VC investment with Tiwa York

Episode 10 September 05, 2024 00:35:00
VC investment with Tiwa York
Hacking Kaizen
VC investment with Tiwa York

Sep 05 2024 | 00:35:00

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Show Notes

We end this first series of Hacking Kaizen talking with Tiwa York, a prominent venture capitalist and board chairman. We explore current VC market trends, including how investment strategies are evolving and the impact of economic shifts. Tiwa also shares insights to the Finno Efra Accelerator program, its selection criteria, and its support structure. Plus, we’ll tackle common criticisms of VC funding and its influence on startups. Join us for a compelling discussion on the future of venture capital, transformative investments and incubation.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Hacking Kaizen with me, Graham Newman. Today we're joined by Tiwa York, a leader in Thailand's angel investing scene and cornerstone in the country's burgeoning startup ecosystem. For over a decade, Tiwa has not only propelled startups to success, but also steered the ship at several tech boards, including seven pigs software. Beyond his vibrant investment portfolio, Tiwa is at the helm of the Fino Efra accelerator, a finovate initiative under Krungstreet bank designed to elevate startups from seed to pre a stages focusing on sectors poised for impactful transformation. Today, Tiwa sheds light on the life of an investor beyond the glitz, debunking myths of endless wealth. In startup investing, he dives into the nuances of carry, the critical performance fee that aligns fund managers earnings with their funds success. A venture world where a high risk funds return hovers around just 21%. As we navigate a post pandemic world where the exuberance of invest has sobered, Tiwa gives us his insights on the current investment climate, particularly in the AI boom. We start by asking him about the prevailing sentiments among venture capitalists today. [00:01:31] Speaker B: So I think that needs to be qualified a little bit between Thailand, Southeast Asia and then globally. [00:01:37] Speaker C: Yeah, let's start with Thailand. [00:01:39] Speaker B: So in Thailand, things have been slow and they've been slow for quite some time, and we'll get more into that, into the accelerator program throughout our conversation. But, uh, things have been slow. Um, a lot of the sentiment over the past few years, from a VC point of view, has been much more focused on Series A and Series B type companies. But the problem in Thailand has been that there hasn't been seed rounds to support the companies to actually get to series A and Series B. So that's from a very thai perspective. And also in the VC community in Thailand, it's also very CVC heavy, uh, which means corporate venture capital. And so a lot of those corporate venture capitalists, they're looking at investments overseas or something that's strategic to their business. And so it's been quite slow for startups. Um, I think from a regional point of view, they've been looking at Thailand specifically going, they'd love access, but they don't know really what's going on here. We do see a lot more visits from regional VC's coming into Thailand. From a regional point of view, it's actually a similar problem in the seed rounds. We have seen this year a slowdown in terms of venture capital going into startups. I think that's an impact of more the concern on a global economic, the macroeconomic factors. I think there's been a lot of dry powder in the system, but people are very concerned about deploying that dry powder and that's even myself as an angel investor, I've been very cautious about deploying capital based upon more macroeconomic factors. And whether it's a stock market over the past week or even the crypto markets over the past week, you've just seen a lot of this sentiment coming bubbling up. You also see other concerns around trade embargoes with China and the US and that the tech wars between chips and AI that's going on there. And I think all those things have made people cautious. And I, we're not quite sure what's going to happen with the US economy. So I think there's a lot of all that to say. There's a lot of concern in general, but the overall the VC's are looking for good investments. The one thing that shifted in the past few years is that they focus towards profit driven, at least break even for these startups. So the willingness to say, hey, look, don't worry about it, just grow, grow, grow on your top line numbers, those days are over, they will come back. It's just this typical cycle. If you go all the way back to the nineties, you can see these cycles come in and out, in and out. But right now it's all about are you a revenue generating startup? And if you are, are you break even or at least close to breakeven on your profitability? And so that's what's being driven in the market today, which also does make it tough for incubation stage and early stage companies, and especially for deep tech companies, that becomes very, very difficult for them. All that with a caveat for AI. So AI is a wholly different exuberance that people are very excited and willing to bet on. AI startups. Yeah. [00:04:52] Speaker C: And aligning the conversation to AI, AI is one of the specific trends that's capturing most interest at the moment. [00:05:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think so if you look at kind of general trends and where we're going, industry looking more future rather than where the sentiment is for VC's today, when we're looking at what are the trends, obviously AI, because AI is actually an arms race. AI is a game changer. And actually what you're seeing is a proper cold war around it and everybody is trying to race to it. And that includes both the