout phase in technology and entrepreneurship. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Tim Romero ([@timoth3y](https://twitter.com/timoth3y?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/timromero/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Host of [Disrupting Japan podcast](https://www.disruptingjapan.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/disrupting-japan/id923817924?mt=2&ls=1&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/tim-romero/disrupting-japan?refid=stpr&ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:22\] - How did you start your career? \[0:44\] - What’s your current role and coverage in your present role as chief technology officer for TEPCO Ventures? \[1:33\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? \[3:30\] - You are the host of “Disrupting Japan” podcast, what is the theme of the podcast and who are its intended audience? \[5:32\] - What are the [most interesting parts of being a podcaster in your journey](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-i-learned-japans-first-professional-podcaster-tim-romero/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with Disrupting Japan? \[6:49\] - Japanese Entrepreneurial Technology Ecosystem \[8:50\] - Can you give an overview of the Japanese entrepreneurial technology and innovation ecosystem? \[9:11\] - What are the common misconceptions about the Japanese ecosystem? \[11:16\] - What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese ecosystem? \[15:15\] - What are the core technologies which are currently interesting within the ecosystem? \[17:14\] - What are the startups in your opinion are interesting on their innovation? Let’s work with a few categories \[19:35\] : - Robotics \[19:41\] – [Mujin](https://mujin.co.jp/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Space \[20:40\] – [Astroscale](https://astroscale.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [iSpace](https://ispace-inc.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Consumer Internet – [Mercari ](https://www.mercari.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - When we think of Japan, we often look at the big conglomerates such as Sony, Toyota, Toshiba, Yamato Group, Rakuten, Fast Retailing (aka Uniqlo) and SoftBank, how are these corporations viewed within the innovation ecosystem? \[22:34\] - Do Japanese startups have the desire to go regional or global? \[24:04\] - How about venture capital in the ecosystem? I was told a few years ago, most Japanese startups usually go public after series B funding, is that changing with the new breed of companies? \[25:07\] - How do you see this new breed of Japanese startups and the evolution of their advancement of technology? \[26:35\] - Where do you think the Japanese technology ecosystem will be in the next 2-3 years? \[29:43\] - Closing \[32:55\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[33:20\] - Tim’s recommendation: Peter Thiel “Zero to One” and “Guerilla Marketing” by Jay Conrad Levinson - BL’s recommendation: Tadashi Yanai (founder of Fast Retailing aka Uniqlo), “One Win Nine Defeats” (Chinese version) - How do my audience find you? \[34:32\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/58853910?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Tc5bFd7DOF51nud8ifbzI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTRtt6I?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2H0TJ43?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/1416799391795302/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=60475212&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-296%3A-Disrupting-Japan-with-Tim-Romero-id1121832-id150641624?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_296\_\_Disrupting\_Japan\_with\_Tim\_Romero.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F296%5F%5FDisrupting%5FJapan%5Fwith%5FTim%5FRomero.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Docdoc & Digital Healthcare in Asia with Cole Sirucek URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-295-docdoc-digital-healthcare-asia-cole-sirucek/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:15.000Z Cole Sirucek, CEO and co-founder of Docdoc, joined us to discuss the evolution of his digital health startup leading in patient intelligence and shared his perspectives on digital healthcare across Asia. We started from Cole’s early career highlights particularly his time with Temasek and subsequently, the backstory to how Grace Park, his wife and he both started Docdoc and how the company transformed both the healthcare and insurance space. Last but not least, Cole discuss the major trends in digital healthcare space and the challenges in building a startup in that space across Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Cole Sirucek, co-founder and CEO of [Docdoc](https://docdoc.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@ColeSirucek](https://twitter.com/colesirucek?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cole-sirucek-044290/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:18\] - How did you start your career? \[0:59\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons? \[3:03\] - [Docdoc](https://www.docdoc.com.sg/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Trends on Digital Health in Asia ([@docdoc](https://twitter.com/docdoc?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[5:37\] - As an introduction, can you describe [Docdoc as a company](https://www.docdoc.com.sg/about/company-overview/?ref=analysepodcast.com), what does it do and can you describe the backstory on how the company are founded? \[5:50\] - What is the current vision and mission of Docdoc? - What is the customer journey for a consumer coming into Docdoc and similarly for a business customer such as an insurance company? \[10:36\] - What differentiates Docdoc with the other companies in the healthtech space? \[12:53\] - I understand that recently you have received quite a bit of interest from the insurance industry. What are the main reasons insurance companies are interested in partnering with Docdoc? \[15:06\] - Where does that transaction layer piece enters into DocDoc upon the discovery and curation stages for patients to discover the doctors? \[16:47\] - Besides yourself, who are [the key people](https://www.docdoc.com.sg/about/our-team?ref=analysepodcast.com) on your current team? \[18:51\] - What’s the geographical business footprint of Docdoc? \[21:18\] - Who are [the investors](https://www.docdoc.com.sg/about/board-and-investors?ref=analysepodcast.com) of Docdoc? \[22:20\] - What will be your metrics if DocDoc is successful in a few years time? \[25:48\] - What are the major trends in the digital health space? \[27:10\] - Where are the key innovation drivers given that healthcare is a highly regulated space? \[28:40\] - What is it like in building a digital health company in Asia Pacific? \[30:42\] - Closing \[32:34\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[32:42\] - Cole’s recommendation: “[The Unfettered Mind](https://www.amazon.com/Unfettered-Mind-Writings-Master-Swordsman/dp/1590309863/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Takuan Soho - BL’s recommendation: “[The Book of Five Rings](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Five-Rings-Japanese-Shambhala/dp/1590302486?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Miyamoto Musashi - How do my audience find you? \[34:00\] **Author’s note:** *There’s a bit of noise at the start, but the recording gradually gets better. We have done our best to work on the sound during editing process and apologized for the little bleeps here and there.* - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/58339182?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6quGas8t3N0fxP09SPQEO8?si=ahMvJSaXRG-SwwEC101qAQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTQqra4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2XPvOtX?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Video](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/812240615807659/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/60289125?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-295%3A-Docdoc-%26-Digital-Healthcare-in-Asia-with-Cole-Sirucek-id1121832-id148362375?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_295\_\_Docdoc\_\_Digital\_Healthcare\_in\_Asia\_with\_Cole\_Sirucek.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F295%5F%5FDocdoc%5F%5FDigital%5FHealthcare%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FCole%5FSirucek.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation across Asia Pacific with Joyce Yang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-294-blockchain-cryptocurrency-regulation-across-asia-pacific-with-joyce-yang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:14.000Z Joyce Yang, founder of Global Coin Research is back on the podcast to share an overview of the regulatory landscape for blockchain technology and cryptocurrency across Asia Pacific with China included. She discuss the major misconceptions on the regulation of cryptocurrency and blockchain by governments across Asia Pacific and how startups and major corporations need to do in order to navigate the ever changing industry with blockchain and cryptocurrency. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Joyce Yang ([@JoyceInNYC](https://twitter.com/JoyceInNYC?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yonghuanyang/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder of [Global Coin Research](https://globalcoinresearch.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:25\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:41\] - The recent surge of bitcoin and other alt-coins prices. - Trip to Thailand on security token offering. - Travel guide from Global Coin Research (Upcoming link coming) - Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Regulation across Asia Pacific \[4:00\] - Let’s take a global perspective, with ICOs faltering and most cryptocurrency and blockchain companies still finding product-market fit, how are US and European regulators thinking about the sector? \[4:38\] - We often hear that Asia is the most welcome when it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, specifically Korea, Japan and Singapore. Is that perception true or are there nuances with the region which people do not know about? \[9:10\] - Blockchain gaming in Japan and Korea. In China, the BAT has their own blockchain type projects starting in 2014\. \[14:39\] - What are the most common misconceptions about cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation globally or specifically in Asia? \[15:50\] - Quality of media on blockchain and cryptocurrency is weak across Asia Pacific. - How regulators interact with cryptocurrency and blockchain projects and the ranking of crypto alt-coins not be objective in China. - Lack of showcase of high quality blockchain projects in the region. - Given that Monetary Authority of Singapore and Hong Kong Monetary Authority are very vocal and open to interact with blockchain projects, is it associated with them being the financial hubs in the region and have developed the sophistication to dealing with the topic at hand? \[19:35\] - We have discussed this previously that blockchain and cryptocurrency are pretty much intertwined for the rest of Asia, whereas in China, it is broken into two separate parts, blockchain applications and ban of ICOs & crypto-exchanges, how does it work for companies positioning themselves in the region? \[21:05\] - Comments on blockchain and cryptocurrency projects tied to the core competency of the country are correlated. \[24:02\] - Let’s start with the region, splitting China and the rest of Asia, is there a spectrum to where the financial regulators are looking at the cryptocurrency and blockchain from favorable to not favorable? \[25:29\] - What are the key legislation in different countries which are the most interesting and exciting for companies dabbling in cryptocurrency & blockchain? \[27:18\] - Banning of bitcoin or crypto mining in China. Note that China previously owns 50% of the bitcoin mining activity in the world. - Will bitcoin mining shift into the rest of Asia from China? \[29:05\] - With the hype cycle of ICOs now in dwindling mode, how are Asian governments looking at companies doing ICOs, and are they shifting towards looking at tokens as securities? \[29:51\] - Cryptocurrency exchanges offering their own initial exchange offerings (IEOs) at much smaller scale than ICOs. - If I am part of the executive leadership of a crypto or blockchain company, what will I be most worried about from regulators? \[30:58\] - Closing \[32:52\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[33:00\] - Joyce’s recommendation: Lee Kuan Yew “[The Singapore Story](https://www.amazon.com/Singapore-Story-Memoirs-Lee-Kuan/dp/0130208035?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - BL’s recommendation: Lee Kuan Yew “[From the Third World to First](https://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/dp/0060197765/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?qid=1555742454&refinements=p%5F27%3ALee+Kuan+Yew&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Lee+Kuan+Yew&ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - How do my audience find you? \[34:11\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/57983806?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6dLGen6B2D89vqGF7QFCSj?si=pXpRuwhBS5KoMdnaAwMw%5FQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQT72hw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2VxWn5W?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/463187517558121/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=60172658&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-294%3A-Blockchain-%26-Cryptocurrency-Regulation-across-Asia-Pacific-with-Joyce-Yang-id1121832-id146587382?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_294\_\_Blockchain\_\_Cryptocurrency\_Regulation\_across\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Joyce\_Yang.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F294%5F%5FBlockchain%5F%5FCryptocurrency%5FRegulation%5Facross%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FJoyce%5FYang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Insights into Huawei's recent troubles with Zen Soo URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-293-huaweis-recent-troubles-with-zen-soo/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:14.000Z Zen Soo, technology reporter from South China Morning Post (SCMP) and host of Inside China Tech, joins us for a conversation on Huawei’s recent troubles. We begin with Zen’s introduction of her coverage with SCMP, and the interesting story of her podcast. Then Zen dived deep into Huawei’s recent troubles which include the arrest of their CFO, Meng Wanzhou in Canada, and the fallout between China and US on 5G with Huawei in the centre, and its implications to the other Chinese technology companies expanding abroad. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Zen Soo ([@zensoo](https://twitter.com/zensoo?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/zensoo/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [SCMP profile](https://www.scmp.com/author/zen-soo?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Technology Reporter, [South China Morning Post](https://www.scmp.com/asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Host of [“Inside China Tech”](https://www.scmp.com/podcasts/article/2178841/inside-china-tech?ref=analysepodcast.com) podcast. \[0:47\] - How did you start your career? \[1:10\] - What are you are currently covering in the technology domain for South China Morning Post (SCMP)? \[1:42\] - You run a podcast called “Inside China Tech” ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/inside-china-tech/id1447345891?l=en&mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/14IT7c4rHC1M7ithU1jVD7?ref=analysepodcast.com)), what’s the focus and what are the intended audience? \[2:16\] - From you career journey, can you share the interesting lessons you have learned with my audience? \[3:29\] - Huawei’s recent troubles \[4:47\] - Can you briefly introduce Huawei, the technology company from Shenzhen to my audience? \[5:13\] - How did [Huawei went from small-time trader in Shenzhen to world’s biggest telecoms equipment supplier](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/2186494/how-huawei-went-small-time-trader-shenzhen-worlds-biggest-telecoms?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[7:11\] - Before we move forward, I like to get an understanding on what 5G is and why is this technology becoming a point of contention between the US and China? \[8:33\] - What has transpired between Huawei and governments around the world since the arrest of Huawei CFO, Meng Wanzhou? \[11:11\] - Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei have since came out with a PR blitz and yet, the narrative of the Western media is still about the alleged cybersecurity risk (which is interesting because [David Sanger from NY Times in Terry Gross “Fresh Air” ](https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621338178/journalist-warns-cyber-attacks-present-a-perfect-weapon-against-global-order?ref=analysepodcast.com)have mentioned that no one has given concrete proof yet on Huawei with their links to the Chinese Communist party, why is the PR blitz from Huawei not working? \[13:15\] - What will happen to Meng Wanzhou? [Will she be released by Canadian government](https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/article/2187940/canadian-minister-who-will-decide-whether-huaweis-meng-wanzhou-goes?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[15:24\] - The US has put a lot of pressure to their allies to abandon Huawei for their 5G build and rollout particularly in the European Union. However, UK has approved it and their [cybersecurity chief, Ciaran Martin has rebuffs US on the risk](https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/article/2186667/uk-approval-huawei-equipment-could-sway-more-european-states?ref=analysepodcast.com), why has the UK not follow the line taken by Canada, Germany, Australia and New Zealand? \[16:16\] - What are the broader implications for other Chinese technology companies given the pushback against Huawei by US, European Union and other Western nations? \[18:36\] - Closing \[20:55\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[21:05\] - Zen’s recommendation: [John Carreyrou “Bad Blood” ](https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[21:49\] **Podcast Information:** - [RSS Feed](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/rss?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/57442121?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Xkrwp32l5wbAQbIrcyYEn?si=zCYZ0ioGTvyCAETLu7jR4g&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](https://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtS9520g?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2VxWn5W?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/425325288217639/) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=59951497&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [RadioPublic](https://radiopublic.com/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-WdQZOA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [PodBean](https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/qac4j-3b090/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-Podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [ListenNotes](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong-bernard-leong-NFfKlsU1kHE/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-293%3A-Huawei's-recent-troubles-with-Zen-Soo-id1121832-id143462085?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_293\_\_Huaweis\_Troubles\_with\_Zen\_Soo.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F293%5F%5FHuaweis%5FTroubles%5Fwith%5FZen%5FSoo.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### RHL Ventures & Venture Capital in Southeast Asia with Rachel Lau URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-292-rhl-ventures-venture-capital-in-southeast-asia-with-rachel-lau/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:13.000Z Rachel Lau, managing partner of RHL Ventures joined us in a conversation to discuss their newly formed venture capital firm and discuss her perspectives on venture capital trends in Southeast Asia. Rachel began the conversation with her background and how RHL Ventures is formed under a group of well-established family businesses behind them, their investment thesis and the verticals which they are currently focused on. She also offered her perspectives on how one need to think of Southeast Asia as a region of investment and the major technology trends in the region. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Rachel Lau, Managing Partner, [RHL Ventures](https://rhl.ventures/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-lau-b90957a1/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:52\] - How did you start your career? \[1:05\] - What prompted you to set up a venture capital firm in Malaysia? \[2:18\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons learnt? \[4:32\] - RHL Ventures \[5:36\] - Can you describe the mission and vision of RHL Ventures? \[5:52\] - What is the backstory behind the setup of RHL Ventures? \[7:14\] - Can you describe the background of both Raja Hamzah Abidin and yourself? How are your skill sets complementary in starting this firm? \[8:49\] (Ref: “[Rich Asian Millennials Pool Family Fortunes to Build Venture Fund](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-05/rich-gen-y-asian-kids-pool-family-fortunes-to-build-venture-fund?ref=analysepodcast.com)“, Bloomberg) - Do RHL Ventures have an investment thesis? \[9:32\] - What is your typical day like as a venture capitalist? \[11:26\] - What are the industry verticals that RHL Ventures typically invest in? \[13:47\] - What is the ticket size per investment for RHL Ventures and what are the traits in startups and founders that RHL Ventures sought out for? \[17:45\] - What are the interesting investments from RHL Ventures so far? \[19:45\] - Given the rise of ICOs and alternative venture capital models, do you see traditional venture capital is here to stay? \[21:30\] - How do you think about investing in Southeast Asia means? Is it just country by country or a set of countries with similar macroeconomic conditions? \[23:40\] - What are the interesting technology trends which VCs will find interesting to tackle in Southeast Asia? \[26:08\] - Closing \[28:41\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[28:52\] - Rachel’s recommendation: “[The Most Good You can Do](https://www.amazon.com/Most-Good-You-Can-Effective/dp/0300180276?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ by Peter Singer - How do my audience find you? \[29:29\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2329650420598423/) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-292%3A-RHL-Ventures-%26-Venture-Capital-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Rachel-Lau-id1121832-id141032063?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ABWa49PecaH5dxwntPttk?si=QV6DMD0JRUyeDXJw8seqAA&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/56971077?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQGTgeE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2Vb0WDa?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook Page](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=59792719&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_292\_\_RHL\_Ventures\_\_Venture\_Capital\_in\_Southeast\_Asia\_with\_Rachel\_Lau.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F292%5F%5FRHL%5FVentures%5F%5FVenture%5FCapital%5Fin%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FRachel%5FLau.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Vayner Media and Marketing in Asia Pacific with Jeff Nicholson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-291-vayner-media-and-marketing-in-asia-pacific-with-jeff-nicholson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:13.000Z Jeff Nicholson, chief media officer of Vayner Media joined us in a conversation on the expansion of their business footprint in Asia Pacific and discuss the major trends in marketing and advertising across Asia Pacific, splitting between China and the rest of Asia. Jeff discuss the customer centric focus of Vayner Media and how they are working with international brands in Asia Pacific and regional brands on digital marketing. We discuss the effects of the new tri-factor of Google, Facebook and Amazon in advertising and aggregation, and the rise of Tik Tok in international markets. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Jeffrey Nicholson, Chief Media Officer of Vayner Media ([@jnicholson](https://twitter.com/jnicholson?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreynicholson/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:55\] - How did you start your career? \[1:46\] - How did you eventually end up in Vayner Media? \[3:19\] - In your career journey, what are some interesting career lessons learnt? - Vayner Media in Asia Pacific \[4:08\] - - Can you briefly introduce VaynerMedia in Asia and what is her current vision and mission? \[5:26\] - As you’ve started to enter into the market, have you found the challenges/needs of the clients in Asia Pacific any different from the clients in the West? \[6:28\] - Do the needs of the global customers driven by localization efforts? \[7:47\] - What are the expectations of Asian brands when it comes to digital marketing and branding? \[8:30\] - Are there any regional examples or case studies which you can talk about? \[9:40\] - How do you cope with customers who have attained an advanced stage in their digital marketing efforts and what is your value add from there? \[10:40\] - What are the dos and don’ts when it comes to educate your clients on digital marketing and branding? \[12:00\] - Suppose you have the media architecture, will the message be important when you deploy them for marketing? \[13:25\] - Due to the costs associated, are traditional companies moving towards bringing their digital media teams in-house? \[14:06\] - What do you think are the key challenges and opportunities currently facing the media industry? \[15:09\] - How does Vayner Media deal with brand safety and deal with controversy? \[18:44\] - What about the relationship between the brands and advertisers with the duopoly: Google and Facebook or maybe adding Amazon when it comes to distribution? \[20:34\] - Given that China and the rest of Asia are two separate media ecosystems, how do you balance your social portfolio across these markets? \[22:06\] - What’s your opinion on Bytedance’s Douyin (or Tik Tok) app? \[23:11\] - What do you think the future could hold for the media industry? \[24:15\] - Closing \[25:08\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[25:10\] - Jeff’s recommendations: Reviews of products and services for brands from public websites such as Amazon. - How do my audience find you? \[26:32\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/781774625513984/) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2307322496174519/) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-291%3A-Vayner-Media-and-Marketing-in-Asia-Pacific-with-Jeff-Nicholson-id1121832-id139860122?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6o0fKn5KtbcVelU8gMHi1v?si=eDHZE%5FQ9RICsf3XBWUkymQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/56757378?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTTtkYE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2TIwmz4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/59721464?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_291\_\_Vayner\_Media\_and\_Marketing\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Jeff\_Nicholson.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F291%5F%5FVayner%5FMedia%5Fand%5FMarketing%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FJeff%5FNicholson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Splice Beta and Media in Southeast Asia with Alan Soon URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-290-splice-beta-and-media-in-southeast-asia-with-alan-soon/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:13.000Z Alan Soon, co-founder and CEO of Splice Media joined us in a conversation about Splice Media and their latest conference, Splice Beta, and offered his perspectives on how the media businesses are now in the transformation mode across Southeast Asia. We discuss the interesting media companies and the non-traditional business models in the media business. Alan also shared his thoughts on how the duopoly of Google and Facebook affects the advertising supply chain of media properties and the challenges of journalism in the region. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Alan Soon ([@alansoon](https://twitter.com/alansoon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/alansoon?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Co-founder & CEO of [The Splice ](https://www.thesplicenewsroom.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)Media \[0:19\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:27\] - [Splice Media,](https://www.thesplicenewsroom.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) [Splice Beta](https://www.thesplicenewsroom.com/splicebeta2019/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Trends on Media & Journalism in Southeast Asia \[0:55\] - To start again, can you introduce the Splice Media and her vision and mission to my audience and how it has evolved since our last conversation? \[1:20\] - Can you talk about [Splice Beta](https://www.thesplicenewsroom.com/splicebeta2019/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the intended audience? \[3:06\] (and you can use the promo code: **analyseasia** to get a 10%) - Who are the interesting speakers for the Splice Beta conference? \[5:11\] - What are the interesting media companies that you have seen across Southeast Asia? \[7:49\] - Is there an unbundling between discovery and curation for media startups across Southeast Asia? \[10:36\] - Have you seen any interesting business models in media startups across Southeast Asia? \[11:49\] - Suppose if you want to do advertising, are any media outlets in Asia Pacific at the mercy of aggregators, Google and Facebook, the duopoly in terms of distribution? \[14:02\] - Have the traditional media outlets started their own transformation and if so, what are the steps that they are taking to deal with their own disruption? \[15:45\] - How do the media outlets in Asia Pacific tackle against regulation and governments which do not support free press? \[18:00\] - What are your current perspectives on investigative journalism in Southeast Asia? \[19:29\] - Do you see investigative journalism operating in Southeast Asia differently? \[22:04\] - Given that you have worked with different traditional media newsroom and recent events happening with Facebook being an enabler for some governments to jail journalists in Philippines and Myanmar, how do we educate more people to be critical and media literate? \[23:14\] - Closing \[25:42\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[26:01\] - Alan’s recommendation: [ABC’s “The Dropout” podcast](http://abcradio.com/podcasts/the-dropout/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: [Jill Abramson’s “Merchants of Truth”](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Merchants-of-Truth/Jill-Abramson/9781501123207?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[27:34\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2307322496174519/) - [Castbox](https://castbox.fm/episode/Episode-290%3A-Splice-Beta-and-Media-in-Southeast-Asia-with-Alan-Soon-id1121832-id137809753?country=us&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6fCMsFaZJpDUFm39R2ZAUM?si=JIfo2Y%5F6SJeEKA5fHUg1hg&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/56317083?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQ945qk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2HyDk8j?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/59550991?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_290\_\_Splice\_Beta\_and\_Media\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Alan\_Soon.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F290%5F%5FSplice%5FBeta%5Fand%5FMedia%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FAlan%5FSoon.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Global Digital Report 2019 with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-289-global-digital-report-2019-with-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:12.000Z Simon Kemp, founder and CEO of Kepios joined us in a conversation on the global digital report 2019 and what it has installed for Asia Pacific in 2019\. We start with the global trends of the report and zoomed it down to Asia Pacific, with the surprise that growth is still accelerating in the region particularly with India, the rise of Tik Tok by ByteDance and the hard truth that Facebook is not declining. We discuss whether there are new entrants in social media for Asia Pacific and the attitude towards privacy in the region as well. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of [Kepios](http://kepios.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:17\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:25\] - [Global Digital Report 2019](https://wearesocial.com/global-digital-report-2019?ref=analysepodcast.com) published by We Are Social and Hootsuite \[2:04\] - What are the key numbers, main observations and trends in the report for 2019? \[2:11\] - Why are the Internet and social media still accelerating and is it because people do not care about their privacy? \[4:04\] - Have you included new datasets from other organizations on top to what the team has done for 2018? \[6:21\] - Zooming down to Asia Pacific, are there any new insights since our last conversation? \[7:57\] - I have seen that you have added data on voice search and voice commands. How was the data compiled? Has there been an increase in usage with voice for Asia Pacific? What are the key applications for the voice search and commands? \[9:30\] - Comments on the difficulty in obtaining Internet and mobile usage data in China and the annual CNNIC report \[13:40\] - With the growing scandals piling onto Facebook, have you seen decreased growth for the big blue app in Asia Pacific and are there any impact to the other two core assets: Instagram and Whatsapp? \[15:15\] - We have read in many articles about the rise of Tik Tok (aka Douyin), a video sharing app from ByteDance Group in China leading the way, has your report picked up their data and are they on track to give Facebook a run for their money, given that they are doing well in Southeast Asia and India? \[20:27\] - Segmentation of Apps by Chinese tech giants to serve their customers better \[24:43\] - What are your thoughts on Mark Zuckerberg’s new vision of Facebook? \[28:19\] - Are they any new entrants in Asia which will be interesting for those to look at? \[33:18\] - How are Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram doing in the social media space? Are the usage rates growing or starting to plateau across the world? \[37:33\] - What does the report discuss about user privacy and their attitudes towards Facebook’s recent mishaps? \[45:51\] - What will be the data that you will most want to get your hands on for 2019 in Asia Pacific? \[49:46\] - Closing \[50:43\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[50:49\] - How do my audience find you? \[51:00\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/2248137505449654/) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5qgOzf2KkW8dZ0NtIw2xOg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/55945012?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQNDryY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2Y15UUE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia/e/59432265?autoplay=true&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_289\_\_Global\_Digital\_Report\_2019\_with\_Simon\_Kemp.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F289%5F%5FGlobal%5FDigital%5FReport%5F2019%5Fwith%5FSimon%5FKemp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Asia Tech Podcast & Podcasting in Asia Pacific with Graham Brown URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-288-asia-tech-podcast-podcasting-in-asia-pacific-with-graham-brown/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:12.000Z Graham Brown, founder of Asia Tech Podcast and Pitchdeck Asia TV joined us in a conversation about his current focus in the podcasting and video media business and his thoughts on the recent major announcements that shook the podcasting world and its impact to Asia Pacific. We first dived into his background and how he has decided to go into the podcasting business. We discuss the Asia Tech Podcast and its intended audience, and how he focused on the storytelling aspect of his media business. Last but not least, Graham discuss the general market trends for podcasting in Asia Pacific, and where it will be heading in the next 3-5 years. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Graham Brown ([@GrahamDBrown](https://twitter.com/GrahamDBrown?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamdbrown/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder of [Asia Tech Podcast](http://www.atp.show/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [PitchDeck Asia TV](http://www.pitchdeck.asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:22\] - How did you start your career? \[0:46\] - From your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[4:43\] - Asia Tech Podcast and Podcasting in Asia Pacific \[6:11\] - What’s the backstory behind Asia Tech Podcast and PitchDeck Asia TV? \[6:33\] - Why did you choose to move to Singapore and use it as the HQ for Asia Tech Podcast? \[8:05\] - The story of PitchDeck Asia TV. \[10:04\] - What are the themes behind Asia Tech Podcast and who are the intended audience? \[11:58\] - Podcasting is a non-zero sum game unlike news media. \[15:10\] - Can you talk about the [interesting guests on your podcast](http://www.atp.show/featured-podcast-episodes/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[16:17\] - What will be your advice for someone who wants to start a podcast? \[20:08\] - How do you typically work with someone who may be interested to create a podcast? \[21:26\] - Distribution is probably one of the biggest problems which I will divide between discovery and curation. How does a podcaster need to break out to gain more audience in your opinion? \[24:15\] - Do you think that podcasters need to invest their time in the new streaming platforms such as Acast, Stitcher, Spotify and Himalaya? \[26:50\] - Let’s switch to trends on podcasting. What are your thoughts on the nascent podcasting market in Asia Pacific? \[28:06\] - Do you think that the podcasting market in Asia Pacific will go more like the US model predicated on advertising or the China model centred on micro-transactions? \[31:48\] - What are the key verticals and markets that are currently of interest in podcasting in this region? \[33:52\] - What are your thoughts on the recent [acquisition of Gimlet and Anchor by Spotify](https://www.recode.net/2019/2/6/18213456/spotify-podcast-gimlet-anchor-q4-results?ref=analysepodcast.com), [investment in Himalaya](https://technode.com/2019/02/13/briefing-chinese-audio-giant-ximalaya-fm-leads-100-million-investment-in-himalaya-media/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [presence of Luminary, the netflix of podcasts](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/03/business/media/luminary-media-podcast-app.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)? How will it impact the podcasting market across the world? \[36:58\] - You have recently interviewed [other podcasters in Asia Pacific](http://www.atp.show/podcasts-asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (including [our host Bernard](https://soundcloud.com/asiatechpodcast/bernard-leong-host-of-analyse-asia-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) as well), what are the general takeaways you can share about talking to them? What are the key ideas and challenges do they face? \[38:35\] - What are the metrics or how do you know if Asia Tech Podcast is successful in your own opinion in 3-5 years time? \[43:00\] - Closing \[45:27\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[45:50\] - Graham’s recommendation: [The Joe Regan Experience Podcast](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience/id360084272?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[48:45\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse/videos/629269777530346/) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/40elDzKdBWPDZWTBICJR1H?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/episode/107656/55634271?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSLGSzA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2SS63Gd?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=59322444&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_288\_\_Asia\_Tech\_Podcast\_\_Podcasting\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Graham\_Brown.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F288%5F%5FAsia%5FTech%5FPodcast%5F%5FPodcasting%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FGraham%5FBrown.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Binance with Joyce Yang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-287-binance-with-joyce-yang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:11.000Z Joyce Yang from Global Coin Research joined us in a discussion to review Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange globally, its rapid rise and current lead in the industry. We began the chronological history of the company and how the founders Zhao Changpeng and He Yi built up the cryptocurrency exchange from 2017 to now the leading player with 40% of the market share globally. We discuss their current business footprint, their current projects from the stable coin project to the recent announcement of the Binance chain. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Joyce Yang ([@JoyceInNYC](https://twitter.com/JoyceInNYC?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yonghuanyang/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder of [Global Coin Research](https://globalcoinresearch.com/premium-2/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:34\] - How did you start your career? \[0:47\] - From your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[2:31\] - You are currently the founder of Global Coin Research, can you discuss what it does and what are you currently covering in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space? \[5:09\] - Do you need bifurcate the segmentation of the market to split between the cryptocurrency and blockchain when you cover the Asia market? \[8:19\] - Do you have to split China and the rest of Asia in the coverage of the cryptocurrency and blockchain space as well? \[10:01\] - [Binance](https://www.binance.com/en?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[11:49\] - - Can you introduce Binance, a global cryptocurrency exchange to my audience? \[12:24\] - What’s the chronology behind the formation of Binance, as the current CEO, Zhao Changpeng was the third member of the Blockchain.info team and also former CTO for OkCoin, one of the top 3 cryptocurrency exchanges in China? \[14:56\] - Who are the other key executives in Binance other than the founders (Zhao Changpeng and He Yi)? \[18:00\] - What is Binance’s mission and vision according to their founders? \[21:17\] - What’s the current business footprint of Binance given that it is originally founded in China and has to move out due to regulation in China? \[25:37\] - How did it become the largest crypto-exchange with a market capitalization of US$1.3B? \[28:52\] - Can you explain the concept of [stable coin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stablecoin?ref=analysepodcast.com) and how Binance and three other major cryptocurrency exchanges [raised US$32M for a stable coin project](http://fortune.com/2018/08/29/cryptocurrency-exchanges-back-32-million-stable-coin-project/?ref=analysepodcast.com) known as Terra? \[32:55\] - Why did Binance not build their own stable coin alone with Terra but instead partner with the other exchanges? \[35:48\] - Recently, they have announced [the launch of the Binance chain](https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-to-launch-its-own-blockchain-binance-chain-in-coming-months?ref=analysepodcast.com), which is a blockchain made by Binance, what does it mean for the business and why is it important? \[39:22\] - Closing \[42:29\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[42:46\] - Joyce’s recommendations: [Billion Dollar Whale](https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Whale-Fooled-Hollywood/dp/031643650X?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope - BL’s recommendation: [The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose](https://www.amazon.com/Sarawak-Report-Inside-Story-Expos%C3%A9/dp/1527219364?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Clare Rewcastle Brown. - How do my audience find you? \[44:43\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Himalaya](https://www.himalaya.com/en/show/107656?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRfBpyE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2EGORzC?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_287\_\_Binance\_with\_Joyce\_Yang.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F287%5F%5FBinance%5Fwith%5FJoyce%5FYang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The US and China Relationship with James Chau URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-286-the-us-and-china-relationship-with-james-chau/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:11.000Z James Chau, news anchor and editor at China-US Focus and World Health Organization Goodwill Ambassador, joined us to discuss the current China and US relationship. We began with his background as a news anchor with Hong Kong TVB, BBC and CGTN (former CCTV news) and discuss his insights from his recent conversation with former US President Jimmy Carter. We dived deeper into the China and US relationship starting from 1979 and discuss how the escalating trade skirmishes between both countries might push them towards a trade war. Last but not least, we hear his perspectives on the recent detention of Huawei’s CFO and the potential implications to world politics upon the calibration of US and China relationship based on the current trade talks. - [James Chau](https://james-chau.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@jameschau](https://twitter.com/jameschau?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameschau/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), News Anchor, and Host of [your own podcast](https://www.chinausfocus.com/podcasts/james-chau/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with [China-US Focus](https://www.chinausfocus.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1pRJDzOydzXfWDfyuF8iJ4?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/atlargepodcast?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/at-large-podcast-by-chinaus-focus?ref=analysepodcast.com)). \[0:22\] - How did you start your career? \[1:04\] - You have been with Hong Kong TVB, a guest presenter on Horizons, the award winning show at BBC and long time anchor on CCTV news, or now CGTN and you have the opportunity to have interviewed important personalities: Muhammad Yunus, Ban Ki-moon, Christine Largarde and many important people globally, what’s your impressions of their thinking and the experience of interviewing these movers and shakers? \[2:57\] - On your recent trip to the US, you have the opportunity to speak to [former US President Jimmy Carter](https://www.chinausfocus.com/podcasts/2019/0121/17664.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) again, what are the new takeaways you learned from the conversation with him this time round? \[6:11\] - You have an interesting career, being in tune as a news anchor on what’s happening across the world, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[10:20\] - You are currently an editor with China-US Focus, an initiative of the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the podcast, what’s the aim of the initiative and who are the audience that you are trying to reach? \[13:30\] - China and US Relationship \[16:56\] - Let’s start from where we are now, what is the chronology behind US and China’s relationship and how did it end up towards a pending trade war? \[17:20\] - Can you provide in the context of the trade war and what it means for the current China and US relationship? \[21:04\] - Does the rise of China, intellectual property theft and difficulty of US tech companies operating in China leading them to a Thucydides trap? \[25:00\] - What is happening now is reminiscent of the rivalry between US and Japan in the 1970s. Some experts think that US is pushing China towards a new Cold War, and in fact, I hear from foreign policy experts talking about the digital cold war, where the US is now gathering their allies, for example, banning Huawei on the pretext of cybersecurity and stopping Chinese technology companies to acquire any US tech companies, does that impede China’s ambition to be technology independent nation? \[29:00\] - We hear the concept of “Made in China 2025” and recently, the Chinese government has dropped it in order to appease the US government and de-escalating the trade tensions, what is that about and will they continue to focus to move in that direction? \[34:07\] - The recent detention of Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou in Canada who happens to be the daughter of Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, immediately after the meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Trump, what are your perspectives on the whole event? With Canada caught in the centre and their citizens now detained in China, should they have done this favor for the US and what can they do now given China exerting pressure on them from trade and detention of their citizens? \[36:25\] - One major criticism from US is that China impose technology transfer and peek into the source code of US tech companies and allow unfair competition against US companies before they can enter into China, will that requirement change in order for the current tensions to end? \[41:10\] - Where do you think the future of US-China relationship will go in 2019 and eventually for the next 20 years? \[44:40\] - Closing \[47:29\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[47:46\] - James’ recommendation: [China in the World](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/china-in-the-world/id738323123?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com) podcast, Movies: “[Green Book](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6966692/?ref%5F=nv%5Fsr%5F2&ref=analysepodcast.com)“, “[Hidden Secrets](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805190/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and documentary “[RBG](https://www.rbgmovie.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)“, Books: “[Faith: A Journey for all](https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Journey-All-Jimmy-Carter/dp/1501184415?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Jimmy Carter - How do my audience find you? \[50:56\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTgL3Zw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2SPXyQY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_286\_\_The\_US\_and\_China\_Relationship\_with\_James\_Chau.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F286%5F%5FThe%5FUS%5Fand%5FChina%5FRelationship%5Fwith%5FJames%5FChau.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Trade Desk and Digital Advertising in Asia Pacific with Matt Harty URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-285-the-trade-desk-and-digital-advertising-in-asia-pacific-with-matt-harty/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:11.000Z Matt Harty, senior vice president of Asia Pacific for The Trade Desk, joined us to discuss the footprint of the programmatic advertising company and the major trends on digital advertising across Asia Pacific. From the start, Matt introduces the concept of programmatic advertising and explains how The Trade Desk works with their customers and expands their business offerings across Asia Pacific. We dived deeper in the importance of brand safety in programmatic advertising, the key trends in digital advertising in Asia Pacific and whether humans or AI should decide what we want to advertise in the future. