Southeast Asia we are neutral and we can work as a team. The geopolitics between US and China it actually benefit us. We should be the region that absorb all of the um economic development and the scalability that would come from the US. Anything that involve like labor and hardware is good for us because we have lower cost. every jobs will be replaced one way or another because the industry changed so fast. So we have to be on top of it. And for our countries in Southeast Asia, if we don't capitalize on this new revolution, the AI revolution, we're going to be left behind, far far behind. But I would love to see people become very hungry because they know that they are actually competing in a global stage. How how do you spread that hunger? It's [Music] Hi friends, today we're visited by Jeep Klein, a good friend of mine who is the leadership of Racewell Ventures in California. Jee, thank you so much for coming over. Thank you for having me. Tell us, you know, you're from Thailand, you were born in Bangkok, and tell us a little bit about your journey. Yeah, um, I was born in Bangkok. Um, and oh my gosh, um, it's been it's been quite a journey. Um, we met here at Stanford. Um, born and raised, um, in Thailand. I went to college in Thailand, all in Thai. So, I didn't go to international school or anything like that. And, um, when I was in the last year of my high school, it was in 1997 as we all remembered um, Asian economic crisis, right? which impacted my family. Um but at the same time it also drove me to study economics and I fell in love with it in college. Um I did really well and I felt that you know four years in college learning economics. I want to come out from college and help Southeast Asia develop long-term sustainable economic growth based on the knowledge that I had. But I it was not enough. Um when I graduated, I felt there was a lot more to learn. Um and I told my parents I was one of those kids that a little bit strange in a way that I never really fit in completely in a Thai culture. Okay. Um and I told my parents that I wouldn't come to the US for grad school. Um they don't have money. So, uh, the only way to be able to come to grad school is I have to get a scholarship. So, they borrow, you know, a little bit of money from friends and family um, to buy the plane ticket for me to come over here. Um, and I stopped. My first stop was Michigan and Arbor um, who we paid, you know. Why why Michigan? It was at the time, believe it or not, I didn't even know that from college you can actually go straight to get a PhD. Okay. I thought you have to get a master's first and then get a PhD. I thought it was kind of like a stepping stone. Nobody told me that. Oh, actually the way to get a PhD is you get masters along the way. Okay. So, I was like, okay, I'm just going to get um a master degree, which really hard to get a scholarship. Sure. Um but I applied um my parents, you know, borrow money to pay for the first year um which I, you know, returned. Um but then after that um I figure out a way to get the scholarship and I remember the person who helped me and wrote me a letter of recommendation was professor Karine Charles who is the current dean um at Yale School of Management and you know I was also um his research assistant and he told me that Jeep you dream of helping the country improve improve um the economy, not just Thailand, but also Southeast Asia. Why don't why don't you try something a little bit bigger? Yeah. And I was like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Why don't you try go work at a war bank?" I was like, "Are you kidding me? Nobody's going to hire me at a war bank." But it's kind of like planted a seed in my mind. So every single um long weekend, I actually save money from my stipen um from Michigan and flew myself to Washington DC. pitch. I cold call and I pitch economists to hire me. Wow. I got like 49 rejections. I was like, are you crazy? Because usually they hire people who have a PhD in economics from Ivy League school and I didn't have any of those, right? And then one person said yes, I worked for free. I agreed to work for free for three months, but of course, you know, in a month he hired me and then the rest is a history. I met with top-notch economists from Larry Summer, Paul Krookman. At that point in time, as you remember, all top policy makers and economists would have an office at a war bank. And then three years in I was this is not the way it's supposed to be. I was also exposed by that. What I meant by that is one the way that the international organization works is a little bit slow for in my viewpoint the way that they do funding the competitiveness is not there coupled with the rise of the technology industry. So to give you a specific example there was um one mission. So when we go on different countries we call mission right. So I serve ministries of finance in emerging markets in Latin America in Asia, in um Eastern Europe and also in Africa. There was one mission I went to um Tanzania. I was in Dar Islam. Yeah. And that was 20 something years ago. And I remember at 5 the electricity went out in a capital city. People came in front of the house, they lit the candle, right? Wow. But at the same time they use the phone and at the time it was a feature phone not even smartphone if you remember Nokia with like buttons and they send payment to their parents and you know relatives in different provinces using digital payment back then before PayPal became famous and I thought to myself technology was going to be big but as a world banker we never really touched technology. um we we going to miss the big shot, right? So I decided to leave the best job in the world in three years and I packed my bag and I came to Silicon Valley. What what sort of message would you have for young aspiring students who are still thinking about pursuing a career at a multilateral institution such as the World Bank or the IMF or any kind. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad place to be. I learned so much. I even asked Paul Krookman a tough question about Southeast Asia. Right. Right. That's the kind of opportunity that we had. But at the same time, it's about who you are. For me, it's all about what kind of impact I can drive. Um and and I was young and I wanted to take risk. Um and I was not afraid to take risks. Yeah. Because I came from a humble background. I also failed many times before. I was a competitive swimmer, but I never won. So, it's like failing is sort of like in my DNA, you know, and I'm going to keep doing it until I I win, right? Um, it's appetizer. It's Yes. It's it's sort of like get to the main menu. Yeah. It's sort of like a practice. And then when I was in college, you know, I want to go and I was like, "Oh my god, this is the best thing in the world." It took me 10 years of swimming like 3 kilometers a day. But anyway, so that's the side note. So my and and looking back, I'm I'm actually glad I did that. Um and you know, as you mentioned, um right before we start the conversation, I'm the only Tai. Um and I think we have a long way to go. I'm the only Thai sitting on your famous podcast. first time you know um I'm also you know um the first person who actually launched impactdriven venture capital investment in Silicon Valley from my country um why why why did you come up with that idea or how did you come up with that idea yeah um it's was it the Tanzania exper experience or that was 90 90 1997 was the first pivot point in my life Tanzania I would say the second pivot point that technology was going to be big. And then I came here um and I was so lucky that I met um at the time Dean um who were uh who uh at Hans a school of business at Berkeley who came from um Goldman Sachs and he said Jeep you need to come to Berkeley we're going to give you subsidies scholarship. I was like how could say no you know uh to uh say no to MBA in top 10 business school with this kind of education. So I came and and along the way I I realized that the the mentality of people in Silicon Valley and and technology industry are actually different. Okay. And it match who I am. I see. So the way that you ask is it yeah there are a building blocks that come along the way but at the same time I also I was also very lucky that I was recruited after um graduating from Berkeley I was recruited by the CEO of Intel at the time uh Paul Tony and he created a leadership program he handpicked 15 students MBA students from top 10 business schools and I was so lucky that I was one of them and I'm the only one from Southeast Asia. I hope we'll have more well in different capacity. So I was a dream for me. Yeah. I was trained by the leaders um not just at Intel but in Silicon Valley. Okay. Um and I learned that the mentality is very important. So to give you specifically I was taught you know even Paul himself Andy Grove who was still alive at the time the principle at Intel was that you know to build the ecosystem like technology ecosystem you don't do everything yourself this is the opposite of you know quote unquote economics that I've learned to maximize profit yes Intel is about profit maximization is a corporation but if you think about it. They um the company was created from microprocessor. They could have done shells, you know, um computer shells by themselves. They could have create everything by themsel because the hardest part of making a computer was microprocessor, not the screen, not the shell, you know, not the memory and everything else. But yet they said, in order to create a true ecosystem, I'm not going to do everything by myself. I'm actually going to create this um ecosystem in Taiwan so they can be OEM. I'm going to do this, you know, um lithography in Europe. Denmark is one of the countries that um got that basically um innovation and that's how they create the power and influence and let everybody win and they call themsel a platform company not a vertical company. Yeah. And to me it was mesmerizing. Yeah. That you don't have to capture every single dollars and every single profit. There's still one big for the longest period of time. I mean the company has been around from 50 years. And we know that right now it's sort of like in a pivot point. Long. Yeah. Yes. But 50 years is long enough to create Silicon Valley. That's why we call Silicon Valley because of the Silicon Valley. Right. So I spent my my my time at Intel for seven years. two years in um I launched um the first one of the first Android tablets for the world, the $99 tablet. And that is a perspective coming from emerging markets, working emerging markets. When Steve Job launched the first iPad, I remember telling the senior leaders at Intel that the vast majority of the population, they're not going to be able to afford it. the version one was very expensive and Intel at the time already missed the smartphone market. So the way that we should enter this um IoT if you call market is we launched the lowcost market and it turned out it became an impact device. So kids say in India, in Indonesia, in Thailand, I also launch in I went to Indonesia to launch the product and also in Thailand and so and so many other countries, kids use it for education for the first time. Wow. And and how much was this? $99. Still steep. Yeah. Yeah. At the time got to be at least at most 10 bucks. Yeah. I mean for this to work. Yeah. Now I if possible it should be free. Yeah. they should just give the hardware out for free and then the monetized maybe from education content and