hardware side around chips and b around the actual algorithms in LlMsdev and other types of models, whether it's diffusion models, vision models, etcetera. So everybody is racing to try to stay ahead of the game. The US is leading that global race at the moment, but it definitely is an arms race because AI is different than anything else we've seen in the past. It really is a game changer and we can dive more into that depending upon if you want to dive into it. But that's one. But the other thing is that what comes along with AI is interest in other industries that I think there's a lot more interest in what's going to be disrupted because of it. So you'll see that healthcare is one area that has, it's one of the big three that hasn't had proper disruption. So it's healthcare, education, government. And my prediction, and I think I'm not the only one, there's a lot of pundits out there that would say similarly, is that these three are ripe for disruption and AI will change the game and it's actually going to move things ahead. [00:06:30] Speaker C: I would probably add another one to that, and that's legal, particularly with case research, with compliance as well. I think that's going to shift dramatically as well. So given the current economic climate that you talked about, how are VC's adjusting their investment strategies? [00:06:51] Speaker B: I'm not sure that I'm qualified to do that since I'm just an angel investor. I think, like I said, from what I've seen and from the friends and colleagues and some of the funds that I am involved with, is that there is a focus towards startups that have revenue and are either close to profitability or are profitable today. And the willingness to invest is certainly there for now. But broader investment strategies I'm nothing aware of or privy to amongst the broader VC community. [00:07:26] Speaker C: We'll frame this around angel investment. From your perspective, is it still about ambition, people and execution? [00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And so we see a lot of projects as angel investors. There's very little due diligence. You do, it's limited, right. You kind of look at it and you do a certain amount of due diligence, but it's not nearly as deep as if you're a vc, because it's your own money. And it really is about the chemistry with the founders, the belief in the founders and the space that they're in, and your interest in that space and your interest to help them. [00:08:03] Speaker C: Let's talk about the risk appetite. Has the current market environment influenced angel investors appetite for risk? [00:08:10] Speaker B: From my purview, I'd say yes. I think there's a lot more caution and looking at, okay, if I deploy capital, what's it going to look like? What kind of projects am I willing to invest into? Right. And so we're in a bull run year for crypto. So when you look at a bull run year, it's, okay, do I deploy to crypto or do I deploy to a more traditional startup, or what people would call web two startup versus a web three startup? I think the willingness to deploy into crypto is a little bit higher because you can actually have liquidity there, whereas in a startup you're looking at seven to ten years before you're going to see your money back. So I think that's changed some of the sentiment this year as well, at least within my groups of friends and influence that I've seen in the angel investment space. [00:09:01] Speaker C: So you're very active to with the Fino Efra accelerator program. Can you share with us the big idea behind this? [00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's associated with Gongsi bank here in Thailand. And underneath Gongsi bank, they have an investment arm called Finovate. So Kunsam, who runs Finovate, teamed up with another good friend of mine, Bum Pawut, who was the founder of Thrott.com and also has about 40 angel investments. So he is quite a prolific and angel investor. And they came together to create a new fund. And the reason they put together this new fund is because, as I said, mentioned earlier, is that there's a gap in the market for seed round and prea types of rounds of investment. So they put together the fund to try to address this need. So they've come together to create something. Create the fund. It's a billion baht fund, or about 30 or 30 million us. And alongside the fund, what they wanted to do was an accelerator program. And so the accelerator program that we'll be running is a program that's built for seed to pre a types of companies post revenue, so they have to be revenue generating. And in those companies, a lot of people have asked me, like, what's the criteria? What are we looking for? So officially, it would be any startups in the areas of impact and or transformation, which is extremely broad. So it's probably better to define what is not the investment strategy like what's outside of the investment thesis for. Yeah. [00:10:41] Speaker C: So looking on the website, and I'm going to take a guess here in terms of transformation, it seems to be doing its impact on digital transformation. [00:10:51] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:52] Speaker C: Impact is the remains of Thailand's s curve industry policy. [00:10:58] Speaker B: You know, so whether you're looking at ESG type of things or what kind of impact they're having, it's quite broad in the definition. So this is why I say like pretty much anything that is, and it's better to answer this by saying what is outside of the scope? So outside of the scope is deep tech. So the fund is not, doesn't have the appetite for deep tech because it's such a long path to commercialization. And the other area that I think is unlikely is web three companies, because this particular accelerator is not built for web three