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Matt Harty ([@matt\_s\_harty](https://twitter.com/matt%5Fs%5Fharty?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattharty/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Senior Vice President of Asia Pacific, The Trade Desk - How do you start your career? \[0:57\] - How did you end up joining the Trade Desk? \[3:27\] - In your career journey, what are the most interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[4:11\] - The Trade Desk in Asia Pacific and Media Trends in Asia \[5:06\] - Introduction: The Trade Desk is a global technology company offering brands and media buyers a self-service platform to manage data-driven advertising campaigns. Founded by Jeff Green (CEO & Chairman) and Dave Pickles (CTO) and currently listed on NASDAQ. - Can you give an introduction to The Trade Desk and talk about its vision and mission for my audience? \[5:32\] - What is your current role and coverage for The Trade Desk? \[7:08\] - What is the current footprint of The Trade Desk in Asia Pacific? \[9:26\] - Can you introduce the concept of [programmatic advertising](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqki%5FmlQmkI&ref=analysepodcast.com) and how it works as it is central to how The Trade Desk operates as a company? \[10:26\] - Who are the customers for the Trade Desk? \[15:10\] - Can you talk about case studies in Asia that have done programmatic advertising? \[16:00\] - What are the products and services that the Trade Desk helps to solve the customer’s pain points? \[18:34\] - Given that the recent backlash on Google and Facebook with the wrong digital ads appearing on the media assets of brands, how does The Trade Desk navigate against such risks? \[22:13\] - Given that you cover Asia Pacific, what are the key trends that [Asia Pacific is leading the way in emerging media consumption trends](https://www.thetradedesk.com/white-papers/digital-upheaval-how-asia-pacific-is-leading-the-way-in-emerging-media-consumption-trends?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[24:25\] - What are the key challenges for a chief marketing officer in Asia Pacific today? \[26:18\] - Given the scale of the CMO needing to reach the audience, what do CMOs need to do by leveraging on big data and potentially AI in the future? \[27:40\] - Can we be totally rely on AI and automation for the most effective marketing or we still need to be guided by humans? \[29:00\] - Where do you see programmatic advertising go in the next 2-3 years? \[30:57\] - Closing \[33:30\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[33:31\] - Matt’s recommendations: [“Misbehaving” by Richard Thaler](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26530355-misbehaving?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [“The Rational Optimist” by Matt Ridley](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7776209-the-rational-optimist?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[34:56\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRLUSMU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2DHgk2E?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_285\_\_The\_Trade\_Desk\_and\_Digital\_Advertising\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Matt\_Harty.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F285%5F%5FThe%5FTrade%5FDesk%5Fand%5FDigital%5FAdvertising%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FMatt%5FHarty.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Western Union in Asia Pacific & Trends in Fintech with Molly Shea URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-284-western-union-in-asia-pacific-trends-in-fintech-with-molly-shea/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:10.000Z Molly Shea, general manager of Asia Pacific from Western Union joined us to discuss the business and distribution footprint of the company across Asia Pacific. We begin the conversation with Molly’s career story, and subsequently leading into the discussion on Western Union’s focus on digital services and geographic expansion in Asia Pacific. Last but not least, Molly shared her perspectives and thoughts on the current trends in the fintech space, for example, the current super apps trends from China to Asia and how Western Union are experimenting with blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Molly Shea ([@mollymshea](https://twitter.com/mollymshea?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mollyshea/?ref=analysepodcast.com), General Manager, Western Union, Asia Pacific \[0:24\] - How did you start your career? \[0:56\] - How did the move from US to Asia come along for you with Western Union? \[4:32\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? \[6:26\] - Western Union in Asia Pacific and Trends in Fintech \[8:18\] - Introduction: Western Union is a US financial services and communications company and was founded in 1851 and is currently a listed company on NYSE, that focus on various services such as wire transfers, money transfers (or remittances), transfer tracking and price estimation. Hikmet Ersek is the current CEO of the company. - Can you introduce Western Union to my audience and what is its current mission and vision? \[8:58\] - What is your current role and coverage with WU? \[9:52\] - How does Western Union operate in Asia Pacific (or what’s the current footprint of WU in Asia Pacific)? \[11:00\] - Who are the customers for Western Union and how do they access your products and services? \[12:06\] - What are the products and services, for example in remittances, that Western Union solve your customers’ pain points? \[13:22\] - How does Western Union integrate digital into their current offerings and how does that change the customer experience? \[15:30\] - How does Western Union work with financial regulatory bodies across Asia Pacific? \[17:58\] - Where do you see the remittances market currently, and what are the major trends? \[19:02\] - Given the rise in fintech for the past few years and inherently, it is shaped by traditional services moving towards digital, how does it shape your current perspective in how you think about the relevance of WU in this new world? \[21:26\] - Most digital native fintech companies are currently operate without the regulatory tax as compare to the traditional companies, how does one think of competition with new fintech companies that are set to disrupt the space? \[23:26\] - The strength of WU is in its distribution network and its access to the unbanked, what are your thoughts to how mobile wallets such as Alipay, Wechat Pay or even regional players might move towards the remittance spaces? \[25:00\] - What are your current views towards blockchain and its applications to remittances? \[28:10\] - Closing \[29:48\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[29:56\] - Molly’s recommendation: “[Younger Next Year](https://www.amazon.com/Younger-Next-Year-Strong-Beyond/dp/076114773X?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Chris Crowley - How do my audience find you? \[31:14\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQvYIA8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2tbaOAv?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_284\_\_Western\_Union\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_\_Trends\_in\_Fintech\_with\_Molly\_Shea.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F284%5F%5FWestern%5FUnion%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5F%5FTrends%5Fin%5FFintech%5Fwith%5FMolly%5FShea.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The ByteDance Group with Matthew Brennan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-283-the-bytedance-group-with-matthew-brennan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:10.000Z Matthew Brennan, co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk, closes the Bytedance trilogy of Toutiao and Douyin with the Bytedance Group. We discuss the mission and vision of the Bytedance Group, an artificial intelligence technology company and where they are after raising US$3B from SoftBank recently. We discuss the product portfolio of Bytedance beyond Toutiao and Douyin, their business model of advertising which drives high profitability and why they are poised to take on Facebook in a global scale. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk podcast ([chinachannel.co](http://chinachannel.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@mbrennanchina](https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) \[0:20\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:47\] - [Wechat Conference and Allen Zhang’s 4 hour talk](https://v.qq.com/x/cover/b86kk0n60chvn5j/b0029zsv8t9.html?ref=analysepodcast.com): How did Allen manage to do a [4 hour talk](https://chinachannel.co/wechat-founder-allen-zhang-4-hour-presentation-full-notes/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[1:14\] - Luckin Coffee leaked financials ([Source in Chinese](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?%5F%5Fbiz=MjM5OTkzODQ0Mg==&mid=2652385866&idx=1&sn=7f8d4ce7a06944018a8aa9785529e52c&chksm=bcdf42af8ba8cbb9336c6a95f4292bc110692340d6cb31356ce7b8bc62578474c9ef81c890da&mpshare=1&scene=1&srcid=0103YeLuus8OGa7ANVFiwpM0&ref=analysepodcast.com#rd)): What are reported in the financials and what insights can we draw from them? \[2:24\] - Will the situation change for Luckin Coffee in 2019 \[3:50\] - [The Bytedance Group](https://bytedance.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[5:00\] - We have done previous episodes on Jinri Toutiao, a smart news app and Douyin aka Tik Tok, a short video sharing app. They are all under an entity which we called Bytedance Group. Can you describe the mission and vision of Bytedance Group and where they are now? \[5:25\] - They have recently raised US$3B from SoftBank at a US$75B. Are they still raising any more money for the group or going IPO? \[7:35\] - Can you offer an introduction to Zhang Yiming, the legendary founder of Bytedance? \[8:50\] - Other than Zhang Yiming, who are the other key people within his management team which we should watch for? \[10:29\] - Similarity of Zhang Yiming & Mark Zuckerberg with Bytedance and Facebook following the ownership of mobile apps (Tik Tok vs Instagram) and reliance of advertising as a business model. \[11:42\] - Bytedance has the most impressive record of not being funded by Tencent and Alibaba and the market cap for the company by the recent round from SoftBank Vision Fund exceeds Baidu now, how did they manage to do that? \[12:30\] - Should Bytedance replace Baidu in the BAT axis given that Baidu is not performing well against Alibaba and Tencent? \[15:17\] - What are the products within the portfolio of Bytedance Group? \[17:00\] - Douyin/TikTok, - Jinri-Toutiao/Today’s Headlines - Xigua/Watermelon – long form video sharing app - Huoshan/Virgo - Leihan Duanzi (has been shut down by Chinese app) - Musically (acquired by Bytedance and the original innovator to Tik Tok now) - What are the major revenues for Bytedance Group? \[20:00\] - What are the major risks for Bytedance Group such as Chinese government regulation? \[22:11\] - Why did Bytedance not bring their ability in content moderation out of China and expand in Southeast Asia and India instead of adopting the same playbook like Facebook? \[24:25\] - Bytedance is coming up as a major competitor against Facebook compared to Tencent. How have they performed outside China so far, for example in India and Southeast Asia? \[26:11\] - What are the things which we look forward to from Bytedance Group in 2019? \[27:50\] - Closing \[29:29\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[29:39\] - Matthew’s recommendation: [Ogilvy on Advertising](https://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising-David/dp/039472903X/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1548920965&sr=1-1&keywords=ogilvy+on+advertising&ref=analysepodcast.com) and [“The Partnership: the making of Goldman Sachs”](https://www.amazon.com/Partnership-Making-Goldman-Sachs/dp/0143116126?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Charles Ellis - BL’s recommendation: [“The Bullet Journal Method”](https://bulletjournal.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Ryder Carroll - How do my audience find you? \[30:34\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRq3lCU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2sXr1cr?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_283\_\_The\_Bytedance\_Group\_with\_Matthew\_Brennan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F283%5F%5FThe%5FBytedance%5FGroup%5Fwith%5FMatthew%5FBrennan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Numbers & Narratives China Edition with John Artman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-282-numbers-narratives-china-edition-with-john-artman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:09.000Z John Artman, editor in chief from Technode of host of China Tech Talk, joined us in a conversation to discuss three different and interesting stories from China entrepreneurial space and align them in the underlying theme of explaining what numbers and narratives can mean in China. We began with the bike rental startups collapse, followed by the Mafengwo scandal and finally the recent leaked financials from Luckin Coffee into the open. Through the lenses of these three stories, we discuss how we need to understand and adjust our expectations to the future of China’s economic growth. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - John Artman ([@knowsnothing](https://twitter.com/KnowsNothing?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jartman/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Editor in Chief from Technode and Host of China Tech Talk and NodeWorthy podcasts \[0:25\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to and what are your reflections for the year 2018? \[0:48\] - **Numbers and Narratives China Edition \[3:42\]** - Here’s how I am going to start the conversation about what we really want to discuss in this podcast. We want to discuss how numbers are presented by various prominent companies in China and then follow by their narratives not matching up. Before we get to the over-arching theme, we like to start with three stories: - **Bike Rental Startups’ Collapse with Ofo and Mobike \[4:05\]** - When the bicycle sharing (or I should be pendantic to call it bicycle rental) companies emerge in the open, they were hailed as the next big things after ride hailing startups. Last year, 2018 witnessed the blood bath of bike sharing companies with Mobike acquired by Meituan-Dianping for US3.8B and Ofo in dire straits, did the numbers they reported on revenues or usage match the reality that they were painting to the press and investors? \[4:44\] - The strategy they use are similar to the past startups who burn cash to gain market share and then hope to be the last man standing, but it did not work for them as compared to others for example, ride hailing and group buying, where did these bike sharing companies go wrong? \[7:50\] - Should Ofo and Mobike merge given the circumstances of their rivalry? \[9:43\] - **The Fake Reviews Accusation for Mafengwo by Xiaosheng Bibi** (Ding Ziquan) **and Hooray Data**: Let’s start from the story of Mafengwo, an up and coming travel website in China that rivals CTrip (the tripadvisor of China), \[Source: [Original article](http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2018-10-21/doc-ihmrasqt3140231.shtml?ref=analysepodcast.com) accusing Mafengwo launched by Hooray Data and XiaoshengBibi and various articles: [SCMP](https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/article/2169604/chinese-travel-platform-mafengwo-denies-faking-reviews-after-social?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Pandaily](https://pandaily.com/chinese-travel-platform-mafengwo-accused-of-arranging-fake-reviews/?ref=analysepodcast.com)\], can you briefly provide an account of the story? \[12:18\] - One key theme of the story is the use of big data and software algorithms to match the data scrapped from Mafengwo’s sites against the other websites. Is this an interesting application of technology to aid investigative journalism at scale? \[15:12\] - Mafengwo was raising a round with prominent investors. Does this scandal derail them from getting the investment? \[17:21\] - It is a well known fact that most Chinese Internet go thru gladiatorial fights between different players and other factors such as fake data and reviews using the zombies and “navy” (shui jun), does the investors really scrutinize their numbers and do their due diligence or other factors at work? \[18:00\] - **Luckin Coffee’s [recently leaked financials](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?%5F%5Fbiz=MjM5OTkzODQ0Mg==&mid=2652385866&idx=1&sn=7f8d4ce7a06944018a8aa9785529e52c&chksm=bcdf42af8ba8cbb9336c6a95f4292bc110692340d6cb31356ce7b8bc62578474c9ef81c890da&mpshare=1&scene=1&srcid=0103YeLuus8OGa7ANVFiwpM0&ref=analysepodcast.com#rd)** **by CareerIn** \[18:58\] - Luckin Coffee has went from a highly profitable startup to now a loss making one, and the leaked financials showed a few interesting facts: (a) the average selling price per coffee which they claimed is about 24 yuan which is approximately US$3.5, and with 85M cups of coffee, you should get 2.04B RMB equivalent to US$300M, but instead they got 760M yuan \~ US$111M that makes the average selling price to US$1.3, so it’s pretty different from what they say and what the reality reflects, (b) the gift ratio is actually for every 1 coffee a Chinese consumer buy, they get 1.5 coffees for free. The numbers given from the startup vs the reality they have are totally different. So how does one really assess a fast growing startup in China? \[21:18\] - From the past three stories, what can we learn about numbers and narratives that are presented by Chinese fast growing companies? \[24:45\] - Should we just factor in the zombies and navy to put a discount on their growth? \[26:40\] - Is the growth in China really real and how should we adjust our expectations as consumers or people watching the business growth there? \[27:53\] - Closing \[29:55\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[30:04\] - John’s recommendation: Noah Yuval Harari’s “21 Lessons for 21th Century”, Ray Dalio’s “Principles” - BL’s recommendation: “A Guide to Big Debt Crises” - How do my audience find you? \[31:45\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRovkSE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2W8Vim0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_282\_\_Numbers\_and\_Narratives\_China\_Edition\_with\_John\_Artman.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F282%5F%5FNumbers%5Fand%5FNarratives%5FChina%5FEdition%5Fwith%5FJohn%5FArtman.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Future is Asia with Parag Khanna URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-281-the-future-is-asia-with-parag-khanna/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:09.000Z Parag Khanna, futurist, TED speaker and founder of Futuremap, joined us to discuss his book “The Future is Asian”. We kick off the conversation on the main themes of the book, and taking the Asian perspective on how we should look at world history. We discuss the geopolitical landscape of Asia, and why China’s Belt and Road Initiative will not led to a bi-polar world but will shift the rest of Asia towards independence and have the ability to assert their identity in the next century. Last but not least, Parag shared his advice for those out there who might want to come to Asia and why the future is truly Asian. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - [Parag Khanna](https://www.paragkhanna.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@paragkhanna](https://twitter.com/paragkhanna?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/pub/parag-khanna/28/381/689?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ personal site](http://paragkhanna.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Founder and Managing Partner of [Futuremap](https://futuremap.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and author of “Technocracy in America”, “Connectography” and “The Second World”. \[0:22\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to since we last spoke? \[1:00\] - On your recent book “[Technocracy in America](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0998232513/ref=dbs%5Fa%5Fdef%5Frwt%5Fbibl%5Fvppi%5Fi4?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, does the US move towards a technocratic state or still dominated by two partisan political parties? \[2:14\] - “The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century” published by [Simon & Schuster](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Future-Is-Asian/Parag-Khanna/9781501196263?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Future-Asian-Commerce-Conflict-Culture-ebook/dp/B07GNVMDNZ?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[4:02\] - Can I start with the conversation on why is the Future Asian? \[4:19\] - What are the main themes of your new book? \[6:47\] - One of the interesting starting points of the book is that you start the history of Asia from the Asian perspective, how does that differ from how the West has viewed Asia in the past century? \[9:28\] - If we are a century from now, when is the real tipping point in the recent years that propelled Asia asserting its own independence globally? \[13:56\] - From your perspective, what has the Belt and Road Initiative from China signifies another shift for the rest of Asia? \[16:33\] - While we are optimistic about the future of Asia, what are the bottlenecks or challenges that might pop up to disrupt that growth? \[21:01\] - US-China escalating trade tensions (which are currently defused for another 90 days): Where do you think that the US and China negotiations heading after their recent declared truce for another 90 days? \[23:50\] - I enjoyed the chapter on Asia-nomics which described the third Asian growth wave, and it starts from China where the watchers of the country has predicted either the country is on the brink of collapse or will devour the world. How are the different parts of Asia are growing and how will the advanced economies of Asia such as Japan, Korea and Singapore impact that new growth wave? \[26:44\] - Did you foresee whether Asia is going to assert its own independence or being dependent on US and China, and probably India in the future? \[29:58\] - What will be your advice for the Asians in America and the Amercians in Asia for the next few decades? \[33:01\] - Closing \[34:49\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[35:03\] - Parag’s recommendation: “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization” by Vince Beiser - How do my audience find you? \[36:13\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtT19Xr8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2DaY9Dm?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_281\_\_The\_Future\_is\_Asian\_with\_Parag\_Khanna.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F281%5F%5FThe%5FFuture%5Fis%5FAsian%5Fwith%5FParag%5FKhanna.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Proptech in Asia Pacific with Charles Reed Anderson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-280-proptech-in-asia-pacific-with-charles-reed-anderson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:08.000Z Charles Reed Anderson, founder of Charles Reed Anderson and associates joined us to discuss the state of proptech in Asia Pacific. Charles break down the real estate supply chain and discuss the key trends which are disrupting the real estate industry. We discuss how user experience and business model disruption are driving the current innovations in proptech such as Wework and how the traditional real estate players such as CBRE and Jones LaSalle are tackling these challenges ahead. Last but not least, Charles explained why the Asian counterparts in multi-national real estate companies are driving more innovation in proptech as compared to their US and European counterparts. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Charles Anderson ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/charlesreedanderson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Charles Reed Anderson and Associates](http://charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[0:22\] - What have you have been to since we last spoke? \[0:26\] - PropertyGuru summit in Thailand - Proptech in Asia Pacific \[0:46\] - Can you define what property tech or “proptech” in short for the industry? \[1:04\] - What does proptech do differently from or currently augment the traditional real estate supply chain? \[1:34\] - Does [construction of buildings using drones by Komatsu](https://www.equipmentworld.com/now-we-know-why-komatsu-bought-a-fleet-of-1000-drones-from-dji/?ref=analysepodcast.com), for example constitute as proptech? \[2:35\] - How about Wework and do they constitute part of the Proptech stack? \[3:06\] - What kind of products and services that are now making proptech interesting for the real estate industry? \[4:03\] - How about smartphones as part of the innovation that is propelling the proptech industry? \[5:19\] - What are the business model from proptech companies that sought to disrupt the proptech space? \[7:03\] - The importance of user experience in proptech for example, PropertyGuru and 99 dot co – where does the user experience enter into the business model and meet unmet demand? \[8:11\] - How does one values Wework as a company? Is it a technology or real estate company? \[10:01\] - Doesn’t that mean real estate is commoditized but the user experience allows it to disrupt and invest new business models? \[12:10\] - What are the traditional companies in the proptech space such as Jones LaSalle (JLL) and CBRE are doing? \[13:12\] - We see the traditional companies building their own corporate incubators and accelerators. Will that model work for traditional real estate companies in proptech? \[15:26\] - Does the global real estate companies in Asia taking the lead as compared to their US and European counterparts? \[17:07\] - What are the interesting companies which we look at proptech? \[18:35\] - Demand Logic - Disruptive Technologies - Spacelytics - What are the prospects of proptech in 2019? \[22:21\] - Other examples of proptech that are of interest: Kanterra and Preformatted Revolution. - Closing \[25:20\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[25:34\] - Charles’ recommendation: [Blinkist](https://www.blinkist.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[26:34\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRcSw3o?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2VBG8p2?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_280\_\_Proptech\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Charles\_Reed\_Anderson.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F280%5F%5FProptech%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FCharles%5FReed%5FAnderson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Luckin Coffee vs Starbucks in China with Matthew Brennan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-279-luckin-coffee-vs-starbucks-in-china-with-matthew-brennan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:08.000Z Matthew Brennan from China Channel joins us to discuss the coffee wars in China between the upstart, Luckin Coffee and Starbucks Cafe. We discuss the origins of the company and the strong management team led by Jenny Qian which brought the startup to its current stage. We discuss how Chinese consumers are now using Luckin Coffee and why they are different and poised to give Starbucks a ride of their lives in China. Last but not least, we discuss the coffee wars in China as part of the proxy war between Alibaba and Tencent and why it will likely to catapult Luckin Coffee outside China for regional expansion. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk podcast ([chinachannel.co](http://chinachannel.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@mbrennanchina](https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) \[0:18\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:25\] - How did TechCrunch Shenzhen go? \[0:52\] - I know that you have covered the scandal of Mafengwo with Boyuan and John in [your podcast](https://overcast.fm/+I8dlkX7yc?ref=analysepodcast.com), what are your thoughts on fake reviews or user growth in China tech startups as a whole? \[1:38\] - Luckin Coffee vs Starbucks in China \[3:39\] - To begin with, what is the history behind Luckin Coffee as who founded the company? \[4:03\] - The management team led by Jenny Qian, CEO and former co-founder of UCAR, a ride-hailing service and a few veterans from UCAR. - What is the current mission and vision of Luckin Coffee? \[5:31\] - How does customers access Luckin Coffee, through their app or physical stores (also thru mini-program as mentioned by Matthew in the show)? \[6:10\] - What distinguishes Luckin Coffee from Starbucks? Where do you think that their competitive advantage is and how do they change the coffee landscape with retail and delivery? Luckin Coffee price it to one third of Starbucks coffee at the current moment and opening 50 stores per week and hopes to reach 2K stores as compared to 3.5K stores by Starbucks in China. \[10:02\] - Who are now the investors behind Luckin Coffee other than Tencent? GIC, the sovereign wealth fund in Singapore. \[14:27\] - Is Starbucks really under threat by Luckin Coffee? How will they fend off against Luckin? \[15:01\] - Why the unit economics on coffee is better than bicycle sharing. \[17:50\] - Luckin Coffee going upstream against Starbucks given their new marketing messaging in their current stores. \[18:59\] - Starbucks has partnered with Alibaba, and Tencent has invested in Luckin Coffee, is this another showcase of proxy war between Alibaba and Tencent beyond retail and other areas? \[20:01\] - Does any startup who want to succeed in China need to take sides between Alibaba and Tencent given the current coffee, smart retail, ecommerce and logistics wars? \[21:36\] - Can Luckin Coffee’s model be exported to overseas to give Starbucks a real challenge outside China? Southeast Asia but Singapore will be the first port of call. \[23:38\] - Closing \[25:10\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[25:17\] - Matthew’s recommendation: “[How to turn down a billion dollars](https://www.amazon.com/How-Turn-Down-Billion-Dollars/dp/1250108616?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Billy Gallagher and “[Ready Player One](https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/0307887448/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546326580&sr=1-1&keywords=ready+player+one&ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Ernest Cline - BL’s recommendation: N K Jemisin “[The Broken Earth](https://www.bookdepository.com/Broken-Earth-Trilogy-N-K-Jemisin/9780316527194?ref=analysepodcast.com)” Trilogy and Kai-fu Lee’s “[AI Superpowers](https://aisuperpowers.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - How do my audience find you? \[26:19\] **Producer’s note:** *This podcast is recorded in late Nov 2018, and hence you will not hear some of the latest updates on Luckin Cafe, including their recent fundraising round (source: [SCMP](https://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2155110/chinas-luckin-coffee-confirms-us200-million-raised-latest-funding?ref=analysepodcast.com)). We should also point other sources such as [Quartz](https://qz.com/1325403/luckin-coffee-startup-challenging-starbucks-in-china-worth-1-billion/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Technode](https://technode.com/2018/07/30/how-luckin-coffee-is-reforming-chinas-coffee-culture/?ref=analysepodcast.com) which have done a fair deal of reporting on this China startup.* **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSHBaYE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2F0RpsU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_279\_\_Luckin\_Coffee\_vs\_Starbucks\_in\_China\_with\_Matthew\_Brennan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F279%5F%5FLuckin%5FCoffee%5Fvs%5FStarbucks%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FMatthew%5FBrennan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### State of China and SoftBank in 2018 with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-278-state-of-china-and-softbank-in-2018-with-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:08.000Z Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information, joins us to conclude the state of China and SoftBank in 2018 and offer his predictions in 2019\. We discussed the five major events: one, ByteDance’s success with Douyin (or Tik Tok) globally and the upcoming war with Facebook; two, the SoftBank Vision Fund and its impact to startups and venture capital globally; three, pending trade war between US and China with a short discussion on Google’s Project Dragonfly; four, the large merger and acquisitions in China and last but not least, the bearish market happening now for China technology giants. We end with Shai’s five predictions on China next year and what it will mean for the rest of the world. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Shai Oster ([@beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Asia Bureau Chief in [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:29\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:50\] - 5th Anniversary of The Information - State of China and Softbank in 2018 \[1:48\] - Event 1: ByteDance is printing money. \[2:19\] - Will ByteDance take over the world? How ByteDance has successfully go global against its rivals: Tencent failed to bring Wechat everywhere, Alibaba expanded via acquisitions such as Lazada and Didi only acquired 99 in Brazil. \[2:36\] - Does the lack of contest between Facebook and Tencent led to ByteDance to come from nowhere and now taking the market outside China? Thinking of Tik Tok more like an instagram product rather than a Facebook or Wechat like product. \[4:21\] - Given the rise of ByteDance with Douyin and Tik Tok and their recent mis-step on fake news in India, what does that mean for them? \[9:35\] - Can ByteDance’s capability navigate with the Chinese government regulation works for them in other countries as compared to Facebook? Is ByteDance going to be another Facebook? \[12:29\] - Event 2: SoftBank Vision Fund \[15:31\] - What has been the impact of SoftBank Vision Fund globally in 2018? \[15:45\] - New big funds like Sequoia (US$8B), Hillhouse Capital (US$10B), GGV and Qiming. - Betting against SoftBank, for example, in Southeast Asia, Tencent and Google are betting against Grab with GoJek. - VCs and other investors are not happy with SoftBank for propping up valuations. - SoftBank has provoked different players within the startup and VC ecosystem globally. Do you foresee more competition against SoftBank? \[19:32\] - Will the Vision Fund still be the most dominant technology fund globally in 2019? \[21:50\] - Event 3: The pending trade war between China and US and impact to US and China tech companies, for example, Google’s Dragonfly project \[24:19\] - With the recent Huawei senior executive being held in Canada, will senior executives from the US stop dreaming to go to China? \[24:30\] - [Google’s Dragonfly Project](https://theintercept.com/collections/google-dragonfly-china/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (Source: [The Intercept](https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-censorship/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[29:05\] - Does Google’s attempt to walk back into China with a censored search engine will work if the Intercept has not reported the story ? \[29:10\] - Why Google should go back into China and why its benefits their advertising business in the long term. \[33:35\] - Shai’s skepticism on whether [Project Dragonfly might have ended](https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-search-engine-2/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[35:50\] - Event 4: Major merger and acquisitions (M&A) in China – Alibaba Group acquires Ele.me at US$9.5B while Meituan buys Mobike at US$3.2B \[36:54\] - There is a considerable consolidation of services in Chinese market. Does that mean we are going to see more M&A next year? \[37:14\] - Shai’s prediction that the China tech giants going after both online and offline assets. \[38:20\] - US companies having 20-30% global revenues from China are now under stress, for example, Apple and Starbucks Cafe and whether Luckin Coffee in China is worth its unicorn valuation. \[40:10\] - Event 5: The bearish market for Chinese tech companies going public \[43:17\] - Based on our earlier discussion on why China tech companies have IPO in droves, is the trade war part of the reason why investors have fermented a bear market for the companies which IPO-ed recently? \[43:30\] - Does that mean that China tech companies will reduce their presence internationally? \[44:51\] - What will be Shai’s five predictions for 2019? \[46:40\] - Didi to IPO in end 2019. - ByteDance will continue to grow and fight Facebook in Southeast Asia, but will not IPO. - Ant Financial’s path to IPO is not clear. - What will happen to Xiaomi with their overseas expansion? - First quarter of scary growth in China and followed by the wave of government stimulus in China. - Closing \[50:00\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[50:15\] - Shai’s recommendation: The Information. - BL’s recommendations: [China Tech Talk with Shai Oster](https://chinatechtalk.libsyn.com/67-ipos-in-a-bear-market-with-shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Acquired Podcast Season 3 Episode 10: Tencent](https://overcast.fm/+FaxkGGqoM?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? \[52:12\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtT40Tjg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2rPiasK?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_278\_\_State\_of\_China\_and\_SoftBank\_in\_2018\_with\_Shai\_Oster.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F278%5F%5FState%5Fof%5FChina%5Fand%5FSoftBank%5Fin%5F2018%5Fwith%5FShai%5FOster.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### State of Southeast Asia in 2018 with Arnaud Bonzom URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-277-state-of-southeast-asia-in-2018-with-arnaud-bonzom/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:07.000Z Arnaud Bonzom, co-founder of Map of the Money joined us to review the state of Southeast Asia in 2018\. We started with the conversation on the movers and shakers in the ecosystem with Grab’s acquisition of Uber Southeast Asia and its quest to be the super app with Go-Jek standing in her way. We discussed how the startup ecosystems in Southeast Asia have evolved, with the venture capital firms raising their 2nd or 3rd rounds and family funds who are set to join in the fray. We discuss how the market in Southeast Asia is shifting in each country and the upcoming unicorns to watch in 2019. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Arnaud Bonzom ([@arnaudbonzom](http://twitter.com/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)[, Slideshare](http://www.slideshare.net/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Co-founder @ [Map of the Money](https://mapofthemoney.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD Business School \[0:24\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:39\] - State of South East Asia in 2018 Review \[0:58\] - **Event 1: Movers and shakers** \[1:20\] - Grab acquisition of Uber Southeast Asia and its implications on Grab and Go-Jek’s strategies in Southeast Asia including their partnership with incumbents and startups. \[2:07\] - Is the current fight between Grab and Go-Jek a proxy war between Alibaba and Tencent in Southeast Asia? \[4:42\] - Indonesia is the largest market in Southeast Asia, and does Go-Jek owning Indonesia with their super app means that they have economics of scale against Grab in the longer term? \[6:12\] - The problem of monopoly for Grab and Go-Jek with governments in Southeast Asia imposing fines on Uber and Grab after the acquisition. \[8:29\] - Will Didi buy Grab to have some breathing room to go public? \[10:56\] - Exits from SEA Group and Razer \[11:44\] - **Event 2: Influence of China Tech Giants in Southeast Asia** \[11:50\] - What are the Chinese technology companies doing in Southeast Asia with Alibaba, Tencent, JD and Meituan-Dianping? \[12:12\] - Reflection on how China tech companies operate vs US tech companies in Asia Pacific, for example pervasiveness of Wechat Pay in Thailand. \[15:10\] - **Event 3: Startup Ecosystems in Southeast Asia** \[15:30\] - Are there lack of seed funds and series A funding in Southeast Asia and at the same time, the comeback of venture builders such as Entrepreneur First and Antler? \[16:00\] - **Event 4: Venture Capital Ecosystem in Southeast Asia** \[18:56\] - Seed and Series A VCs raising their 3rd fund (Golden Gate Ventures, Jungle Ventures) and Series B VCs raising their 2nd fund (Qualgro, B Capital, …), does that mean that most better performing funds are now going upstream? \[19:02\] - Where do you see countries like Thailand (Siri Digital Ventures) and Asian families (RHL, Aurum) building their own funds? \[21:20\] - How about vertical driven venture funds in Southeast Asia? \[24:16\] - Verticals driven funds in Southeast Asia: Play Ventures (Gaming), LuneX (Blockchain), Start Today, Visvires New Protein Ventures (Food technology), Tryb (Fintech) - How are the LPs structured in Southeast Asia, for example, are they mostly from family funds or sovereign wealth funds (GIC, Temasek)? Will we see the equivalent of a Silicon Valley Bank appearing in the region? \[26:36\] - **Event 5: Blockchain** \[30:46\] - What’s going to happen to the blockchain market in Southeast Asia given Singapore publish its first ICO paper, and the projects not finding a foothold (TenX), but the major projects: Neo, Ethereum are based here in Singapore? \[31:17\] - **Event 6: Regional Focus** \[32:32\] - Malaysia \[32:44\] - Vietnam \[33:58\] - Philippines \[34:49\] - What is the future of Singapore under the rapid development of the Indonesia and Thailand ecosystems? \[35:40\] - How are the corporates doing in the region with their corporate accelerators? \[39:30\] - Which startups will be part of the next wave of unicorns in 2019 for Southeast Asia? \[41:17\] - Closing \[45:02\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? - Arnaud’s reflection on his current work to produce the 3rd edition of the Singapore Startup Ecosystem report. - BL’s recommendation: [Acquired Podcast Season 3 Episode 10: Tencent](https://overcast.fm/+FaxkGGqoM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How does my audience find you? \[46:08\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQJbulw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2Aa565K?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Bernard Leong. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_277\_\_State\_of\_Southeast\_Asia\_in\_2018\_with\_Arnaud\_Bonzom.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F277%5F%5FState%5Fof%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5Fin%5F2018%5Fwith%5FArnaud%5FBonzom.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### How to understand China Technology Companies as an investor with Elliott Zaagman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-276-how-to-understand-china-technology-companies-as-an-investor-with-elliott-zaagman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:07.000Z Elliott Zaagman, co-host of China Tech Investor podcast, joined us to discuss how to understand Chinese technology companies as an investor. We discussed the theme and intended audience for his current podcast, and dived deep into how we can value the technology giants in China from Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent to the recent upstarts such as Pinduoduo and Xiaomi. Elliott laid out the deep misconceptions on Chinese technology companies and provided a different perspective to how they are vertically integrated companies with different products and services contrast to their western counterparts. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Elliott Zaagman, ([@elliottzaagman](https://twitter.com/elliottzaagman?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-zaagman%EF%BC%88%E2%80%9C%E5%B0%8F%E6%9F%A5%E2%80%9D%EF%BC%89-93681926/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), consultant and executive coach for CEOs of China tech companies, writer and co-host of [China Tech Investor ](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/china-tech-investor/id1440576420?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com)podcast \[0:20\] - How did you start your career? \[0:45\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? \[1:57\] - Can you talk about the new China Tech Investor podcast you are co-hosting under Technode and who it is intended for? \[2:44\] - Do you find that most investors from outside China do not understand Chinese technology companies because they have no prior knowledge or have used their apps such as Meituan-Dianping, Wechat or Alipay? \[4:58\] - How to understand Chinese Technology Companies as an investor? \[8:31\] - How do you introduce Chinese tech companies to investor and how are they compared against US companies? Are labels such as “Google, Groupon or Facebook of China” still work for investors out there? \[8:57\] - Should these retail investors visit China to see how these technology companies work before bringing themselves to invest these companies? \[11:33\] - What will be the key metrics or indicators which you will identify in Chinese technology companies for investments? \[13:38\] - For example, there is a backlash with the Singles Day GMV numbers most notably by Tim Culpan from Bloomberg & yourself, can you elaborate why those numbers from one day are meaningless or what can we really infer from them meaningfully? \[15:42\] - BL’s comments on using logistics numbers as a way to understand whether the ecommerce transactions are really real. \[19:08\] - Given that most of the upstarts: Xiaomi, Meituan-Dianping, Pinduoduo and soon, ByteDance have gone IPO, how does that change the way to investors reviewing their China tech portfolio? \[20:54\] - Unlike US tech companies which seemed to be one product or service focused, Chinese tech companies are much more integrated. Just as an example, Meituan-Dianping is an amalgation of Yelp, Groupon, Foursquare, Uber Eats and even Uber into one. How should investors think of them differently? \[22:41\] - What are your thoughts on the current companies based on their last quarterly earnings: \[24:37\] - Baidu - Alibaba - Tencent - JD - Xiaomi - Meituan-Dianping - Pinduoduo - What is the future of Chinese tech companies in the next year? Will US-China escalating trade tensions or other external event change that calculus? \[33:15\] - Closing \[34:45\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[34:54\] - Elliott’s recommendation: John Pornfret’s “[The Beautiful Country in the Middle Kingdom](https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Country-Middle-Kingdom-America/dp/0805092501?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - BL’s recommendation: [Howard Marks](https://www.amazon.com/Howard-Marks/e/B004LE5B00?ref=analysepodcast.com) “[The Most Important Thing](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1328479250/ref=dbs%5Fa%5Fdef%5Frwt%5Fhsch%5Fvapi%5Ftaft%5Fp1%5Fi0?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[Mastering the Market Cycle](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1328479250/ref=dbs%5Fa%5Fdef%5Frwt%5Fhsch%5Fvapi%5Ftaft%5Fp1%5Fi0?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - How do my audience find you? \[36:16\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQDqsvs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2Emp28x?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_276\_\_How\_to\_understand\_China\_Technology\_Companies\_as\_an\_investor\_with\_Elliott\_Zaagman.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F276%5F%5FHow%5Fto%5Funderstand%5FChina%5FTechnology%5FCompanies%5Fas%5Fan%5Finvestor%5Fwith%5FElliott%5FZaagman.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Information with Jessica Lessin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-275-the-information-with-jessica-lessin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:06.000Z Jessica Lessin, CEO and founder of The Information joined us in a conversation to discuss the news media site and its current focus in Asia. Jessica began the conversation on why she was inspired to set up The Information, and offer the vision and mission of her company. Continuing the conversation, she shared her perspectives on growing a media business, the cultural differences and innovation between US and Asia technology companies and why a good product is not enough for a company to be great. Last but not least, she discuss where The Information will go and relay her thoughts on the future of media companies. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Jessica Lessin ([@jessicalessin](https://twitter.com/Jessicalessin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicalessin/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/jessica-e-lessin?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder and CEO of [The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:27\] - How did you start your career? \[0:36\] - In your career journey so far, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[1:25\] - I understand that you are currently in Hong Kong, Asia. What has brought you here this time round? \[2:23\] - The Information ([@TheInformation](https://twitter.com/theinformation?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-information/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Jessica’s thoughts on Asia \[4:19\] - What is the inspiration behind The Information? How did you decide to start the news portal and try to distinguish the outlet against the others out there? \[4:28\] - What is the current mission and vision of The Information? \[6:52\] - What does The Information cover and what are the key areas they focus on in both US and Asia? \[7:55\] - I have heard your position in focus on the subscription business model many times with The Information and I agree with your position a 100%. How did you come to this position and are you open to other models upon the evolution of The Information? \[9:50\] - Growing a media business is extremely difficult in the US and of course in Asia, it’s even worse. I want to hear your thoughts on this. Is it because there is a difference between editorial control and business model innovation within the business? \[11:44\] - The Information has now an incubator to build new media companies, can you briefly talk about what the incubator is about and how do they help journalists to enter the digital era? \[13:14\] - So, it has been great to see the stories in Asia covered by Shai Oster and his team, I want to take a step back: why did you bring The Information to Asia? \[14:42\] - What do you hope your subscribers in Asia will get out of reading The Information? \[16:00\] - From your observations in China and US, do you see any significant differences in culture or even how your team covers them here in Asia? \[17:53\] - Have enjoyed your [recent editorial article](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-product-doesnt-win?ref=analysepodcast.com) about why the product does not determine the success of the company, can you elaborate on why successful companies need more than just a good product to stay great? \[19:52\] - With the current turn against social media companies such as #Metoo (and your sites are one of those which break the Silicon Valley stories), fake news or more elaborately, the tech backlash from the politicians and public in the US or elsewhere, what are your thoughts on how tech companies will cope against these issues? \[22:35\] - What is the future of The Information for the next few years and what metrics you will use to measure that success? \[24:00\] - Where do you see the future of media going? \[25:39\] - Closing \[28:47\] - Can you recommend anything from a book, podcast, movie or anything to my audience that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[28:57\] - Jessica’s recommendation: [“Bloomberg on Bloomberg”](https://www.amazon.com/Bloomberg-Michael-R/dp/0471208884?