whatnot, right? That would be the ultimate goal. Um, but I agree with you. Hardware has been commoditized in the past 10 years, but it's a long way to answer the question that no matter where not no matter where I go and what I do, I have the lens of the global market. I have the lens of emerging market simply because of the training that I had and also because the way I grew up um and now um am a managing partner and also founder at raceware ventures right same thing this is a impact raid venture capital investment for Southeast Asia are are you comfortable with the kind of exponentiality of technological innovation that you're seeing in the context of how not only it's going to be applicable to places like Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, much less those in Africa, but how they're also not going to be able to catch up. How do you juxtapose? How do you combine those two? Yeah. You know, views that are somewhat conflicting, right? That's right. You know, unfortunately, technology create more disparities. Yeah. between the countries. You can look at the data in the last um two decades, in the last 20 years. Um people who get access to technology, they became really really wealthy and well off even within the Silicon Valley, right? Like we see, you know, high income and also low-inccome people who get access versus not, but also true in emerging markets. And this is why we in Southeast Asia Southeast Asia should really focus on on tech. um it is a nature that we can't escape. So to give you some stats, I'm going to talk about a few pieces. One, technology. Two, what can we do about it from the point of view of Southeast Asia? Um on the technology perspective if you look at the data in the US alone more than 50% of the market capitalization in the stock exchange today those companies used to be ones backed by venture capital but venture capital industry is only 1% of the US GDP this is how much influence the VC have on the entire industry and globally, right? Okay. And it's going to continue to rise. Now, Nvidia, as you know, is three trillion. Yeah. In in terms of valuation, right? 10 years ago, it was only like how many billion now because we have passed the phase that you know we are not there yet in terms of the technology um ecosystem and industry that we need to be built. Now, we are in 2025. We mean Southeast Asia. What do we need to do? I also believe I've been in the industry for almost 20 years now. I also believe that Silicon Valley has made a lot of mistakes. We invested in ideas and things that doesn't create productivity in the economy. Right? Give me cryptocurrency. Um to me is a speculation. I know that we talk now you know is the rise and a fall now is a rise again I want to see real productivity in the real sector right or companies such as rework right that's to me not improve producting we need to improve productivity in our region number one um so the question is how do we use VC as a tool or a method to improve the region economic wise and technology wise and this is why impactdriven VC becomes very important and when we talk about impact VC a lot of people thought oh you know this is like towards nonprofit or impact no no no and this is what I teach um I'm a professor um at the high school of business I'm teaching impact driven venture capital investment and what I teach is essentially we are still in a VC asset class so we have to make money nonprofit in venture doesn't work. Okay. Pure profit with greed that you invest in anything and everything at all cost also doesn't work because it create a lot of negativity in the society. Yeah, we still have to work with the capitalist in the capitalism society in a way that we mobilize the investors money and at the same time we demand positive impact socially, environmentally and economically. So this is why you know I found um I founded Reszo Ventures. Um it's actually my fourth investment fund but it's the first fund um that I would like to focus on of course investing still in the US but also Southeast Asia. It meant to be the catalyst to build the long-term tech ecosystem in our region. I I want to peel you on in a bit more, but before we get there, h do you sense that Silicon Valley has learned or the VC space has learned from its past mistakes as to not overly invest in things just based on FOMO or hype, things that are not allegedly or supposedly productive as you may allude to. No, it's it's going to keep repeating, right? Yes. And because I think it comes from the approach. Is it just because there's too much money? It's a lot of money and is the mentality. Okay. Um the big funds that used to be the small funds say 10 15 years ago now they get bigger and bigger and bigger. Right. So and then they keep you know they have dry powder to deploy those money in a way that they think it make them win to create massive returns. Yeah. Okay. And those I call conventional traditional funds or VC funds. What is missing is they should have demand the impact return as a bonus on top of the profit that they that they make. Yeah. Okay. Um this is a new area. When I launched um one of my first funds, I actually invested in Land America. Not so easy. I know that's you're supposed to go around a world. Yes. Um and I invested in five countries in Latin America. It was impact driven um VC fund. Um and I remember at the time when I raised fund my investors did not know what impact driven VC is. Really? They didn't. This was 20 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. There it was so new. It was so new. Um it was not 20 years ago. It was around seven years ago. But the concept was new, still new to them. And I said, you know, I'm just going to change my pitch. This is a typical VC fund. I'm just going to generate top