companies. Um, so outside of those two, I pretty much see everything fitting in. Uh, it's unlikely that we'll see too many b, two c companies in it. So very consumer driven companies, but you never know if something actually stands out. We wouldn't be against it, but it's going to be. We, we expect a lot of b, two b types of companies that we'll see in the space. [00:11:57] Speaker C: And are there specific qualities or attributes that make a startup stand out within this investment fund? [00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So maybe it's best to talk about where we're at in the process right now and what the full program will look like. So we launched a recruitment for startups to come apply, and that started in July 15. We will close the application on September 15. So out of that I'm hoping we get two to 300 applicants. That would be ideal. And out of that we will select 25 finalists. So those 25 finalists will come to pitch day. On pitch day, the selection is actually up to the ten mentors that we've chosen and the ten mentor teams. So each of the teams that go into the program will have a mentor and a co mentor that help guide them through the whole bootcamp. So those ten teams that get selected start bootcamp on October 1, early October, and then it will run through the end of February, and then we'll have demo Day in March. For companies that come into the program, there is no equity requirement upfront. In fact, the full program is run for free for the teams, so there's no cost to them outside of time. And every week we expect them to come once a week, on Wednesdays to come for full day workshops. Very practical workshops try to help the founders. And at the end of it they pitch on demo day. And once they pitch on demo day, this then goes to the IC, the investment committee for the fund, and then they will decide to. Each team has a potential of getting up to 40 million baht, or $1.3 million in investment. From that, if I do my job right as the principal behind the accelerator, then we have ten very investable companies that come out of this program, which is my goal. People have asked me, how many do you want to get funded? My goal is 100%. I want all ten companies to get funded by the fund. And that means that we did our job, because in theory, all ten should do great. And so you asked me, like, what's the criteria that we're looking for? So again, it's seed to prea companies in these basically non deep tech, and that we see that they have some traction. We've got strong founders, great market opportunity, all the standard things that you look for in your investment. But because the fund itself is quite broad in its investment thesis, there's no specific direction that we're headed to, which is like a lot of people have asked, is it fintech? Because of the name? But no, it's nothing. If you're in fintech, you don't have to be in fintech. You can be on any industry, you can be in edtech, you can be in health tech, you can be across anything that we find that's really drive. It's got a great opportunity ahead of it with a great founding team. [00:14:42] Speaker C: This is very progressive and very encouraging to hear, I guess, why has it taken so long to do this? And actually, one of the retail banks has actually said, okay, we'll do this. This doesn't seem to have existed before. This is a new thing. [00:14:58] Speaker B: So actually, if you go back to the history of the thai startup scene, one of the big drivers between 2014 2013 all the way to 2019 was a program called DTAC Accelerate. So DTAC accelerate. DTAC is one of the major telcos here in Thailand that has since merged with true, the other major telco. And they had a great program that actually got shut down at the end of 2019. The CEO that had come in, the new CEO, decided that this wasn't in her strategy or her direction for the company, and so she closed down the program. So that was, that really hurt the industry. The second thing that actually happened was a lot of the seed funding had dried up and a lot of seed funding in Thailand was driven by a company called 500 Tuk Tuks, which is part of 500 startups, and they started pushing towards series a types of investments. So seed round funding disappeared. So with the disappearance of these two things, we saw a massive lack or gap in the market. And that's why Sam and bum came together to create this program, this particular fund and this program to try to meet this gap that we see that's lacking. Hopefully this will fire up the industry again. [00:16:10] Speaker C: So how does the accelerator facilitate mentorship and networking opportunities for its participants? [00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so actually we've got, like I said, each team will be assigned, well, they'll be selected by their mentor, so it's not us assigning them the mentors. We do it similar to the voice. So the mentors say, I would like for you to be on my team. If another mentor competes for you, then it's really up to the startup to decide which mentor they want to be with. And then the mentors will have a weekly check in to see how the teams are doing, any help they can give. On each Wednesday we have the coaching and training sessions, so we have morning and afternoon workshops and we're bringing in specialists and industry experts and usually they're all founders themselves that have been through it, teaching on different topics. One of the goals of the boot camp is to make it very practical. So a lot of times boot camps, they come in very theoretical and we're trying to make it practical, talking to people who've actually done it, things to avoid a lot of, um, a lot of the people. Like one of the trainers will be Mike from Chaco CRM. And I was asking him, because they're a CRM company, to