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: [Matthew Pressman, “On Press”](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976658&content=bios&ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[30:00\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTSyR3A?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2EbowtB?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_275\_\_The\_Information\_with\_Jessica\_Lessin.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F275%5F%5FThe%5FInformation%5Fwith%5FJessica%5FLessin.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### How to do an ICO and Kleros with Federico Ast URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-274-how-to-do-an-ico-and-kleros-with-federico-ast/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:06.000Z Federico Ast, co-founder and CEO of Kleros joined us in a conversation on how to do an ICO, and the story behind his blockchain project, Kleros. He shared the backstory in how he put together a global team to build a blockchain dispute resolution layer, the decision process in doing an ICO and at the same time, explain how to engage a cryptocurrency exchange to list the token for his project. Last but not least, Federico shared his impressions on his recent trip in Asia and offered his perspectives to whether Asia is leading the blockchain space globally. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Federico Ast ([@federicoast](https://twitter.com/federicoast?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicoast/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder and CEO of Kleros \[0:30\] - How did you start your career? \[1:08\] - In your career journey, what are the most interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[4:14\] - How does one do an ICO? and [Kleros](https://kleros.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[6:27\] - Before we start, can you describe your current company Kleros and what is the vision and mission? \[7:06\] - What is your role in Kleros and what is the backstory of your company? \[10:42\] - How did you put a global team to work on Kleros together? \[12:00\] - How did you start by putting an ICO together? What are the steps required? \[13:40\] - What do you need to do for Kleros to separate it from those ICOs out there who might be out to earn a quick buck or smearing the entire space as shams or ponzi schemes? \[18:36\] - How does one get their ICO into a cryptocurrency exchanges? Can you run a blockchain ICO without getting involved with an exchange? \[23:12\] - As part of the effort to put an ICO, you came to Asia and specifically visited Hong Kong and Singapore, what are your impressions and why you have decided to come to Asia and see what is happening? \[29:02\] - What have you learned about the regulatory frameworks in Asia and how does it distinguish from where you come from and the US? \[31:38\] - Closing \[35:13\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[35:34\] - Federico’s recommendations: (i) Ray Kurzweil, “The Singularity is Near”, (ii) Peter Diamandis “Bold” and “Abundance”, (iii) Yuval Noah Harari’s 3 books (Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for 21st Century), (iv) [Epicenter podcast](https://epicenter.tv/?ref=analysepodcast.com) for cryptocurrency - How do my audience find you? \[36:44\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTaKztg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2RpEFzE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_274\_\_How\_to\_do\_an\_ICO\_and\_Kleros\_with\_Federico\_Ast.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F274%5F%5FHow%5Fto%5Fdo%5Fan%5FICO%5Fand%5FKleros%5Fwith%5FFederico%5FAst.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Luxasia Group in Asia with Dr Wolfgang Baier URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-273-luxasia-group-in-asia-with-dr-wolfgang-baier/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:05.000Z Dr Wolfgang Baier, group CEO of Luxasia Group joined us in a conversation to discuss the corporate transformation of the company and its current business footprint across Asia Pacific. Wolfgang shared his background as a consultant in McKinsey from Europe till his former role as Singpost CEO and narrate the backstory how he brought Alibaba Group to invest into Singpost. He also discuss the current trends of ecommerce, logistics and retail across Asia and shared how young millennials are valuable and can help in any company transformation. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - [Wolfgang Baier](http://wolfgangbaier.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@wpbaier](https://twitter.com/wpbaier?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/wolfgangbaier/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Group CEO of Luxasia Group and former Group CEO of SingPost and former partner in McKinsey. \[0:25\] - How did you start your career? \[1:08\] - What are your reflections on the business enviroments and culture when you move from Europe to Asia? \[1:58\] - In your career journey, what are the most interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[4:14\] - The backstory of Alibaba Group’s investment to SingPost \[6:19\] - In our past lives, you have engineered one of the major transformations in Singapore with your past role as Group CEO of SingPost. They say in our lives, we have only the opportunities to work in a few great teams, and this is one of the best senior management teams which I have worked for and you are our captain for that journey, can you talk about how you managed to convince Alibaba Group to investment US$300M into SingPost? \[6:44\] - [Luxasia Group](https://www.luxasia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[9:53\] - *Introduction: Luxasia Group is the leading omnichannel partner for beauty and luxury lifestyle brand distribution, retail, and e-commerce in Asia Pacific founded by Patrick Chong, the current chairman of the group. Luxasia has an impressive list of trusted business partners with major prestige, masstige and niche brands in this space from LVMH Group, Hermes and etc.* - Can you introduce the backstory behind Luxasia Group and the mission and vision of the company? \[10:25\] - Do you see the company going towards vertical integration with brick and mortar retail? \[14:40\] - What is your current mandate and focus for the company? \[15:42\] - As the group CEO of the company, can you briefly share the values and the culture of the company? \[16:34\] - How does Luxasia go deeper with the major brands to provide an omnichannel distribution across the region? \[18:34\] - What are the major products and services that Luxasia provide for the customers? \[20:30\] - Who are the customers for Luxasia? \[22:04\] - What is the geographical footprint of Luxasia Group? \[23:15\] - Can LuxAsia take the concept of smart retail, the combination of online and offline retail from China and export to the region? \[25:28\] - In your current journey to transform Luxasia group, what are the most important priorities to take them to the next stage? \[26:25\] - From SingPost to Luxasia, what are your current thoughts on ecommerce and omnichannel retail? What are the most interesting trends that dominating this area? \[26:51\] - Wolfgang’s thoughts on how retail is going from mass targeting to mass customisation via AI. \[29:08\] - You have talked about [why millenials and transforming companies are a match](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-millennials-transforming-companies-match-transformational-leader/?ref=analysepodcast.com), what are the key traits you look for in millenials and how you put them together with companies who are seeking to transform and patch the age difference? \[29:57\] - Do you look to millenials for inspiration to how they use social media to communicate and reach customers in the business? \[32:30\] - Where do you see the influence of China, US-China ongoing trade tensions and other events shaping Asia and how they will impact logistics, ecommerce and retail in Asia Pacific? \[33:12\] - Closing \[35:13\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[35:31\] - Wolfgang’s recommendations: “[Sapiens](https://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Yuval Noah Harari and “[Tools of Titans](https://toolsoftitans.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Tim Ferriss - BL’s recommendations: “[21 lessons for 21st Century](https://www.ynharari.com/book/21-lessons/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Yuval Noah Harari and “[Blitzscaling](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557261/blitzscaling-by-reid-hoffman-and-chris-yeh/9781524761417/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh - How do my audience find you? \[37:47\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQwO-o8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2QJC6Ie?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_273\_\_Luxasia\_Group\_in\_Asia\_with\_Dr\_Wolfgang\_Baier.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F273%5F%5FLuxasia%5FGroup%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FDr%5FWolfgang%5FBaier.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Why Chinese Tech Companies are going IPO this year with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-272-why-chinese-tech-companies-are-going-ipo-this-year-with-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:05.000Z Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information joins us in a conversation on why Chinese technology companies are frantically going IPO this year and what it means for the Chinese market and the rest of the world. We begin our conversation with the upcoming subscriber event from the Information in Asia on Nov 12, the recent news on the prominent Google mafia in China and the state of Chinese electric cars market. Shai shared his thoughts on why Chinese technology companies are now rushing to take themselves public and how the recent trade war coupled with the recent dumping of technology stocks may change their calculus in the short term. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - - Shai Oster ([@beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Asia Bureau Chief in [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:20\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:25\] - [The upcoming subscriber event in Hong Kong on 12 Nov 2018](https://www.theinformation.com/events/2018-hong-kong-subscriber-event?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[0:55\] - A request from our host to have a subscriber event in Singapore for Southeast Asia \[4:02\] - [A Google Diaspora shapes China’s tech scene](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/a-google-diaspora-shapes-chinas-tech-scene?ref=analysepodcast.com): How has the former employees from Google (and to some extent from Microsoft earlier) shaped China’s tech scene? \[5:20\] - [Why China’s Electric Car Market is falling short](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-chinas-electric-car-market-is-falling-short?ref=analysepodcast.com): Why has China focused so much in electric car market? How are the Chinese electric car makers compared against their competition from US (Tesla), Japan (Nissan) and Germany (VW Group, Daimler)? \[9:33\] - Why Chinese Companies are going IPO in droves and its implications \[17:20\] - Introduction: Based on Forbes, *Chinese tech firms are rushing to tap public markets, offering to sell $8.5 bln worth of new shares so far this year.* *Reference: [Why Chinese’s Tech Companies are rushing to go public this year](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2018/06/28/why-chinas-tech-companies-are-rushing-to-go-public-now/?ref=analysepodcast.com#4348f0393d78)* - To help my audience, let’s start by setting the baseline of the conversation, what does it mean for a company to go public? \[17:50\] - How the IPOs driven by Chinese tech companies returning liquidity back to the market and generate more VCs, entrepreneurs and money back into the ecosystem \[21:39\] - Recently, many tech companies in China, for example, Xiaomi, Meituan-Dianping, Pinduoduo, ByteDance are going IPO. Xiaomi and Meituan Dianping are around for 10 years but companies like Pinduoduo and ByteDance are pretty young companies to do that. What is the calculus behind their decisions to go public? \[23:24\] - How about ByteDance (the holding company behind Toutiao, Douyin and Tik Tok)? Why are they rumored to go IPO now as well? \[25:35\] - Does the choice of the public stock exchanges (NASDAQ, NYSE, HKSE, SGX) matter to how these Chinese tech companies go IPO? \[28:59\] - Xiaomi and Meituan-Dianping have gone public in HKSE but did not do very well as it is still trading below the starting IPO price. Will it have an impact to other companies going public at HKSE in the near future? \[Ref: [Got shares in a Blockbuster IPO? Dump them Quick](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-05/got-shares-in-a-blockbuster-ipo-dump-them-quick?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] \[31:05\] - Is HKSE a better destination for IPO given that the investors understand what a Xiaomi phone or have used Meituan Dianping as a super app? \[32:09\] - The HK stock exchange has recently changed the rule of companies having the ability to provide dual class shares and the Chinese tech company’s shares are not doing well, will the investors look back to NYSE or NASDAQ if it does not work out or there may be a cultural change of attitudes towards tech company stocks in the future? \[Ref: [Hong Kong’s Tech Dreams are becoming a nightmare](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-21/hong-kong-tried-to-lure-tech-ipos-with-dual-share-structure?ref=analysepodcast.com)\] \[34:17\] - Shai’s comments on whether founders and management teams should have dual class shares so that they can either push thru the execution of the vision by the founding or management team. \[35:57\] - In the past few weeks, exacerbated by the trade war and massive dump of China tech stocks, what does it mean for the rest of the Chinese companies going public? \[37:49\] - Is there a second market equivalent for founders and employees to sell their stock in private from China? \[39:55\] - Closing \[40:29\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[41:00\] - Shai’s recommendations: Sound Opinions, Soul and funk music, Duncan Clark “[Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built](https://www.duncanclark.com/publications?ref=analysepodcast.com)“, Kai-fu Lee’s “[AI Superpowers](https://aisuperpowers.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - How do my audience find you? \[42:05\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRuE3dE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2RNmQKp?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_272\_\_Why\_Chinese\_Tech\_Companies\_are\_going\_IPO\_this\_year\_with\_Shai\_Oster.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F272%5F%5FWhy%5FChinese%5FTech%5FCompanies%5Fare%5Fgoing%5FIPO%5Fthis%5Fyear%5Fwith%5FShai%5FOster.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Digital Trends across Southeast Asia and SEA Group with Santitarn Sathirathai URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-271-digital-trends-across-southeast-asia-and-sea-group-with-santitarn-sathirathai/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:05.000Z Santitarn Sathirathai, group chief economist of the SEA group joined us in a conversation to discuss the key digital trends that drive the growth of Southeast Asia. We began the conversation with the SEA Group and their current mission, vision and coverage across the region, and discuss their key products: Garena, Shopee and Airpay. Continuing our conversation, Santitarn offered his perspectives on the major digital trends specifically on ecommerce in Southeast Asia and the development of super app, and how the current escalating trade tensions between China and US will influence where the major economies within Southeast Asia will be heading in the future. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Santitarn Sathirathai ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/santitarn-sathirathai-04205011/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Group Chief Economist at SEA Group (formerly known as Garena). \[0:25\] - How did you start your career? \[0:45\] - How did you eventually made your way to become the chief economist of the SEA Group? \[1:50\] - In your career journey, what are the most interesting career lessons learnt? \[3:00\] - [SEA Group](https://www.seagroup.com/home?ref=analysepodcast.com): \[4:29\] - Introduction: SEA Group is a leading consumer Internet company in Southeast Asia focusing on three areas: digital entertainment, ecommerce and financial services, founded by Forrest Li Xiaodong, and started as Garena, which is focused on gaming in Southeast Asia. Currently listed in NYSE as SE with a market capitalisation of US$4.8B. - Can you briefly introduce the history of SEA Group with its mission and vision? \[5:34\] - What is your role and coverage with SEA Group as their group chief economist? \[7:37\] - How is the SEA Group currently structured and what are the key businesses lines: digital entertainment, e-commerce and financial services? \[8:54\] - How does SEA monetise through their different assets: Garena, Shopee and Airpay? \[14:09\] - What is the current footprint of SEA Group in Southeast Asia, for example, which areas of focus are more dominant in certain geographies? \[15:39\] - Digital and Ecommerce Trends Across Southeast Asia \[18:30\] - What are the common misconceptions about e-commerce in ASEAN region? \[18:40\] - Given the logistics infrastructure are not fully built out yet in the developing areas of Southeast Asia, does that also constitute another challenge for ecommerce in the region? \[22:00\] - From your perspective, how has the economies of Southeast Asia changing? \[23:58\] - What are the key trends that you have seen in the digital economy within the region? \[28:10\] - Like China and India, there is the development of the super app similar to Wechat and Paytm. What are your thoughts about different apps in Southeast Asia are now vying to be the super app in the region? \[32:06\] - What are your thoughts on the ongoing and escalating trade war between US and China and what does it mean for Southeast Asia? \[33:52\] - How does the belt and road initiative transform the Southeast Asia economy? \[36:06\] - Closing \[37:46\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[38:00\] - Santitarn’s recommendations: Analyse Asia, [Behind the Numbers](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/emarketer-podcast/id1113097936?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Work Life by Adam Grant](https://www.ted.com/read/ted-podcasts/worklife?ref=analysepodcast.com), Books: [Superforecasting](https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-Philip-Tetlock/dp/0804136718?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Dan Gardner and Philip Tetlock, [Economy Rules](https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rules-Rights-Wrongs-Science/dp/1511372664?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Dani Rodrik - How do my audience find you? \[39:06\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtR0QAr8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2PDYWUg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_271\_\_Digital\_Trends\_across\_Southeast\_Asia\_and\_SEA\_Group\_with\_Santitarn\_Sathirathai.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F271%5F%5FDigital%5FTrends%5Facross%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5Fand%5FSEA%5FGroup%5Fwith%5FSantitarn%5FSathirathai.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Rise of IoT in China and 5G across Asia with Charles Anderson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-270-rise-of-iot-in-china-and-5g-across-asia-with-charles-anderson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:04.000Z Charles Reed Anderson, founder of Charles Reed Anderson and Associates joined us to discuss the surprises that emerge from the IoT industry in Asia Pacific. We discussed why China has emerged the surprise winner of leading the IoT deployment race and whether it will lead the rest of the world in IoT technologies. In the same conversation, we dived into the current status of 5G across Asia Pacific, specifically in Japan with what Rakuten and Softbank are thinking about MVNO, and last but not least, we also discussed how the new SIMs technology are going to disrupt the telcos in the near future. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Charles Anderson ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/charlesreedanderson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Charles Reed Anderson and Associates](http://charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[0:24\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:30\] - [IoT World USA 2018 Keynote](http://charlesreedanderson.com/cra-keynote-iot-world-2018-santa-clara-usa/?ref=analysepodcast.com), US, Santa Clara. - The surprises of IoT in 2018 based on the talk “[What’s Hot, What’s Not & What’s next](http://charlesreedanderson.com/iot-market-disappoints-but-china-shines/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” \[1:38\] - We have often established a definition in IoT three years back. Has the definition of IoT changed for the past few years? If it has changed, can you give a definition of IoT and what it covers now? \[1:51\] - Since 2015, we hear the coming explosion of IoT, now we are at 2018, what are the sentiments of the various groups of people towards the technology, for example, the venture capitalists, the vendors and the users? \[3:13\] - How about you as a wearable user and how would you rate and assess IoT in the consumer space? \[5:21\] - The industry has made many predictions on IoT in the past few years from connections to market opportunities. What are the initial predictions and what is the market reality now? \[6:35\] - What happened with the reality not meeting the expectations for the IoT connections and market opportunity? \[9:58\] - Do you think that the peak of inflated expectations for the Gartner cycle of IoT has fallen all the way to the bottom yet? \[11:54\] - The Surprise Rise of IoT in China \[13:06\] - The first is IoT in China. What has happened in China and can you share some data to how IoT has exploded in China? \[13:10\] - Why did IoT exploded in China? Is it just initial setup growth and will there be a plateau similar to startup growth? \[14:55\] - In the area of LPWans, is NB-IoT the default standard for China? \[17:04\] - Will services enabled by the IoT technology power the growth of IoT in China? \[18:03\] - 5G in Asia Pacific and SIMs technology trends \[19:30\] - Most telcos are now in the beginning phases of 5G deployment. Can you discuss the progress of the telcos and what they have gotten right and wrong in their 5G deployment? \[19;36\] - Are we going in MVNO for 5G? \[21:22\] - Can you give a brief introduction to what MVNO means? \[22:50\] - The networks talks about network slicing. What’s that technology and what does it do? \[24:10\] - Will the telcos deploy two different networks for 5G one for consumer and one for enterprise? \[25:26\] - ESIMs and Virtual SIMs: Can you elaborate how the SIMS technology has changed and and how they will shift the market? What are the implications to smartphone growth? \[26:39\] - Does that mean that data roaming services traditionally provided by the telcos will be disrupted by these new advances in SIMs technology? \[28:36\] - Where and which verticals are or will IoT technologies be disrupting? \[29:44\] - If I ask you at 2020 the same question, which are the predictions on IoT that are likely to happen? \[31:31\] - Closing \[33:51\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[34:06\] - Charles’ recommendations: readings on stoicism – Ryan Holiday “The Daily Stoic” - BL’s recommendations: Epicurius “The Art of Happiness” - How do my audience find you? \[34:52\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtT8XKzU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2AuOoOQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_270\_\_Rise\_of\_IoT\_in\_China\_and\_5G\_across\_Asia\_with\_Charles\_Anderson.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F270%5F%5FRise%5Fof%5FIoT%5Fin%5FChina%5Fand%5F5G%5Facross%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FCharles%5FAnderson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Hubspot in Asia and Scaling Companies with J D Sherman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-269-hubspot-in-asia-and-scaling-companies-with-j-d-sherman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:04.000Z J D Sherman from Hubspot joined us in a conversation to discuss Hubspot in Asia and his perspectives on how to scale companies across the world. We started the conversation with JD sharing his background and introduce the backstory, vision and mission behind Hubspot, a developer & marketer of software products for inbound marketing and sales. JD discussed the products, services and geographical footprint of Hubspot in Asia and how they are localising their products for the local market. Last but not least, he shared the lessons of how to scale companies globally. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - - J D Sherman ([@j\_d\_sherman](https://twitter.com/j%5Fd%5Fsherman?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Hubspot](https://www.hubspot.com/company/management/jd-sherman-coo?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jd-sherman-27082238/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), President and Chief Operating Officer of Hubspot \[0:22\] - How did you start your career? \[0:48\] - In your career journey, what are the most interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[2:00\] - [Hubspot ](https://www.hubspot.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)in Asia and Scaling Companies \[3:43\] - *Introduction: Hubspot is a developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing and sales. It was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006\. Its products and services aim to provide tools for social media marketing, content management, web analytics and search engine optimization. Currently listed in NYSE, and market cap \~ US$5B.* - Can you introduce the backstory behind Hubspot and the mission and vision of the company? \[4:17\] - What is your current role and coverage for Hubspot? \[8:13\] - Who are the customers for Hubspot? Can you walk me thru how a customer get on board with Hubspot? \[8:55\] - Do you foresee Hubspot will integrate AI and automation into the CRM for the customers? \[11:16\] - What brought you to Asia? \[12:58\] - What are the geographical coverage of Hubspot in Asia Pacific? \[13:52\] - Does the products and services need to be localised for the Asian markets? If so, can you share some examples? \[14:10\] - Case studies by Hubspot in Asia: - [Impact Hub Singapore](https://www.hubspot.com/case-studies/impact-hub-singapore?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Eyeota](https://www.hubspot.com/case-studies/eyeota?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Refuel4](https://www.hubspot.com/case-studies/refuel4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Lessons from Scaling Companies Globally \[15:19\] - One of the interesting discussions that I like to chat with you is about scaling a company, what are the dos and don’ts for scaling a company globally? \[15:30\] - How do you introduce new innovation in products and services in an existing scalable and sustaining business? \[17:08\] - What is the optimal way to run a company differently at 10 employees? At 50? When you cross a few hundred? \[19:05\] - What are bottlenecks and potholes that all founders and company builders are likely to encounter, and how can they be avoided? \[21:14\] - Closing \[23:01\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[23:12\] - [Hubspot Inbound Conference](https://www.inbound.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[23:44\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQidTaM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2Rap9Hd?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_269\_\_Hubspot\_in\_Asia\_and\_Scaling\_Companies\_with\_J\_D\_Sherman.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F269%5F%5FHubspot%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fand%5FScaling%5FCompanies%5Fwith%5FJ%5FD%5FSherman.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Future of Mobility in Asia and Nissan with Vincent Wijnen URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-268-the-future-of-mobility-in-asia-and-nissan-with-vincent-wijnen/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:03.000Z Vincent Wijnen, senior vice president from Nissan in Asia & Oceania joined us in a conversation to discuss the future of mobility in Asia. We began our conversation on the concept of autonomous vehicles and how it will transform the concept of mobility in Asia. We discussed the major themes around autonomous vehicles specifically in the areas of energy, communications and cybersecurity. Vincent also discussed how the regulatory bodies in Asia are thinking about self-driving cars and whether we will be living in a future where we are driving or be driven. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Vincent Wijnen, Senior Vice President for Nissan in Asia & Oceania ([@wijnen\_nissan](https://twitter.com/wijnen%5Fnissan?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-wijnen-231634154/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:25\] - How did you start your career? \[0:45\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? \[1:45\] - Briefly, can you introduce my audience to your company, Nissan and what’s your role and coverage currently in Asia and Oceania? \[2:39\] - The Future of Mobility \[4:37\] - Let’s start from the fundamental aspect of transportation, in your perspective, how do you define autonomous vehicles (self driving cars) and the concept of mobility for my audience? \[4:49\] - How does turning cars from diesel to electric have an impact to autonomous vehicles? \[8:59\] - What are the different levels of autonomy in the automotive space? \[10:31\] - One of the under-appreciated thing about self driving cars, is that the problem of driving is already solved, but the problem of energy, communications and cybersecurity as bits in the digital world are used to shift atoms in the real world. \[12:03\] - What are your thoughts on the following: - Energy: What are the current paradigms in energy? For example, the car companies are torn between hydrogen fuel cells and electric charging. How are they different and why car companies chose one over the other? \[12:56\] - Communication: How does autonomous vehicles resolve the issues of hazards, navigation and driving while they need to access information from the network? \[16:43\] - Comments on the augmentation of the drive before going fully autonomous \[19:55\] - Cybersecurity: How are self driving cars immunized from hackers? What do we need to do to ensure safe and secure cars? \[21:41\] - How does regulatory bodies thinking of self driving cars? How are standards imposed onto self driving cars? \[22:57\] - Are we going to drive or be driven in the future? \[24:53\] - What are the key trends in mobility and transportation for Asia? \[25:26\] - Closing \[27:30\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[27:38\] - Singapore Women’s Conference - World Economic Forum ASEAN in Hanoi, Vietnam - How do my audience find you? \[29:56\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtROSeHU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2NU7SAh?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_268\_\_The\_Future\_of\_Mobility\_in\_Asia\_and\_Nissan\_with\_Vincent\_Wijnen.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F268%5F%5FThe%5FFuture%5Fof%5FMobility%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fand%5FNissan%5Fwith%5FVincent%5FWijnen.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Go-Jek in Indonesia with Rama Mamuaya URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-267-go-jek-in-indonesia-with-rama-mamuaya/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:03.000Z Rama Mamuaya, founder and CEO of DailySocial joined us to discuss one of the most important startup unicorns in Indonesia, Go-Jek. We discussed the backstory behind G0-Jek which evolved from a ride-hailing to now a super app that bridge payments, ride hailing and other services in Indonesia, and why it’s giving Grab a run for their money. We examined Go-Jek’s regional expansion strategy and how it is becoming a proxy battle between Alibaba Group and Tencent in Southeast Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Rama Mamuaya ([@rampok](https://twitter.com/rampok?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmamuaya/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder and CEO of [Dailysocial](https://dailysocial.id/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@dailysocial](https://twitter.com/dailysocial?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:25\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:28\] - Launch of DailySocial new innovation-incubation platform \[1:30\] - How does the platform works for small and medium businesses in Indonesia? \[2:11\] - How has the startup ecosystem in Indonesia evolving in the past three years? \[3:20\] - [Go-Jek](https://www.go-jek.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Indonesia \[5:04\] - Can you briefly introduce the company Go-Jek and what is their mission and vision as a company? \[5:40\] - Who are the founders behind Go-Jek? \[8:16\] - How does the Indonesian customer access Go-Jek? \[11:13\] - What are the products and services that Go-Jek provide for their users? \[13:15\] - How does Go-Jek differ from the other ride-hailing apps? What is its competitive advantage that made it difficult for Grab to gain a foothold in Indonesia? \[15:45\] - In your opinion, how’s the match-up between Grab and Go-Jek in Indonesia? What are the battlegrounds that these two companies will try to win over the other within Indonesia? \[17:44\] - Thoughts on Indonesia as a massive market and whether it is protective of its local champions similar to India and China. Does Go-Jek have that advantage against Grab \[20:06\] - Who are the investors behind Go-Jek? Google, Tencent, NSI Ventures, Meituan-Dianping and etc. \[22:05\] - Go-Jek has tried to expand across Southeast Asia, do you think that their business model will work with the other countries, given that Grab has a strong foothold in the other markets? \[24:02\] - Comments on effective market size of Indonesia and whether Go-Jek’s super app strategy will work in Indonesia. \[24:51\] - Where will Go-Jek be in 3 years from now \[29:47\] - Closing \[31:35\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[32:01\] - Rama’s recommendations: Peter Thiel “Zero to One” and Ben Horowitz “The Hard Thing about Hard Things” - How do my audience find you? \[32:50\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTFkHqA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2PpoUaJ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_267\_\_Go-Jek\_in\_Indonesia\_with\_Rama\_Mamuaya.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F267%5F%5FGo-Jek%5Fin%5FIndonesia%5Fwith%5FRama%5FMamuaya.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Jack Ma and Leadership Transition in Alibaba Group with Rui Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-266-jack-ma-and-leadership-transition-in-alibaba-group-with-rui-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:02.000Z Rui Ma, founder of Transformative Technology Academy and co-host of TechBuzz China podcast joined us to discuss Jack Ma’s recent announcement to step down as the chairman of Alibaba Group, the leadership transition within Alibaba Group and where they will be heading next. We discussed Jack Ma’s influence within the Alibaba Group and how his tenure with the company has led to Alibaba becoming one of the technology giants not just in China, but the rest of the world. We continued our conversation to the future with Daniel Zhang, the successor to Jack Ma’s chairmanship within Alibaba and where the group is heading with Ant Financial, Cainiao and international expansion in the midst of a leadership transition and what it means for their rivals: Tencent and Baidu. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Rui Ma, Founder of [Transformation Technology Academy](https://ttacademy.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Host of [TechBuzz podcast](https://supchina.com/series/techbuzz-china/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Pandaily produced by SupChina ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ruima](https://twitter.com/ruima?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:20\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:30\] - You have done some interesting discussions on topics in China which I hope to explore in the future: - What are your thoughts on [Baidu vs Google part 2](https://supchina.com/podcast/ep-18-china-vs-google-rematch/?ref=analysepodcast.com) if it is ever happening thanks to Glenn Greenwald’s breaking of Project Dragon Fly in the Intercept? \[1:24\] - Could there be a scenario that Google will enter via Tencent instead of going direct? See the episode also on [Google’s investment into JD](https://supchina.com/podcast/ep-13-jd-google-and-the-war-for-the-rest-of-the-world/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[3:03\] - So, [is Wechat really bullet-proof](https://supchina.com/podcast/ep-21-is-wechat-bulletproof/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[3:53\] - How does Bullet Messenger compare against Ding Talk, the slack equivalent from Alibaba Group or Wechat for Work? \[5:23\] - Jack Ma and Alibaba’s Leadership Transition \[6:49\] - Alibaba Group today is a multi-national conglomerate specializing in ecommerce, retail, AI, cloud computing and finance (with Ant Financial) at over US$400B market capitalization with their founding in 1999 by Jack Ma along with another 17 founders. To help my audience, can you introduce Alibaba Group as a company and how they are perceived in China and the rest of the world? \[7:25\] - What’s Jack Ma’s role in Alibaba and how has he shaped Alibaba’s dominance in ecommerce and many other areas over the years? \[10:25\] - [Porter Erisman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/portererisman?ref=analysepodcast.com) “[Crocodile in the Yangtze](http://www.crocodileintheyangtze.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” movie (check out [his interview on Analyse Asia](https://analyse.asia/2015/06/20/episode-39-alibabas-world-with-porter-erisman/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Alibaba’s culture is more reminiscent of a Silicon Valley company than a typical Chinese company \[15:00\] - Why has he decided to retire given that he is only 54 years old now? Compare and contrast with Pony Ma of Tencent and Robin Li of Baidu \[16:47\] - Analogy of BAT with Romance of Three Kingdoms \[20:53\] - Jack Ma [wrote the memo](https://www.alizila.com/alibaba-group-jack-ma-succession-plan/?ref=analysepodcast.com) to announce his departure, and the best line from him: “*The one thing I can promise everyone is this: Alibaba was never about Jack Ma, but Jack Ma will forever belong to Alibaba.”,* what are your thoughts on his memo ([Chinese version](http://www.ntdtv.com/xtr/gb/2018/09/10/a1390920.html?ref=analysepodcast.com))? \[22:09\] - Who is Daniel Zhang, the successor to his chairmanship next year this time? \[24:25\] - What are the key areas of focus which Alibaba are now heading in the next decade? \[28:55\] - International Expansion \[29:13\] - Ant Financial ([TechBuzz China episode](https://supchina.com/podcast/ep-11-after-alibaba-team-jack-mas-newest-centacorn-ant-financial/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Cainiao IPO \[30:38\] - Smart Retail (online and offline) \[33:14\] - What does it mean for Tencent and Baidu and the rest of China tech giants, JD and TMD? \[34:41\] - Closing \[37:03\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[37:08\] - Rui Ma’s recommendations: Revisionist History podcast by Malcolm Gladwell and “3 Billboards” movie. - Where can my audience find you? \[37:56\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtR5H31o?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2xOvBfI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_266\_\_Jack\_Ma\_and\_Leadership\_Transition\_in\_Alibaba\_Group\_with\_Rui\_Ma.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F266%5F%5FJack%5FMa%5Fand%5FLeadership%5FTransition%5Fin%5FAlibaba%5FGroup%5Fwith%5FRui%5FMa.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Entrepreneur First with Alex Crompton URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-265-entrepreneur-first-with-alex-crompton/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:02.000Z Alex Crompton from Entrepreneur First (EF) joined us to discuss the progress of their startup incubator in Singapore and Hong Kong and how they are helping entrepreneurs to build their startup companies by employing a talent first approach. We dived deep into the vision, mission and backstory behind EF and how it operates across the region, and discussed interesting topics from how EF facilitates the interaction between entrepreneurs and steer them towards building companies, and whether the trend of too much incubators create an elitist atmosphere for startup founders out there. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Alex Crompton, managing director, Entrepreneur First, Singapore ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexcrompton1/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@raccrompton](https://twitter.com/raccrompton?ref=analysepodcast.com), [medium](https://medium.com/@alex%5Fcrompton?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:24\] - How did you start your career? \[0:47\] - What brought you to Asia? \[3:10\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? \[5:00\] - [Entrepreneur First](https://www.joinef.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (EF) \[6:53\] - Can you describe the vision, mission and backstory of Entrepreneur First as a startup incubator? \[7:06\] - Who are the founders and the key people driving EF? \[10:34\] - EF as an incubator that targets founders right at the beginning journey of their startups. \[11:44\] - Does EF target founders to start companies from a specific vertical? \[13:05\] - What are the interesting companies or alumni companies that have emerged from EF? \[14:31\] - What is your current role and coverage within EF? \[15:33\] - How will be the metrics that you will use to evaluate if Entrepreneur First (EF) is successful in three years time? \[16:25\] - How does Entrepreneur First (EF) operate as an incubator? How much investment does Entrepreneur First (EF) provide in the startups who are incubated under them? \[18:48\] - What is in the selection process to bring the entrepreneurs into the program? \[19:33\] - What are the signals does the team in Entrepreneur First (EF) look out for in founders within entrepreneurial teams? \[20:50\] - How does EF help the entrepreneurs selected into their program? How do EF deal with issues such as founders breakup during the program? \[21:47\] - There are many incubators out there such as Y-Combinator, TechStars, 500 Startups, what is your competitive advantage? \[24:37\] - Given that Y-Combinator is becoming the Harvard Business School for startups, and now the trend of startups being sexy to people, wouldn’t it breed elitism in the longer run? Would it be worse in the longer run given that entrepreneurs can come from anywhere? \[27:02\] - Other factors at work for startups to succeed for example, market size in China and US being advantage, talent circulation. \[29:19\] - Does EF have any plans to move upstream with investing into companies in later stages? \[30:40\] - Closing \[31:17\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[31:23\] - Alex’s recommendation: [Effective Altruism](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com),William MacAskill “Doing Good Better”, [80000 hours](https://80000hours.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com) with [their podcast](https://80000hours.org/podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com), - How do my audience find you? \[32:28\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl?si=RwehcIh7RnWEE-AeOFmSuQ&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtR9Mlx8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2zo00mi?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_265\_\_Entrepreneur\_First\_with\_Alex\_Crompton.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F265%5F%5FEntrepreneur%5FFirst%5Fwith%5FAlex%5FCrompton.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Billionaire Raj with James Crabtree URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-264-the-billionaire-raj-with-james-crabtree/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:02.000Z James Crabtree, associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yee School of Public Policy joined us in a conversation to discuss his new book “The Billionaire Raj: A Journey through India’s New Gilded Age” and what it means for where India will move in the next decade. We discussed the major themes of the book and the intrinsic links between the political and business ecosystem across the country. As we progressed our conversation from the interesting Ambani family and Reliance Group, we shift our conversation to the current technology ecosystem in India where it is an open economy that are at the crossroads with US & China technology giants. Last but not least, James offered his perspectives to where India is heading for the future. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - James Crabtree ([@jamescrabtree](https://twitter.com/jamescrabtree?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescrabtree2000/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Personal Site](https://www.jamescrabtree.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Author of “[The Billionaire Raj](https://www.amazon.com/Billionaire-Raj-Journey-Through-Indias/dp/1524760064?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and [Associate Professor in Practice at the LKY School of Public Policy](https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/our-people/faculty/james-crabtree?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:25\] - How did you start your career? \[0:44\] - Within your career journey as an editor and academic, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[2:11\] - What is your current role in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy? \[3:32\] - James’ recent article: “[Crazy Rich Asians and the face of the one per cent](https://www.ft.com/content/8665efbc-a140-11e8-85da-eeb7a9ce36e4?ref=analysepodcast.com)” \[4:54\] - The Billionaire Raj: “A Journey through India’s New Gilded Age” \[7:06\] - What inspire you to work on the book? \[7:30\] - What are the major themes or lessons that you want the audience to learn from the book? \[9:13\] - From reading the book, the business world has a lot of intrinsic links to the political world, can you talk about how the business ecosystem has evolved with respect to the political system since its independence to today, and the new gilded age in India which you describe in the book? \[11:39\] - The book began with the Ambani family, who controlled the Reliance Group, an Indian conglomerate headquartered in Navi Mumbai India, can you introduce the story of Reliance founded by Dhirubhai Ambani followed by his two sons who are major characters in India business world today, Mukesh and Anil Ambani and why their feud forced the whole of India to take sides? \[14:55\] - Does the title of the book “The Billionaire Raj” refer to the Ambani family? \[19:03\] - Given that Infosys emerged in late 1990s to early 2000s as an champion of tech outsourcing, why has it not create a generation of Internet entrepreneurs? \[20:08\] - Thoughts on the success of Indian CEOs in US companies \[22:47\] - Sometime around 2013, the India technology startup ecosystem has started to emerge and recently Flipkart has been acquired by Walmart, and Paytm is backed by Ant Financial and SoftBank, will the new titans of the India business world emerge from this new tech boom? \[25:39\] - A lot of people look at India as the next major market after China. China has its BAT and now TMD, do you think that India will have their own homegrown champions given that it is such an open market where the US companies such as Facebook and Google are in the market without the strong regulation faced when they are in China? \[27:40\] - Both US and China tech giants have entered India with major investments and competing for the India customer. The US companies prefer to build their own such as Amazon and Google while the Chinese companies invest in the local champions. In the longer term, whose approach will win the war? \[30:22\] - What will be the way forward for India to bridge the current inequality between the rich and the poor? \[32:34\] - Closing \[35:14\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[35:29\] - James’ recommendation: [The Diplomat podcast](https://thediplomat.com/tag/podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [“Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found”](https://www.amazon.com/Maximum-City-Bombay-Lost-Found/dp/0375703403?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Suketu Mehta - How do my audience find you? \[36:21\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQpNgPg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2QlIqGe?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_264\_\_The\_Billionaire\_Raj\_with\_James\_Crabtree.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F264%5F%5FThe%5FBillionaire%5FRaj%5Fwith%5FJames%5FCrabtree.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Antler with Magnus Grimeland URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-263-antler-with-magnus-grimeland/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:01.000Z Magnus Grimeland, founder and CEO of Antler, joined us in a conversation to discuss the new startup incubator focusing on helping founders in building and scaling their own businesses. Magnus shared his early career story in special forces with the military and how his experience to deal with extreme situations of life and death becomes vital with his stints as an entrepreneur in Zalora and Global Fashion Group. We also discussed Antler, the mission and vision and what it means to succeed and differentiate themselves as a startup generator globally. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Magnus Grimeland, founder & CEO of Antler ([@MagnusGrimeland](https://twitter.com/MagnusGrimeland?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/magnus-grimeland-953b311/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:20\] - How did you start your career? \[0:44\] - You have spent a considerable amount of time with Rocket Internet, and also as the managing director of Zalora, subsequently as the COO of the Global Fashion Group, what are the major learning takeaways in building and scaling a business from that experience? \[6:42\] - Does your special forces experience of dealing with near death situations translate into the startup experience as well? \[10:13\] - Antler \[12:57\] - What’s the back story behind the founding of Antler as an incubator and can you describe the vision and mission of Antler? \[13:04\] - How will you characterise the metrics if Antler is successful in three years time? \[15:31\] - There are very few success stories in the startup incubators and accelerators for example, Y-Combinator, TechStars and even Rocket Internet in its early days. How is Antler differentiating itself in that space or alternatively, another way to frame it, what’s Antler’s competitive advantage? \[17:02\] - Who are the key people driving Antler and who are the major advisors to the company? \[20:22\] - What is in the selection process to bring the entrepreneurs into the program? What traits does the team in Antler see in the entrepreneurial teams? \[23:29\] - Can you explain what happens when founders joined the program and how Antler help them to progress and graduate from the program subsequently? \[29:14\] - So all the successful startup incubators and accelerators eventually move upstream in the venture business by developing growth funds in the next stage of venture capital, do you see Antler moving in that direction as it grows in the process? \[32:05\] - Closing \[33:46\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[33:52\] - Magnus’ recommendations: [Analyse Asia](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com) podcast (as we need to promote ourselves too and thanks to Magnus for recommending us too), NPR “[How I build this](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhNWWq6mU3QIVBdbACh2Sog%5FPEAAYASAAEgKZGfD%5FBwE&ref=analysepodcast.com)” podcast and Reid Hoffman’s “[Masters of Scale](https://mastersofscale.