tier returns. I'm just going to invest in Latin America. Massive opportunity. And then I raise money. I start deploying money. I generate returns. But then in my reports, quarterly reports, annual reports. By the way, you get a bonus. It's called impact returns. And that's how I started good educating uh my investors. That's actually a better way to do it. Yeah. And that's how I also got invited to become better it better credentialized you. Yeah. Right. Like look, you get free bonus, you make an impact and you get money. Why wouldn't you like that? Right. And that's how thing got started. But also there are a lot of other influences globally that help that get started. like as you know right now we talk a lot about net zero by 2050 um international organization also try to push towards it Paris accord you are also a part of it to help drive this agenda sustainability agenda so there's a lot more push from different pieces um globally um so to this year right now it is not like seven eight years ago when this concept is new but it's alo our time that we have to teach the next generation investors like the MBAs um here right at Stanford and also at Berkeley that if you want to be a VC you better be an impact VC you make money and you make impact why don't you do that why why Latin America at that time um because you saw more opportunities there or yeah uh I actually wanted to come to Southeast Asia since then okay and because I'm Thai Yeah, I wanted to start in Thailand. I was too early in the market. Yeah. Okay, fair enough. Indonesia um was there. There were some companies are very successful um mostly in SAS software as a service. Um Singapore some companies successful but not much in Thailand. I just need to get start where people can relate to me. Okay. So I went to Latin America and land the way they look at me, they don't care whether or not I'm Latan American. I don't speak Spanish or Portuguese and then like oh yeah you're like oh you're from Silicon Valley. Oh you are a professor. You have done this before and they look at your track record. You work at a World Bank. You work at Intel. You've done this and that. You know I'm just going to invest. It's very strange behavioral economics. Wow. So, and that's why it's an opportunity and the investors were mainly from the US or mainly from the US also from Latin America to a certain extent also from Europe like in Spain. Um but the investment goes to five countries all Spanishspeaking countries. So I didn't invest in Brazil. Okay. So that's why it got started. Um and you know let me let me just ask you if if it had something or anything to do with the fact that for recycling purposes the capital markets were in a traditional VC firms ready they were more ready. Yeah. Okay. And when the firm get really big if you have 20 billion dollar say firm right you're going to have a lot of GPS general partners or um fund managers who manage the money. you you no longer really like do the hands-on work yourself. You can't pivot in time. All you do is you create a mandate and then those GPS go execute and invest the money. It's very hard when you are $20 billion fund and you say, "Oh, you know, I'm going to change right now. I'm going no longer going to be conventional fund even though this is kind of like my fund and then I'm going to be impact fund." You can't just change the image overnight. Yeah. And the approach has been done all along because of the founders and and so on. It's kind of like a big company. Why small small startup company disrupt them? Because they can pivot, they can change. Yeah. Um and I hope that there's going to be a lot of fund managers, new fund managers who see the opportunity like this in a market especially in Southeast Asia cuz we have really really good talents. Yeah. We just need to invest in ourselves. But did the exit opportunities were they pretty clear? Still very challenging in in Latin America. Oh. Oh, you mean Latin America? I thought in Southeast Asia. In Latin America, yes, it's still very challenging, but at least the proximity with the US market helps number one. And number two, when I invest, at least they have to be registered as a C corp Delaware alongside the registration in the local country because if Google want to buy them easy, it's going to be much easier. Yeah. So they have to structure correctly since day one so that they can scale outside their own country at least within LAM region or come to the US or go to Europe, Spain and whatnot and if it's going to get acquired it has to be very very easy and very clean. Is that something that's being adopted in other geographies? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Southeast Asia is very challenging in terms of the exit market. Yeah. But we can build it. Okay. we can build it. This is why we are working together also with you um and with the stock exchanges. We have a lot of opportunities. We talked about this um briefly before. Singapore stock exchange. Yeah. Stock exchange of Thailand. These should be the IPO hops for the Southeast Asia and we should attract the companies here to list in Southeast Asia as a bridge financing before they go to NASDAQ or they can also do dual listing like Alibaba. Yeah. Right. This is our shot. It's kind of tough to find a company in Southeast Asia that has kind of scale. Yeah. That that Ali has. Yes. So we going to have to so we're going to have to find there are approach. So this is an approach in my funds as well, right? I invest in the US if they want to scale. I would love Southeast Asia to be the platform for scale. Yeah. And the way to do that is, you know, of course it has to map with a thesis. For example, if we do climate tech, um we invest in EV, right? um battery, food tech, agriculture tech and