do, uh, retention strategies for customers. And he said, pete, can I do, uh, can I do sales as well? I was like, sure. And he's like, no, because I just want to share with him all the mistakes I've made on trying to build the sales team and also all the mistakes we've made in trying to retain customers. I was like, that's fantastic. So one of the keys is for the trainers to have the experience to come in and say, yeah, I wouldn't do that if I were you. And people will be like, why not? And he's like, I did that before, it hurts. And so that's what we're trying to get from that. In addition to that, we've lined up over 100 other experts and these are all our network in the industry to be available and also set it up so that if they need something special or some particular advice, we can actually reach out to that network. And then in addition to that, we also have what we're calling their coaches sessions, which is we have experts, whether it's legal advice, financial advice, tech advice, that you can book time with these experts and they will make their time available for you to ask them whatever you need, HR topics, and we have those specifically lined up as well, all of that. We will also have regular networking sessions as well, where it will be not just the teams themselves hanging out, but also other industry people hanging out with us to try to make sure that we're fostering the community. [00:18:37] Speaker C: I think what you've actually done is built this incredible ecosystem that bridges the academy and industry and the traction there I think will be amazing to actually have experts on hand without all of that academic stuff and say, okay, guys are the future of the country. This is how were going to push you and this is how were going to deliver. [00:18:57] Speaker B: William yeah, so I think its really important to get the mentorship or actually even in my own life, this is why ive been doing mentoring startups here in Thailand for over a decade now. And its a lot about very practical topics, right. Its not from what you read in the books, its going, how do I deal with employees or how do I, you know, what kind of provident fund should I have? There's a lot of practical things that I think experienced entrepreneurs can say, yeah, these are, this is real, this is what you have to deal with and this is how I dealt with it. And really it's, you know, I break it up into three different levels. I can be, I can give you advice, I can be a mentor, I can be a coach. And they're not the same, they're not the same levels, right. As an advisor at giving you advice, I tell you what to do. As a mentor, I'll tell you what I've done and have you think about it. As a coach, I ask you questions, what do you think you should do about it? And I think depending upon the topic and the person, you have to approach it differently. And that's what we want our entrepreneurs to do. So they really help bring out the best out of the entrepreneurs so that they also avoid the pitfalls that most of us make. Right? So really entrepreneurship and success in a startup isn't we only hear about all the bright stories. The reality is all of us have scars on our backs from the hard yards that we've done. And a lot that can be learned for entrepreneurs is about those hard yards and how to avoid them and make sure you don't make those same mistakes. [00:20:34] Speaker C: And again, I think also looking at the role of the board, regardless of whether it's a startup or a family company or a listed company, the role of the board in terms of being responsible for the sustainability of the company on behalf of the shareholders is something that perhaps startups don't necessarily understand in terms of the fiduciary duty and how a board is not just friends and family, it can really drive the company. [00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So that particular aspect of this program we won't address. We will lightly touch on board topics because usually a board isn't introduced for these companies until a series A round. That's usually when you bring in institutional investors. They want a board seats, they want preference shares, they want all these other things in governance issues on paper in the company because they're raising at a much higher level. So we'll lightly touch on that when we talk about the program itself. It's more very operational strategy, sales, product, tech, legal, hr, all those types of things will be the first 60% and then the last 40% is about fundraising. Because the biggest headache that every founder has is how do I raise money? And what we trying to do with the program is to a give them the tools to go out there and pitch properly, but also give them perspective. So one of the goals of the program is to sit down with VC's and get their perspective. And what's interesting about most startups, most startups believe that VC's are very, very rich. And the truth is they actually have very low salaries. They make money when the startups are successful and then they get what's called carry. So I don't know about your audience and how much they know about how the VC world works, but if we look at it of typical VC, so let's say if a VC fund has $10 million under management, so out of that they work on what's called a two in 20 model, that means every year they take 2% of the fund to fund operations, pay their salaries, pay for the office, pay for the staff, that means they're running that whole business to go out there and travel and go talk to startups and do all that on $200,000, that's a very slim margin. Now imagine a lot of these VC's sit in Singapore. It's hard to live on 200,000 and run a business and do all these things. [00:22:58] Speaker C: It's hard to live in Singapore on anything. [00:23:00] Speaker B: Exactly. So you get paid 2% per year, and then once the startup is successful and they get an exit, you're able to sell the shares that you invested into. Then we get what's called carry. So what it means is the investors, all the LP's limited partners, they get paid out first their original stake, then the profit that's made on the fund. So let's say if we triple the fund, so we had 10 million and we actually make 30 million. So 10 million is paid out first. The remaining 20 million that's on the table gets split. 