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and his book recommendation: “[Man Search for Meaning](https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl-ebook/dp/B009U9S6FI?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Victor Frankl. - BL’s recommendation: “[Strategy beyond the hockey stick](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/strategy-beyond-the-hockey-stick?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit - How do my audience find you? \[35:44\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTAA9Kc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2N1EMm4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_263\_\_Antler\_with\_Magnus\_Grimeland.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F263%5F%5FAntler%5Fwith%5FMagnus%5FGrimeland.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Douyin in China with Matthew Brennan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-262-douyin-in-china-with-matthew-brennan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:01.000Z Matthew Brennan from China Channel and co-host of China Tech Talk joined us to discuss the mobile app Douyin aka Tik Tok (for the rest of the world) by Bytedance and why they are poised to be one of the new leading social media platform not just for China but for the rest of the world. We discussed the mechanics in how Douyin work for content creators and consumers and the monetisation model for the app, and how Douyin are now navigating the regulatory environment in China with their user generated content. Last but not least, we also discussed their ongoing feud with Tencent. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk podcast ([chinachannel.co](http://chinachannel.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@mbrennanchina](https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) \[0:25\] - Recently, both John and you did an episode on China Tech Talk reflecting on the development of China. You have been living there for a while, what are your thoughts on China now (for example, are Chinese businesses really going global or stay within their own borders?) \[1:06\] - [Douyin](https://www.douyin.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[2:50\] - Can you introduce the app Douyin and its connection with Bytedance (the group which owns Toutiao)? \[3:02\] - How does the app work as a short video and music app? \[5:43\] - Comments on Bytedance’s acquisition of Musical.ly and its implications to Douyin \[7:38\] - How does the users and the key opinion leaders (KOLs) access the services on Douyin? \[8:25\] - Comments on Bytedance’s AI capability and how they translate to the different apps such as Toutiao and Douyin and their appeal factor given that they have the largest downloads in the different app stores internationally. \[10:25\] - How does Douyin take steps to regulate the user generated content on their platform as the [authorities have criticized the platform](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2146909/video-app-douyin-brings-chinese-out-their-shells-beats-youtube?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[12:30\] - What’s the business or monetisation model for Douyin as a platform, for example [partnering with Alibaba on ecommerce](https://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2139288/short-video-app-douyin-taps-alibaba-platforms-social-e-commerce-push?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[15:32\] - What are the [major lessons](https://technode.com/2018/06/15/8-lessons-douyin/?ref=analysepodcast.com) that one can draw from Douyin’s rapid growth and success? \[18:00\] - Tencent and Bytedance are going to war with [Douyin under siege](https://technode.com/2018/05/10/how-douyin-became-the-most-popular-app-in-the-world/?ref=analysepodcast.com), what’s the chronology behind this legal tussle between them? \[19:19\] - Do you foresee Tencent will come up with a Douyin clone at some point? \[22:44\] - Closing \[25:52\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[25:36\] - Matthew’s recommendation: [Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Gracias Martinez](https://www.antoniogarciamartinez.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - [CHat Conference 2018 on 20 and 21 Sep 2018](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/china-chat-2018-wechat-china-digital-marketing-conference-tickets-48439834850?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Shanghai organized by China Channel and Walk The Chat. - How do my audience find you? \[26:09\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTji1F4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2BKgdW6?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_262\_\_Douyin\_in\_China\_with\_Matthew\_Brennan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F262%5F%5FDouyin%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FMatthew%5FBrennan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Foxconn and TSMC in 2018 with Tim Culpan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-261-foxconn-and-tsmc-in-2018-with-tim-culpan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:00.000Z Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us in a conversation on the two technology giants from Taiwan: Foxconn and TSMC and how they have evolved for the past three years since 2015\. First, Tim started the discussion with Foxconn and the major milestones in the past three years from the acquisition of Sharp to the recent listing of FIH Mobile and Foxconn’s efforts on automation and robotics in manufacturing. Next, Tim discussed the recent leadership transition in TSMC and where they are heading in the next few years. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Tim Culpan ([@tculpan](https://twitter.com/tculpan?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-culpan-3a753617/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/columnists/AOZ1cdFX8mo/tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Columnist at Bloomberg \[0:25\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:40\] - Foxconn \[1:11\] - [FoxConn](http://www.foxconn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Bloomberg](http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/2354:TT?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Google Finance](https://www.google.com/finance?q=TPE%3A2354&ei=gLAjVsmgF4rvuATEsZfACA&ref=analysepodcast.com), [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn?ref=analysepodcast.com)) – Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd (HQ: Taipei, Taiwan), founded by Terry Gou and one of the best episodes in Analyse Asia history which you can [listen to here](https://analyse.asia/2015/10/29/episode-70-the-foxconn-group-with-tim-culpan/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - Introduction to Foxconn \[1:20\] - How does the Foxconn group as a company evolve since our last conversation three years ago? \[3:31\] - It seems that most companies have difficulty in automating their manufacturing processes with robotics, in fact Tesla has the same problem, and Elon Musk conceded that humans are better at doing certain parts of car production, is this the same with Foxconn as well? \[7:49\] - Para-phrasing Mark Twain, are the rumors of robots taking over manufacturing greatly exaggerated? \[10:25\] - An [interesting tweet](https://twitter.com/tculpan/status/1025185514159144960?ref=analysepodcast.com) you have shared recently on Apple’s recent 1 trillion market capitalisation milestone that Foxconn is valued at 1/20 \~ 5% of Apple’s market cap. Why has Foxconn’s stock not rise with Apple, given that it’s captive to the Apple > 50%? \[10:48\] - Tim’s comments on Foxconn’s failure to buy a major portion of the Toshiba chip unit deal made it difficult for them to add value to Apple. \[12:53\] - Here are some of the major milestones that the Foxconn group have achieved in the past three years, what are the implications for Foxconn Group? \[14:36\] - Acquisition of Sharp for screens technology \[14:51\] - Does Sharp has its own research and development arm to improve the current screen technology? \[16:57\] - Setting up manufacturing in US at Wisconsin, US. \[18:00\] - FIH Mobile (publicly listed in HKSE) [sustaining losses of US$525M](https://asia.nikkei.com/Asia300/Foxconn-unit-FIH-Mobile-makes-record-loss-in-2017?ref=analysepodcast.com) in 2017 \[22:01\] - How has the Foxconn leadership changed in the past three years? Any potential successors to Terry Gou? \[23:07\] - TSMC Group \[25:29\] - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (or [TSMC Group](http://www.tsmc.com/english/default.htm?ref=analysepodcast.com)) ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/2330:TT?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Google Finance](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:TSM&sq=TSMC&sp=1&ei=JnqsVpD6G9eDuQTIvojICg&ref=analysepodcast.com)) – dual listed in Taiwan Stock Exchange & NYSE. Market Cap \~ US$109B in NYSE, more than 35K employees. Headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, founded in 1987\. - TSMC Group has undergone a major leadership transition in the past year with Morris Chang, and reached its 30 anniversary last year, what has been the impact to the company over all? \[27:44\] - TSMC recently [suffered a virus attack](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-04/tsmc-takes-emergency-steps-as-operations-hit-by-computer-virus?ref=analysepodcast.com) recently, which are the real and false information perpetuated in the process? \[31:23\] - What are the key revenue drivers for TSMC Group? What are the innovations in semiconductor industry that TSMC is driving in the next few years and how will they impact the market? \[34:06\] - Closing \[36:49\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[37:03\] - Ashlee Vance “[Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future](https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/006230125X?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - Where can my audience find you? \[37:54\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRSe3ZE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2MiyyOW?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_261\_\_Foxconn\_and\_TSMC\_in\_2018\_with\_Tim\_Culpan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F261%5F%5FFoxconn%5Fand%5FTSMC%5Fin%5F2018%5Fwith%5FTim%5FCulpan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Pinduoduo & their upcoming IPO in China with Matthew Brennan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-260-pinduoduo-their-upcoming-ipo-in-china-with-matthew-brennan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:51:00.000Z Matthew Brennan, co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk, joined us to discuss Pinduoduo, the three year old social ecommerce company backed by Tencent slated for an IPO this year. We discussed the origins of Pinduoduo and why they labelled themselves as the amalgamation of Costco and Disney, their products and services on the mobile app and the business model that powered their rise. We also discussed the backers of the company together with the upcoming IPO of Pinduoduo in NASDAQ. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk podcast ([chinachannel.co](http://chinachannel.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@mbrennanchina](https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) \[0:25\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:30\] - [CHat Conference 2018 on 20 and 21 Sep 2018](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/china-chat-2018-wechat-china-digital-marketing-conference-tickets-48439834850?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Shanghai organized by China Channel and Walk The Chat. \[0:32\] - [Pinduoduo](https://www.pinduoduo.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[1:29\] - Can you introduce Pinduoduo to my audience and what do they do? \[1:37\] - The company describes itself as “Costco + Disney” and 3 years old, funded by Tencent and will go IPO soon. - Colin Zheng Huang, ex Google, born Hangzhou, 38 - What are the products and services from Pinduoduo? \[3:03\] - One can understand the “[Costco](https://www.costco.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” part of Pinduoduo, but what about the Disney part? \[4:58\] - Comments on the diametrically opposite business model of Pinduoduo against Alibaba and JD in China \[7:48\] - How does the different stakeholders access Pinduoduo for example, consumers or sellers? \[9:04\] - What is the business model for Pinduoduo or alternatively, how do they monetize? \[11:14\] - Comments on Pinduoduo’s lack of logistics and fulfillment capabilities unlike JD and Alibaba. \[11:39\] - Who are the key investors behind Pinduoduo? \[12:09\] - Notable investors: Sequoia Capital, Tencent, IDG - Why does Tencent have so much interest on Pinduoduo instead of JD? \[13:00\] - Some of the early employees from the Wechat team, who are they and have they been influential to Pinduoduo’s growth? \[14:14\] - Pinduoduo is planning to go public in 2018 with 85.6 million American Depositary Shares in an IPO at a price range of $16 to $19 each, its filing late on Monday showed. The three-year-old Pinduoduo—which has yet to make a profit—is valued at between $20 billion to $24 billion, higher than its[ $15 billion](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-12/ex-googler-s-e-commerce-site-is-said-valued-at-about-15-billion?ref=analysepodcast.com) valuation in April. Why are they going public? (Reference: Forbes “[Chinese Startup Pinduoduo Prepares To Go Public In U.S., But Red Flags Abound](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hendriklaubscher/2018/07/18/why-i-am-concerned-about-pinduoduo/?ref=analysepodcast.com#2c0aade12b5c)”) \[15:39\] - Where do you see Pinduoduo go from here? WIll they eventually be independent or be acquired by a larger player (Tencent or JD)? \[17:35\] - It has been a phenomenal year for Chinese companies going IPO, and most [CEOs are banking their bonuses](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-23/china-ceos-start-to-get-1-billion-ipo-bonuses-to-go-public?ref=analysepodcast.com), will this go into the year 2019? \[19:43\] - Reference: [How Pinduoduo works](https://hans.vc/pinduoduo/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Hans Tung and Zara Zhang - Closing \[22:16\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[22:30\] - Matthew’s recommendation: [Daniel Kahneman “Thinking Fast and Slow”](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: [Michael Lewis “The Undoing Project”](https://www.amazon.com/Undoing-Project-Friendship-Changed-Minds/dp/0393354776/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[23:07\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSa%5FxFw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2KF5OKt?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_260\_\_Pinduoduo\_\_their\_upcoming\_IPO\_in\_China\_with\_Matthew\_Brennan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F260%5F%5FPinduoduo%5F%5Ftheir%5Fupcoming%5FIPO%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FMatthew%5FBrennan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Xiaomi IPO with Tim Culpan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-259-xiaomi-ipo-with-tim-culpan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:59.000Z Tim Culpan, columnist at Bloomberg joined us to discuss the recent Xiaomi IPO and what it means for Chinese technology companies going public. Tim offered his analyses on Xiaomi and break down their media narrative versus what they are really are and where their core businesses and revenue models are structured. Last but not least, Tim discussed how the Chinese companies such as Xiaomi, Baidu and Alibaba might move with the Chinese government’s scheme of Chinese depositary receipts (CDRs). Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Tim Culpan ([@tculpan](https://twitter.com/tculpan?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-culpan-3a753617/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/columnists/AOZ1cdFX8mo/tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Columnist at Bloomberg \[0:18\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:35\] - Tim’s recent conversations at RISE Conference and TechSauce conference \[1:10\] - Xiaomi IPO \[3:08\] - Context: Our discussion on Xiaomi’s progress was based on their performance in the first week after their IPO. - Let’s start with an introduction of the company although we have covered this company many times on the show. Can you give an introduction to Xiaomi and what the company does? \[3:21\] - Oftentimes, I have difficulty in understanding Xiaomi’s business models, because sometimes, they are the Apple of China and then another time, Amazon of China, and of course, with their physical stores, you can call them Muji of China, what are the business models that define this company? \[6:51\] - Is Xiaomi a hardware company or software & services company today? \[7:43\] - The best is to start with understanding Xiaomi’s business, in your view, what are their core businesses and how have they fared so far before IPO? \[9:38\] - Xiaomi was in the spotlight in 2015 with their smartphone success and subsequently started plunging down with their smartphone market share being usurped by Huawei and Oppo/Vivo, are they going to profitable or not in the coming years after the IPO? \[11:08\] - You have [floated 8 charts to explain Xiaomi and their legendary founder, Lei Jun](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-09/captain-xiaomi-and-his-floating-empire-in-charts?ref=analysepodcast.com), and what interesting conclusions you can draw from them? \[15:11\] - Can you elaborate on the idea of Chinese depositary receipts or otherwise known as CDRs and it appears that other major tech companies in China such as Baidu are considering doing this? \[17:45\] - Xiaomi made [a great return with their investment on Midea](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-28/well-played-xiaomi-for-that-200-return-on-midea?ref=analysepodcast.com), and what is that about and what does it say about Xiaomi in general? \[21:13\] - Do you see Xiaomi becoming a SoftBank with the founder who started off as a super angel and now a corporate VC thru his own company? \[22:50\] - What are the sentiments of the investors towards Xiaomi’s IPO? (Reference: [Xiaomi has China’s moms and pops paying Lei June](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-20/xiaomi-ipo-has-china-s-moms-and-pops-paying-lei-jun?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Tim). Xiaomi has launched their IPO on Hong Kong Stock Exchange 9 July 2018, so how did they fare from their initial launch? (Reference: [Millions of Xiaomi Shares may be under water from Day One](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-08/millions-of-xiaomi-shares-may-be-underwater-from-day-one?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Tim) \[24:25\] - Where do you see the future of Xiaomi? What are the critical success factors they need to win over investors in the public markets? \[27:14\] - Closing \[31:30\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[32:10\] - Tim Culpan’s recommendations: Reid Hoffman’s “[Masters of Scale](https://mastersofscale.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and Brad Stone’s “[The Upstarts](https://www.amazon.com/Upstarts-Airbnb-Companies-Silicon-Changing/dp/0316388394?ref=analysepodcast.com)“. - Where can my audience find you? \[33:24\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTsJdx4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2AxJAKE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_259\_\_Xiaomi\_IPO\_with\_Tim\_Culpan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F259%5F%5FXiaomi%5FIPO%5Fwith%5FTim%5FCulpan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Meituan Dianping with Liza Lin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-258-meituan-dianping-with-liza-lin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:59.000Z Liza Lin from Wall Street Journal joined us to discuss one of the upstart Internet giants from China: Meituan Dianping with their upcoming IPO and described her recent interview with their charismatic founder, Wang Xing and where the company is heading. We discussed the backstory of the company, Meituan till its merger with Dianping, their focus as the “Amazon of Services” in China, their recent foray into ride-hailing taking on Didi and their shifting alliances from Alibaba to Tencent. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Liza Lin, ([@Liz\_in\_shanghai](https://twitter.com/liz%5Fin%5Fshanghai?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/liza-lin-a1a79842/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Technology Reporter at Wall Street Journal \[0:24\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:26\] - Thoughts on Xiaomi IPO \[0:58\] - Discussion on Smart Retail and other major technology trends in China \[1:16\] - [Meituan](http://www.meituan.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)–[Dianping](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dianping.v1&hl=en&ref=analysepodcast.com) and their upcoming IPO \[2:44\] - Can you briefly describe the company Meituan Dianping and why it is given the status of TMD (Toutiao-Meituan Dianping-Didi) in the Chinese technology world? \[3:01\] - How does the typical Chinese consumer access Meituan Dianping and what kind of products and services do they provide? \[5:08\] - What’s their current revenue and are they profitable or still running at a loss before their IPO in Hong Kong with their valuation at US$60B? \[8:11\] - Why did Meituan Dianping changed their IPO location from New York to Hong Kong Stock Exchange? Is it because of HKSE allow dual class shares and the ongoing US and China trade war? \[9:54\] - Can you talk about the founder Wang Xing who have a history in building Ren Ren (which is the facebook of China) and Fanfou (the first generation of twitter clones before Weibo)? \[11:02\] - Meituan-Dianping has a history with both Alibaba and Tencent, first invested by the former and then switched sides to be with Tencent. What has Alibaba started doing to compete with them (with Koubei and Ele.me)? \[15:42\] - In its own, Meituan Dianping has also started to enter into ride-hailing (and the backstory is that both Wang Xing and Cheng Wei were buddies before this happened), and why have they decided to enter into this space? \[18:16\] - Why has the reverse not happened with Didi entering into Meituan-Dianping’s space yet? \[22:09\] - Where do you see Meituan Dianping’s evolution in China will be in the next 1-2 years? \[22:45\] - Does Meituan Dianping wants to focus on expansion into markets such as Southeast Asia or instead focus on continue their market domination in China? \[25:15\] - Closing \[27:40\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[27:46\] - Where can my audience find you? \[30:00\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSumU9Y?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2K25i9p?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_258\_\_Meituan\_Dianping\_with\_Liza\_Lin.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F258%5F%5FMeituan%5FDianping%5Fwith%5FLiza%5FLin.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The ZTE debacle with Rui Ma URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-257-the-zte-debacle-with-rui-ma/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:59.000Z Rui Ma, founder of Transformative Technology Academy and host of TechBuzz China podcast joined us in a discussion on the recent crisis of the Chinese technology company, ZTE and its implications on the ongoing trade war between US and China. We discussed the major lessons learnt by the Chinese companies from the ZTE fallout in a time where Chinese technology companies are now in the midst of challenging Silicon Valley for dominance in technology and regional expansion across Asia Pacific. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Rui Ma, Founder of [Transformative Technology Academy](https://medium.com/transformative-technology?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Host of [TechBuzz China podcast](https://supchina.com/series/techbuzz-china/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/techbuzz-china-by-pandaily/id1378670805?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com), SoundCloud) by [Pandaily](https://pandaily.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) produced by [SupChina](https://supchina.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@ruima](https://twitter.com/ruima?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:30\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:35\] - Can you talk about your new project: the TechBuzz podcast by Pandaily? \[2:18\] - ZTE’s recent crisis ([Company main page](https://www.zte.com.cn/global/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[3:46\] - Introduction: **ZTE Corporation** is a Chinese[ multinational](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational%5Fcorporation?ref=analysepodcast.com)[ telecommunications equipment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications%5Fequipment?ref=analysepodcast.com) and systems company headquartered in[ Shenzhen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen?ref=analysepodcast.com), Guangdong, China running at 108B Yuan \~ US$16B revenue in 2017 with 74.7K employees globally and also listed in Shenzhen Stock Exchange. - Can you briefly introduce the Chinese company ZTE and what they do? \[4:12\] - What’s the history behind this company? \[5:12\] - ZTE is divided into 3 business units: carrier networks, terminals and telecommunications, and who are their customers? \[6:34\] - How did ZTE got into trouble with the US authorities? (See Reference: How did ZTE end up in the middle of US-China trade war? [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-zte-ended-up-in-middle-of-us-china-trade-war-quicktake/2018/07/04/b65d3986-7f59-11e8-a63f-7b5d2aba7ac5%5Fstory.html?noredirect=on&utm%5Fterm=.16614ae6e413&ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[8:12\] - How important are US suppliers to ZTE? \[10:10\] - What are the consequences if the ban will to continue without Trump’s intervention? What’s the current status for ZTE? \[12:30\] - How does this fit into the US – China trade war? \[14:34\] - Are there any long term consequences from China’s perspective? \[16:24\] - Discussion on the competition between US and China technology companies. \[18:12\] - Is Silicon Valley really starting to lag behind China given Mike Moritz’s recent articles on FT? \[20:30\] - Is the ongoing trade war going to be counterproductive to the China and US technology companies given that they have a long history in cross border investments to each other and starting to build alliances and synergies between them? \[22:26\] - What are the lessons that Chinese companies need to learn from this crisis? \[23:56\] - Closing \[26:31\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? - Rui Ma’s recommendation: Alain De Botton’s “[The Consolations of Philosophy](http://alaindebotton.com/philosophy/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and Bill Bryson’s “[A Short History of Nearly Everything](https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/076790818X?ref=analysepodcast.com)“. - BL’s recommendation: Alain De Botton’s “[Status Anxiety](http://alaindebotton.com/status/?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQpyV9w?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2OcLZNA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_257\_\_The\_ZTE\_debacle\_with\_Rui\_Ma.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F257%5F%5FThe%5FZTE%5Fdebacle%5Fwith%5FRui%5FMa.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### WeWork in Southeast Asia with Turochas Fuad URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-256-wework-in-southeast-asia-with-turochas-fuad/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:58.000Z Turochas “T” Fuad, managing director of WeWork, Southeast Asia joined us for a conversation on his journey as a serial entrepreneur and his current role to expand WeWork across Southeast Asia. We started from his early career with Yahoo! and Skype and subsequently with the acquisition of Spacemob to WeWork. We discussed WeWork, their products and services offered to different customers from startups to multi-national corporations and their geographical expansion across Southeast Asia. Last but not least, he also shared his thoughts on how the co-working spaces are evolving across Southeast Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Turochas “T” Fuad, Managing Director of [WeWork](https://www.wework.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) Southeast Asia ([@turochas](https://twitter.com/turochas?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/turochas/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:25\] - How did you start your career? \[1:00\] - You have started Travelmob which was acquired by Home Away, and then Spacemob which is now acquired and expanded into Wework Southeast Asia. In starting both companies and leading them to acquisitions, what are the thought processes you have to go thru to make these acquisitions work? \[2:21\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons learnt? \[4:39\] - [WeWork](https://www.wework.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Southeast Asia and co-working spaces \[6:53\] - Introduction: WeWork provides [shared workspaces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking?ref=analysepodcast.com), technology startup subculture communities, and services for entrepreneurs, freelancers, startups, small businesses and large enterprises. Founded in 2010, it is headquartered in [New York City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New%5FYork%5FCity?ref=analysepodcast.com). WeWork has a current valuation of roughly US$20 billion and manages 10M square feet of office space. Founders: Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey. - Can you briefly introduce WeWork to my audience and what is its current vision and mission? \[7:42\] - WeWork is known for its culture, can you briefly talk about how that culture empowers their employees to work with their customers? \[9:22\] - How does WeWork enable personal fulfilment and productive work through its culture to the customers who are working there everyday? \[11:52\] - What are the current products or services that WeWork provide to small and medium businesses and to corporations as well? \[13:43\] - How does technology enable WeWork with their customers? \[16:15\] - What is the current footprint of Wework in Southeast Asia? Where are the most interesting locations in the region? \[18:45\] - How is the experience for any startup or corporation different in Wework as compared if they have worked in any co-working space out there and where do you see the co-working spaces in Southeast Asia going? \[20:40\] - Wework has also branched out from its traditional businesses (Welive, Wegrow and Rise by We), will we see these new services enter into Southeast Asia? \[24:00\] - Closing \[25:01\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[25:16\] - T’s recommendation: [Start with Why](https://startwithwhy.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Simon Sinek and [his famous TED talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/simon%5Fsinek%5Fhow%5Fgreat%5Fleaders%5Finspire%5Faction?ref=analysepodcast.com). - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTvVBso?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2JkOTfS?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_256\_\_WeWork\_in\_Southeast\_Asia\_with\_Turochas\_Fuad.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F256%5F%5FWeWork%5Fin%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FTurochas%5FFuad.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Advertising and Video Landscape in Asia Pacific with Greg Armshaw URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-255-advertising-and-video-landscape-in-asia-pacific-with-greg-armshaw/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:58.000Z Greg Armshaw, head of sales from Brightcove Asia joined us to discuss the advertising and video landscape across Asia Pacific. We discussed his current work and role in Brightcove within the region and his thoughts on how the digital in Asia Pacific is shifting against US and Europe. Last but not least, he discussed his thoughts on how Facebook and Tencent will contest Southeast Asia and how the outcome will be decided. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Greg Armshaw, Head of Sales, Brightcove Asia ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregarmshaw/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@Innovasian](https://twitter.com/Innovasian?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:27\] - How did you start your career? \[1:16\] - In your career journey, what are interesting career lessons learnt? \[3:34\] - Can you talk about the video platform company, Brightcove? \[4:20\] - What’s your role and coverage in Brightcove for Asia? \[5:57\] - Digital in Asia Pacific vs USA/Europe \[6:52\] - What are the key differences in attitudes to the internet? \[7:10\] - Do you think that the cultural practices in social media platforms also attributed to that difference? \[8:54\] - Advertising and Video Landscape across Asia Pacific \[10:59\] - Netflix has shifted the landscape to how customers access tv shows and videos. Has that also shifted the video landscape in Asia Pacific? \[11:04\] - How US analysts do not appreciate Netflix’s expansion in Asia Pacific, and also why people in Asia Pacific are now viewing movies via mobile. \[14:09\] - Can you talk about how advertising has shifted in Asia Pacific? \[18:30\] - Have big advertising agencies such as WPP Group started to decline with the entrance of US digital agencies and the power of the duopoly (Google and Facebook)? \[20:52\] - Where is the customer when it comes to access for content from devices whether thru streaming or downloading? \[26:00\] - What are the preventions for piracy of original content for both video or more generally for other contact? \[27:38\] - Does customers in Asia Pacific really respond to advertising? \[29:59\] - What are your thoughts on [Facebook vs Tencent in Southeast Asia](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebook-vs-tencent-battle-sea-greg-armshaw/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[31:46\] - Closing \[35:25\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? \[35:30\] - Greg’s recommendation: Malcolm Gladwell, Revisionist History Podcast - BL’s recommendation: Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder - Where can my audience find you? \[36:30\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Overcast FM - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2m1bjJK?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_255\_\_Advertising\_and\_Video\_Landscape\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Greg\_Armshaw.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F255%5F%5FAdvertising%5Fand%5FVideo%5FLandscape%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FGreg%5FArmshaw.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Google I/O and Apple WWDC 2018 with Ben Bajarin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-254-google-i-o-and-apple-wwdc-2018-with-ben-bajarin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:57.000Z Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies joined us in a conversation to discuss what happened in the recent Google I/O and Apple WWDC 2018 and its implications on the development of artificial intelligence, voice assistants and the separation of state between tablets and personal computers. We also discussed the recent happenings in Intel and his brief thoughts on the semiconductor industry in Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Ben Bajarin ([@benbajarin](https://twitter.com/benbajarin?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-bajarin-196b36?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Techpinions profile](https://techpinions.com/author/benbajarin?ref=analysepodcast.com)) from [Creative Strategies](http://creativestrategies.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Techpinions](https://techpinions.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[0:27\] - What have you been up to since we last spoke? \[0:38\] - Intel experienced a recent turmoil with [their CEO resigned](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/technology/intel-ceo-resigns-consensual-relationship.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) recently, where do you think that things are going for them? (Reference: [Intel’s moment of truth](https://techpinions.com/intels-moment-of-truth/53135?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Ben) \[1:30\] - Who’s likely to be the next Intel CEO and where are they heading with the roadmap of semiconductor chips with their [recent acquisition of Mobileye](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-tech-intel-mobileye-exclusive/exclusive-intels-mobileye-gets-self-driving-tech-deal-for-8-million-cars-idUSKCN1II0K7?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[4:45\] - Google I/O and Apple WWDC 2018 \[8:20\] - What are the key major announcements for [Google I/O 2018](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/8-big-announcements-from-google-i-o-2018/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Apple WWDC 2018](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/04/14-big-announcements-from-apples-annual-developer-conference-wwdc-2018/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[8:33\] - Is the reduction of time usage on the mobile phone a reaction from Apple and Google due to the recent backlash on technology companies? \[13:08\] - Thoughts on kids’ access to smartphones and tablets as digital pacifiers \[16:20\] - Is the smartphone still the centre of the universe against the rise of new platforms: VR/AR and wearables? \[17:25\] - What are the [tea leaves you can infer on Siri, Mac and iPad](https://techpinions.com/reading-the-wwdc-tea-leaves-for-siri-mac-and-ipad/53045?ref=analysepodcast.com) from WWDC 2018? \[20:11\] - Are Apple and Google [heading in the same direction](https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/8/17438884/wwdc-google-io-2018?ref=analysepodcast.com) with regards to AI and mobile but diverge on privacy? \[24:42\] - Has Google’s perspectives on hardware increased with their TPU chip for AI and their emphasis on Google Home? \[28:08\] - Has Apple also shifted their paradigm in terms of how they have decided that they will not tell users what it is good for them as [described by your colleague Carolina Milanesi](https://techpinions.com/apple-no-longer-tells-users-what-is-best-for-them/53028?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[30:50\] - The semiconductor industry is also undergoing a major shift with the recent ZTE debacle that pushed China to be more independent, ARM now owned by SoftBank and Taiwanese company TSMC in leadership transition, how are these changes affect Google, Apple and other major tech companies in the years ahead? \[34:15\] - Closing \[36:21\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? - Ben Bajarin’s recommendation: The Exponent Podcast with Ben Thompson and James Allworth and [The Menu Bar](http://www.themenu.bar/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Zac Cichy. - BL’s recommendation: [Acquired Podcast](http://www.acquired.fm/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert - Where can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRTimFg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2KwZSqZ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_254\_\_Google\_I\_O\_and\_Apple\_WWDC\_2018\_with\_Ben\_Bajarin.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F254%5F%5FGoogle%5FI%5FO%5Fand%5FApple%5FWWDC%5F2018%5Fwith%5FBen%5FBajarin.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Why Blockchain is hot again in China with John Artman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-253-why-blockchain-is-hot-again-in-china-with-john-artman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:57.000Z John Artman, editor in chief from Technode and host of China Tech Talk joined us to discuss why blockchain is now hot again in China despite the ban on ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges. We discussed the Chinese government’s recent enthusiasm in promoting development of blockchain technologies, and the major applications that will emerge. Last but not least, we discuss how China’s development in blockchain might spur Chinese technology companies to go global. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - John Artman ([@knowsnothing](https://twitter.com/KnowsNothing?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jartman/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Editor in Chief from [Technode](http://technode.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Host of [China Tech Talk](https://itunes.apple.com/sg/podcast/china-tech-talk/id1228528520?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com) and [NodeWorthy](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/node-worthy/id1286596291?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com) podcasts \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:24\] - [TechCrunch Hangzhou](https://tc.technode.com/2018-hangzhou/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) event on 2-3 July 2018 \[1:32\] - Why Blockchain is hot again in China \[3:37\] - Given that the Chinese government has banned ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges, why is the story of blockchain becoming relevant in China again? \[3:50\] - Why did the Chinese government banned the cryptocurrency exchanges given that bitcoin and ethereum are mainstream globally? \[6:32\] - Where is the stage of development for China’s major blockchain players such as Neo and Qtum? \[8:46\] - What are the major applications of blockchain in China? Are they applied mainly in the utilities and energy space or watermarking of original content? \[10:22\] - Do you see the blockchain applications in China align with the Chinese government’s ‘made in China 2025’ initiative? \[12:27\] - Will the Chinese government eventually issue their own cryptocurrency? \[15:47\] - In the West, we are seeing blockchain applications that can dis-intermediate the current applications such as Google and Facebook, do you see the same happening in China? \[18:06\] - Do you see the Chinese technology companies will leverage blockchain as their means to expand globally? \[20:04\] - Will the development in blockchain technologies in China focused on private or public sector needs for the next 1-2 years? \[22:51\] - Closing \[24:36\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[24:50\] - John’s recommendation: Jordan Petersen “[12 Rules for Life](https://www.amazon.com/12-Rules-Life-Antidote-Chaos/dp/0345816021?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and Steven Pinker “[Enlightenment Now”](https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570/ref=sr%5F1%5F2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528441149&sr=1-2&keywords=enlightment+now&ref=analysepodcast.com). - BL’s recommendation: Wu Xiaobo “[The History of Tencent: 1998-2016](https://www.amazon.com/Tencent-1998-2016-Survivor-Challenger-Chinese/dp/7308164209/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528443073&sr=1-1&refinements=p%5F27%3AWu+Xiaobo&dpID=41bD8P6msAL&preST=%5FSX218%5FBO1,204,203,200%5FQL40%5F&dpSrc=srch&ref=analysepodcast.com)” - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQc8GaE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2M5Trcm?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_253\_\_Why\_Blockchain\_is\_hot\_again\_in\_China\_with\_John\_Artman.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F253%5F%5FWhy%5FBlockchain%5Fis%5Fhot%5Fagain%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FJohn%5FArtman.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Why the Broadcom and Qualcomm deal fell apart with Chirayu Wadke URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-252-why-the-broadcom-and-qualcomm-deal-fell-apart-with-chirayu-wadke/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:56.000Z Chirayu Wadke, partner from Seedplus joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the most important trends in smartphone, internet of things (IoT) and mobility landscape and why the recent Broadcom acquisition of Qualcomm failed. In the second part, we discussed why the recent Broadcom and Qualcomm deal fell apart and its implications to Asia Pacific companies making acquisitions in the US market. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Chirayu Wadke, Partner, [SeedPlus](http://www.seedplus.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@chirayuwadke](https://twitter.com/chirayuwadke?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cwadke?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:38\] - Why Broadcom and Qualcomm deal fell apart \[1:04\] - Can you provide a background to how Broadcom came to be and why it has decided to acquire Qualcomm? \[1:48\] - How far can the M&A methods and stripping innovation out by Hock Tan go? \[4:50\] - In the end, the deal did not go through. What are the key factors to the failure of the deal? \[7:08\] - Does the boardroom dynamics affected the Broadcom-Qualcomm deal? Why did Intel not enter as the white knight? \[7:46\] - The implications of Broadcom and Qualcomm are also felt in the other failed acquisitions by Asian companies in the US from Ant Financial’s failure to acquire Moneygram as well, does that mean that it will be increasingly difficult to consolidate the technology market? \[9:20\] - References: - [Mr Tan Goes to Washington: The Undoing of a Tech Mega Deal by Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-15/mr-tan-goes-to-washington-the-undoing-of-a-117-billion-deal?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Qualcomm Ex-Chairman to leave amid plans to buy company by NY Times. ](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/technology/qualcomm-taking-company-private.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Closing \[12:52\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[13:00\] - Chirayu’s recommendation: “[The End of Average](https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062358363/the-end-of-average/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Todd Rose - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQPG8fk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2IN6cuF?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_252\_\_Why\_the\_Broadcom\_and\_Qualcomm\_deal\_fell\_apart\_with\_Chirayu\_Wadke.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F252%5F%5FWhy%5Fthe%5FBroadcom%5Fand%5FQualcomm%5Fdeal%5Ffell%5Fapart%5Fwith%5FChirayu%5FWadke.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Smartphone, IoT & Mobility Landscape with Chirayu Wadke URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-251-smartphone-iot-mobility-landscape-with-chirayu-wadke/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:56.000Z Chirayu Wadke, partner from Seedplus joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the most important trends in smartphone, internet of things (IoT) and mobility landscape and why the recent Broadcom acquisition of Qualcomm failed. In the first part, we discussed his current role and coverage as a venture capitalist with Seedplus and his central investment thesis and branched into a deeper conversation on smartphone, IoT and mobility (autonomous vehicles) landscape and how it shifts the calculus of putting investments into those emerging technologies. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Chirayu Wadke, Partner, [SeedPlus](http://www.seedplus.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@chirayuwadke](https://twitter.com/chirayuwadke?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cwadke?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:15\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[5:22\] - Can you talk about what your day is like as a venture capitalist? \[6:25\] - What’s your current role and coverage with SeedPlus? \[7:20\] - Any interesting companies which you have invested with your portfolio? \[8:06\] - [Coveiot](http://coveiot.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Qopper](https://www.qopper.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Smartphone, IoT & Mobility Landscape \[11:06\] - Given that we live in a duopoly world now with iOS and Android, where do you see the mobility landscape evolving? \[11:29\] - We have seen interesting business models such as Reliance Jio in India and Xiaomi over the past these two years, what are the factors that will drive the growth of the emerging markets with mobile? \[15:46\] - How Reliance Jio taught all the other telcos the correct pricing for an individual user by giving unlimited free for the Indian users during their trials last year. \[17:26\] - Given that we see wearables and IoT hovering around the mobile smartphone, do you see them as an augmentation to the smartphone or can they be a foreshadow to something coming up such as VR and AR (for example, we have Google Glass, Apple Airpods)? Will the smartphone still be the centre of the universe for wearables? \[18:19\] - We are seeing Google and Apple are building their own semiconductor chips now focusing on the AI processing. Do you see the semiconductors industry will move in different direction due to this new demand from the tech giants? \[19:53\] - What are the trendlines for autonomous vehicles given the massive IoT deployments and applies to both drones and self-driving cars? \[23:53\] - Should startups enter the autonomous vehicles starting from a service model or a different business model first? \[26:48\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTSZ2DY?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2LcbUDT?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_251\_\_Smartphone\_IoT\_\_Mobility\_Landscape\_with\_Chirayu\_Wadke.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F251%5F%5FSmartphone%5FIoT%5F%5FMobility%5FLandscape%5Fwith%5FChirayu%5FWadke.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### China Tech Giants' Acquisitions & Its Impact to Asia with Jon Russell URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-250-china-tech-giants-mergers-acquisitions-its-impact-to-asia-with-jon-russell/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:56.000Z Jon Russell, from TechCrunch joined us in a two episode arc to discuss the major acquisitions that are shaking the Asia landscape from Southeast Asia to China. In the second part of our conversation, we discussed the recent major acquisitions by China technology giants in China. From the acquisition of Mobike by Meituan-Dianping to Ele.me by Alibaba Group, we evaluate their impact to Southeast Asia and India and examine why Amazon is not likely to buy Flipkart in India. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Jon Russell ([@jonrussell](https://twitter.com/jonrussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://th.linkedin.com/in/jmarussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ Newsletter](http://jonrussell.