whatnot. And these companies usually they have manufacturing um plans or they have hardware that they have to to get made. So they would locate somewhere. Typically in the past, sure, it was China. But because of the geopolitics, it's very hard to do that in China right now. So our region automatically becomes a star region and we have to talk about this that this is our advantage. We have good enough engineer to manage the plant. We don't need like you know Stanford engineer to do that and we have lower cost lower cost of living lower wage. So when they scale we should be the smart manufacturing hub for the high growth company that are ready to scale here. Let's let's start with some of the structural impediments y that people in places like the US have with respect to Southeast Asia and and identify those and how do you think those could be remedied in the short run and long run. I mean if if you're looking at the Southeast Asia region from the through the lens of Silicon Valley, right? What what are some of the issues? Yeah. That are pretty structural, you think? Yeah. Um I mean the opportunities are there. I'm with you. Yeah. Right. In terms of reshoring, French shoring, offshoring from China, but I think there's some structural issues. Yeah, I think it also depends on what countries which countries I mean Singapore is an outlier. Yeah, we admit that. But Singapore is also very small and also very expensive now. GDP per capita is almost the same as US GDP per capita. No, higher. Yeah, it's amazing. It's 85 90,000 I think. It's crazy. It's crazy crazy good. Yeah. Yeah. Um so so so that an outlier and then we have I call the middle of the pack. Okay. Like Thailand um the Philippines, Malaysia and a certain extent Indonesia um that has also the land area and population advantage. Right. What people are worried about is definitely number one politics. Right. um what would be the political instability that they have to encounter and I think that is one of the biggest issues and you know I would love to hear your thoughts on Indonesia but Thailand that has been the biggest issue in the last 20 years that's why the GDP growth has been so minimal in the last 20 years could be much higher way higher um so that's most important okay two rule of law Yep. People don't want to come into the country and you know, not just it's so hard to get the company registered and whatnot, but if there's problems, right, with the workers, with the labors, they want to make sure that there's fair rules and how they treat people and how they are being treated. It's as simple as that. the infrastructure in terms of the the law has to be there to make sure that we attract foreign direct investment. Um the third area which we argue talents and education and this is why we have to focus on the middle market or middle talent first not the very top talent. Okay. So the vocational Yes. skills. Yeah. Yes. So when I talked about smart manufacturing hub, I want to see for example Southeast Asia to be the micro pro processor hub. Okay, but I'm not talking about designing ships. I'm talking about packaging assembly things that we can leverage our local engineers to work right away. And at the same time those opportunities would create technology transfers from the US. So people and the talents that we have in our countries can learn and hopefully from that we reskill and upskill and use it to create an innovation on top. But we have to start there. It's not going to be the top you know we're going to create like another LLM model you know we we are not there yet. Yeah. Um but education the quality of education is one of the biggest things right so these are the top three things but of course there are other infrastructure that you might argue you might argue oh health care is so important when people want to move that sure but those kind of things will be created if these three things are in place right the stability um uh the education rule of law and the rule of law are you optimistic Super optimistic. Yeah, I'm super optimistic. Okay. What's what's the basis for your optimism for Southeast Asia in the long run? At least we are in a right place at the right time. Okay. Okay. And I and you sense the young generation takes ownership. What's important, right? Yes. I I wouldn't say this seven years ago or 10 years ago. No, we are in the right place at the right time for so many reasons. So one um as I mentioned before the geopolitics between US and China it actually benefit us. Yeah we should be the region that absorb all of the um economic development and the scalability that would come from the US two global mandates and you are part of it. We talk about the world economic forum. We talk about Paris Accord. We talk about sustainability because of the global agenda that try to push the world towards net zero by 2050. What it means is we have to invest in deep tech and hard tech. Okay. Anything that involve hardware and energy otherwise we are not going to achieve net zero by two. I mean even that we still don't we exactly we still don't know if we could achieve it. So but we have but we have to invest in these areas right and if you were thinking about these area anything that involve like labor and hardware is good for us because we have lower cost and number three Southeast Asia we are neutral and we can work as a team. Um last year um in November I actually um gave a talk um at the annual economic forum right and I was a keynote speaker and I talk about the concept of 1C or one Southeast Asia. Singapore has two leading academic institutions NTU and the N US SMU. Yes and SMU as well and they are very good in deep tech and research. They have IPs, they have IP office to manage it. Okay, it's great start but they don't have market size. So