20% goes to the people that are running the gps, general partners of the fund, and the remaining 80% goes to the investors. So that money usually comes in year. If you're lucky, year seven, on average, you're looking at year ten to year twelve. So before you see that carry, it's a long time. So that means you've been running on $200,000. Now, the reality is that $200,000, you raise fund one, you deploy it, then you got to go to raise fund two, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of people think of just, oh, all these venture capitalists are all rich. No, they're not, not when they have small funds, right, and they do run on limited budgets. And what's more important is they are managing somebody else's money. And so, yeah, they have, they think a lot about what they're going to deploy to because it's not their money, and they need to make sure this is successful. Right. And so if you look at your average fund return, IRR is usually around 20%, 20% to 24%, like 21%, I think, is the industry average. So its better than market. Its better than if I just put my money on an index fund. But it is higher risk as an LP. Its can be very interesting, the companies that you get to look at and get to see and get to spend time with, but its tough business. It is. And so I think thats some of the perspectives that we want to give to the startups, because a lot of times startups, they pitch and theyre so passionate about their own project, and they think, oh, well, youre an idiot because you dont love my project like I do, because you dont understand it. The truth is, thats not it. And in fact, thats a very bad attitude to have. The reality is they dont invest probably for a lot of different reasons that may or may not have anything to do with your product, could just have to do with their actual theme, where theyre at in deployment of their capital, et cetera. There could be lots of different reasons. So I think its really important for us to help give the startups that perspective, so that when they go out to start fundraising, that youre empathetic to the other parties out there. And once you can empathize with them, then you can understand and you can get the proper help you need. So those are some of the tools that we hope to equip so were spending 40% of the time on just fundraising because it is the hardest task that any founder does. [00:25:56] Speaker C: And on a personal note, Tiwa, what's your intrinsic drive for doing this? I've known you for many years, you're very approachable, you're very, very candid, you're not ostentatious in any way. I don't think you're driven by the extrinsic side to this. So what is the intrinsic? [00:26:14] Speaker B: Yeah, so my wife asked the same question. She's like are you getting paid? So the truth is what we myself and actually my fellow, fellow principal Boyd boy Suwat who was the founder of Scutar, you know we want to help the ecosystem and help the industry and we believe, you know, it's fun to help the founders. You know these are incredibly bright, motivated, intelligent people that just need a little bit of help and we want to see their success and so anything we can do to help, give them advice because I think as a startup community, it's all about that community to help grow each other. So if you look at the successful startup hubs around the world, right, they're all about community, whether it's Silicon Valley or another good example is Boulder, Colorado. So you've got a community that's there. So what we're trying to revive and develop further is this community because it really does take a village for these startups to be successful. It requires a whole ecosystem that we're helping each other. There are people in the world that take advantage of that but in reality we all try. So like the hundred, you know, the hundred mentors that were the hundred different coaches and people that are willing, theyre all friends and theyre like yeah of course we just give them a call and theyre like of course Im willing to help, Im willing to give my time, Im willing to give advice, Im willing to participate because we all want to see everybodys success. So it very much is a community driven thing and I think for me thats inspiring. It also after having been in startups for 30 years its inspiring to see the next gen thats doing this and I also get inspired by their ideas. So its a lot of fun right. [00:27:54] Speaker C: I want to move on and perhaps take a critical position of VC funding to gain your insights. The first would be short term focus, potentially. VC's are often criticized for prioritising quick returns over long term success, which can pressure startups to focus on rapid growth rather than sustainable development. So given what you talked about earlier during the interview about the program, and the accelerator. How do you balance the need for rapid growth with the importance of long term sustainability in your investments? [00:28:31] Speaker B: So I think that sentiment has changed a lot in the last few years. Since COVID we've seen a massive sentiment towards sustainable growth. And instead of just looking at your top line numbers, top line figures of grow, grow, grow, it's now much more about your bottom line. So I think that shifted tremendously in the VC community. And so rather