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ba97f7320d4d550688a17209a&id=9f5d1c81f2&ref=analysepodcast.com#%5F=%5F),[ Personal Site](http://insidethenoodlebowl.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Reporter at[ TechCrunch](http://techcrunch.com/author/jon-russell/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - China’s major merger and acquisitions \[0:46\] - References [Meituan Dianping acquiring Mobike for US$2.7B](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/03/chinese-bike-sharing-pioneer-mobike-sold-to-ambitious-meituan-dianping-for-2-7b/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Alibaba acquiring Ele.me for US$9.5B](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/01/alibaba-to-buy-all-remaining-outstanding-shares-of-local-delivery-service-ele-me/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Technode](https://technode.com/2018/04/04/meituan-mobike-deal-confirmed/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - What are your thoughts on these major acquisitions happening in China and why Meituan-Dianping entering into the ride-hailing market? \[2:00\] - Does that mean that there will be consolidation for the ridesharing space, given that Didi and Alibaba are both investors and have fought for control in Ofo? \[3:11\] - What does that mean for the bike sharing space in general and even those in the US as we heard Uber is considering in acquiring Jump Bikes in the US? \[5:40\] - Is Uber copying what the Chinese are doing with acquisitions of bike-sharing services in China? \[7:00\] - Comments on whether bike sharing is a fad and feature and not a proper business. \[7:34\] - Alibaba is flexing their muscles on Ele.me and Grab, does that mean that there will be more acquisitions happening in China & outside in Southeast Asia and India as well? \[8:12\] - How Alibaba and Tencent’s investments in Southeast Asia and India have locked out the US companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon) which has not bothered to look at investing in the region. \[12:05\] - Why the Amazon-Flipkart deal can’t happen in India? \[13:40\] - Closing \[16:25\] - How do my audience find you? \[16:25\] - Jon’s weekly newsletter: [Asia Tech Review](http://asiatechreview.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Telegram Channel](https://t.me/asiatechreview?ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQbPejQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2KYfEbL?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_250\_\_China\_Tech\_Giants\_Acquisitions\_\_Its\_Impact\_to\_Asia\_with\_Jon\_Russell.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F250%5F%5FChina%5FTech%5FGiants%5FAcquisitions%5F%5FIts%5FImpact%5Fto%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FJon%5FRussell.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Grab acquires Uber Southeast Asia with Jon Russell URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-249-grab-acquires-uber-southeast-asia-with-jon-russell/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:55.000Z Jon Russell, from TechCrunch joined us in a two episode arc to discuss the major acquisitions that are shaking the Asia landscape from Southeast Asia to China. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed the recent acquisition of Uber Southeast Asia by Grab and its impact to the different stakeholders from investors, employees, consumers and governments. We also explore how their competitors Go-Jek and Ola are affected within the Asian landscape. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Jon Russell ([@jonrussell](https://twitter.com/jonrussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://th.linkedin.com/in/jmarussell?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ Newsletter](http://jonrussell.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ba97f7320d4d550688a17209a&id=9f5d1c81f2&ref=analysepodcast.com#%5F=%5F),[ Personal Site](http://insidethenoodlebowl.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Reporter at[ TechCrunch](http://techcrunch.com/author/jon-russell/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - Since we last spoke, what have you been up to? - [Grab acquires Uber Southeast Asia](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/25/gruber-official/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[2:28\] - Before the deal happened, there have been rumors circulating about Uber and Grab are in talks to discuss the acquisition similar to how the Didi deal was done. What is the backstory on the circumstances that lead to this story? \[4:19\] - After a month of speculation, the deal happened. Was it an equity swap deal or are there cash involved? \[7:20\] - Who are the winners and losers for Grab and Uber Southeast Asia deal? \[9:20\] - Grab - Uber - Go-Jek - Employees at Uber Southeast Asia - Consumers in Southeast Asia - What do this mean for ride hailing in Southeast Asia? Do you think that Grab will eventually beat Go-Jek in Indonesia? \[17:24\] - Do you see the domino for Uber to collapse also in India with Ola taking over Uber’s assets in India? \[18:41\] - Where do Uber go from here? Are they relegated to become a regional power or are there regions where they can still dominate? \[19:21\] - Does SoftBank play a role in making sure that all their assets are playing nice to each other? \[20:56\] - The Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) has said that it has “reasonable grounds” to suspect that the merger of Grab & Uber Southeast Asia has infringed the Competition Act and it triggered similar commissions in Malaysia and Philippines governments to look into this deal. Will this deal get defrayed? \[21:30\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQ2Ajy0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2vYNWbu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_249\_\_Grab\_acquires\_Uber\_Southeast\_Asia\_with\_Jon\_Russell.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F249%5F%5FGrab%5Facquires%5FUber%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FJon%5FRussell.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The State of Low Power Wide Area Networks in Asia 2018 with Charles Anderson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-248-the-state-of-low-power-wide-area-networks-in-asia-2018-with-charles-anderson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:55.000Z Charles Anderson from Charles Reed Anderson and Associates, joined us in a two part conversation discussing the global state of IoT and the evolution of low power wide area networks (LPWANs) in Asia. In the second part, we discusse the state of low power wide area networks and the path for the three major vendors: NB-IoT, LoRA and SigFox across Asia Pacific and how the different telco players are leveraging them to enable IoT for different use cases. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Charles Anderson ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/charlesreedanderson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Charles Reed Anderson and Associates](http://charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[0:38\] - [State of LP Wans in Asia 2018](http://charlesreedanderson.com/iot-snapshot-lpwans-asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:51\] - Can you introduce the concept of LP Wans and the three major vendors: NB-IoT, SigFox and LoRA? \[1:08\] - Among these three major vendors, can you elaborate on their strengths and weaknesses in their technology stack? \[4:12\] - The deployments have exploded across Asia Pacific and can you give us an outline of the countries and telcos who are involved? \[5:53\] - How does the telcos as customers looking at LP Wans? Are they focused on capabilities or costs? \[8:40\] - What are the market awareness of customers from consumer to enterprise who might need to build services and products on the LP Wans? \[10:28\] - What are the top 5 challenges of LP Wans and can you provide some details to each of these challenges? \[13:28\] - Are LP Wans going the way of the 3G when it first started? Where are the use cases? \[16:18\] - By 2019, will the situation on LPWans be the same as today or more use cases will be evolving? \[17:54\] - Closing \[19:53\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? - [Light Reading – Iain Morris](https://www.lightreading.com/profile%5Fcontent.asp?piddl%5Fuserid=429558&ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari](http://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSs%5FZJU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2Hn7SWK?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_248\_\_The\_State\_of\_Low\_Power\_Wide\_Area\_Networks\_in\_Asia\_2018\_with\_Charles\_Anderson.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F248%5F%5FThe%5FState%5Fof%5FLow%5FPower%5FWide%5FArea%5FNetworks%5Fin%5FAsia%5F2018%5Fwith%5FCharles%5FAnderson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Why IoT initiatives fail with Charles Anderson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-247-why-iot-initiatives-fail-with-charles-anderson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:54.000Z Charles Anderson from Charles Reed Anderson and Associates, joined us in a two part conversation discussing the global state of IoT and the evolution of low power wide area networks (LPWANs) in Asia. In the first part, we discussed why most IoT initiatives fail and how many companies can avert the points of failure in their digital transformation programs. Last but not least, Charles discussed the interesting case of Taipei’s smart city initiative and what they have gotten right in their implementation with a private-public partnership. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Charles Anderson ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/charlesreedanderson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Charles Reed Anderson and Associates](http://charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:03\] - [Why IoT initiatives Fail](http://charlesreedanderson.com/iot-snapshot-iot-initiatives-fail/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - To start with, can you give an introduction to how companies usually frame IoT initiatives and who are the stakeholders involved? - What benefits will IoT deliver for companies, given that most IoT initiatives are driven by infrastructure that enable traditional industries such as construction and oil & gas mining? \[3:05\] - Are most IoT initiatives focused more on cost savings and less on revenue generation? \[4:38\] - Which stakeholders must be involved in the process? \[5:42\] - Do we need a special team to coordinate these teams in deployment of IoT initiatives given that it seems to need every function in the company from strategy to finance to be involved? \[6:56\] - What are the common points of failure for IoT initiatives? \[7:40\] - How does companies avert these common points of failures in IoT initiatives? \[9:05\] - How does cyber-security on IoT devices factor into these initiatives? \[11:00\] - You have a recent example of how [Taipei create a citizen centric smart city](http://charlesreedanderson.com/taipei-city-create-citizen-centric-smart-city/?ref=analysepodcast.com), can you share the backstory to how they manage to do it and what they got right in the process? \[12:44\] - Does that mean if the IoT initiatives in the Taipei model work out, the tech vendors can scale it across the rest of Taiwan? \[17:06\] - So, who winning in the IoT race? \[18:54\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTEnhcE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2JOdgDV?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_247\_\_Why\_IoT\_initiatives\_fail\_with\_Charles\_Anderson.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F247%5F%5FWhy%5FIoT%5Finitiatives%5Ffail%5Fwith%5FCharles%5FAnderson.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### A Conversation on Technology with Andreas Ehn URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-246-a-conversation-on-technology-with-andreas-ehn/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:54.000Z Andreas Ehn, current partner of Approach and former CTO of Spotify, joined us in a conversation on technology and where we are heading in four major areas: artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and cryptocurrency, autonomous vehicles and virtual & augmented reality. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Andreas Ehn ([@ehn](https://twitter.com/ehn?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasehn/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Partner at [Approach](https://approach.world/?ref=analysepodcast.com), former CTO of Spotify (first employee) and CTO / co-founder of Wrapp \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:22\] - As I have interviewed your wife [Lisa Enckell](https://analyse.asia/2015/12/09/episode-80-approach-asia-with-lisa-enckell/?ref=analysepodcast.com) previously on the show, how has your travels in Asia been and what have you observed across Asia Pacific? \[5:51\] - In your career journey from being the former CTO of Spotify & co-founder of Wrapp to fighting the Samwer brothers from Rocket Internet, what are the interesting career lessons learnt? \[9:03\] - A Conversation On Technology \[10:32\] - I have in mind four different technologies which are currently at different stages of development: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain or Cryptocurrency, Autonomous Vehicles (drones, cars) and Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) - We can start with defining the field, business opportunities and where the technology is at now: - Artificial Intelligence \[11:39\] - Blockchain or Cryptocurrency \[19:16\] - Autonomous Vehicles \[25:45\] - Virtual and Augmented Reality \[31:59\] - Closing \[36:44\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[36:52\] - Andreas’ recommendation: Liu Cixin “[The Three Body Problem](https://www.amazon.com/Three-Body-Problem-Cixin-Liu/dp/0765382032?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - BL’s recommendation: Steven Pinker, “[Enlightenment now](https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - How do my audience find you? \[39:44\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtR3Ur5k?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2Jvc8oA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_246\_\_A\_Conversation\_on\_Technology\_with\_Andreas\_Ehn.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F246%5F%5FA%5FConversation%5Fon%5FTechnology%5Fwith%5FAndreas%5FEhn.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Intelligent Island with Ramakrishna Purushotaman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-245-intelligent-island-with-ramakrishna-purushotaman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:53.000Z Ramakrishna Purushotaman, deputy CEO of CIO Academy Asia joined us in a conversation to discuss his new book “Intelligent Island” which he co-authored with Grace Chng, that chronicled the history of information technology development & how it spurred the economy of Singapore from early government efforts. We discussed the major themes, the lessons learnt and what the future of technology industry lies ahead for Singapore will be in the next decade to come. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Ramakrishna Purushotaman ([@RamakrishnaPuru](https://twitter.com/RamakrishnaPuru?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramakrishna-purushotaman-b16824104/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Deputy CEO, CIO Academy Asia and Co-Author of Intelligent Island \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:20\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons learnt? \[3:02\] - Can you briefly describe what CIO Academy Asia does and what is your role and coverage? \[4:56\] - Intelligent Island: The Untold Story of Singapore’s Tech Journey by Rama and Grace Chng ([SITF](https://www.sgtech.org.sg/Web/Marketplace/Intelligent%5FIsland/SGTECH/Web/Marketplace/Intelligent%5FIsland.aspx?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Kinokuniya](https://singapore.kinokuniya.com/bw/9789811138911?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[8:02\] - What is the backstory behind writing this book? \[8:52\] - What are the main themes behind Intelligent Island? \[11:35\] - What are the major stories in the book chronologically that are key to the development of information technology in Singapore? \[14:20\] - What are the key lessons that other Asian governments or developing countries outside Asia can learn from? \[17:24\] - Just a thought provoking question: I often felt that Singapore gave up on technology companies before they can grow big. I draw two comparisons: Chartered Semiconductors which lost out to TSMC before they become large, and NCS which lost out to Infosys, all were in the same time where both are equally small. Do you think that the nature of Singapore’s market size made it impossible for behemoth tech companies to emerge? \[18:54\] - Where do you see the evolution of Singapore technology companies in the next two decades? \[24:09\] - Closing \[25:52\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or anything that has impact your personal or work life recently? \[26:03\] - Rama’s recommendation: [Peh Shing Huei, “Neither Civil nor Servant”](http://www.stpressbooks.com.sg/Neither-Civil-Nor-Servant-The-Philip-Yeo-Story.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[27:05\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQaAT88?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2JbF2dp?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_245\_\_Intelligent\_Island\_with\_Ramakrishna\_Purushotaman.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F245%5F%5FIntelligent%5FIsland%5Fwith%5FRamakrishna%5FPurushotaman.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### What Mike Moritz got wrong about China Startup Ecosystem with Benjamin Joffe URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-244-why-mike-moritz-got-wrong-about-china-startup-ecosystem-with-benjamin-joffe/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:53.000Z Benjamin Joffe, partner of HAX from SOS Ventures joined us in a conversation about the evolution of their hardware startup accelerator and discuss what Mike Moritz from Sequoia Capital got wrong and right about China’s technology startup ecosystem. We discussed the intention of Moritz’s article to Silicon Valley and how the Chinese startups will pose a challenge to them globally. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Benjamin Joffe ([@benjaminjoffe](https://twitter.com/benjaminjoffe?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminjoffe/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Medium](https://medium.com/@benjaminjoffe?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Partner at [HAX](http://hax.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:20\] - How has the hardware ecosystem in Shenzhen evolved in the past two years and what’s the trajectory look like in 2018 since we last spoke? (Ref: “[What Hardware Investors want in 2018 and what they don’t](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-hardware-investors-want-2018-dont-benjamin-joffe/?ref=analysepodcast.com)”). \[4:25\] - Will Shenzhen become the Silicon Valley of China given that it has both hardware and software companies situated in that region? \[5:34\] - [What Sequoia’s Mike Moritz don’t understand about startups in China](https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/11/what-sequoias-mike-moritz-doesnt-understand-about-startups-in-china/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[7:04\] - Introduction: [Silicon Valley would be wise to follow China’s lead](https://www.ft.com/content/42daca9e-facc-11e7-9bfc-052cbba03425?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Mike Moritz from Sequoia Capital – a critique to the work ethic of Silicon Valley and praising the 9-9-6 i.e. startup entrepreneurs & employees work 9 am to 9 pm & 6 days a week coupled with the frugality mentality in China. What are your initial thoughts on the article? \[7:56\] - From your observation, you feel that Mike Moritz did not really get China. My first question is: how does China differ from US from the market size, education focus and economy growth? \[9:34\] - Why can’t US copy China as the latter has done so in the past decade? \[11:44\] - It is really surprising that we often hear US tech companies speak of China as a market to expand to but we don’t hear the reverse. Why are most Chinese technology companies (other than Tencent and Alibaba) competing for the US market? \[16:57\] - With the recent deal to acquire MoneyGram by Ant Financial failed and the collapse of the AT&T deal with Huawei, do you think that these events stopped Chinese companies from entering US? \[18:24\] - How does the Belt and Road initiative open the path for Chinese companies in global expansion? - In your opinion, what did Mike Moritz get right and wrong about China startups? \[21:52\] - Is China’s 9-9-6 culture shifting towards more or less sustainable (like 0-0-7 i.e. 0 am to 0 am and 7 days a week) for the Chinese tech worker? \[23:19\] - Where do you see the Chinese technology companies in the next 5 years? \[24:18\] - Closing \[25:26\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[25:40\] - Ben Joffe’s recommendations: - GGV Capital 9-9-6 podcast by Hans Tung and Zara Zhang, produced by SupChina. - SOS Ventures, “[VC Lingo](https://sosv.com/videos/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - Sam Harris, “[Waking Up podcast](https://samharris.org/podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRAnlGo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2pSeDJx?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_244\_\_What\_Mike\_Moritz\_got\_wrong\_about\_China\_Startup\_Ecosystem\_with\_Benjamin\_Joffe.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F244%5F%5FWhat%5FMike%5FMoritz%5Fgot%5Fwrong%5Fabout%5FChina%5FStartup%5FEcosystem%5Fwith%5FBenjamin%5FJoffe.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### From Huawei's US entry to Wechat's Future with Juro Osawa URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-243-from-huaweis-entry-to-us-to-the-future-of-wechat-with-juro-osawa/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:53.000Z Juro Osawa, reporter at The Information joined us in a conversation to discuss the recent challenges faced by China’s technology giants, Huawei and Tencent. We discussed why Huawei’s deal with AT&T in the US had fallen apart and its implications to other foreign companies trying to enter the US market. At the same time, we discussed the recent turmoil within Tencent on the future of Wechat. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Juro Osawa ([@JuroOsawa](https://twitter.com/JuroOsawa?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/juroosawa/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/juro-osawa?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Reporter at [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:16\] - How do you end up joining as a reporter in The Information? What are the areas and companies you cover there? \[2:54\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[4:08\] - Why Huawei’s deal with AT&T in US fell apart \[5:00\] - References: “[Inside Huawei’s Plans to Challenge Apple in the US](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-huaweis-plans-to-challenge-apple-in-the-u-s?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[AT&T Deal Collapse Forces Huawei to Rethink Global Plans](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/at-t-deal-collapse-forces-huawei-to-rethink-global-plans?ref=analysepodcast.com)” (requires subscription) - Can you introduce Huawei as a company to my audience and who are the key executives of the company behind the smartphone division? \[5:25\] - Can you describe the backstory to Huawei trying to launch a phone in US and the deal with AT&T collapse? \[8:02\] - Why did Huawei’s deal with AT&T collaspe at the last minute? \[9:32\] - What are the preparations made by Huawei to enter the US market? \[11:04\] - Does that it mean that it will be difficult for other Chinese companies such as Xiaomi to enter the US market? \[12:57\] - [Turmoil at Tencent](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/at-tencent-tensions-rise-over-the-future-of-wechat?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[15:38\] - Recently, WeChat just turned seven and has a major conference in Jan 2018\. Can you provide the background behind the creator of WeChat, Allen Zhang and his team and how they take WeChat to become a key player within Tencent? \[16:02\] - Can you talk about how the Wechat team views Allen Zhang and how did he got the status of “WeGod” in the Wechat division? \[18:48\] - Why are some Wechat early employees or key product managers leaving Wechat? \[21:15\] - What is the internal tension about the future of WeChat? \[22:41\] - What’s Allen Zhang’s eventual vision for WeChat? \[25:23\] - Will Allen Zhang leave Tencent eventually? \[27:03\] - Closing \[27:36\] - How do my audience find you? \[27:38\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtR-E3Ks?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](https://blcw.me/2G7MmVu?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_243\_\_From\_Huaweis\_US\_entry\_to\_Wechats\_Future\_with\_Juro\_Osawa.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F243%5F%5FFrom%5FHuaweis%5FUS%5Fentry%5Fto%5FWechats%5FFuture%5Fwith%5FJuro%5FOsawa.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Cisco and Software & Network Transformation in Asia Pacific with Brink Sanders URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-242-cisco-and-software-network-transformation-in-asia-pacific-with-brink-sanders/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:52.000Z Brink Sanders joined us in an interesting conversation on the footprint of Cisco across Asia Pacific and his perspectives on software & network transformation across Pacific. We discussed Cisco’s coverage across Asia Pacific with their products and services and how they are helping to transform the landscape of Asia with their network technologies. Brink also shared his thoughts on the challenges of companies in Asia undergoing digital transformation and discussed the upcoming technologies from AI, blockchain to even quantum networks that will transform the networking industry for tomorrow. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Brink Sanders, ([@brinksanders](https://twitter.com/brinksanders?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brink-sanders-050633/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Managing Director, Software & Network Transformation, Cisco, Asia Pacific & Japan \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:08\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[2:26\] - Cisco in Asia Pacific \[5:07\] - Can you introduce Cisco as a company and its current vision & mission to my audience? \[5:14\] - What’s the current footprint of Cisco across Asia Pacific? \[8:12\] - What is your role and coverage in Cisco? \[11:11\] - What are the problems that you are helping your customers to solve and what are the products and services from Cisco that helped enable that? \[13:21\] - What are the most interesting use cases which you can share with my audience? \[17:42\] - Perspectives on software & network transformation in Asia Pacific - What are the challenges to enable software and network transformation across Asia Pacific? \[22:15\] - Most Asian companies are currently undergoing digital transformation, where do you see Cisco’s place in the ecosystem? \[26:15\] - What are the interesting technologies within your area of coverage that you have seen in the US or elsewhere that will be important in the networks, for example, mesh networks, blockchain technologies and quantum networks? \[28:13\] - It is likely that Asia will be the first to launch 5G and this will jumpstart and enable new applications that will require more network capabilities such as autonomous vehicles from drones to self driving cars, what are your thoughts on this? \[33:22\] - Closing \[36:10\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[36:20\] - Brink’s recommendations: “[Can AI taught to explain itself?](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/magazine/can-ai-be-taught-to-explain-itself.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)” in NY Times, [“Lincoln in the Bardo’ by George Saunders](https://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Bardo-Novel-George-Saunders/dp/0812995341?ref=analysepodcast.com). - BL’s recommendation: [Annie Duke’s “Thinking in Bets”](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216355?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[39:16\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQHJ1M4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2FIEnSx?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_242\_\_Cisco\_and\_Software\_\_Network\_Transformation\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Brink\_Sanders.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F242%5F%5FCisco%5Fand%5FSoftware%5F%5FNetwork%5FTransformation%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FBrink%5FSanders.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Tryb and Fintech in Asia Pacific with Markus Gnirck & Lien Choong Luen URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-241-tryb-and-fintech-in-asia-pacific-with-markus-gnrick-lien-choong-luen/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:52.000Z Markus Gnirck, CEO and co-founder and Lien Choong Luen, COO of Tryb joined us in a conversation to discuss the backstory and evolution of their company, and their recent round of US$30M from Makara Capital. They also discussed their perspectives on the major trends on fintech in Asia Pacific, specifically on how the Chinese technology giants and local banks are approaching financial inclusion and the challenges on regulation and navigation in the fintech space by corporations & startups. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Markus Gnirck ([@mgnirck](https://twitter.com/mgnirck?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgnirck/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), CEO and co-founder and Choong Luen Lien ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/choong-luen-lien-0322923/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), COO from Tryb Group \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? - Markus Gnirck’s journey from aerospace engineering to fintech \[1:26\] - Choong Luen’s journey from military special forces to McKinsey to fintech \[2:54\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? - Choong Luen’s career lessons \[4:38\] - Markus Gnirck’s career lessons \[5:43\] - [Tryb](https://trybgroup.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@trybgroup](https://twitter.com/trybgroup?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/tryb/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[6:32\] - What is the mission and vision of Tryb? \[6:48\] - What is the problem which you are solving with your company? \[8:06\] - How do you assemble your initial team? \[11:11\] - What are the products and services which Tryb will be building or acquiring? \[13:00\] - Where are you with respect to the fintech supply chain? \[15:58\] - Recently, you have [raised 30M from Makara Capital](https://trybgroup.com/2018/01/25/tryb-announces-us30m-investment-makara/?ref=analysepodcast.com), can you talk about your investors and the fundraising process? \[17:38\] (Reference: [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/24/tryb-raises-30m/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Fintech In Asia \[20:08\] - Fintech has been a hot topic across Asia Pacific, what are the key verticals that are flourishing within Asia? \[20:42\] - What are the factors driving the verticals in fintech such as P2P lending, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, digital payments and insurance tech? \[26:53\] - Do you see a possible inundation of Chinese payment systems controlling the payment systems for example what Ant Financial and Tencent have successfully done in China and porting it to Southeast Asia or a local bank like DBS which shifts towards the digital bank model? \[31:46\] - What are the challenges faced by regulators in response to fintech? How are businesses such as large corporations and startups negotiating the regulatory boundaries of fintech? \[36:34\] - Where do you see fintech in the next 1-2 years? \[42:19\] - Closing \[44:15\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or something that has recently impact your work or personal life? \[44:21\] - Markus’s recommendation: His upcoming new financial podcast and [“How Asia works” by Joe Studwell](https://www.amazon.com/How-Asia-Works-Joe-Studwell/dp/0802121322?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Choong Luen’s recommendation: [“The 100 Year Life” by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott](https://www.amazon.com/100-Year-Life-Living-Working-Longevity/dp/1472947320?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [“Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande](https://www.amazon.com/Being-Mortal-Medicine-What-Matters/dp/1250076226/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: [“The General Theory of Employment, Interest & Money” by Maynard Keynes](https://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Employment-Interest-Money/dp/0156347113/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? \[47:09\] - Choong Luen: [Adventures with Lien](https://adventureswithlien.wordpress.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtS4Jvk4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2GvtAIH?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_241\_\_Tryb\_and\_Fintech\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Markus\_Gnirck\_\_Lien\_Choong\_Luen.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F241%5F%5FTryb%5Fand%5FFintech%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FMarkus%5FGnirck%5F%5FLien%5FChoong%5FLuen.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Fintech in Asia Pacific 2018 with Zennon Kapron URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-240-fintech-in-asia-pacific-2018-with-zennon-kapron/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:51.000Z [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_240\_\_Fintech\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_2018\_with\_Zennon\_Kapron.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F240%5F%5FFintech%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5F2018%5Fwith%5FZennon%5FKapron.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) Zennon Kapron, founder of Kapron Asia and China Fintech joined us to conclude the two part conversation on Fintech in Asia Pacific. In this episode, Zennon continued the conversation on fintech outside of China, starting from the recent aggressive expansion of Tencent & Ant Financial in Southeast Asia, the evolution of digital payments in an open market with the other major players such as Visa, Mastercard & Paypal and the current boom and bust of ICOs in the cryptocurrency and blockchain markets in Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Zennon Kapron ([@chinafintech,](https://twitter.com/chinafintech?ref=analysepodcast.com) @kapronasia, [LinkedIn](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/zennon?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:zennon ), Founder and Director of Kapron Asia & China Fintech \[0:38\] - Fintech in Asia Pacific \[0:38\] - Can you talk about the key developments in Fintech specific to Asia Pacific outside China? \[0:59\] - Digital Payments and banking services - Specifically, Alipay and Tenpay has been aggressive in Southeast Asia, enabling local users to link their credit cards to the apps, where do you see this space evolves? \[1:10\] - How would the local giants such as Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) with their digital bank concept, the foreign players (Paypal, Mastercard, Visa) battle the onslaught of the Chinese tech giants? \[4:04\] - Do you see the payment infrastructure built by Tencent and Ant Financial (under Alibaba) which works for China is now portable and will win over Visa and Mastercard in the emerging markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand? \[7:25\] - The difficulty for Visa, Mastercard and Paypal to tackle the payment infrastructure advantage from Tenpay and Ant Financial in emerging markets.\[9:39\] - P2P lending and robo-advisors in Asia Pacific - Have you seen any activity by similar companies in the P2P lending and robo-advisors space in the Asia Pacific market? \[13:29\] - Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology in Asia Pacific \[15:10\] - Can you briefly discuss what an initial coin offering (ICO) is? \[15:30\] - Are the ICOs creating a bubble in the fintech market specifically to blockchain technology or are there credible ones which deter us from thinking that it’s a bubble otherwise? \[16:30\] - The cryptocurrency & blockchain are in the early stages and similar to the time where people are purchasing URLs in 1993 to 1995, before we see a killer app. With the development of the blockchain at the moment, do we see that the market is advancing? \[20:13\] - It seems that blockchain technology are still in its infancy, for example, Estonia and Israel startups have applied blockchain to cybersecurity, and the computing infrastructure of processing a transaction is still not fast enough, what are your thoughts on that? \[23:43\] - Why the bitcoin value cannot be zero and its implications on the digitization of cash \[26:35\] - Closing \[29:51\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything that have impacted your work or personal life recently? \[30:10\] - Zennon’s recommendation: “[The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia” by Peter Hopkirk](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Game-Struggle-Central-Kodansha/dp/1568360223?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: “[Cracking the China conundrum: Why conventional economic wisdom is wrong” by Zhang Yukon ](https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-China-Conundrum-Conventional-Economic/dp/0190630035/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520782195&sr=1-1&keywords=cracking+the+china+conundrum&dpID=51rhrLL-xoL&preST=%5FSY291%5FBO1,204,203,200%5FQL40%5F&dpSrc=srch&ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[31:45\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRwRrgs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2p6qdzC?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### The Regulation Shift on Fintech in China with Zennon Kapron URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-239-regulation-shift-fintech-china-zennon-kapron/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:51.000Z Zennon Kapron, founder & director of Kapron Asia and China Fintech, joined us in a conversation in how the Chinese government’s new regulations are shaping the fintech space in China. We discussed the impact of Wang’lian on digital payments, the reduction of peer to peer landing companies and the ban on ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges to the dynamic fintech space in China. Last but not least, we look at how the fintech industry in 2018 within China will be shaped by emergence of new verticals such as AI or new regulation that continues to shape the fintech space in China. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Zennon Kapron ([@chinafintech,](https://twitter.com/chinafintech?ref=analysepodcast.com) @kapronasia, [LinkedIn](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/zennon?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:zennon ), Founder and Director of Kapron Asia & China Fintech \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:04\] - Fintech in China \[2:08\] - Can you talk about the key developments in Fintech specific to China in the following verticals? \[2:22\] - Digital Payments and banking services \[2:28\] - [China’s Wang’lian](https://www.kapronasia.com/china-payments-research-category/item/866-wang-lian-and-provision-control-push-payment-industry-in-china-to-move-forward.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) on digital payments regulation. - Perspectives on Chinese government’s regulation on the reserves required by funds run by Ant Financial and WeChat, for example, Yuerbao. \[5:20\] - Does the regulation from Chinese government allow the traditional banks within China to take on Alibaba and Tencent better? \[7:30\] - P2P lending \[9:42\] - How has the peer to peer lending space shifted with new regulation entering? \[9:50\] - Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology \[11:54\] - The cryptocurrency market has taken a hit with China banning exchanges and ICOs, where is the blockchain technology with business models going from there? \[12:08\] - Instead of the cryptocurrency trading piece which is banned, what about the blockchain technology as itself within the fintech space? \[14:47\] - Have the three major bitcoin exchanges from China: BTC China, OKCoin and Huobi now relocated to other parts of the world and stopped allowing trading from China? \[17:55\] - What are the implications for Bitmain, the Chinese company which has 70-80% market share of bitcoin mining equipment in the world? - Are we seeing new verticals that are emerging within Fintech or instead see the Chinese government start to regulate the existing innovations which have emerged from the industry? \[22:50\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSq3Ux0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2oM8Sf5?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_239\_\_The\_Regulation\_Shift\_on\_Fintech\_in\_China\_with\_Zennon\_Kapron.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F239%5F%5FThe%5FRegulation%5FShift%5Fon%5FFintech%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FZennon%5FKapron.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Xero & SaaS in Asia with Alex Campbell URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-238-xero-saas-asia/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:50.000Z Alex Campbell, managing director of Xero, joined us in a conversation to discuss the web based accounting software service company in Asia and the state of software as a service (SaaS) in Asia. We discussed the origin of Xero and its current footprint across Asia, the products and services behind the company and how the company is scaling across different geographies. Last and not least, Alex shared his thoughts on the SaaS industry in Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Alex Campbell ([@alexjcampbell](https://twitter.com/alexjcampbell?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexjcampbell/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) Managing Director, Xero in Asia \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:24\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[4:26\] - Xero in Asia Pacific and SaaS in Asia \[5:27\] - Can you briefly introduce Xero as a company to my audience and discuss its vision and mission? \[5:34\] - What is your current role and coverage in Xero? \[8:55\] - Xero is an accounting as a a service solution, can you elaborate more on what the product does and even tell us more about the services that have evolved? \[9:38\] - How have you managed to get customers to shift to online? What’s the onboarding process like? \[11:13\] - What’s the current footprint of Xero in Asia Pacific? \[12:46\] - Does Xero need to localise its product within Asia? \[13:51\] - As Xero is focused on small and medium businesses, what are their main challenges in Asia as you have observed with customers? \[14:31\] - Can you offer your thoughts in software as a service (SaaS) in Asia? Are small and medium businesses responding more to them? \[15:15\] - Can you talk about the importance of strategic partnerships for example, the recent one did with DBS Bank in Singapore? \[17:52\] - Where do you see the SaaS business evolve in the next 1-2 years? \[20:26\] - Closing \[21:47\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or something that has recently impact your work or personal life? \[21:56\] - Alex’s recommendation: “[Fooled by Randomness](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[The Black Swan](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb%5Fsb%5Fnoss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Bed+of+Procrustes&ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Nassim Taleb - BL’s recommendation: “[Anti-Fragile](https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Nassim Taleb - How can my audience find you? \[22:24\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQNl1YQ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2GEVD7k?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_238\_\_Xero\_\_SaaS\_in\_Asia.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F238%5F%5FXero%5F%5FSaaS%5Fin%5FAsia.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### MyDoc & Digital Healthcare in Asia with Snehal Patel URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-237-mydoc-digital-health-asia-snehal-patel/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:50.000Z Snehal Patel, CEO and co-founder of MyDoc joined us in a conversation to discuss the story of his healthcare company and the state of digital healthcare companies in Asia. We discussed the vision and mission of his company MyDoc, and how it has shifted from its initial model to the current state. Last but not least, we discussed the state of digital healthcare companies and how they are navigating the boundaries from regulatory bodies across Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Snehal Patel ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/snehal-patel-m-d-j-d-ba05563/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Co-founder and CEO of MyDoc \[0:38\] - How do you start your career? \[1:14\] - How did you end up starting MyDoc? \[1:39\] - In your career journey so far, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[7:10\] - [MyDoc](https://www.my-doc.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Digital Health in Asia \[8:23\] - What is the current mission and vision of MyDoc and what does it do as a company? \[8:37\] - How do you assemble the team to deliver the products and services of MyDoc today? \[10:16\] - What are the products and services for the customers of MyDoc? \[14:21\] - Who are the customers of MyDoc? (or How does my-doc provide cost efficient and quality healthcare with MyDoc?) \[18:41\] - Is the business model subscription based for MyDoc? \[20:05\] - What are the geographical coverage of MyDoc beyond Singapore? \[21:51\] - Who are the investors of MyDoc? \[22:29\] - The digital health industry in the US are in the early stages with ZocDoc, Oscar and many others forming. How do you define the digital health industry and how do you see this industry in the Asian market? \[23:38\] - Do you see digital healthcare in Asia works closely with the insurance market? \[25:18\] - What are the major trends of digital health industry in Asia Pacific? \[30:14\] - Does digital health companies faces major challenges from healthcare regulatory bodies? \[31:11\] - Closing \[32:57\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? \[33:08\] - Snehal’s recommendation: Ben Horowitz’s “The Hard Thing about Hard Things”. - How do my audience find you? \[35:16\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRqdGYI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2GmBDWI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_237\_\_MyDoc\_\_Digital\_Healthcare\_in\_Asia\_with\_Snehal\_Patel.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F237%5F%5FMyDoc%5F%5FDigital%5FHealthcare%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FSnehal%5FPatel.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Ride Hailing Wars 2.0 in China with Eva Xiao URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-236-ride-hailing-wars-2-0-china-eva-xiao/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:50.000Z Eva Xiao, China reporter from Tech In Asia joined us in a two part conversation on the most important events that is rocking the China technology landscape. In the second part of our conversation, Eva discussed the return of China’s ride hailing wars and why Didi’s dominance in the ride hailing space is now being challenged not just by the bike sharing startups such as Ofo and Mobike but surprisingly from a fellow second generation technology giant, Meituan-Dianping. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Eva Xiao, China Reporter in Tech In Asia ([@evawxiao](https://twitter.com/evawxiao?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/eva-xiao-09880734?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat: evawxiao, Tech in Asia) \[0:38\] - [China’s ride hailing wars are back](https://www.techinasia.com/didi-meituan-dianping-ride-hailing-war?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:51\] - Since June 2016 when Uber ceded China to Didi, we thought the ride sharing space is concluded with one dominant player, why is China’s ride hailing war back in play? \[0:59\] - More growth opportunities in the transportation sector overall. The competition is not simply over ride-hailing – it’s about EVs, car sharing, autonomous vehicles, in-car entertainment - Is China’s ride hailing war fueled by the rise of bikesharing startups such as Ofo and Mobike? \[3:18\] - Partly – now that the bike sharing market is consolidated and stabilizing in China, bike sharing startups need to think about the next area for growth - Bike sharing has decreased the need for ride-hailing over short distances, such as 1 or 2 kilometers - But Mobike is not entering the ride-hailing industry right now (it’s piloting a Zipcar-like service in Guizhou) – this new competition is coming from Meituan-Dianping - We all know that Meituan-Dianping is an analogous app to Yelp + Foursquare + Groupon in China, can you introduce the company and explain why they are now involved in the ride hailing wars? \[8:39\] - Meituan was founded in 2010 (was backed by Alibaba), Dazhong Dianping was founded in 2003 (backed by Tencent), the two merged in 2015 to create Meituan-Dianping - Food delivery, restaurant booking, travel, errand-running, spas – lifestyle services - Ride-hailing brings Meituan-Dianping growth, combining transportation services with lifestyle services also makes sense (GrabFood, Go-Food, UberEats), TMD competition - How are Meituan-Dianping threaten Didi on ridesharing and what have they been doing to ignite the ride hailing war in this 2nd iteration? \[11:34\] - Subsidies, low driver commission rates - What are the regulatory issues that these ride hailing companies face now in China? \[13:46\] - Restrictions on car licenses, ride-hailing permits - Didi also weathered restrictions on car types - Where do you see this new ride hailing war go and will we end up with one dominant player in the end? \[15:48\] - Ride-hailing is just a means to an end - Meituan-Dianping may form alliances with other tech companies to take on Didi, as it’s the market leader - Didi vs. Ofo shows that having the same BAT investor doesn’t necessarily mean no competition - Closing - Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or anything that has impact your personal or work life recently? \[20:27\] - Eva’s recommendation: “[Chasing the Scream](http://chasingthescream.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Johann Hari - BL’s recommendation: “[Debt: The first 5000 years](https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by David Graeber - How can my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRRRc5Y?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2ECOdok?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_236\_\_Ride\_Hailing\_Wars\_2.0\_in\_China\_with\_Eva\_Xiao.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F236%5F%5FRide%5FHailing%5FWars%5F2.0%5Fin%5FChina%5Fwith%5FEva%5FXiao.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Wechat World Conference 2018 with Eva Xiao URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-235-wechat-world-conference-2018-eva-xiao/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:49.000Z Eva Xiao, China reporter from Tech In Asia joined us in a two part conversation on the most important events that is rocking the China technology landscape. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed the recent WeChat World Conference 2018 and its impact to the ecosystem. We covered the key announcements made during the conversation, the important messaging from Allen Zhang, the WeChat founder, and how mini-programs and mini-games will change the dynamics of the WeChat ecosystem from online to offline in China. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Eva Xiao, China Reporter in Tech In Asia ([@evawxiao](https://twitter.com/evawxiao?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/eva-xiao-09880734?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat: evawxiao, Tech in Asia) \[0:38\] - What have you been up to since our last conversation? \[1:15\] - Bytedance AI conference in Beijing - Trip back to the US - WeChat conference - WeChat World Conference 2018 ([CGTN coverage](https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d63544f30674464776c6d636a4e6e62684a4856/share%5Fp.html?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[2:21\] - What are the key announcements in this event for Wechat? \[2:40\] - Few announcements: 1) launching new official accounts app, 2) more upcoming features for content creators. - Talks either focused on specific business case studies or Wechat’s values (decentralization, user privacy, partnerships) - WeChat is not just a product anymore – it is a brand - Emphasis on retail, payments, advertising, and mini games - The offline retail market is very important to WeChat (related to WeChat Pay vs. Alipay) - [Tencent](https://chinachannel.co/tencent-report-2018/?ref=analysepodcast.com)’s power in gaming distribution that will impact Wechat’s mini-games \[6:20\] - Perspectives on mini-programs and mini-games enabling AR for Wechat in the near future, given its core advantage with QR codes and location based features. \[7:37\] - Tencent’s focus on offline retail \[8:27\] - What are the major statistics on Wechat that Tencent have shared in this event? \[10:00\] - 170m daily active users (DAUs) for WeChat mini programs - 580,000 mini programs total - 1m+ miniprogram developers (both individual and corporate) - Will mini-programs compete with Meituan Dianping in the process? \[11:14\] - We don’t usually hear a lot from Allen Zhang, the founder of Wechat, what are his key messages in where Wechat will go this year? \[13:20\] - WeChat as a decentralized platform, open to third-party game developers, services, brands, etc. - Emphasis on respecting user privacy (following the controversy around WeChat storing chat messages) - Continued emphasis on WeChat mini programs (more so than official accounts) - Specifically for mini-programs which have a slow start in early 2017 but the surge came in end 2017, what are the interesting developments there? \[15:31\] - Improvements in search, discovery - Boosting marketing, sales functionalities, connecting MPs with official accounts more seamlessly - UX improvements to make MPs more visible - Mini games - Specifically for gaming, given it’s Tencent’s third revenue stream after messaging and payments, how is Wechat integrating gaming to boost Tencent’s gaming business? \[17:11\] - Tencent and game developers will share advertising revenue from mini games - Another gaming distribution channel that Tencent controls - Can funnel users from WeChat to Tencent games outside of the app, like Honor of Kings/King of Glory – users can get a team together in WeChat (chat groups, social), and then initiate a Honor of Kings game - Mini games cannot be uninstalled or removed, since they are mini programs. **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTXhhnU?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2nXabas?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_235\_\_The\_Wechat\_World\_Conference\_2018\_with\_Eva\_Xiao.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F235%5F%5FThe%5FWechat%5FWorld%5FConference%5F2018%5Fwith%5FEva%5FXiao.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Digital in 2018 Part 2 on Connecting the Next Billion with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-233-digital-2018-part-2-connecting-next-billion-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:49.000Z Simon Kemp, founder and CEO of Kepios and global consultant from We are Social, joined us in a conversation to discuss the latest global digital report in 2018\. In the second part of our conversation, we discussed how the next billion will be connected and what it means for innovation for voice and video messaging and the profile of the Instagram user. Last but not least, we examined whether Facebook is really declining across the world and whether we are seeing any interesting trends from the ecommerce data. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of [Kepios](http://kepios.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Global Consultant from We Are Social. - [Global Digital Report in 2018](https://wearesocial.com/sg/blog/2018/01/global-digital-report-2018?ref=analysepodcast.com) Part 2 \[0:41\] - Is the future of humanity distributed when it comes to Internet access? Are we going to see the remainder of Asia connected to the Internet? \[1:26\] - Do you see the dynamic of US$50 smartphones and free services offered by Google or Facebook with telcos in these emerging markets allow more people to get connected to the Internet across Asia? \[5:21\] - The importance of voice search to connect the next billion with China leading with audio messaging that uses data beyond the exabyte range.\[ 9:05\] - Can you talk about the profile of Instagram users? Are they identical to the facebook users? \[14:11\] - While the US government and media is now giving Facebook a lot of issues, are the numbers showing something otherwise? In other words, is Facebook really declining? \[17:03\] - On Ecommerce, what are the major trends and are we seeing the shift that switches the balance between online and offline retail? \[21:49\] - Closing \[25:32\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? - Simon’s recommendation: “[Unleashing The Idea Virus](http://www.sethgodin.com/ideavirus/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Seth Godin - BL’s recommendation: “[How Democracies Die](https://www.amazon.com/How-Democracies-Die-Steven-Levitsky/dp/1524762938?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky - How do my audience find you? \[26:57\] **Here is the Digital in 2018 Global Review Report:** **[Digital in 2018 Global Overview](//www.slideshare.net/wearesocial/digital-in-2018-global-overview-86860338 "Digital in 2018 Global Overview")** from **[We Are Social ](https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocial?ref=analysepodcast.com)** **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSZYBL0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2EDoHfy?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_234\_\_Digital\_in\_2018\_Part\_2\_on\_Connecting\_the\_Next\_Billion\_with\_Simon\_Kemp.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F234%5F%5FDigital%5Fin%5F2018%5FPart%5F2%5Fon%5FConnecting%5Fthe%5FNext%5FBillion%5Fwith%5FSimon%5FKemp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Digital in 2018 Part 1 on Messaging Apps with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-233-digital-2018-part-1-messaging-apps-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:48.000Z Simon Kemp, founder and CEO of Kepios and global consultant from We are Social, joined us in a conversation to discuss the latest global digital report in 2018\. In the first part of our conversation, he discussed the key numbers, trends and new data that is added to this most important annual digital report across the world, and dissected the interesting world map of the messaging apps and its implications for Facebook, Whatsapp, Wechat, LINE, Telegram and many others across Asia Pacific. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of [Kepios](http://kepios.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Global Consultant from We Are Social. \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:14\] - [Global Digital Report in 2018](https://wearesocial.com/sg/blog/2018/01/global-digital-report-2018?ref=analysepodcast.com) Part 1 \[2:51\] ([SlideShare](https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocial/digital-in-2018-global-overview-86860338?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - So we now know that there are more than 4B people connected to the Internet, what are the key numbers in this report that are important as compared to 2017? \[3:04\] - What are the important trends that have shown up in 2017 and heading into 2018? \[5:44\] - What are the new data which the team has included into the Global Digital Report 2018 and who are your partners who have added to your rich datasets? \[8:36\] - Zooming down to Asia Pacific, are there any new insights since our last conversation? \[10:04\] - Simon’s perspectives on BL’s observation that even Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp dominated two thirds of the world, but the average revenue per user for Wechat, LINE and Kakao talk are far higher, and it creates an inverse correlation to how monetisation of the Asian messaging apps beat Facebook and Whatsapp similar to how Android has 80% market share but do not have a strong monetisation model as compared to iOS. \[12:05\] - Messaging App trend on Wechat & Asian Messaging Apps vs Facebook is analogous to the iOS and Android OS dominance debate \[15:15\] - What does that mean in the longer term for Facebook and Whatsapp and then for the Asian messaging apps such as Wechat, LINE and Kakao Talk? \[18:55\] - Currently, while Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp dominating two thirds of the world, Tencent has been investing in the local messaging apps including Snap in the US to form a wall against Facebook with the exception of Telegram gaining ground in the process, will the competition for the messaging space evolve with AR/VR and ecommerce as it moves along? \[23:52\] - With Alibaba Group and Tencent busy building their payment infrastructure across Southeast Asia that allows the users there to integrate their payment methods onto their apps, do you see that the dynamics of the war between Facebook and them change in the next few years? \[27:23\] **Here is the Digital in 2018 Global Review Report:** **[Digital in 2018 Global Overview](//www.slideshare.net/wearesocial/digital-in-2018-global-overview-86860338 "Digital in 2018 Global Overview")** from **[We Are Social ](https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocial?ref=analysepodcast.com)** Here’s the map of the messaging apps which we reference from the Digital in 2018 Global Report during the podcast episode: [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/wordpress/2018/02/global-messaging-apps-2018-300x166.png)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b1/93/b193afc8-0edf-47bf-af0e-e037cbc1aae0/content/images/wordpress/2018/02/global-messaging-apps-2018.png?ref=analysepodcast.com) **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSpm6fo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2GL3wZS?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_233\_\_Digital\_in\_2018\_Part\_1\_on\_Messaging\_Apps\_with\_Simon\_Kemp.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F233%5F%5FDigital%5Fin%5F2018%5FPart%5F1%5Fon%5FMessaging%5FApps%5Fwith%5FSimon%5FKemp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Uber China Mafia with Chenyu Zheng URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-232-uber-china-mafia-chenyu-zheng/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:48.000Z Chenyu Zheng, former product marketing manager from Uber and now author, joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the unique digital experience in China and the Uber China mafia and their impact to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in China after merger with Didi. In the second part, we discussed the impact of Uber in China, after its merger with Didi, and how it has created a generation of entrepreneurial talent that are shaking the transportation landscape with Ofo and Mobike. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Chenyu Zheng ([@cheyuz ](https://twitter.com/chenyuz?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chenyuzheng/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat official account: 苹果姐姐), former product marketing manager of Uber and freelance writer. - Uber China Mafia - Can you talk about your role and coverage when you were in Uber and how you interface with Uber China? \[1:15\] - What are the most important traits for the people who Uber hired in China? \[2:15\] - How do you define what success means in China for a Silicon Valley company? \[4:16\] - [Did Uber fail in China?](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/did-uber-fail-china-perspectives-from-former-employee-chenyu-zheng?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[5:27\] - Who are the key people in Uber China mafia that are now involved in the bicycle sharing space? \[9:40\] - Why is Didi unable to keep the talent from Uber China? \[11:00\] - What are the lessons you think that entrepreneurial talent can draw from Uber China? \[12:40\] - Closing: - Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or anything that has impact your personal or work life recently? \[17:50\] - Chenyu’s recommends: Chip Conley’s “Emotional Equations” - How do my audience find you? \[18:39\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRjU1Ik?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2DPskkC?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_232\_\_Uber\_China\_Mafia\_with\_Chenyu\_Zheng.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F232%5F%5FUber%5FChina%5FMafia%5Fwith%5FChenyu%5FZheng.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### What makes Digital Experience in China unique? with Chenyu Zheng URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-231-makes-digital-experience-china-different-chenyu-zheng/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:47.000Z Chenyu Zheng, former product marketing manager from Uber and now author, joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the unique digital experience in China and the Uber China mafia & their impact to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in China after merger with Didi. In the first part, she discussed her major observations on the web and mobile apps in China and why they have evolved in a different way from their US counterparts. Last but not least, she also shared what she has learned from Allen Zhang, the founder of Wechat in product management. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Chenyu Zheng ([@cheyuz ](https://twitter.com/chenyuz?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chenyuzheng/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), former product marketing manager of Uber and freelance writer. - How did you start your career? \[1:46\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons learnt? \[4:37\] - Since your experience after Uber and Whisper, what have you been up to these days? \[5:13\] - What makes Digital Experience in China unique? \[6:10\] - References: “[China Innovation: 10 mobile apps in China to know](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/china-innovation-10-mobile-apps-know-chenyu-zheng?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, “[18 never revealed product insights from the man behind China’s Wechat](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/18-never-revealed-product-insights-from-man-behind-chinas-zheng?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[Beyond the copycats: 5 things I learned about China Internet](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-things-i-learned-china-internet-based-real-experience-chenyu-zheng?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - What are the five observations on Chinese Internet Sector? \[6:10\] - How does working & living in China differ from the US? \[14:15\] - You have written an article about the 10 mobile apps in China that many should know, can you talk about some of them? \[15:40\] - Everyone knows about Wechat as the most important social app in China and very little is know about the creator, Allen Zhang from Tencent, what are the key product insights you have learned from him in thinking about products in China. \[20:44\] - In China, the trend for digital apps are moving towards a holistic way to create a super app while in the US, we see more apps with single set of distinct features such as Google and Facebook, do you see that the thinking in China digital apps shift in the US direction at some point? \[26:05\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSJuNkE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2mVwga0?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_231\_\_What\_makes\_Digital\_Experience\_in\_China\_unique\_\_with\_Chenyu\_Zheng.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F231%5F%5FWhat%5Fmakes%5FDigital%5FExperience%5Fin%5FChina%5Funique%5F%5Fwith%5FChenyu%5FZheng.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Appier & AI with Chih-Han Yu URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-230-appier-ai-chih-han-yu/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:47.000Z Chih-Han Yu, the co-founder and CEO of Appier joined us in a conversation to discuss the journey, team and products behind his company, Appier that focused on artificial intelligence with leading investors from Sequoia Capital to SoftBank Group. We discussed his perspectives on AI and its impact to society and where the field is moving in the next one year. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Chih-Han Yu ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chih-han-yu-a5593b?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Co-founder and CEO of Appier \[0:38\] - How do you start your career? \[1:11\] - In your career journey so far, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[4:45\] - [Appier](http://www.appier.com/en/index.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Crunchbase](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/appier?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/appier.tw/), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/2774891/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [@GoAppier](https://twitter.com/GoAppier?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[5:57\] - Founded by Chih-Han Yu, Joe Su, and Winnie Lee. Started in 2012, currently in [series C](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/29/ai-startup-appier-gets-33m-series-c-from-investors-including-softbank-group-line-corp-and-naver/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and raised a total of over US$82M from various investors, most notable: Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Group, Naver and LINE. Not to mention Alibaba (through WI Harper), Temasek (through Pavilion Capital) and EDBI. - What is the mission and vision of Appier? \[6:40\] - What is the backstory behind your company Appier? \[7:05\] - Who are behind the team in Appier given you have made a couple of high profile hires, for example, Sean Chu from Microsoft, Junde Yu from App Annie & Charles Ng from Coupang. \[11:22\] - Can you give us an insight into the AI technology that you use in your products? \[12:40\] - What kind of algorithms does Appier adopt, for example, supervised or unsupervised learning and are the business data different? \[15:00\] - As I understand that Appier is an AI startup that helps enterprises to solve their business problems, can you discuss your product: the Appier Axion platform or other services and what it does to address the problem? \[16:24\] - Can you provide some examples to how Appier has helped enterprises in different verticals (please state 3 examples preferably in different verticals)? \[19:43\] - Perspectives on AI \[21:32\] - What are the key developments will be for AI in the next 12 months? \[21:43\] - One of the interesting aspects of leveraging on AI technology is that it makes predictions based on existing data, what I am interested to know is that there are cases where it might over-predict and how does Appier compensate on cases of such? \[24:16\] - A lot of people are talking about the pros and cons of AI lately, with Andrew Ng who is positive about the technology and its applications and Elon Musk on the other end worried about their uses. Where do you see AI as a technology and its impact to society? \[26:23\] - Closing \[28:15\] - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTHKo88?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2mxA3d4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_230\_\_Appier\_\_AI\_with\_Chih-Han\_Yu.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F230%5F%5FAppier%5F%5FAI%5Fwith%5FChih-Han%5FYu.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### AI in Asia Pacific with Ayesha Khanna URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-229-ai-asia-pacific-ayesha-khanna/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:47.000Z Ayesha Khanna, CEO of ADDO AI joined us in a conversation on the subject of artificial intelligence aka AI. We discussed the key technologies, major applications in fintech and manufacturing and at the same, discussed the major trends on AI dominating Asia Pacific. Last but not least, Ayesha discussed the implications of AI, particularly in how they will reshape traditional industries and the displacement of knowledge workers’ jobs by AI. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Ayesha Khanna ([@ayeshakhanna1](https://twitter.com/ayeshakhanna1?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayeshakhanna/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), CEO of [ADDO AI](https://addo.ai/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:24\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[3:19\] - Can you briefly introduce your company, ADDO AI and what services do the company provide? \[5:08\] - What’s your role and coverage in the company? \[7:04\] - AI in Asia Pacific \[8:46\] - Let’s start with helping our audience to understand the term Artificial Intelligence or AI in short, what is the definition of artificial intelligence? \[8:54\] - What are the key technologies which are driving AI globally? \[10:36\] - To effectively leverage on AI whether in the case of supervised or unsupervised learning, large quantities of accurate and precise data are required, what are the key challenges for the technology such that it does not over-predict or learn the wrong results from inaccurate data? \[12:20\] - A lot of people seem to conflate automation and AI together, what makes AI different from what we have seen in the past? \[14:41\] - How does business benefit from leveraging on AI? \[16:55\] - What are the most interesting applications in AI from corporations and startups across Asia Pacific in your opinion? \[19:18\] Here are some interesting examples from the [ADDO incubator](https://addo.ai/ai-incubator/?ref=analysepodcast.com) which Ayesha did not mention but worth taking a look. - Surveying the landscape of Asia Pacific, what are the major trends in AI? \[20:40\] - In the past two years, there has been a lot in press about technology displacing the knowledge based jobs such as lawyers and doctors and these are mainly in the space of AI, what are your opinions on the matter? \[22:44\] - Closing \[25:19\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or anything that has impact your personal or work life recently? \[25:19\] - Ayesha’s recommendation: [Race against the machine](https://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson and [Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies](https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom-ebook/dp/B00LOOCGB2/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1515146426&sr=1-1&keywords=super+intelligence&ref=analysepodcast.com) by Nick Bostrom - BL’s recommendation: [Machines of Loving Grace](https://www.amazon.com/Machines-Loving-Grace-Common-Between-ebook/dp/B00OP06CRG/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1515146462&sr=1-1&keywords=machines+of+loving+grace&ref=analysepodcast.com) by John Markoff - How do my audience find you? \[26:45\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQw47Yw?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2Ek6IJE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_229\_\_AI\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Ayesha\_Khanna.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F229%5F%5FAI%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FAyesha%5FKhanna.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### State of Southeast Asia 2017 Part 2 with Arnaud Bonzom URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-228-state-southeast-asia-2017-part-2-arnaud-bonzom/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:46.000Z Arnaud Bonzom from 500 Startups joined us in a conversation to conclude our conversation on the state of Southeast Asia in 2017 and what is likely to come in 2018\. We discussed the entry of Alibaba and Tencent in Southeast Asia and India which set up the war for ecommerce, logistics, social and cloud computing with Amazon, Facebook and Google, and the strange situation of disruptors and incumbents teaming up in consolidation or strategic partnerships across Southeast Asia. Last but not least, we discussed what 2018 will be for Southeast Asia particularly in the payment wars between major players and startups across the region. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Arnaud Bonzom ([@arnaudbonzom](http://twitter.com/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ Slideshare](http://www.slideshare.net/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)),Venture Partner @[ 500 Startups](http://500.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Co-founder @ [Map of the Money](http://mapofthemoney.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - Southeast Asia in 2017 Review Part 2 - Event 4: Alibaba and Tencent stepping up their global expansions plans in Southeast Asia and India \[0:55\] - Who will win out the ecommerce, logistics and cloud computing between Amazon and Alibaba in Southeast Asia? \[1:45\] - Comments on Facebook being a ecommerce threat to Alibaba and Amazon. \[6:45\] - What’s Tencent’s strategy in Southeast Asia and are they entering with JD, given that they have investments with Sea and various messaging apps in the region? \[10:35\] - Comparison between Facebook and Tencent \[12:44\] - Event 5: Consolidation or strategic partnerships between disruptors and incumbents in Southeast Asia \[16:27\] - What is the observation on why the disruptors (Uber, Grab) are working with the incumbents (Lippo Group in Indonesia, Comfort Delgero in Singapore)? \[16:27\] - Strategic Partnerships mentioned: Grab with Lippo Group in Indonesia, Uber and Comfort Delgero in Singapore, Go-Jek doing a partnership with Bluebird cabs in Indonesia, Spacemob working with Ascendas, real estate company and subsequently acquired by WeWork, Disney with iFlix in entertainment. - Will these strategic partnerships stay close for a while or break apart at some point? \[21:05\] - What are your predictions on the Southeast Asia tech startup ecosystem in 2018? \[21:58\] - Upcoming payment wars between Alipay, Tenpay, Grab, Go-Jek, Razer, Garena, Honestbee, and many others in Southeast Asia. - Closing \[27:43\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or movie which has a major impact in your personal and work life? - Arnaud’s recommendations: Porto (written in Portuguese and French) - BL’s recommendation: “The Corporation that changed the World” by Nick Robins. - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQPWNqI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2zUW0qp?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_228\_\_State\_of\_Southeast\_Asia\_2017\_Part\_2\_with\_Arnaud\_Bonzom.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F228%5F%5FState%5Fof%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5F2017%5FPart%5F2%5Fwith%5FArnaud%5FBonzom.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### State of Southeast Asia 2017 Part 1 with Arnaud Bonzom URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-227-state-southeast-asia-2017-part-1-arnaud-bonzom/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:45.000Z Arnaud Bonzom from 500 Startups joined us in a conversation to review the state of Southeast Asia in a two part conversation before the closing of 2017\. In this episode, we discussed the three major events that rocked Southeast Asia starting with SoftBank and Didi’s investment into Grab with US$2 billion, followed by the two IPOs from Sea (formerly Garena) and Razer, followed by how the startups and venture capital firms are starting their series B journey, and the change of fundraising landscape with initial coin offerings (ICOs) dominating the region. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Arnaud Bonzom ([@arnaudbonzom](http://twitter.com/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ Slideshare](http://www.slideshare.net/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)),Venture Partner @[ 500 Startups](http://500.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Co-founder @ Map of the Money \[0:38\] - Re-Introduction and what have you been up to? \[1:58\] - State of South East Asia in 2017 Review Part 1 \[2:27\] - Event 1: [SoftBank & Didi’s major investment in Grab with US$2B](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/23/grab-raises-2b-from-didi-chuxing-and-softbank/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Will Go-Jek still able to take on Grab in Indonesia given that it’s the largest market there? \[3:47\] - Will Didi eventually acquire Grab? \[5:18\] - Does Uber even stand a chance within Southeast Asia? \[7:48\] - Reference: China Tech Talk Episode 13 - Event 2: Southeast Asia companies go IPO with [Sea](https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/23/sea-files-for-a-1-billion-u-s-ipo/?ref=analysepodcast.com) (aka former Garena) and [Razer](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/razer-to-raise-upwards-of-504-million-in-hong-kong-ipo/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[9:57\] - Given the lack of knowledge from US investors, will Sea able to break out in their next stage of growth in the company? \[11:04\] - Razer is entering China as they are listed in Hong Kong Stock Exchange, what will be their trajectory be? \[12:47\] - A conversation on Hong Kong Stock Exchange vs New York Stock Exchange. \[13:11\] - Event 3a: Series B & C funding across startups in Southeast Asia for [Carousell](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/27/carousell-series-c/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [CXA Group](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/08/cxa-25-million-series-b/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [SmartKarma](https://press.smartkarma.com/press-releases/smartkarma-raises-series-b-round-led-by-sequoia-capital/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Shopback](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/06/shopback-raises-25m/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[17:06\] - Will the war on talent in Southeast Asia start to shift? \[17:49\] - How are these companies going to prove their valuations for the next stage of funding in series C? \[23:11\] - Brief mention of Naspers and their significance as investors in Southeast Asia and they are early investors of Tencent as well. \[24:30\] - Event 3b: VCs in Southeast Asia have successfully raised their second round funds: [NSI](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-12/nsi-ventures-targets-125-million-second-fund-for-consumer-apps?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Golden Gate](http://goldengate.vc/news/golden-gate-ventures-closes-us60m-fund-ii-for-southeast-asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Wavemaker](https://www.techinasia.com/wavemaker-third-sea-fund?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Jungle Ventures](https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/jungle-ventures-100-million-fund-southeast-asia/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and etc… \[25:06\] - Are the seed and series A deals getting smaller given that we don’t see new entrants? \[25:54\] - Are the ICO successes a new form of fundraising in Southeast Asia with Omise and TenX? \[29:13\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTfhYbI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2zJ8AJx?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_227\_\_State\_of\_Southeast\_Asia\_2017\_Part\_1\_with\_Arnaud\_Bonzom.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F227%5F%5FState%5Fof%5FSoutheast%5FAsia%5F2017%5FPart%5F1%5Fwith%5FArnaud%5FBonzom.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### State of North East Asia 2017 with Shai Oster URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-226-state-of-north-east-asia-2017-with-shai-oster/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:45.000Z Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief at The Information, joined us in a conversation to review the state of North East Asia in 2017\. We discussed the five major events: SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the expansion of Alibaba and Tencent into Southeast Asia and India while battling Google & Amazon in these open markets, China’s imposing tougher regulations on both local & foreign tech companies, the ties between US & China tech companies, and the rise of Toutiao, Meituan-Dianping and Didi, with an additional conversation on Xiaomi’s upcoming IPO in 2018. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Shai Oster ([@beijingscribe](https://twitter.com/beijingscribe?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-oster-7105774/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [TheInformation Profile](https://www.theinformation.com/reporters/shai-oster?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Asia Bureau Chief in [The Information](https://theinformation.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do you start your career? \[1:17\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons learnt? \[2:56\] - Can you briefly introduce The Information to my audience and what’s your role and coverage there? \[3:51\] - Review of North East Asia in 2017 (Here are the 5 major events which I feel are the year’s most important for North East Asia – China, Japan and Korea) \[5:56\] - Event 1: [SoftBank Vision’s Fund](https://www.theinformation.com/how-softbank-is-reshaping-global-tech?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[6:18\] - What are the problems that the fund faces given that it can target competitors to startups it already invests and their investment thesis is up for debate? (Ref: [SoftBank’s $93B Vision Problem](https://www.theinformation.com/softbanks-93-billion-vision-problem?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[6:53\] - How are the new startup ecosystems going to cope with so much money flowing into the startup ecosystem given SoftBank’s mega US$100B fund? \[9:47\] - Shai’s prediction: Another middle eastern oil rich state or country building their own version of Masayoshi Son’s Vision Fund (Reference: [Why Saudi Arabia’s Gulf Rivals Will Launch a Mega Fund](https://www.theinformation.com/why-saudi-arabias-gulf-rivals-will-launch-a-mega-fund?ref=analysepodcast.com) – requires subscription) \[10:38\] - Interesting references from Shai after the interview (as we recorded in the first week of December and requires subscription): “[New Hurdle for SoftBank’s Uber Investment: Regulatory Review](https://www.theinformation.com/new-hurdle-for-softbanks-uber-investment-regulatory-review?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[The Information’s Person of the Year 2018: Masayoshi Son”](https://www.theinformation.com/the-informations-person-of-2018-masayoshi-son?ref=analysepodcast.com). - Event 2: Alibaba and Tencent into Southeast Asia and India \[13:17\] - Where do you see the fault lines are and how these companies will duel it out given that Amazon are in both geographies as an aggressive competitor? Will these companies choose buy vs build in these new geographies? \[13:48\] (Ref: [Alibaba’s Tsai sees a ‘very hot war’ in India](https://www.theinformation.com/alibabas-tsai-sees-a-very-hot-war-in-india?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Do you see Tencent will bring Jingdong (JD dot com) or Meituan-Dianping with them into Southeast Asia and India \[15:28\] - Alibaba’s most significant investment is Paytm in India and Google’s entry into India with Tez from their next billion initiative. - Event 3: China’s new regulations on local & foreign tech companies \[18:04\] - What are the implications with China’s regulations into both local and foreign tech companies? \[18:25\] - Chinese companies dealing with strategy tax outside China \[19:45\] - How does that factor in terms of data privacy? (Ref: [Big data strengthens China’s grip](https://www.theinformation.com/big-data-strengthens-chinas-grip?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[20:58\] - Event 4: [Nature of US and China Tech Ties](https://www.theinformation.com/how-china-u-s-tech-ties-have-evolved?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[22:24\] - Given that we are seeing more and more Chinese investors heading west, will we see the reverse? \[23:00\] - Do we see Chinese companies able to challenge US direct for example, Toutiao in AI and news and Ofo or Mobike in bicycle sharing? \[25:46\] - How will the impact of a US-China trade war on China & US tech companies? \[30:15\] - Event 5: Rise of TMD (Toutiao, Meituan-Dianping and Didi) \[30:48\] - With the exception of Toutiao, the other two relied heavily on BAT on their successes, will we see similar companies in the future that resemble TMD? \[30:48\] - Bonus Event: Xiaomi going IPO in 2018? \[37:05\] - Closing \[39:55\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or anything that has impact your personal or work life recently? \[39:58\] - Shai’s recommendations: NPR “[Planet Money](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money?ref=analysepodcast.com)” podcast and “[Sound Opinions](http://www.soundopinions.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, a music podcast; Duncan Clark’s “[Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma built](https://www.amazon.com/Alibaba-House-That-Jack-Built/dp/0062413406?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, books by [Michael Lewis](http://michaellewiswrites.com/index.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Peter Hessler](http://www.peterhessler.net/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How do my audience find you? \[41:08\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQuZOgs?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2C77kmd?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_226\_\_State\_of\_North\_East\_Asia\_2017\_with\_Shai\_Oster.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F226%5F%5FState%5Fof%5FNorth%5FEast%5FAsia%5F2017%5Fwith%5FShai%5FOster.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Tencent's Gaming Empire & Honor of Kings with Matthew Brennan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-225-tencents-gaming-empire-honor-kings-matthew-brennan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:45.000Z Matthew Brennan, co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk joined us in a conversation to discuss Tencent’s gaming empire worldwide and their third killer app after QQ & Wechat: Honor of Kings. We discussed the recent major happenings from Tencent in their purchase of stock from Snap in the US and bypassing Facebook’s market capitalisation temporarily, and how they assembled their gaming portfolio and assets, particularly Honor of Kings, in a strategy as the top gaming company now in the world and mitigate against the concerns of the Chinese government in mobile gaming addiction. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of [China Channel](http://chinachannel.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) dot co ([@mbrennanchina](https://twitter.com/mbrennanchina?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:42\] - What happened in the [CHina CHat 2017](https://chinachannel.co/china-chat-conference-2017-sponsor-exhibitors/?ref=analysepodcast.com) event you organized in Sep 2017? \[2:28\] - Specifically for key opinion leaders (KOLs), what are the major points of discussion the CHina CHat conference 2017? \[3:18\] - Tencent’s Gaming Empire and [Honor of Kings](https://itunes.apple.com/tr/app/arena-of-valor/id1150318642?mt=8&ref=analysepodcast.com) \[5:08\] - Few interesting news recently: In Tencent’s history, it is incorporated on 11 Nov (or now what we called double 11 or Singles Day – the most important event in ecommerce), and it has [bypassed the market capitalisation of 534.5B against Facebook of 519.5B](https://www.ft.com/content/01a7308c-b947-35ae-ade3-3abfbc200560?ref=analysepodcast.com), what are your perspectives on these issues? \[6:08\] - Tencent has built up a third revenue stream within the company other than advertising and payments and that is gaming. Can you briefly discuss the efforts of Tencent in this space and what their gaming revenues are as part of the whole company’s revenues? \[10:03\] - Note: Tencent makes 41% revenue from games in Q3 2017\. As the percentage of revenues are going down over time closer to 50% a year or two ago, absolute numbers going up. Mobile gaming overtook PC clients game revenue last month. - Started with the key titles: Dungeon and Fighter, Crossfire. - Tencent owns two studios: Riot Games in the US which made Honor of Kings and Supercell that made Clash of Clans. - Mobile key titles: Honor of Kings (HoK), Lead of Legends (LoL), Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds \[13:28\] - Key acquisitions: Riot Games (November 8, 2013 LoL $231M), Supercell (21 June 2016, 84.3% of Supercell with USD 8.6 billion, Clash of Clans) - How Tencent compete against Alibaba in China and Facebook in the rest of the world. \[15:28\] - A lot of us know Tencent with their two killer messaging apps, QQ and Wechat but in a recent episode on China Tech Talk, you discussed that they have the third killer app: Honor of Kings, can you describe what this app is about and why it is taking China and outside world by storm? \[17:40\] - Honor of Kings have a very strong offline presence as well, can you briefly talk about that? \[21:00\] - What do you observe Tencent is doing with Honor of Kings outside China, for example, Thailand \[23:15\] - Does Tencent leverage on its social capability to extend into the media content business in the way how they have successfully done so with the gaming business in their portfolio? \[28:10\] - The Chinese newspaper, People’s Daily wrote a scathing column on Honor of Kings regarding people’s addiction on the game, how does Tencent mitigate these issues with the game? \[30:36\] - Closing - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? \[32:37\] - Matthew’s recommendation: [China Influencer Podcast](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/china-influencer-marketing-podcast/id1314741445?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[33:14\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCDxg25I?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2CU9Ye6?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_225\_\_Tencents\_Gaming\_Empire\_\_Honor\_of\_Kings\_with\_Matthew\_Brennan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F225%5F%5FTencents%5FGaming%5FEmpire%5F%5FHonor%5Fof%5FKings%5Fwith%5FMatthew%5FBrennan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Nokia Networks, Smart Cities and IoT with Danial Mausoof URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-224-nokia-networks-5g-iot-danial-mausoof/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:44.000Z Danial Mausoof from Nokia joined us in a conversation to discuss the company’s current focus in carrier networks, the upcoming 5G networks and Internet of things (IoT) initiatives across Asia. He discussed how Asia businesses and governments are currently figuring out the strategy behind their IoT & smart cities initiatives, where the key applications currently are in the enterprise sector and where they are heading in the next 2-3 years. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Danial Mausoof ([@dmausoof](https://twitter.com/dmausoof?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danialm/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Head of Strategic Marketing, Asia Pacific & Japan, [Nokia](https://networks.nokia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - How do you start your career? \[1:23\] - In your career journey so far, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[2:34\] - Nokia Networks, 5G and IoT \[3:51\] - Can you provide a quick introduction to Nokia and its current focus in carrier networks? \[3:59\] - What is your role and coverage in Nokia? \[5:39\] - Where is Nokia’s position in the supply chain in the networks businesses particularly for 5G and IoT? \[6:55\] - What are the products and services offered by Nokia Networks within their line of business? \[10:36\] - How does Nokia networks enable countries implementing smart cities with 5G, cloud and IoT given the difference in developed cities (Japan, Korea & Singapore) vs emerging economies (Indonesia, Thailand)? \[15:02\] - What are the major challenges you see that governments in the implementation of smart cities? \[18:30\] - What are the most interesting applications in IoT that you have seen? \[21:17\] - Where do you see the networks and IoT go in the next 1-2 years? \[23:32\] - Closing \[25:57\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has made an impact to your work or personal life recently? \[26:04\] - Danial’s recommendation: “[Dare Not Linger](https://www.amazon.com/Dare-Not-Linger-Presidential-Years/dp/0374134715?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Nelson Mandela, which is a sequel to his earlier book, “[The Long Walk to Freedom](https://www.amazon.com/Long-Walk-Freedom-Autobiography-Mandela/dp/0316548189?ref=analysepodcast.com)”. The second book is “[The Silk Road](https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Roads-New-History-World/dp/1408839989?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Peter Frankopan - How do my audience find you? \[27:22\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Libsyn](http://analyseasia.libsyn.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCAjLuns?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2AHKboS?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_224\_Nokia\_Networks\_Smart\_Cities\_and\_IoT\_with\_Danial\_Mausoof.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F224%5FNokia%5FNetworks%5FSmart%5FCities%5Fand%5FIoT%5Fwith%5FDanial%5FMausoof.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Tata Communications & Perspectives on IoT & Mobility with Anthony Bartolo URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-223-tata-communications-perspectives-iot-mobility-anthony-bartolo/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:43.000Z Anthony Bartolo from Tata Communications joined us in a conversation on mobility and Internet of Things (IoT) and their impact on the enterprise level across Asia Pacific. Anthony begin the conversation on his work with Tata Communications and how carrier networks and IoT are changing the landscape in asset management and other applications such as the connected transportation networks within the enterprise space. Last but not least, he shares his observations on the trends in IoT and mobility this year and what it’s coming in the next 2-3 years. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Anthony Bartolo ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/abartolo/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), President, Business Collaboration, Mobility & IoT solutions, [Tata Communications](https://www.tatacommunications.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:22\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[2:32\] - Tata Communications \[5:05\] - Can you briefly discuss Tata communications and what it does in the networking space? \[5:24\] - What’s your current role and coverage in Tata Communications? \[8:45\] - The importance of tackling latency in network communications \[9:36\] - What are the products and services provided by Tata Communications in your area of interest? \[10:48\] - Discussion on asset management in the communication networks and IoT space \[12:20\] - Who are the customers to Tata Communications? \[13:44\] - Perspectives on Communications, Networks and IoT \[15:00\] - In your perspective, what are the key critical factors that IoT will eventually gain adoption from customers? \[15:00\] - Example of Mobike bicycle hubs from China to different parts in Asia. \[16:30\] - What is your view on the connected transportation world (bicycles, drones and self-driving cars) with respect to the networks out there? \[17:43\] - What are the most interesting applications of IoT in your opinion? \[23:43\] - There is a difference between consumer and enterprise IoT technologies, and in your opinion, what are your thoughts on the consumer space given you have discussed your perspectives on the enterprise space? \[27:15\] - What are the key trends in business collaboration, mobility and IoT that you are observing in the past year? \[30:40\] - Where do you think mobility and IoT will be in 1-2 years time? \[33:09\] - Do we foresee preferred networks happening in Asia given the different demands from customers on content that are in different scales? \[37:00\] - Closing - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has made an impact to your work or personal life recently? \[38:38\] - Anthony’s recommendation: [Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”](https://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Ray Kurzweil, “The Singularity is Near”](https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology/dp/0143037889/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: [“Abundance” by Peter Diamandis and Steve Kotler](https://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think/dp/145161683X?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[39:24\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCDLVfg4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2jSla41?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_223\_Tata\_Communications\_Perspectives\_on\_IoT\_Mobility\_with\_Anthony\_Bartolo.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F223%5FTata%5FCommunications%5FPerspectives%5Fon%5FIoT%5FMobility%5Fwith%5FAnthony%5FBartolo.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The SoftBank Vision Fund with Tim Culpan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-222-softbank-vision-fund-tim-culpan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:43.000Z Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us in a two part conversation on the high impact news from Asia’s movers and shakers. In the second part of our conversation, Tim covered Japan’s SoftBank US$100B Vision Fund and discussed the mission, vision and structure behind this massive fund that is poised to overshadow all the venture capital and private equity funds. We discussed the investments made by SoftBank Vision Fund so far and its implications to startup unicorns such as Uber and Flipkart. Last but not least, we explored the implications of the fund to the global startup ecosystem out there. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Tim Culpan ([@tculpan](https://twitter.com/tculpan?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-culpan-3a753617/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/columnists/AOZ1cdFX8mo/tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Columnist at [Bloomberg Gadfl](http://bloomberg.com/gadfly?ref=analysepodcast.com)y \[0:38\] - [SoftBank Vision Fund](https://softbank-ia.com/node/8?