for the entrepreneurs in Singapore to win and attract money from VCs from Silicon Valley, they need to get access to Indonesia, Thailand just to make sure that the market size is big enough. Footprint is there is a footprint and we have to work together with them for Thailand. I think stock exchange is in a prime position if they can adjust the infrastructure and attract high growth tech company to be listed to to list there and be the bridge finance before going to NASDAQ because the market cap is lower. Singapore is great too and they're adjusting but traditionally as you know they're really heavy on real estate. Okay. Indonesia you have the market size. Yeah. If any companies, startup companies that were created, you know, in Bangkok, in Indonesia itself or um in Singapore can get access to Indonesian market as the customer base, they're going to win. You have hundreds of millions of population. And so the concept of 1C is we take advantage of each country's strengths and we work together and that's how we going to attract foreign direct investment including the VC like myself and the good news is because the rise of the VC that's another factor VCs are not solo investor and I've been in the industry when I invest and if the company in Southeast Asia should grow to the next stage and if they want to raise fund I would love to invite my co-investors in Silicon Valley to co-invest with me. But we have to lead the round. Yeah. If we want the USVC to lead around, it's not going to happen because they have million other deals that they can pick into. The only thing is they can follow. We do all the work. We lead the deals. We do the diligence. We write up the memo and we tell them why they should invest. And that's how we create foreign direct investment to the region. I want to go back to the three okay structural issues you alluded to the education infrastru I mean political stability and rule of law right in in some ways the rule of law and political stability or lack thereof are correlated with the quality of educational attainment right now if you go to most countries in Southeast Asia 80 to 90% of the households are led by people with less than university education. Politicians, you know, they don't come from planet Mars. They come from the society. And if the society is subject to or susceptible or exposed to households that are not with good tertiary education or even no tertiary education. Yeah, it's kind of a tough thing, right? Y to to to move the needle. Absolutely. Then then I'm just curious as to what your views are with respect to, you know, when the kids leave home, they go to the schools, they go to the places of worship, they go to the social institutions. I think there needs to be some sort of a disruption so that they get much better education. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. I think I think this is one of the biggest bottlenecks, right? And and you know Singapore steadfastly recruits teachers from the top percentile. I know they try to recruit me too and you and we are here together in you. But you know you go to the other countries in Southeast Asia you know the guys that end up teaching are usually those that don't get accepted at the World Bank, at Intel, at Google, Amazon or what you know. So they're they're likely to be I mean not a generalization but they're likely to be coming from the bottom percentile of the academic institutions until and unless it gets fixed. Yep. You're going to be exposed to you know perhaps political instabilities and yes less robust rule of law. That's right. You know so I think it's just one variable. Yeah. You know agree. you you need to be able to convince the people in the United States or anywhere that that needle is going to move in the right direction. That's right. Why do you think um Vietnam now I know oh my gosh why do you how how did they disrupt right like people from the bottom of pyramid what why do you think that is is it mentality or is it because of the government I think to some extent the diaspora okay has played a role right the diaspora in the hundreds of thousands that fled 1975 onward they were hungry that's right for opportunities right That opportunism I think drove them to a level that other Southeast Asians probably were not thinking about and that rubbed off, you know, to their fellow countrymen. That's right. You know, in the past few decades. Agreed. I mean, the Vietnamese, they're just so different. They would mortgage their house to send their kids to school. Yes. They're so committed. Yeah. And people who went to local school, you know, they use device like smartphone or tablet or iPad to access free education online. People speak English and they try. If you go to Vietnam, as I'm sure you know, you know, they would come and speak English to you. It's just a way to practice. I'm like, wow, this is their mentality. I think one is the institution that the infrastructure is not there but I would love to see people become very hungry because they know that they are actually competing in a global stage not within the region not just within a country. It's hard. It takes extra time, but there's always a way to get ahead or build a foundation. Spread that hunger. That's opportunity. That's a great question, right? It's it's the minds, it's the entrepreneurship. You know, I think the most important skills for the kids in the next generation is Yeah. I mean, some people like, oh, mathematics and, you know, technical skill. Yeah. I mean part of it you're going to learn that in school but what going to carry so far in my personal opinion throughout their lives is actually entrepreneurship skills which is how to solve the problem and which right now we are in the AI age right things going to move really