than just running for the fences, just trying to get it hit a home run out of it, theyre now more practical. So I think that sentiment has changed rather than because the willingness to deploy capital is much more conservative. So when you see massively bullish markets, then youll see that type of sentiment and exuberance. There is that exuberance in the AI world right now. But we, I think the current viewpoint is that we're coming off of that exuberance from a VC point of view, that between 2022, 2023 we saw this massive exuberance as AI, AI, AI in terms of investment thesis and just throwing money at it. People are starting to come off of that, but it's still hyped up in that area. But outside of that specific AI space, I think people are much more practical about what their trying to accomplish and really looking at the growth of these companies. So, and this includes my own mentorship with even companies are outside my portfolios. So I just met with a founder yesterday who's struggling and, you know, struggling to raise capital. It's series B. It's a series B company. And looking at it and really looking how do I get to profitability? And coming to ask me for help on that and giving advice on, okay, where should we really look at the business and that top line growth? Now one of the challenges is a lot of the startups because they were in this growth mindset and talking about those top line numbers, theyre looking at the wrong metrics. One of the things I do a lot in mentorship is, okay, what are the right metrics? What are the most important KPI's that you really should be? What are the goals? How are you measuring? So I break it up into, you've got goals, objectives and KPI's. And the problem is most people think KPI's are the goals. That's not the goal. Everybody misses the fact that KPI's is just a key performance indicator. But getting your KPI's correct is super important. And are we focused on the right metrics to really push the business towards growth and when you're in a capital market as such, with high interest rates, etcetera, people are looking for profitability. So then what are the key drivers to profitability in your business? And is it really that top line growth, or is it really your operational excellence? Where do you need to optimize? And usually it comes down to your people most of the time, yeah, I. [00:31:26] Speaker C: Think there's probably two pillars. We could segment that into performance and health, and the two are symbiotic and interrelational. [00:31:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And so when you, when you really for this, for the, for the startups, when we are in a free flow, money, everybody's throwing money around. It's very easy, it's exciting to grow. But once we get into a situation like we currently are in, the current market dynamics and environment that we're in, it's really about how are you pushing the business in the right direction. It really becomes hard yards because you start to run out of money, you've got limited Runway, and how do you make that last? You're in a place where it's hard to raise money. So it really comes down to how are we actually operating the business and really operating it, and getting out of chaos into proper processes, proper workflows, and making sure that things work. And a lot of people, you know, a lot of startups, they go, oh, we were just growing, growing, growing is so much fun. But now there's tons of processes. Well, processes should not ever be there because I read it out of book or because somebody told me to do it. The process is simply about how does the fundamentally, it's, how does the organization communicate effectively and can you make that communication as effective as possible so that we can efficiently run the business towards the right, for the right goals, using the right. [00:32:50] Speaker C: KPI's last thing, Tewa, is for those startups that have perhaps missed the Fino Efra accelerator for this round. When is the next round coming for potential companies to join? [00:33:05] Speaker B: So the program is expected to run once a year at its current status. I mean, this is our first time around. And like any startup, it's a lot about POCs and MVP's and making sure that this is successful. And I think if this goes well, then the fund will say, okay, let's do that again. You know, if we get ten investable companies, then it should be okay, let's rinse and repeat and let's do this again. And hopefully what we're looking for is for companies, ecosystem builders, the government, schools, universities. We'd love for them to be part of the program because this should be a community built thing. And yeah, ultimately the fund needs to make money. But for now, it's really about firing up the Thailand ecosystem because if we do that together, then we will have real success. And if you look at this southeast asian map, Thailand seems to be this outlier and this dark horse that nobody really understands, particularly in startups. We have major conglomerates, we have a lot of success in manufacturing, but in startups there haven't been a breakout unicorns that have really come up, and I think Thailand needs that legendary story to really inspire the next gen of startup founders. [00:34:24] Speaker A: My thanks to our guest, Tiwa York. There on our website you can find the program notes and a reading list to accompany this episode. Hacking Kaizen is produced by DSA and that's it for this series. We'll be back in December with the next season unpacking how leading minds are making social, cultural, and economic change to make the world a better place. My thanks to all our guests and support throughout the series. So until then, from me, Graham Newman. Many thanks for listening.

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