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - For a start, can you give a quick intro to [SoftBank](https://www.softbank.jp/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the rationale behind [Masayoshi Son’s gambit with the US$100B Vision Fund](http://fortune.com/2017/10/23/softbank-vision-fund-masayoshi-son/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[1:54\] - What is the investment strategy behind the Vision Fund? \[4:58\] - Who are the investors behind the Vision Fund? \[6:53\] - SoftBank’s Vision Fund is a league of its own against the other funds out there (See attached screenshot below). How are they compared against the best US funds out there? \[8:41\] - Does that mean that SoftBank has the ability to make life miserable for the venture capitalists because they drive the valuations up? \[11:00\] - Which are [the companies that are now invested by the Vision Fund](https://www.recode.net/2017/9/18/16317902/uber-softbank-vision-fund-big-investment-saudi-arab-emirates-apple-qualcomm-sharp?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[15:35\] - How big must your company be in order to be invested by SoftBank? \[18:38\] - Who are [the key people](http://thein.fo/r/a9a5a4361f729156?ref=analysepodcast.com) who people need to get in touch for investments of such scale? \[19:17\] - SoftBank and Uber: If SoftBank close the deal with Uber, it means that it has now owned all 4 major players on ridesharing (Ola, Grab and Didi), does that mean that they might force an IPO on all 4 or massive consolidation across all? \[20:47\] - SoftBank and Flipkart/Snapdeal: SoftBank has now invested in Snapdeal’s competitor, Flipkart in India. What does that mean for everyone else out there? \[24:46\] - What’s the impact on the global startup ecosystem with such a massive scale? \[27:33\] - References: Tim Culpan “[Son Flipped Snap in a Judo move](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-08-11/son-flipped-snap-in-judo-move?ref=analysepodcast.com)“, “[Son’s Expensive Revenge](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-07-31/son-s-expensive-revenge?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - Closing \[28:45\] - Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has made an impact to your work or personal life recently? \[29:00\] - Tim’s recommendations: Bloomberg “[Decrypted](https://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/decrypted?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[Odd Lots](https://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/odd%5Flots?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - BL’s recommendation: [Katherine Graham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine%5FGraham?ref=analysepodcast.com), “[Personal History](https://www.amazon.com/Personal-History-Katharine-Graham/dp/0375701044?ref=analysepodcast.com)” - How do my audience find you? \[30:50\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCCHOa6Q?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2BGs2sk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_222\_The\_SoftBank\_Vision\_Fund\_with\_Tim\_Culpan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F222%5FThe%5FSoftBank%5FVision%5FFund%5Fwith%5FTim%5FCulpan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### The Toshiba Chip Unit Deal with Tim Culpan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-221-toshiba-chip-unit-deal-tim-culpan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:43.000Z Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us in a two part conversation on the high impact news from Asia’s movers and shakers. In the first part of our conversation, he covered the backstory, drama and conclusion to the Toshiba’s chip unit deal and examine why Apple is involved with at least two of the major bidders. In the same conversation, Tim offered his perspectives on the TSMC 30th anniversary panel with the major players in the semiconductors industry and the recent Google-HTC deal. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Tim Culpan ([@tculpan](https://twitter.com/tculpan?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-culpan-3a753617/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/columnists/AOZ1cdFX8mo/tim-culpan?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Columnist at Bloomberg Gadfly \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:06\] - The [TSMC 30th anniversary panel](https://tsmc.str.hinet.net/liveportal/tccontent.php?pid=501000015&ref=analysepodcast.com) with [Jeff Williams (COO of Apple) giving an in-depth understanding of Apple’s relationship with TSMC](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/23/jeff-williams-attends-tsmc-30th-anniversary/?ref=analysepodcast.com). Worth a watch as the CEO of ARM, Qualcomm and Nvidia were all on the panel. \[2:15\] - What happened in the [Google and HTC deal](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-09-21/htc-messed-up-its-google-deal?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[4:30\] - Toshiba Deal \[7:10\] - Can you offer an overview of Toshiba and the chip unit which they have been trying to sell? \[9:35\] - Why is the Toshiba chip unit such an asset that it attracted so many bidders? \[11:58\] - Can you give a quick chronology of this whole acquisition deal and why has it attracted so much attention? \[14:49\] - Who are the three key bidders of the Toshiba chip unit and what’s the motivation within each one of them to get this deal done? \[16:40\] - The fact that Apple is part of the coalition with every bidder, why is this so? What’s Apple’s interest in this chip unit? (They have bought this outright but instead choose to work with the bidders). \[19:00\] - The end state now is that Toshiba only sold 49.9% to the Bain consortium, with itself holding 40.2% and Hoya owning 9.9%, so what’s the end-game going to be for each one of them? \[24:29\] - References: Tim Culpan, “[A Yard Sale may save Toshiba’s chips](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-11-20/a-yard-sale-may-save-toshiba-s-chips?ref=analysepodcast.com)” “[Toshiba should keep their chip unit](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-08-31/toshiba-should-just-keep-the-chip-unit?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, “[Start the bidding war, Toshiba](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-09-13/toshiba-shareholders-deserve-a-bidding-war?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[Toshiba’s chip trick](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-09-29/toshiba-s-chip-trick?ref=analysepodcast.com)” **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCCB6wWc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2j6XB6V?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_221\_The\_Toshiba\_Chip\_Unit\_Deal\_with\_Tim\_Culpan.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F221%5FThe%5FToshiba%5FChip%5FUnit%5FDeal%5Fwith%5FTim%5FCulpan.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Digital in Asia Pacific 2017 Part 2 with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-220-digital-asia-pacific-2017-part-2-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:42.000Z Simon Kemp, founder & CEO of Kepios and global consultant from We Are Social, joined us in a two part discussion on the state of digital in Asia Pacific. In the second part of our conversation, we discussed the emerging social media trends that spanned across China, Japan & Korea and rest of Asia Pacific. Simon shared his perspectives on the additional metrics and data which he want to put in his future reports and explain the intriguing trends that popped up in 2017\. Last but not least, we have a deeper conversation in why Facebook and Tencent have not engaged each other in a full scale war over social in Asia Pacific. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of [Kepios](http://kepios.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com), Global Consultant from We Are Social. \[0:40\] - [Digital in Asia Pacific 2017](https://kepios.com/blog/apac2017?ref=analysepodcast.com) Part 2 \[0:58\] - In your analyses across Asia Pacific, are the digital, mobile and social media trends split between China & Rest of Asia Pacific? \[1:16\] - China \[1:37\] - Japan \[7:33\] - South Korea \[10:42\] - Rest of Asia Pacific \[12:56\] - What are the most intriguing numbers that you want your audience to know from reading your report? What are the other metrics that you would like to include in your report? \[13:59\] - From looking at the report, what will be the interesting trends coming up in 2018 and what should people watch out for? \[18:11\] - What are the most interesting social media tools that are emerging in Asia Pacific? \[21:32\] - Do you see ad blockers become prominent for Asia to access content? Wechat has ensured that there are less ads and control the user experience while Facebook does exactly the opposite. \[24:03\] - Facebook vs Wechat. I often think that Facebook messenger should have just cloned Wechat and take them on in Asia, and Wechat should challenge Facebook’s dominance in Asia Pacific by shifting to high gear in customer acquisition, why do you think both social media giants are entrenched in their own turfs and not willing to engage each other on their strengths? \[29:02\] - Closing - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything that has been useful to you in work or personal life recently? \[36:18\] - Simon’s recommendation: [The Cluetrain Manifesto](http://www.cluetrain.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by David Weinberger - BL’s recommendation: [WTF](http://www.oreilly.com/tim/wtf-book.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Tim O’Reilly - How can my audience find you? \[37:32\] - Simon’s reports on social media can be found [here](http://kepios.com/data?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCCri9w4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2j3dXhd?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_220\_Digital\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_2017\_Part\_2\_with\_Simon\_Kemp.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F220%5FDigital%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5F2017%5FPart%5F2%5Fwith%5FSimon%5FKemp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Digital in Asia Pacific 2017 Part 1 with Simon Kemp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-219-digital-asia-pacific-2017-part-1-simon-kemp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:42.000Z Simon Kemp, founder & CEO of Kepios and global consultant from We Are Social, joined us in a two part discussion on the state of digital in Asia Pacific. In the first part of our conversation, Simon discussed the major trends that have emerged in his report distilling from global to Asia and why voice might be the digital device that surpass the current modes of input in Asia. Last but not least, Simon offered a valuable insight to why access to the Internet is vital to those who are not connected online and part of the emerging & frontier economies from Africa to Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Simon Kemp ([@eskimon](https://twitter.com/eskimon?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founder & CEO of Kepios, Global Consultant from We Are Social. \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:20\] - Are brands still sticking to one or many platforms or stuck in whether they should leverage on digital media tools? \[2:00\] - [Digital in Asia Pacific 2017](https://kepios.com/blog/apac2017?ref=analysepodcast.com) Part 1 \[4:25\] - Can you first give an overview of the numbers on digital till Sep 2017 in your report globally and then scale it down to the Asia Pacific region? \[4:46\] - Do you think that we will eventually merge the desktop with mobile Internet into one category as the desktop is becoming less and less relevant to access? \[7:42\] - Specific for Asia Pacific, are we seeing a mobile first world and less of a desktop world and is it still accelerating? \[12:03\] - What are the key global annual digital trends you have seen in 2017 that differ from the previous years? \[14:38\] - In your analysis, you talked about the digital divide, can you elaborate which parts of Asia are still not connected to the rest of the world? What are the factors that are responsible for that? \[15:29\] - Simon’s interesting comments on why people in the emerging markets need access to the Internet. \[21:29\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCABO2fg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2zmEtbk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_219\_Digital\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_2017\_Part\_1\_with\_Simon\_Kemp.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F219%5FDigital%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5F2017%5FPart%5F1%5Fwith%5FSimon%5FKemp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Sustainable Development in Asia Pacific with Xu Haoliang URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-218-sustainable-development-asia-pacific-xu-haoliang/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:41.000Z Xu Haoliang, Assistant Secretary General for the United Nations and Director, Regional Bureau for Asia & the Pacific joined us in a conversation to discuss sustainable development in the Responsible Business Forum 2017\. We discussed how the UNDP are working with different stakeholders from businesses, NGOs and UN agencies on the sustainable goals and how we can align them and at the same time, measure their impact and success for the future. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - **Haoliang Xu**, ([@HaoliangXu](https://twitter.com/haoliangxu?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/haoliang-xu-29530638/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Assistant Secretary General for [United Nations](http://www.un.org/en/index.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@UN](https://twitter.com/UN?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@UNDP](https://twitter.com/UNDP?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@UNDPasiapac](https://twitter.com/UNDPasiapac?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Director, Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific ([UNDP Asia](http://www.asia-pacific.undp.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). - How did you start your career? \[1:18\] - How did you end up in the United Nations and move to your present role today? \[1:58\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons? \[3:06\] - Responsible Business Forum 2017 and Sustainable Development Goals \[4:42\] - Can you introduce the United Nations’ current coverage in Asia and the Pacific, and what’s your role and coverage as the Assistant Secretary General for the UN? \[5:12\] - How do you define sustainable development from your perspective? \[6:39\] - What are the problems that the Responsible Business Forum are tackling in Asia? \[9:33\] - Comments on corporate social responsibility of companies working with Asian countries and how they contribute to sustainable development \[12:24\] - How do we align the different stakeholders towards the sustainable goals given they have different interests on the issues for example, dealing with poverty? \[14:07\] - How do we measure the performance and impact to these goals? \[16:45\] - How does technology play a role in sustainable development? Do they play a more positive role? \[18:46\] - Where do you see sustainable development goals head in 2-3 years time? \[20:35\] - Closing - Can you recommend a book, podcast or something which has helped you in your work or personal life recently? \[22:32\] - Hao Liang’s recommendations: books on education of kids. - How do my audience find you (social media)? \[24:02\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCApbYyk?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2zvTifO?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bernardleong](http://www.twitter.com/bernardleong?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_218\_Sustainable\_Development\_in\_Asia\_Pacific\_with\_Xu\_Haoliang.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F218%5FSustainable%5FDevelopment%5Fin%5FAsia%5FPacific%5Fwith%5FXu%5FHaoliang.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Brinc, Hardware & IoT in Asia with Bay McLaughlin URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-217-brinc-hardware-iot-asia-bay-mclaughlin/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:41.000Z Bay McLaughlin, COO and co-founder of Brinc joined us in a conversation to discuss the evolution of his company, Brinc and where it is now heading across Asia from China to southeast Asia and other parts of the world. In our conversation, we dived deep into major trends and challenging issues on hardware and Internet of things (IoT) in Asia, from debunking one of the major myths of some investors about hardware commoditisation to the major opportunities for IoT startups to capture across Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Bay McLaughlin, COO & co-founder of [Brinc](https://brinc.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@betabay](https://twitter.com/betabay?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://hk.linkedin.com/in/betabay?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:08\] - Heard that you have become a KOL for Huawei, what is that about? \[2:33\] - How has Brinc evolved since our last conversation? \[3:46\] - Outside China, where does Brinc operate across in Asia? \[6:06\] - Understand Brinc have started their operations in China, what’s the footprint over there and what are the key activities within China? \[7:05\] - On Hardware, Internet of Things and Asia - I want to start with hardware and I believe that most of the venture capital firms out there share what I called “business truths” (which are not). One of them is about hardware commoditization. A lot of VCs use this to dissuade themselves from funding hardware companies. What are your thoughts on the issue? \[9:01\] - In what you have worked on, you have worked with IoT startups that touched on interesting areas such as agriculture, can you share some interesting examples on that area? \[12:30\] - In your opinion, do you think that the IoT startups picking up steam in Asia given that most solutions are business centric rather than consumer centric? \[15:01\] - What are the challenges of IoT startups in Asia? \[16:01\] - What are the interesting trends in hardware or software across Asia? \[17:36\] - How are your interactions with startups across Asia? Where do you see their strengths and weaknesses? \[20:47\] - Where do you see things go into the next year with respect to hardware, IoT in Asia? \[23:35\] - Closing \[25:05\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything that is useful to you in your work or personal life? \[25:26\] - Bay’s recommendation on Youtube channels: [Motherboard](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB6PV0cvJpzlcXRG7nz6PpQ?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Vox](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA?ref=analysepodcast.com) and [Vice](https://www.youtube.com/user/vice?ref=analysepodcast.com). Of course, check out [Brinc’s blog](https://blog.brinc.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How can my audience find you? \[26:40\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCD-Eifc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2A76asE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_217\_Brinc\_Hardware\_IoT\_in\_Asia\_with\_Bay\_McLaughlin.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F217%5FBrinc%5FHardware%5FIoT%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FBay%5FMcLaughlin.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Indian Titans Leadership Crisis with Andy Mukherjee URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-216-indian-titans-leadership-crisis-andy-mukherjee/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:40.000Z Andy Mukherjee from Bloomberg Gadfly joined us in a conversation discuss the recent Indian titans leadership crises from the Tata Group & Infosys. We discussed the business structure, key people, background and recent corporate governance troubles behind the Tata Group & Infosys and discuss whether these issues will percolate to the rest of the other Indian corporate business titans. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Andy Mukherjee, ([@andymukherjee70](https://twitter.com/andymukherjee70?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymukherjee/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/columnists/ASj7dG4ftKY/andy-mukherjee?ref=analysepodcast.com)), [Gadfly](https://bloomberg.com/gadfly?ref=analysepodcast.com) columnist for Bloomberg LP - How did you start your career? \[1:18\] - What’s your current role and coverage in Bloomberg Gadfly? \[4:12\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[5:06\] - Indian Titans Leadership Crisis \[6:04\] - To start off with, there are some interesting things happening in India on the leadership with the Indian business titans: Infosys and Tata Group. I want to get an understanding of both companies before we head into that topic of interest and to start, can you briefly describe the Tata Group and the industries which the group are involved in? \[6:30\] - Similarly in Infosys which we have often know it as an Indian successful IT outsourcing company, can you briefly tell us what Infosys do? \[10:15\] - Who are the key players and owners in Tata Group & Infosys in the past and today? \[12:01\] - Tata Group \[12:18\] - InfoSys \[15:06\] - With the rise of Indian startup unicorns such as Flipkart and Paytm, is Infosys under threat for talent in India? \[17:43\] - In the case of Tata Group, Ratan Tata, the Chairman of the group ousted Cyrus Mistry, the group CEO, what are the key reasons for [that ousting](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-09-15/tata-s-dark-arts-will-dim-more-than-mistry-s-defiance?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[19:15\] - In the case of [Infosys](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-08-21/infosys-fight-isn-t-tata-redux?ref=analysepodcast.com), what actually happened with Vishal Sikka quiting the company given that there are constant attacks from one of the founders, Narayana Murthy? \[22:41\] - With both companies having leadership crises, is the main reason being the founders and their CEOs are not aligned with the core values of their companies? \[25:49\] - Will this percolate down to the rest of corporate India? \[27:04\] - Closing \[28:58\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything that you found interesting to your work or life? \[29:04\] - Andy Mukherjee’s recommendation: [Sapiens by Yuval Harari](https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: [Homo Deus by Yuval Harari](https://www.amazon.com/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow/dp/0062464310/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510300874&sr=1-1&keywords=homo+deus&ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do my audience find you? \[30:28\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCB1ypgc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2zqSYhv?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [weibo](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_216\_Indian\_Titans\_Leadership\_Crisis\_with\_Andy\_Mukherjee.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F216%5FIndian%5FTitans%5FLeadership%5FCrisis%5Fwith%5FAndy%5FMukherjee.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Stripe in Asia and the Startup Stack with Piruze Sabuncu URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-215-stripe-asia-startup-stack-piruze-sabuncu/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:40.000Z Piruze Sabuncu from Stripe joined in a conversation to discuss the company’s footprint across Asia and how they are helping the startups from Asia to scale to the rest of the world. We discussed their recent one year anniversary celebrations where they unveiled the startup stack and the key tools which most startups are using for their businesses. Last but not least, Piruze also shared her thoughts on digital payments and cashless society and how it will impact Asia’s recent focus on the subject. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Piruze Sabuncu ([@piruzes](https://twitter.com/piruzes?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/piruzesabuncu/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Head of Southeast Asia & Hong Kong, Stripe \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:08\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[2:21\] - How do you find Asia given that you have come from a culture that Europe centric and with your work experience in the US? \[3:14\] - Stripe in Southeast Asia \[4:30\] - Can you introduce Stripe to my audience and what is the vision and mission of the company? \[4:55\] - What is your current role and coverage in Stripe? \[5:36\] - What is the current footprint of Stripe in Asia Pacific? \[5:59\] - Stripe’s partnership with Alipay & Tenpay in China \[6:20\] - Who are the customers of Stripe? How does one onboard with Stripe? \[7:05\] - What are the products and services which Stripe offer to merchants or developers? \[8:51\] - Stripe just celebrated its one year anniversary in Singapore. What are some of milestones you’ve achieved in the past year? \[11:31\] - How are startups within the region, for example, Singapore go global from Day 1? \[12:39\] - Stripe also announced a new research called Startup Stack to celebrate its anniversary. What were some of your key findings? What are some of the interesting technology tools that power this new wave of entrepreneurship? \[13:54\] - Specifically, I am interested in Stripe Atlas. Can Asian startups tap on Stripe Atlas and how can they go about doing that? \[16:31\] - Specifically for Asia, do we need to customise these products and services in the local markets? \[17:40\] - What are the key challenges in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong with relations to digital payments? \[19:03\] - How can we move from a society who handles so much cash to a cashless one? - Where do you see the role of Stripe in this cashless society world? \[20:25\] - Closing - Can you recommend something that you have read, seen or heard recently that is interesting in your line of work or relevant to my audience? \[21:11\] - Piruze’s recommendation: [Rough Translation from NPR podcast](http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510324/rough-translation?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: [The Weeds podcast from Vox](https://www.vox.com/the-weeds?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How can my audience find you? \[22:29\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCBpMl34?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2isFQOg?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_215\_Stripe\_in\_Asia\_and\_the\_Startup\_Stack\_with\_Piruze\_Sabuncu.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F215%5FStripe%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fand%5Fthe%5FStartup%5FStack%5Fwith%5FPiruze%5FSabuncu.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### #AskGaryVee & Vayner Media in Asia with Gary Vaynerchuk URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-214-askgaryvee-vayner-media-asia-gary-vaynerchuk/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:40.000Z Gary Vaynerchuk is here to discuss his companies: Vayner X and Vayner Media and his insightful perspectives on entrepreneurship and family business. We dived deep into his understanding of social media from US to Asia and how it has evolved, his life principles in bridging strategy & execution with a customer centric driven approach. Last but not least, we hear his first impressions on Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - [Gary Vaynerchuk](https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@garyvee](https://twitter.com/garyvee?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/gary/), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyvaynerchuk/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [blog](https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/blog/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/garyvee/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Chairman of [VaynerX](http://vaynerx.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and CEO of [Vayner Media](https://vaynermedia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/VaynerMedia/), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/VaynerMedia?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Host of [#AskGaryVee show](https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/podcast/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[0:38\] - Can you briefly introduce yourself to my audience who may not be familiar with what you have done in the US? \[1:16\] - Gary’s use of key opinion leaders (a term used in China) and understanding of the Asia market from China to Indonesia. \[4:13\] - You have been a well-known social media influencer with a podcast, with 4 NY Times best seller books “[Crush It](https://www.amazon.com/Crush-Time-Cash-Your-Passion/dp/0061914177?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, “[#AskGaryVee](https://www.amazon.com/AskGaryVee-Entrepreneurs-Leadership-Social-Self-Awareness/dp/0062273124?ref=analysepodcast.com)”, “[Jab Jab, Jab, Right Hook](https://www.amazon.com/Jab-Right-Hook-Story-Social/dp/006227306X/ref=asap%5Fbc?ie=UTF8&ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[The Thank you Economy](https://www.amazon.com/Thank-You-Economy-Gary-Vaynerchuk/dp/0061914185/ref=asap%5Fbc?ie=UTF8&ref=analysepodcast.com)” and your own podcast as well. Can you share how you think about social media and What are your favorite social media tools? \[6:06\] - I have enjoyed your books “Crush It” & “#Ask GaryVee” and since you are here, I want to ask a few things: - In #AskGaryVee, you talk about the clouds and the dirt as a metaphor to look at high level principles & day to day battle. Can you describe your commandments such as “Bring value to the customer” and “Always play the long game of life time value” and how they guide you in how you think? \[8:04\] - There’s a lot of startups out there dreaming about becoming unicorns and you are an investor to unicorns (Twitter, Facebook), but I understand you have a different perspective to business, can you share some of your philosophies particularly in the concept of being sustainable focusing on top line revenue and optimising for profit? \[11:40\] - Suppose today you can tell your twenty year old self something, what will be the advice you should give him? \[14:46\] - Since we are in Asia that most businesses are mostly driven by family and I understand you also work in your family business too, can you talk about that experience and how do you navigate the dynamics in working with family? \[15:56\] - [Vayner Media](https://vaynermedia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[19:31\] - What inspired you to start [Vayner Media](https://vaynermedia.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and what is the mission and vision of the company? \[19:40\] - Understand that major brands such as Budweiser, Unilever and Toyota are your customers. Specifically in US and Asia, who are your customers? \[21:23\] - What are the business problems the company are trying to solve for the customers? \[22:27\] - You have just launched a pair of sneakers known as [GaryVee 001 & 002 K-Swiss sneakers](https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/garyvee-001-002-sneakers/?ref=analysepodcast.com), what is that about? \[23:12\] - Since you are in Singapore and Hong Kong (recently for RISE conference), what are your first impressions in Asia? \[24:48\] - Closing - Can you recommend something that has profound influence to your life in the form of a book, podcast or any other forms of media such as a movie? - GaryVee’s recommendation: His audience and it’s an interesting recommendation. \[26:24\] - How can my audience find you? \[28:56\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCBd%5Fpck?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2zObcWM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_214\_AskGaryVee\_Vayner\_Media\_in\_Asia\_with\_Gary\_Vaynerchuk.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F214%5FAskGaryVee%5FVayner%5FMedia%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FGary%5FVaynerchuk.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### China's Belt and Road Initiative with Robert Koepp URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-213-chinas-belt-road-initiative-robert-koepp/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:39.000Z Robert Koepp from the Economist corporate network joined us in a conversation to discuss the government of China’s Belt and Road initiative. We discussed the impact of the Belt and Road initiative to the Asian economies and the geopolitical, trade and financial risks that potentially impact China’s most important infrastructure project across Asia and Europe. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Robert Koepp ([@RobKoepp](https://twitter.com/RobKoepp?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertwkoepp/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Director, The Economist Corporate Network \[0:40\] - How did you start your career? \[1:04\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[1:56\] - You have written an interesting book “Betting on China”, which provide an interesting analysis on China-based enterprises raising capital from NASDAQ & New York Stock Exchange and their evolution in handling investors outside of China, what is the key thesis of the book and who the intended audience is? \[3:00\] - Does the tech companies such as Alibaba Group learned from the mis-steps of the first wave of Chinese companies going public? \[5:14\] - What is your role and coverage in the Economist corporate network? \[7:10\] - Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) or otherwise [One Belt, One Road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One%5FBelt%5FOne%5FRoad%5FInitiative?ref=analysepodcast.com) \[9:03\] - Can you give an introduction to the Belt & Road (BRI) initiative by the Chinese government? \[9:30\] - Geographically, where are the economic corridors that the initiative is expanding from China to the outside world? \[11:24\] - A lot of media outlets likened One Belt One Road similar to the [US Marshall Plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall%5FPlan?ref=analysepodcast.com) after World War II, and I understand you have analysed BRI against foreign aid and the Marshall plan, what are the similarities and differences between them? \[13:46\] - China has launched the BRI forum and how many countries are actually involved in the initiative and what is the amount of money pledged? \[16:21\] - One key point is the economics of BRI. What is the impact on China with its trade with BRI countries? Is the outlook optimistic and what are the mercantilist strategic implications? \[18:25\] - How does BRI affect China’s foreign direct investment and their own economy in the next few years? \[21:20\] - What are the trade risks for China with BRI? \[24:25\] - Which financial institutions are dedicated in providing the funds for BRI? \[27:04\] - Which are there any major projects within BRI such as the Indonesia: Jakarta-Bandung high speed highway that are important? \[28:07\] - Where do you see the financial risks for BRI come from? \[29:44\] - Where are the geopolitical risks in BRI from China’s perspective, for example, India is not part of it? \[31:45\] - Where do you see BRI goes in the next 1-2 years? \[35:20\] - Closing \[38:12\] - Can you recommend anything (and that can be in the form of a book, podcast, movie) that you find interesting in your work or life recently? \[38:28\] - Robert’s recommendation: [Francis Fukuyama, “Political Order & Political Decay](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20575435-political-order-and-political-decay?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[The Origins of Political Order](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9704856-the-origins-of-political-order?ref=analysepodcast.com)“. - BL’s recommendation: [Richard McGregor, “Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan & the fate of US power in the Pacific Century”](https://www.amazon.com/Asias-Reckoning-China-Pacific-Century/dp/0399562672?ref=analysepodcast.com). - How can my audience find you? \[41:20\] Editor’s note: We experienced issues in uploading the track to SoundCloud and have pinged them. Hence please wait till we sort this out. Our apologies for not able to provide the podcast episode on soundcloud yet. But check out our [latest episode](https://overcast.fm/+KLCBSF5Ys?ref=analysepodcast.com) on Overcast. As of 6 am on 28 Oct, we successfully uploaded into [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2lmwIzC?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCBSF5Ys?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2lmwIzC?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_213\_China\_s\_Belt\_and\_Road\_Initiative\_with\_Robert\_Koepp.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F213%5FChina%5Fs%5FBelt%5Fand%5FRoad%5FInitiative%5Fwith%5FRobert%5FKoepp.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) ### Why China bans exchanges & ICOs with Neil Woodfine URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-212-china-bans-exchanges-icos-neil-woodfine/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:39.000Z [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_212\_Why\_China\_bans\_exchanges\_ICOs\_with\_Neil\_Woodfine.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F212%5FWhy%5FChina%5Fbans%5Fexchanges%5FICOs%5Fwith%5FNeil%5FWoodfine.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) Neil Woodfine, growth manager from Wyre & organizer of Beijing bitcoin meetup joined us in an interesting conversation on bitcoin, blockchain & cryptocurrencies where we examined some of the popular misconceptions of the industry. We discussed why the government of China has decided to ban cryptocurrency exchanges and ICOs and where it will go from there. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Neil Woodfine, Growth Manager, [Wyre](https://www.sendwyre.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & organizer of [Beijing Bitcoin Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/beijingbitcoinmeetup?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@nwoodfine](https://twitter.com/nwoodfine?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nwoodfine/?ref=analysepodcast.com)). \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:18\] - The story of Remitsy and how it was eventually acquired by Wyre. \[2:58\] - What’s your current role and coverage in Wyre? \[4:35\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? \[5:10\] - Why China banned cryptocurrency exchanges & ICOs \[6:08\] - Can you briefly describe your understanding of these three terms \[6:21\] - Cryptocurrency - Bitcoin - Blockchain - In your opinion, what are the common misconceptions of the cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and blockchain? \[13:05\] - Can you discuss from your perspective on how bitcoin, blockchain and subsequently cryptocurrencies have evolved in China? \[15:06\] - Why is China important to the whole cryptocurrencies and bitcoin markets globally? \[17:38\] - Can you describe what an initial coin offering (ICO) is? \[20:13\] - ICOs have been seen as an alternative approach to raise funding for startups or non-profit software foundation, what are the pros and cons of that? \[24:00\] - In your opinion, why has the Chinese government decided to step in and ban ICOs? \[28:14\] - Are there any precedents in which the Chinese government has banned something and subsequently relaxed? \[29:22\] - Will all the bitcoin exchanges in China for example, Huobi, BTCC & OkCoin close down in the next few months? \[32:02\] - What has the media picked up correctly or wrongly in discussing this controversial move? \[34:54\] - What is the impact to the Chinese cryptocurrencies which has undergone an ICO in China? \[36:20\] - Where do you see the movement of ICOs and the whole bitcoin, blockchain & cryptocurrencies market heading in China? \[38:21\] - Closing - Can you recommend anything (and that can be in the form of a book, podcast, movie) that you find interesting in your work or life recently? \[40:06\] - Neil’s recommendation: Satoshi Nakamoto Institute’s [crash course in bitcoin political economy](http://nakamotoinstitute.org/crash-course/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - BL’s recommendation: Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper: “[Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System](http://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” dated 31 Oct 2008\. - How can my audience find you? \[41:15\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCBL5q10?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2yFbFgl?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Red Hat in Asia & Open Innovation Labs with Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-211-red-hat-asia-open-innovation-institute-dirk-peter-van-leeuwen/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:38.000Z [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_211\_Red\_Hat\_in\_Asia\_Open\_Innovation\_Institute\_with\_Dirk-Peter\_van\_Leeuwen.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F211%5FRed%5FHat%5Fin%5FAsia%5FOpen%5FInnovation%5FInstitute%5Fwith%5FDirk-Peter%5Fvan%5FLeeuwen.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, senior vice president & general manager from Redhat, Asia Pacific joined us to discuss the company’s footprint across Asia and their recent launch of their new Open Innovation Labs in Singapore. We discuss how Asian companies are in different phases of their digital transformation from culture to innovation and adjusting against digital disruption. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, ([LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpvanleeuwen/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Senior Vice President & General Manager, Redhat, Asia Pacific and Japan \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:20\] - What brought you from Europe to Asia? \[2:00\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons you can share with my audience? \[2:25\] - Redhat in Asia Pacific and Open Innovation Institute \[3:00\] - Can you briefly describe Redhat, the company who has built its fortunes on Linux, an open source operating system to our audience? \[3:10\] - What is the current vision and mission of Redhat? \[4:45\] - Can you talk about your current role and coverage? \[5:06\] - What are the current products and services of Redhat and are they focused mainly in the enterprise? \[5:31\] - What is the current footprint of Redhat in Asia Pacific? \[6:53\] - Can you share any interesting stories of enterprise clients leveraging on Redhat technologies? \[7:11\] - MyRepublic - GovTech’s responder app - Are there any additional verticals beyond government and telco which used Redhat? \[9:20\] - Redhat launches the Open Innovation Labs in Singapore, and that is the first in Asia Pacific, what’s the role of the institute in providing an environment for customers to develop new solutions? \[10:01\] - How do your customers engage the Open Innovation Labs on building new innovations? \[11:42\] - What are your perspectives in how businesses should think about innovation? \[13:00\] - How does businesses balance the priorities between being agile and being secure at the same time? \[15:31\] - The region of Asia Pacific is divided into three types of markets: developed (Japan, Korea, Singapore), emerging (Indonesia) and frontier (Myanmar), does that mean innovation has a different role to play in each of these markets? - Most Asian companies are currently in the phase of digital transformation and innovation, what are the key challenges do they face particularly in transitioning from traditional business & operations by increasing their digital technologies stack? \[19:01\] - Closing \[20:45\] - Can you recommend anything (and that can be in the form of a book, podcast, movie) that you find interesting in your work or life recently? \[21:03\] - Dirk’s recommendation: [The Open Organization](https://www.amazon.com/Open-Organization-Igniting-Passion-Performance/dp/1511392460?ref=analysepodcast.com) by James Whitehurst, CEO of Redhat. - How can my audience find you? (Social media or plug Redhat’s social media assets as well) \[22:20\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQ3Qtb8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2xEBrlL?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com))and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Lean In Singapore & Women Leadership in Asia with Helen Duce & Uma Balasingam URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-210-lean-singapore-women-leadership-asia-helen-duce-uma-balasingam/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:38.000Z [http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode\_210\_Lean\_In\_Singapore\_Women\_Leadership\_in\_Asia\_with\_Helen\_Duce\_Uma\_Balasingam.mp3](http://media.blubrry.com/analyseasia/p/traffic.libsyn.com/analyseasia/Episode%5F210%5FLean%5FIn%5FSingapore%5FWomen%5FLeadership%5Fin%5FAsia%5Fwith%5FHelen%5FDuce%5FUma%5FBalasingam.mp3?ref=analysepodcast.com) Helen Duce and Uma Thana Balasingam from Lean In Singapore joined us to discuss the movement that helps to progress the challenges of women leadership in the workplace. We discussed how Lean In Singapore provide help and coverage to women in their career progression and also its interaction with the other chapters across Asia. In the same conversation, Helen and Uma highlighted the unconscious biases and challenges which women faced in their career. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Helen Duce ([@helengreenocean](https://twitter.com/helengreenocean?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenduce/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Managing partner Green Ocean Group & Uma Thana Balasingam ([@umathana](https://twitter.com/UmaThana?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/umathana/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) VP, Channel & Sales of Riverbed Technology and both are co-founders of LeanIn SG. \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? (With Helen \[1:20\] and Uma \[5:28\]) - What is Helen’s role & coverage in Green Ocean Group \[2:22\] & Uma’s role and coverage in Riverbed Technology \[6:10\]? - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons learnt? (With Helen \[3:07\] and Uma \[6:49\]? - [Lean In SG](http://leanincircles.org/chapter/singapore?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@leaninSG](https://twitter.com/LeanInSG?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/LeaninSingapore/), [LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/company/lean-in-singapore?ref=analysepodcast.com)) and Women Leadership in Asia \[8:46\] - As an introduction, can you describe the concept of Lean In movement pioneered by Sheryl Sandberg in her famous book and TED Talk (who happens to be COO of Facebook)? \[9:10\] - How did you end up starting the chapter of Lean In Singapore together? \[10:18\] - What are the key objectives of the Lean In movement globally and then specifically in Singapore? \[13:54\] - What are the activities do the chapter typically get together and does the chapter also extend its invitation to other chapters within Asia? \[16:04\] - What are the key challenges for women in the workplace comparing US & Europe against Asia? \[18:54\] - What are the unconscious biases that we need to watch out pertaining in our workplaces when it comes to interactions with women? \[23:16\] - What are your advice to women in how they should approach practical things like taking on a more senior role or asking for a raise? \[26:15\] - How does men able to helping women to advance from home to the workplace? \[28:09\] - In your experience within Asia, do you see that women encounter the same kind of challenges as their counterparts in the US and Europe? Are there specific cultural differences? \[30:24\] - We have seen male CEOs, VCs and senior executives being outed for sexual harassment and even assault in some case coming from Silicon Valley, what are your perspectives on this? \[34:22\] - Why an honest dialogue between men and women in an area with psychological safety matters in such difficult conversations. \[37:58\] - Closing \[38:54\] - Can you recommend something (which can be a book, movie, podcast or anything else) to my audience that my audience can learn something from? - Uma: “[The Magic of Thinking Big](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Thinking-Big-David-Schwartz/dp/0671646788?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Joseph Schwatz, [Outliers](https://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1507691556&sr=1-1&keywords=outliers&ref=analysepodcast.com) by Malcolm Gladwell, Movie: [Hidden Figures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden%5FFigures?ref=analysepodcast.com), “[Dads and Daughters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL5fS9OGGPY&feature=youtu.be&ref=analysepodcast.com)” – Reinvent Mindsets, McKinsey & Company – [Addressing unconscious bias](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8UIW%5FPi5wU&feature=youtu.be&ref=analysepodcast.com), - Helen: Sheryl Sandberg’s “[Lean In](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/0385349947?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and [TED Talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl%5Fsandberg%5Fwhy%5Fwe%5Fhave%5Ftoo%5Ffew%5Fwomen%5Fleaders?ref=analysepodcast.com), Men and Women. - BL: [Dangal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangal%5F%28film%29?ref=analysepodcast.com) movie (2016) by Aamir Khan and Nitesh Tiwari. - How can my audience find you? \[42:06\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+KLCDolFtc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2yYXz6J?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com))and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### The Thailand Startup Ecosystem with Michael Waitze URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-209-thailand-startup-ecosystem-michael-waitze/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:37.000Z Michael Waitze, founding partner of Metaliq & host of Asia Tech Podcast joined us in a conversation to discuss the Thailand startup ecosystem. We discussed the interesting startups, incubators, accelerators and investors in Thailand and explore how the nascent ecosystem is evolving in the past few years. Last but not least, we discussed how the Chinese technology giants: Tencent and Alibaba are extending their influence in Thailand. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Michael Waitze ([@MichaelWaitze](https://twitter.com/MichaelWaitze?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelwaitze/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Founding Partner of Metaliq and host of “[Asia Tech Podcast](http://www.asiatechpodcast.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:29\] - What eventually brought you from Japan to Thailand? \[2:38\] - What is your current role and coverage as the founding partner of Metaliq? \[4:06\] - Through your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you have learnt? \[6:38\] - Thailand Startup Ecosystem \[7:37\] - How does one navigate the Thailand startup ecosystem from the outside? \[7:56\] - Is the Thai startup ecosystem embracing international talent or insular from your perspective? \[9:18\] - Where are most of the startups aggregated in Thailand? Is there a location where most of these companies are placed similar to Blk 71 in Singapore, Gangnam in South Korea? \[11:03\] - What are the key verticals that most Thailand startups excel in? \[14:16\] - What are the key interesting startups in Thailand from seed to unicorn? \[17:24\] - Whenever there are entrepreneurs, there will be investors. Who are the VCs or angels that we should know in the ecosystem? \[18:41\] - Are there any Thai local angel investors? \[23:55\] - What are the accelerators and incubators in Thailand which are of interest? \[25:00\] - What are the key events that foreign entrepreneurs & investors need to attend in Thailand? \[26:30\] - Recently, Tencent and JD dot com have been very active in Thailand, how is the startup ecosystem reacting to thse China tech giants? \[28:19\] - Asia Tech Podcast \[30:00\] - What is the back story behind the Asia Tech podcast? \[30:06\] - How do you select your guests on the show? \[36:56\] - Closing \[39:22\] - Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or documentary which you have seen that is interesting recently? \[39:31\] - Michael: [Angel by Jason Calacanis](https://www.amazon.com/Angel-Invest-Technology-Startups-Timeless-Investor/dp/0062560700?