fast and change really fast are you on top of it how can you get access to those opportunities how can you use technology right now almost everybody have some sort like smartphone or maybe like feature phone and whatnot it is really low cost right now. Do you use it to your advantage? Do you build yourself? Do you see the opportunity that others see? And I think that's the thing. They have to see the opportunity and they also have to see threat. You know, we've just witnessed a Sputnik moment with Deep Seek. Yes. Right. Do you see that that sort of stuff happening in Cambodia, Thailand? to create those kind of Indonesia to create those kind of company not I mean if it happened in China for six bucks I know seriously you know well we can argue whether or not it's it's actually 5 million no okay how about four right so maybe the ties could do it for a buck yeah I yeah wish no I mean do do you foresee a future where a sputnik moment could occur in Chiang Mai or in Koala Lumpur I would I would love for us to get there. I I I actually this is actually a very hot topic. I'm I'm going to go on another interview um in a next few days talking just about like because people want to hear I invest in um AI and also deep tech as well and going to talk about deepse but anyway so interestingly I think deepse is good for us because now we know that the trail blazer the first mover might not be the winner it's about who can with many other things. Yes. Yeah, who can optimize um those kind of function in a way that improve efficiency, improve productivity and reduce cost massively? Now we can argue whether it's four or five or maybe little but still it's low is lower cost than the model that we have here or the companies that we have here. In my view, I think this trend that we see is going to even further democratize and optimize and encourage a lot of entrepreneurs to explore the benefit of the con the model and concept in a way that is much faster and much cheaper than even deepseek. Now how soon this going to happen in our region and whether or not the founder is going to be in our region I don't know but what I know right now is it's good for us because it creates more competition in the market not only opener eye or you know anthropic like only a handful of companies going to win no and I don't want that because otherwise only tier ones conventional firms in Silicon one in Silicon Valley wins. Yeah. Now it's also our shot. I think this is a good wakeup call for a lot of ECs and also for our region that you know you can actually do it. Can you actually explore doing it the right way? Okay. Not malicious way. It's inspirational. Yes. Because if you figure out the way how to do that, I mean, you know that um Jensen Huang also went to our region like maybe six weeks or seven weeks ago and he took my country. My country, your country, Vietnam, Vietnam. Yeah. Yeah. They want to build cloud infrastructure because the demand of the GPA. They can build it, but they're going to need the energy. They're going to need energy. It comes right to the engine now. Oh my god. We just got to build the energy faster. Much faster. Yes. And we need that. Yeah, we need that. Um because the demand is higher. We need more cloud, you know, um and farms and we and to operate those, they need more energy. And when we don't have enough existing, um energy companies, they're going to we're going to have to figure out how to power more energy into like all of these um demand. Let's you know, Sam Alman was in India recently, right? and he was asked, you know, is it possible to do something like what whatever he's done with 10 bucks, $10 million? And he he laughed and and asserted that, you know, it's foundationally hopeless. The fact that it's been disrupted by some guy for $4 million or $5 million or $6 million, I mean, he's got to feel pretty odd right now. But but I I'm sure millions of people in not just Southeast Asia but in Africa in South America, Eastern Europe, I think are playing feeling pretty good about what lies ahead, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's highly inspirational. It's a race to the bottom. Yeah. And if China can do it, we can do it. So let's talk about impact, right? What what can you do to be impactful for that sort of opportunism? within Southeast Asia. Oh my god, there's so many opportunities, so many things. Um maybe I can talk about from the perspective of my fund. Okay. Um I found it I launched Razio Ventures um September 4th last year. In 12 weeks, um I invested in five companies and I didn't do pre-deals. I don't like pre-deals. So I launched a fund, money in a bank account, then I start doing deal sourcing and then diligence and then invest. For me, in order to narrow the gap between the US and Southeast Asia, we have to be the bridge on the technology part. And so the investment that I do um I talk about the scalability. if I invest in the US um if they do hardware I hope you know I can I cannot force my portfolio companies but because I'm one of the investors I can encourage them to take a look at our region instead of going somewhere else and that those kind of opportunities create technology transfer employment um if the company is a little bit more mature I would encourage them to take a look at the stock exchanges that we have in the region that you know can act as you know almost like the middle market the mid-market IPO because the market cap is smaller than NASDAQ that is you know one also financial opportunity that they had also invested in um microprocessor company HAI company um full stack robotic companies uh software robotic companies uh cyber security right now deepseek and whatnot this is also a hot topic every investment from investor perspective every investment that