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the [Accidental Tech Podcast](http://atp.fm/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - BL: “[Narrative & Numbers](https://www.amazon.com/Narrative-Numbers-Business-Columbia-Publishing/dp/0231180489/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1507127089&sr=1-1&keywords=numbers+and+narrative&ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Aswath Damodaran - Where do my audience find you? \[42:05\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQzHSEc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2ypxXnt?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Microsoft Enterprise in Asia Pacific with Ricky Kapur URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-208-microsoft-enterprise-asia-pacific-ricky-kapur/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:37.000Z Ricky Kapur, the general manager from the Enterprise Group in Microsoft, Asia Pacific joined us to discuss the footprint of the Microsoft Enterprise in Asia Pacific. Ricky discussed how Microsoft is working with companies in Asia, leveraging on their technologies in cloud computing, AI and Internet of Things to tackle digital transformation & disruption. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Ricky Kapur, General Manager, Enterprise Group, Microsoft Asia Pacific ([@KapurRicky](https://twitter.com/KapurRicky?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kapurricky/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:46\] - How did you start your career? \[1:23\] - How did you end up joining Microsoft? \[3:06\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons learnt? \[4:22\] - Microsoft Enterprise in Asia Pacific \[5:38\] - Can you give an introduction about Microsoft and its current focus in the enterprise? \[5:56\] - When we discussed the enterprise business in Microsoft, what are the products and services associated? \[10:05\] - Office 365 - Microsoft Dynamics - Cortana (AI) - Yammer / LinkedIn - Skype - Specifically, can you talk about the Microsoft dynamics and how it is helping companies in the CRM space? \[15:03\] - Since we are in Asia, has Microsoft Enterprise localized some of their products particularly in the emerging and frontier markets? \[17:21\] - How does Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing environment distinguish itself from other competitors in the market? \[19:52\] - Specifically in the IoT and AI space where Microsoft has a strong foothold in, how do they incorporate them into the enterprise for the different industries out there? \[24:06\] - Digital Disruption and Digital Transformation - Most traditional companies in Asia are currently facing disruption and have created digital transformation programs to shift their company into the digital age, what do you see are the biggest challenges for these companies and how would they be able to solve it? \[28:05\] - What would be your advice to CIO or CDOs out there on thinking about digital disruption? \[31:40\] - Closing \[34:30\] - Can you recommend a book, TV show, movie or anything that you have found interesting recently? \[34:35\] - Ricky’s recommendation: “[Extreme Ownership](https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs-ebook/dp/B00VE4Y0Z2?ref=analysepodcast.com): How US Navy Seals lead & win” by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin - BL’s Recommendation: “High Output Management” by Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel. - How do my audience find you? \[36:38\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQTlSaE?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2wlHcQF?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com))and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### The Shenzhen Startup Ecosystem with Jan Smejkal URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-207-the-shenzhen-startup-ecosystem-with-jan-smejkal/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:37.000Z Jan Smejkal, China & Asia Pacific community director of Startup Grind joined us to discuss the Shenzhen startup ecosystem in China. He provided an comprehensive overview of the interesting startups, incubators, accelerators and venture capital firms within Shenzhen and most importantly, how the major players such as Huawei and Tencent are currently interacting with them. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Jan Smejkal ([@yourchinaguy](http://twitter.com/yourchinaguy?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yourchinaguy/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), China & APAC Community Director at [Startup Grind](https://www.startupgrind.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How did you start your career? \[1:20\] - What made you end setting Shenzhen as the place in China to stay as compared to many who will go to Beijing or Shanghai? \[2:53\] - In your journey, what are the interesting career lessons you can share with my audience? \[4:00\] - Can you briefly introduce Startup Grind to my audience? \[5:25\] - What’s your current role & coverage in Startup Grind? \[7:04\] - Startup Ecosystem in Shenzhen, China \[8:32\] - For a start, how would you characterize the Shenzhen startup ecosystem to someone from the outside? \[8:49\] - Is Shenzhen the modern day version of Silicon Valley, given the presence of Tencent, Huawei and DJI similar to Facebook, Google and HP? \[11:51\] - What are the key traits of the Shenzhen startup ecosystem? \[13:36\] - Which are the interesting startups within the ecosystem? \[14:54\] - [DJI](https://www.dji.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Insta360](https://www.insta360.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [MakeBlock](http://www.makeblock.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - What are the key accelerators and incubators in Shenzhen? \[18:45\] - [HAX](https://hax.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Brinc](https://brinc.io/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Who are the investors in Shenzhen, for example, venture capitalists and early stage angels? \[21:36\] - Shenzhen Capital Group - What are the key events that people can attend in Shenzhen to get an introduction? \[23:58\] - Shenzhen is the home of a few well-known Chinese companies: Huawei, DJI and Tencent, how do they interact with the startup ecosystem? \[26:31\] - Closing \[28:58\] - Can you recommend a book, podcast, movie or something which you have find interesting recently? - Jan’s recommendation: “[Banking on Bitcoin](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5033790/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” movie - How do my audience find you? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQmGib4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2ytGYbZ?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com))and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Carousell & Scaling in Asia with Marcus Tan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-206-carousell-scaling-asia-marcus-tan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:36.000Z Marcus Tan, co-founder and president of Carousell joined us in a conversation on his company which he co-founded and where it is heading after their series B round with leading investors such as Rakuten Ventures & Sequoia Capital. We discussed the humble beginnings of Carousell as a mobile marketplace and how the company has scaled by focusing on their culture. Marcus shared some of the interesting lessons which he learned from his investors and how they scale their company from Singapore into Asia. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Marcus Tan, co-founder & president of Carousell ([@CuriousMarcus](https://twitter.com/curiousmarcus?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/curiousmarcus/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:12\] - From your career journey, what are the interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? \[3:07\] - [Carousell](https://carousell.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Crunchbase](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/carousell?ref=analysepodcast.com#/entity)) \[5:42\] - Introduction: Carousell is a mobile & online consumer marketplace for buying & selling new & secondhand goods over 19 cities. Headquartered in Singapore founded by Quek Siu Rui, Lucas Ngoo and Marcus Tan. - To start, what is the back story behind how you and your fellow co-founders start Carousell? \[6:05\] - What is the current vision and mission of Carousell? \[7.55\] - How does the consumer access Carousell through mobile? \[10:12\] - How does buyers and sellers use Carousell as a marketplace and what are the interesting services that Carousell has placed to better help sellers? \[11:42\] - Who are the investors of Carousell and what stage of funding you are in? \[16:40\] - Rakuten Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, 500 Startups, Sequoia Capital and Darius Cheung - The backstory in how Vinnie Lauria from Golden Gate Ventures become an investor and led them to Rakuten Ventures. You can hear Vinnie’s perspective in one of our [early episodes](https://analyse.asia/2015/01/31/episode-15-golden-gate-san-francisco-singapore/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - What is the footprint of Carousell across Asia? Can you discuss how the company has expanded and what are the interesting challenges you face? \[20:30\] - Recently, Carousell has won one of the best tech companies to work in. Can you talk about what the values of the workplace you are advocating and how you facilitate collaboration within the company? \[22:52\] - You have made some acquisitions, how do you integrate those new teams and get them on board to your company? \[24:08\] - What keeps you up at night with thinking about the next steps for Carousell? \[25:45\] - Closing \[27:33\] - Can you recommend anything (book, podcast or movie) which you have recently learned from? \[27:38\] - Marcus: “[The Hard Thing about Hard Things](https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205?ref=analysepodcast.com)” by Ben Horowitz - Where can we find Marcus Tan? \[28:10\] - Check out what [he’s selling on Carousell](http://carousell.com/marcus?ref=analysepodcast.com). **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTnTpDM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2xqLsSB?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com))and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Qtum Foundation from China to Global with Patrick Dai URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-205-qtum-foundation-china-global-patrick-dai/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:36.000Z Patrick Dai, co-founder & chairman of Qtum foundation joined us in a conversation to discuss the backstory behind Qtum Foundation. We discussed the mission and vision of Qtum as a open source blockchain project emerging from China and now armed with a global team that is spread across the world. We discussed the technologies and applications which arise from the Qtum project and where the blockchain industry is heading. Last but not least, Patrick also shared his thoughts on government regulation and ICOs. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Patrick Dai, Founder and Chairman of Qtum Foundation (Qtum is pronounciated as Quantum), in the Forbes 30 under 30 list. \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:26\] - From there, how did you end up creating Qtum Foundation? \[1:54\] - Throughout your journey, what are the interesting career lessons that you can share? \[2:23\] - What is Patrick’s nickname when he was in Alibaba? The answer can be [found here](https://medium.com/@Qtum/qtums-patrick-dai-named-to-forbes-30-under-30-list-2f5c15531209?ref=analysepodcast.com). \[3:33\] - [Qtum ](https://qtum.org/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com)([@QtumFoundation](https://twitter.com/QtumFoundation?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat: qtumfoundation) \[4:02\] - To start, can you talk about the concept of cryptocurrency, blockchain and bitcoin? \[4:09\] - Specifically in China, how do you see the development of these technologies been in the past two years? \[5:41\] - Does China lead in bitcoin mining has an impact to blockchain technologies? \[6:33\] - Can you talk about the vision and mission of Qtum? \[7:33\] - In an interesting article by Eva Yoo on Technode, [Qtum seeks to unify Ethereum & Bitcoin blockchain applications](http://technode.com/2017/01/13/qtum-wants-to-unify-bitcoin-and-ethereum-blockchain-applications/?ref=analysepodcast.com), how do you propose to do that? \[9:27\] - Does Qtum build on top of Ethereum’s tokenization technology? \[11:22\] - How does the Qtum foundation governance structure work for those who are involved? \[12:02\] - Who are on the team of Qtum that are spearheading the developing of the open source blockchain protocol? \[14:05\] - What are the key technologies that Qtum are focusing to develop for the blockchain space? \[15:31\] - How does Qtum work with the existing technologies such as Wechat in the current applications space? \[17:43\] - The ICO phenomenon has been exciting. Can you talk about your perspectives and how you perceive ICOs? \[19:13\] - Which bitcoin exchanges where we can find Qtum to be traded? \[22:06\] - How does Qtum differ from the rest of the blockchain projects out there, for example, Ethereum, given that it’s working on the smart contracts space?\[23:12\] - Closing \[25:47\] - Can you recommend an book, podcast, movie or film in your area of expertise which you have read that is useful to you recently? - Sapiens: A brief history of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari - How can my audience find you? **Editor’s note:** *The interview with Patrick Dai was done [before China banned ICOs](http://www.businessinsider.com/r-china-bans-initial-coin-offerings-as-illegal-fundraising-2017-9/?IR=T&ref=analysepodcast.com).* **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSCImp4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2fhJolR?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com))and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Myth Busters, the China Edition with John Artman URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-204-myth-busters-china-edition-john-artman/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:35.000Z John Artman, editor in chief for Technode and host of China Tech Talk podcast joined us to debunk the narratives on China that has been propagated from different parts of the world. We began with his story and how he came to China. In our discussion, we dissect the different myths about the Chinese government, media censorship, lack of innovation, efficiency and last but not least, education. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - John Artman ([@knowsnothing](https://twitter.com/KnowsNothing?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jartman/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Editor in Chief from [Technode](http://technode.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and Host of China Tech Talk ([Apple Podcasts](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/china-tech-talk/id1228528520?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:56\] - When did you move from US to China \[6:39\] - In your career journey, what are the interesting lessons you can share with my audience? \[7:17\] - Myth Busters, the China Edition \[8:43\] - Myth 1: China is a communist country and only cares about itself. \[8:43\] - What’s does China government care about people? \[11:54\] - With the “One Belt One Road” initiative how does China’s new silk road dreams signify its shift from a regional to a global power? \[14:30\] - Myth 2: Censorship is everywhere & the Chinese government controls everything \[17:58\] - Recently, the Chinese government has pressured Apple to cave on VPN apps in China’s iTunes app store, are they increasing their footprint in censorship? \[20:24\] - Myth 3: There is no innovation in China. \[23:35\] - What are the interesting innovations which the US media seem to miss by propagating the narrative that China only copies and clones? (Wechat, Fintech, AI, Qtum, Alibaba) - Changing narrative from Silicon Valley in how they looked at China tech startups - Myth 4: China is better at “getting things done” \[31:17\] - Myth 5: China has better STEM education \[35:00\] - Closing \[41:04\] - Do you have any recommendations (podcast, books or movies) for my audience? - Noah Yuval Hanari, “[Homo Deus](http://www.ynharari.com/book/homo-deus/?ref=analysepodcast.com)” and “[Sapiens](http://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens/?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - [Cal Newport, “Deep Work”](http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Henry Kissinger, “[On China](https://www.amazon.com/China-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0143121316?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - BL’s recommendation: Henry Kissinger, “[World Order](https://www.amazon.com/World-Order-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0143127713?ref=analysepodcast.com)“ - How do my audience find John Artman? **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtThlcPI?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2eosDEx?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com))and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Weibo is not Twitter of China with Matthew Brennan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-203-weibo-is-not-twitter-of-china-with-matthew-brennan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:35.000Z Matthew Brennan from China Channel & host of China Tech Talk podcast joined us on a discussion on Sina Weibo and why it is not the “Twitter” of China. We discussed the origins, the products, revenue & business models in Weibo, and how it was spun off from its parent company, Sina. Matthew also explained why Weibo has been far more successful than Twitter and where it stands against the other Chinese social platforms for example, Wechat. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel dot co ([chinachannel.co](http://chinachannel.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [@MattyBGooner](https://twitter.com/MattyBGooner?ref=analysepodcast.com) , [Linkedin](https://cn.linkedin.com/in/matthew-brennan?ref=analysepodcast.com), Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:16\] - [CHina CHat 2017](https://chinachannel.co/china-chat-conference-2017-sponsor-exhibitors/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in Sep 2017\. You can order the tickets via [Event Bank in China](https://www.eventbank.cn/event/10435/home.html?ref=analysepodcast.com) (in China and pay via Yuan/RMB) and [Eventbrite](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/china-chat-shanghai-2017-tickets-36769892739?ref=analysepodcast.com) (USD$) \[1:51\] - Recently, [Apple banned all VPNs apps on their app store](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/29/apple-removes-vpn-apps-from-the-app-store-in-china/?ref=analysepodcast.com), so how does it impact the expats there? \[3:40\] - [Weibo ](http://weibo.com/login.php?ref=analysepodcast.com)([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sina%5FWeibo?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/WB:US?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[4:41\] - Introduction: Sina Weibo, started off as a Chinese micro-blogging site in 2009 otherwise known as the Twitter of China. Originally owned by [Sina corp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sina%5FCorp?ref=analysepodcast.com), and now it is spun off into a public listed company on 17 April 2014 in NASDAQ US, currently at market capitalisation of US$16.98B. According to [China Daily](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2017-05/18/content%5F29393533.htm?ref=analysepodcast.com), Weibo has now 340M monthly active users which overtakes Twitter with 328M monthly active users to date. From the same article, the total revenue of Weibo in the first quarter reached 1.37 billion yuan (\~ US$200 million), a 76 percent rise over the first quarter 2016\. Weibo’s profits increased 278% during the same period. Both stats exceeded Wall Street expectations. The advertising revenues for Weibo reached 1.17 billion yuan, increasing 80% year-on-year. - Let’s talk about the backstory, How did Weibo started off as a project within Sina and subsequently become a public listed company on its own? (Also check out [Charles Chao, founder & CEO of Sina made a bet on Weibo](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-06/how-charles-chao-bet-500-million-on-himself-and-got-even-richer?ref=analysepodcast.com) on Bloomberg decrypted podcast) \[5:28\] - How does Weibo work as a micro-blogging service for Chinese users? \[9:49\] - What are the major product features of Weibo? \[11:52\] - Live-streaming - Microblogging - Chat with people - Book a taxi (Didi) - Ecommerce with Taobao - Recent introduction of stories (cloned from Snapchat and Instagram) - What are the revenue streams for Weibo? \[13:43\] - Advertising - Key opinion leaders (KOLs) economy. - How does Weibo deal with regulation and content that is sensitive to the Chinese government, for example, [Winnie the Pooh](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-40627855?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[15:40\] - What can [Twitter learn from Weibo](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2017/06/06/the-rise-of-weibo-lessons-twitter-can-learn-from-chinese-upstart/?ref=analysepodcast.com#5c57d96b20b0)? \[16:48\] - How is Weibo compared to other major platforms such as Wechat, QQ? \[19:08\] - Will Weibo or Tencent have the capacity to buy Twitter sometime in the future? \[22:28\] - Closing \[24:25\] - Do you have any recommendations (podcast, books or movies) for my audience? \[24:25\] - Podcast: [China Tech Talk](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/china-tech-talk/id1228528520?ref=analysepodcast.com) of course 😉 - Book: [The Everything Store – Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon-ebook/dp/B00BWQW73E?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Brad Stone (who has been on [episode 180](https://analyse.asia/2017/06/13/episode-180-upstarts-brad-stone/?ref=analysepodcast.com) to talk about his recent book, “The Upstarts”) - How do my audience find you? \[26:10\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSsKedA?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2wRKrm6?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) & my [weibo account](https://weibo.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com))and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Japan Startup Ecosystem in 2017 with James Riney URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-202-japan-startup-ecosystem-2017-james-riney/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:34.000Z James Riney from 500 Startups, Japan joined us in a conversation to discuss the evolution of Japan startup ecosystem. We discussed where the 500 Startups Japan fund is now, some interesting tidbits on what is happening with the ecosystem there, and his perspectives on payment startups versus banks & whether ICOs will displace venture capitalists. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - James Riney ([@james\_riney](https://twitter.com/james%5Friney?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://jp.linkedin.com/in/jamesriney?ref=analysepodcast.com), [personal website](http://www.jamesriney.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Head of 500 Startups, Japan. \[0:38\] - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[0:48\] - What’s your daily routine as a venture capitalist like? \[1:40\] - 500 Startups and Japan Startup Ecosystem \[2:55\] - 500 Startups Japan has now a team and closed a recent round from your LPs. Can you give an update who’s on your team and who are the LPs that funded the Japan fund? (for example, [Japan Government Fund](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-14/japan-government-fund-backs-500-startups-seeks-vc-investment?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[3:15\] - What are the interesting investments you have made with 500 Startups? \[3:34\] - [Infostellar](https://www.infostellar.net/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SmartHR](https://smarthr.jp/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How has the Japan startup ecosystem evolved in the past two years since we last spoke? \[7:05\] - [Do Japanese startups with global ambition need to speak English](http://www.jamesriney.com/english-vs-japanese-company/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? Given that Rakuten is one of the first companies that pushed English to be their main language years back, have we seen other major Japanese corporations do the same? \[8:00\] - Recently, you penned a piece on TechCrunch entitled “[There’s a war brewing in Japan and the banks should pay attention](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/theres-a-war-brewing-in-japan-and-the-banks-should-pay-attention/?ref=analysepodcast.com)”. The piece touched on two interesting points \[10:01\] - People referred to the term “time machine model” in Japan, can you describe what it is about? \[10:21\] - One interesting example is how Flipboard led to the rise of Smartnews and Gunosy, can you talk about how these two startups raise huge amounts of funding, and led to war? \[11:10\] - Does the time machine model mutate the startup after their localisation? \[12:25\] - So you talked about the similar war now with mobile P2P payments? Can you talk about what the battle is about? \[13:30\] - What are the interesting startups in the mobile P2P payments? \[15:37\] - LINE Pay - Kash - Paymo (started by the CEO of Gunosy) - Youdopay - When will the Japan regulators come in with these mobile P2P payment startups moving into banking sector? \[16:16\] - Recently, there is a lot of attention on initial coin offerings or ICOs with Bancor raised over $153M, TenX raised US$80M and Omise raised US$25M, do you see the [possibility that venture capital firms be replaced by ICOs](http://www.jamesriney.com/how-icos-could-profoundly-impact-venture-capital/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[16:58\] - What are the interesting verticals that you will be watching next in Japan and elsewhere in Asia? \[18:20\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtTQ826o?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2vXwTVe?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw)](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Cherubic Ventures & Taiwan Startup Ecosystem with Tina Cheng URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-201-cherubic-ventures-taiwan-startup-ecosystem-with-tina-cheng/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:34.000Z Tina Cheng from Cherubic Ventures joined us in a conversation about the firm’s investments across the region from Greater China to US. We discussed the mission, vision and management team behind Cherubic Ventures and discuss how they looked at founders & startups as an early stage investor. Last but not least, she also shared her perspectives on the Taiwan startup ecosystem from an investor’s perspective. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Tina Cheng ([@tinacheng](https://twitter.com/tinacheng?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-cheng-76520a2/?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Partner, Cherubic Ventures \[0:38\] - How did you start your career? \[1:02\] - What is the transition in shifting from entrepreneur to venture capitalist? \[3:47\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons you can share with my audience? \[4:57\] - What is the daily routine of a venture capitalist for someone like yourself? \[7:30\] - [Cherubic Ventures](http://cherubicvc.com/en/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Venture Capital Ecosystem in Taiwan \[9:12\] - What is the mission and vision of Cherubic Ventures? \[9:20\] - What is your current role and coverage in Cherubic Ventures? \[10:15\] - Who are the key partners in the management team of Cherubic Ventures? \[10:44\] - Do you have an investment thesis? If so, can you share with us? \[11:22\] - [Flexport ](http://flexport.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do you identify founders of startups to invest in? What are the key traits you look in them? \[12:45\] - What are the common issues that the venture capital firm typically help founders to do? \[14:10\] - How do you help founders when their startups are in trouble? What are the “do-nots” that you tell them? \[15:43\] - What are the interesting companies on the [Cherubic Ventures portfolio](http://cherubicvc.com/en/companies/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[18:11\] - [Liulishuo](https://www.liulishuo.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) – Edutech - [Calm](http://calm.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - How do you see the Taiwan startup ecosystem from your viewpoint? \[20:56\] - What are the challenges of the Taiwan startup ecosystem from your perspective? \[26:30\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQBM1p4?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2wfFc03?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw)](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-200-analyse-asia-bernard-leong/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:33.000Z Our host, Bernard Leong is on the hot seat for this special 200th episode to be interviewed by Charles Reed Anderson. Bernard discussed his day job, his time in Singularity University at Silicon Valley last year and work achievements to date. In the same conversation, he offered his perspectives in how the major ecommerce battles will pan out across Southeast Asia and India, where the major technology shifts such as drone delivery, AI and blockchain will happen in Asia and why the center of gravity for growth will be in Asia for the next few decades. Last but not least, he discussed the future for Analyse Asia and how you, the audience can help us to grow for the next stage. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Our guest host: Charles Anderson ([@CRASingapore](https://twitter.com/CRASingapore?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ LinkedIn](https://sg.linkedin.com/in/charlesreedanderson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Charles Reed Anderson and Associates](http://www.charlesreedanderson.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - On the interview chair: Bernard Leong ([@bleongcw](https://twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com), [main site](http://bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - **Time to turn the tables \[0:52\]** - Your podcasts give the listeners the opportunities to learn a lot about your guests. But, strangely, most listeners won’t know a lot about you. Why don’t we kick off by having you give us some background on Bernard Leong? \[0:52\] - [SingPost’s SAM wins World Post & Parcel Award 2017 for Retail Access](http://www.singpost.com/about-us/news-releases/singpost%E2%80%99s-sam-wins-world-post-and-parcel-award?ref=analysepodcast.com). - Last year you attended [Singularity U](http://su.org/?ref=analysepodcast.com) – for those who aren’t familiar with it – can you give the listeners a brief overview and then tell us about what you learned there and how it has changed the way you work/your vision for the future? \[3:43\] - So in addition to running this podcast, you also have your full time job with Singpost, have a family, are an avid reader, etc. My question is, #1 do you sleep? And #2 – what do you do (or what would you do) if you have some free time? \[6:35\] - Reference: [Ron Chernow’s “Titan”](https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303?ref=analysepodcast.com) - **Let’s talk a bit about your Analyse Asia podcast \[9:07\]** - You have now done 199 interviews over the past X years, what was the most surprising or shocking thing you have heard? (could be about something you learned, gained a new perspective or insight, etc) \[9:07\] - If there was one interview that you think the listeners should go back and listen to again – which one would it be? - The interviews with Horace Dediu of [Asymco](http://asymco.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com). (Part [1](https://analyse.asia/2015/05/19/episode-31-the-asymco-trilogy-with-horace-dediu-part-1-new-market-disruption/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [2](https://analyse.asia/2015/05/22/episode-32-the-asymco-trilogy-with-horace-dediu-part-2-apple-in-asia-luxury/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [3](https://analyse.asia/2015/05/25/episode-33-the-asymco-trilogy-with-horace-dediu-part-3-the-asian-cars-edition/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [4](https://analyse.asia/2017/02/25/episode-166-modular-revolution-startup-strategy-horace-dediu/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [5](https://analyse.asia/2017/03/01/episode-167-apple-anomaly-narrative-horace-dediu/?ref=analysepodcast.com), [6](https://analyse.asia/2017/03/06/episode-168-tesla-jesus-car-horace-dediu/?ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[11:15\] - I’m sure that despite doing 200 interviews, you must have some kind of “interview wish list” for the future. Care to give us some insights on which people – or which topics – you’d like to bring into your podcast? \[12:29\] - **The Current Market from drone delivery, ecommerce to startups in Asia \[14:25\]** - Wang Wu ([@wangwu15](https://twitter.com/wangwu15?ref=analysepodcast.com)) asks “What are your perspectives on Drones in Asia Pacific?” This is interesting for those who don’t know that Bernard was part of the SingPost team that launched the first commercial drone delivery last year. In addition to your perspectives on the wider industry, what insights did you gain from the SingPost project? (Ref: BL’s article in Infocomm & Media Development Authority of Singapore, “[The Future of Drone Delivery](https://www.imda.gov.sg/infocomm-and-media-news/viewpoint/2017/3/the-future-of-drone-delivery?ref=analysepodcast.com)“) \[14:33\] - Lived Nomed ([@livednomed](https://twitter.com/livednomed?ref=analysepodcast.com)) asks “how do you think the Asia’s eCommerce battles will play out? \[20:33\] - Check out BL’s discussion with Matthew Brennan & John Artman in [China Tech Talk episode 13](http://technode.com/2017/07/21/china-tech-talk-13-ats-southeast-asia-entrance-with-bernard-leong/?ref=analysepodcast.com). - [Arnoud Bonzom](http://arnaudbonzom.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@arnaudbonzom](https://twitter.com/arnaudbonzom?ref=analysepodcast.com)) asks “ What are your 3 favourite underrated startups in Singapore?” \[23:30\] - [CXA Group](https://www.cxagroup.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Rosaline Koo](https://analyse.asia/2016/01/13/episode-86-insurance-cxa-group-in-asia-with-rosaline-koo/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Lunch Actually](https://www.lunchactually.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Violet Lim](https://analyse.asia/2016/02/13/episode-92-dating-industry-in-asia-lunch-actually-group-with-violet-lim/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & Jamie Lee (who happens to be one of BL’s angel investments) - [Ideal Workspace](https://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by [Deng Yuying](https://twitter.com/yuyingdeng?ref=analysepodcast.com) (who happens to be BL’s wife). - **The Future View** - What technology or technologies do you think are undervalued today? What will it take for them to rise to the forefront? \[24:26\] - Mathew Benjamin from Asia Recon ([@asiarecon](https://twitter.com/asiarecon?ref=analysepodcast.com)) asks “What will the future look like for technology in Asia?” \[27:15\] - **Closer** - Rick Lee ([@ricklee10000](https://twitter.com/ricklee10000?ref=analysepodcast.com)) asks “What are the three books do you recommend for your listeners?” \[29:40\] - [Sapiens](http://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens/?ref=analysepodcast.com) & [Homo Deus](http://www.ynharari.com/book/homo-deus/?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Yuval Noah Hanari - [Competing Against Luck](https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062435613/competing-against-luck?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon & David S Duncan. - [Hit Makers](https://www.amazon.com/Hit-Makers-Science-Popularity-Distraction/dp/110198032X?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Derek Thompson - When I interview you for your 300th episode, which will be at some point over the next couple years, how will the technology industry have changed and what will be the “hot topics”? \[31:32\] - And the last question, what does the future hold for Analyse Asia? \[34:27\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtSp%5FB8Y?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2uC1Lrl?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw)](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Vectr Ventures in Hong Kong with Alan Chan URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-199-vectr-ventures-hong-kong-alan-chan/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:33.000Z Alan Chan joined us in a conversation to discuss his firm, Vectr Ventures in Hong Kong and offer his perspectives on the Hong Kong startup ecosystem. He shared his investment thesis & his insights in how he work with the startups as an investor. Last but not least, we discuss his interest and work in the conservation of the environment. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Alan Chan ([@achanman](https://twitter.com/achanman?ref=analysepodcast.com), [LinkedIn](https://hk.linkedin.com/in/alan-chan-34b34b7?ref=analysepodcast.com)), Co-founder, [Vectr Ventures](http://vectr.co/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@vectr\_ventures](https://twitter.com/Vectr%5FVentures?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - How did you start your career? \[1:12\] - How did you end up becoming a venture capitalist? \[1:41\] - Throughout your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons you can share with my audience? \[4:26\] - Vectr Ventures & Investor Scene in Hong Kong \[7:06\] - What is the motivation behind starting Vectr Ventures? \[7:17\] - What is your current role and coverage in Vectr Ventures? \[8:40\] - What’s the mission and vision of Vectr Ventures? \[9:07\] - Do you have an investment thesis? If so, can you share them? \[11:16\] - Who are in the team within Vectr Ventures? \[12:26\] - How do you identify founders of startups to invest in? What are the key traits you look in them? \[15:04\] - How do you help founders when their startups are in trouble? What are the “do-nots” that you tell them? \[16:50\] - What are the interesting companies on the [Vectr Ventures portfolio](http://vectr.co/portfolio/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[18:42\] - [NextVR](http://www.nextvr.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) - [DayDayCook](http://www.daydaycook.com/daydaycook/hk/website/index.do?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Land Life Company](http://www.landlifecompany.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Other geographies which Vectr Ventures invest in. \[21:40\] - How do you see the Hong Kong startup ecosystem from your viewpoint? \[22:28\] - What are the challenges of the Hong Kong startup ecosystem from your perspective? \[24:49\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtRQcjBM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2fs7YUc?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw)](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Samsung Electronics in 2017 with Jan Dawson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-198-samsung-group-2017-jan-dawson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:33.000Z Jan Dawson from Jackdaw Research, host of Beyond Devices and Tech Narratives podcast joined us in a two part conversation discussing the tech narratives of the technology giants in Asia & the Korean chaebol: the Samsung Group. In the second of the two part conversation, we discussed the Samsung Group, and how the business is structured into various subsidiaries and the key executives who are behind the consumer electronics giant. Jan also explained the recent high profitability for Samsung in the 2nd quarter, 2017 and how it might approach the self driving car space with the acquisition of Harmann Kardon. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Jan Dawson ([@jandawson](https://twitter.com/jandawson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Jackdaw research](https://jackdawresearch.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and host of the [Beyond Devices](http://www.beyonddevic.es/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the[ Beyond Devices podcast](http://podcast.beyonddevic.es/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond-devices-podcast/id1002197313?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/beyonddevicespodcast?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with Aaron Miller. \[1:14\] - Contributor to[ Techpinions](https://techpinions.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) &[ Techpinions podcast](https://techpinions.com/category/the-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/techpinions/id868991384?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com),[ SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/techpinions?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - [Tech Narratives](https://www.technarratives.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-narratives-podcast/id1252808525?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Samsung Electronics in 2017 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Samsung Electronics in Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/005930:KS?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=005930.KS&ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[1:25\] - Quick Introduction: Samsung is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Suwon, South Korea with market capitalization of approximately 367.8T won \~ US$0.33T. (Ref: [Money, Power, Family: Inside South Korea’s Chaebo](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/south-korea-chaebol-samsung.html?%5Fr=0&ref=analysepodcast.com)l, NY Times) - What is the [mission & vision](http://www.samsung.com/sg/aboutsamsung/?ref=analysepodcast.com) of the Samsung Conglomerate or in Korean language, we called the [Chaebol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[1:49\] - How is the Samsung divided up into their separate subsidiaries and what are their key business lines? For example, their semiconductors and screens run independently from Apple, yet compete with them at the same time with the mobile phone with Samsung Galaxy 8\. \[2:57\] - Who are the key executives or [board members](http://www.samsung.com/sg/aboutsamsung/samsungelectronics/executives/executives%5F02/?ref=analysepodcast.com) of Samsung or their subsidiaries, for example, consumer electronics, mobility & components business relating to OLED screens & solid state drives in mobile phones? \[7:00\] - Kwon Oh Hyun - Yoon Boo Keun - Shin Jong Kyun - Samsung is expected to report [the highest profit in Q2 2017](https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/7/15933148/samsung-record-profit-earnings-guidance-q2-2017?ref=analysepodcast.com) with revenue up 18% and profit up 72% from last year, where are the profitability coming from? \[9:03\] - Is Samsung mobile growing or just in the plateau or decline? \[11:40\] - Given that it’s a year after the Samsung Note 7 debacle, in your opinion, do you think that the company has managed to recover from their setback with the Galaxy 8? \[12:44\] - Will they rebrand the Note 8 or just stick with the brand name? \[15:10\] - If we reverse this hypothetically to Apple, have it been much worse for them? \[16:27\] (Check out Jan Dawson and Aaron Miller’s [“Beyond Devices” episode 63](http://podcast.beyonddevic.es/2016/09/episode-63-research-on-product-recalls-iphone-7-watch-2-review/?ref=analysepodcast.com) where they did an excellent discussion on brand recalls in history in context to the Samsung Note 7). - Is Samsung’s recent acquisition of [Harman Kardon](http://www.harmankardon.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) signaled their focus into the autonomous vehicles space? \[18:49\] - Additional reference: [A deep dive on Samsung Electronics](https://techpinions.com/a-deep-dive-on-samsung-electronics/50664?ref=analysepodcast.com) by Jan Dawson in Techpinions (require subscription). - In Verne Harnish’s “Fortune: the Greatest Decisions of All Time”, Lee Kuh Hee, the founder & Chairman of Samsung made an important decision to let its star performers to take a sabbatical and it helped to internationalise the company. **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtQq1iw8?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2fbq6Bo?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw)](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. ### Tech Narratives with BAT & Softbank in Asia with Jan Dawson URL: https://www.analysepodcast.com/episode-197-tech-narratives-bat-softbank-asia-jan-dawson/ Last updated: 2026-07-19T13:50:32.000Z Jan Dawson from Jackdaw Research & host of Beyond Devices and Tech Narratives podcast joined us in a two part conversation discussing the tech narratives of the technology giants in Asia & the Korean chaebol: the Samsung Group. In the first of the two part conversation, he discussed the motivation behind creating the Tech Narratives site and how he covered the global technology giants in general. In the same conversation, we discussed the major narratives from global expansions to breakthrough technologies such as self driving cars that encompass the Asia technology giants from BAT in China to Softbank in Japan. Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included): - Jan Dawson ([@jandawson](https://twitter.com/jandawson?ref=analysepodcast.com)), founder of [Jackdaw research](https://jackdawresearch.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and host of the [Beyond Devices](http://www.beyonddevic.es/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and the[ Beyond Devices podcast](http://podcast.beyonddevic.es/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond-devices-podcast/id1002197313?ref=analysepodcast.com),[ SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/beyonddevicespodcast?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with Aaron Miller. \[1:14\] - Contributor to[ Techpinions](https://techpinions.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) &[ Techpinions podcast](https://techpinions.com/category/the-podcast?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/techpinions/id868991384?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com),[ SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/techpinions?ref=analysepodcast.com)) - Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? \[1:31\] - How is it like covering Asian companies such as BAT from the US? \[2:16\] - [Tech Narratives](https://www.technarratives.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-narratives-podcast/id1252808525?mt=2&ref=analysepodcast.com)) \[3:05\] - What is the motivation behind setting up the Tech Narratives site and podcast? \[3:24\] - How does the website select or feature a tech story and explain the narrative? \[7:47\] - Specifically in Asia, what are the major companies with tech narratives that you cover and why? \[9:55\] - Let’s discuss a few tech narratives with the major dominant companies in Asia - [Baidu](https://www.technarratives.com/companies/baidu/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Baidu has made a couple of headlines in autonomous vehicles aka self driving cars by [opening up their platform](https://www.technarratives.com/2017/07/05/baidu-fleshes-out-its-open-platform-for-autonomous-driving/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and partners with [Bosch and Continental](https://www.technarratives.com/2017/06/01/baidu-partners-with-bosch-and-continental-for-autonomous-driving/?ref=analysepodcast.com). What does this tells us about where they are in the self driving car space? \[11:08\] - [Alibaba](https://www.technarratives.com/companies/alibaba/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Alibaba has announced [the $73 speaker](https://www.technarratives.com/2017/07/05/alibaba-announces-73-voice-speaker/?ref=analysepodcast.com) similar to the Google Home and Amazon Echo. Are they merely following the footsteps of Amazon or building a different perspective in the home automation front? \[16:01\] - Is Alibaba managing expectations with their recent announcements in [global expansion](https://www.technarratives.com/2017/06/08/alibaba-provides-bullish-outlook-as-slight-hit-to-profits-funds-expansion/?ref=analysepodcast.com)? \[17:59\] - [Tencent](https://www.technarratives.com/companies/tencent/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - What is the narrative with [Stripe turning on Alipay & Tenpay](https://www.technarratives.com/2017/07/10/stripe-partners-with-alipay-wechat-pay/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in China? \[20:15\] - Does the market favors Tencent’s dominance in gaming due to the recent annoucement that [China has superceded US](https://www.technarratives.com/2017/06/02/china-overtakes-us-to-become-top-contributor-to-100bn-global-gaming-market/?ref=analysepodcast.com) in the mobile gaming market? \[22:16\] - [SoftBank](https://www.technarratives.com/companies/softbank/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - Why did [SoftBank purchase Boston Dynamics and Schaft](https://www.technarratives.com/2017/06/09/%e2%98%85-alphabet-sells-boston-dynamics-and-schaft-robotics-businesses-to-softbank/?ref=analysepodcast.com) from Alphabet? \[24:24\] - What is the narrative that [Softbank is selling with Sprint](https://www.technarratives.com/2017/05/12/sprint-and-t-mobile-holding-informal-merger-talks/?ref=analysepodcast.com) talking with T-mobile informally on merger again? \[26:23\] **Podcast Information:** - [Feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-bernard-leong/id914868245?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Google Play](https://play.google.com/music/listen?ref=analysepodcast.com#/ps/Isqlmmtnbf5cnnw5rndhevifr24) - [TuneIn](http://tunein.com/radio/Analyse-Asia-with-Bernard-Leong-p930707/?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Overcast FM](https://overcast.fm/+DUtT98JpM?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [SoundCloud](http://blcw.me/2uQn4rO?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/asiaanalyse) - [Google+](http://google.com/+AnalyseAsia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/company/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Stitcher](http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/analyse-asia?ref=analysepodcast.com) - [Acast](http://www.acast.com/analyseasia?ref=analysepodcast.com) The show is hosted by [Bernard Leong](http://www.bernardleong.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([@bleongcw)](http://www.twitter.com/bleongcw?ref=analysepodcast.com) and are sponsored by [Ideal Workspace](http://www.idealworkspace.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/idealworkspace?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/idealworkspace) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/3770397?ref=analysepodcast.com)) with their new [Altizen Desk](http://altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) on [Indiegogo](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aspirus-world-s-first-smart-standing-workstation/x/1909131?ref=analysepodcast.com#/) ([Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com), [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/thealtizen), [Medium](https://medium.com/@thealtizen?ref=analysepodcast.com)). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, [Altizen](http://www.altizen.com/?ref=analysepodcast.com) and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack. _Truncated after 5 MiB. Use `/sitemap.xml` for the complete archive of public content._