we do it has to be strategic initiative for Southeast Asia region because that's my mandate for the fund but at the same time those standalone companies it's an impact company meaning let's say if I only invest in the US and nothing to do with Southeast Asia. I have to be able to see social impact, environmental impact and or economic impact from each of the company that I invest in. And this is why I do not invest in cryptocurrency or some of the sectors that do not have clear um positive benefit in terms of productivity, efficiency and and whatnot. So I think from my point of views is simply because of where I am in my career um as a fund manager um and also professor I can do this for other people. you can absolutely engage in this right um I hope that the younger generations can see entrepreneurship as opportunity I don't know how long the academic institutions either you know Berkeley Stanford and what not going to be relevant they can get knowledge anywhere and anytime if you don't have the opportunity to come to the US learn from your device. Yeah. In my generation when the device podcast Yes. or watch the podcast. When when in my generation when the device was not there, you know how I learned to speak English? Cuz I went to Thai schools, I turn on CNN at home and I repeat I repeated. You done? Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm just very lucky. I I watch a lot of cowboy movies. and no amazing we met here and we've done all right. Yeah, I'm I'm just very lucky. But yes, you watch you watch the podcast. Are you suggesting that the relevance of university education is diminishing? I think that the education sector, even a top 10 university like ours, it has to adjust. And you you don't think it's adjusting fast enough? No, I don't think so. That's troubling. Yes, I can tell you that not just at Berkeley, I mean Stanford as well and also top 10 um MBA uh schools, the application has been declining. Yeah. Is a fact. That's a fact. Yeah. Because people don't see the relevancy. Yeah. Right. I mean, especially, you know, tech companies. Yeah. I mean, it's still hard to get in, don't get me wrong, but they prefer engineers over MBAs nowadays. Exactly. Yeah. It is. So the the question is what do students get to learn? I mean even in in uh engineering school right uh right now do you need to I mean we the word coding was so hot 10 years ago oh everyone need to know how to code you learn how to code chip can do that now deep sea could yeah DC can do that now so and it's only 10 years and this kind of learning and development going to be very very fast actually to give you a case in point there was um one student um from Southeast Asia uh trying to apply um to Berkeley and he wanted to learn um the you know uh graphic design, product design and so on. Um he wanted to get into the master's program. Okay. And I told him that you know if you invest in the two years education actually chat GP uh CH GPT can do the job. They can design what you want to design. Not that they're not going to get a job, but in a big company, if they used to hire 200 people, it might be down to 10 at my fund. To give you case in point, typically if I, you know, say 5 years ago, I might have to hire three or four associates, basically MBA grads. Now I need one. Yeah. every jobs will be replaced one way or another or maybe a fraction of it because the industry change so fast. So we have to be on top of it and for our countries in Southeast Asia if we don't capitalize on this new revolution the AI revolution we're going to be left behind far far behind then the smartphone. It's pretty scary. is very scary because we have hundreds of millions of people that that are likely to be exposed to this dislocation. Right. That's right. 11 countries, hundreds of millions of people and this is why we need to be the bridge between the two region and we try to close the gap and they have we have to also leaprog. We shouldn't make the same mistake that has made. Yeah. And we have to focus on impact. Are you having a tough time convincing your LPs with regards to what might have happened with the tech companies in Southeast Asia that have not performed as well as you know people would have expected them to or that's got that's got to have some impact right yeah that's that's a great question Gita you know when I'm talking about racial ventures and this the the mandate or my goal this is this is how I give back to where I come from. Yeah. Which is this fun. I actually don't need to do this. And we talked about this um earlier. And a lot of people ask me why not investing 100% in Southeast Asia because as I mentioned the vast majority of money I still deploy in the US but I want to allocate um a fraction right um to invest in superstars companies in Southeast Asia and groom them going to spend more time with them and help them become successful. And the reason is because we are not ready. The LPs or the investors in the fund if I raise money and I said oh I'm going to invest 100% in Southeast Asia. They said jeep why do you do this? Yeah, this is way too high risk and you have done a lot of in fact your teacher has you can just like deploy the money in the US it's you have you already have the network you can do this easily and was like no no no we have to do that because we have to close a gap but I can't do it all at once yet so vast majority still have to happen here and we absorb the knowledge yeah and a fraction we still have to do that to create a catalyst and they have to get the exposure here and that's how we kind of blend things together and they get to learn from each other and that's how it's also become more digestible to um the investors that ah okay at least you know you deploy the money where you know how to deploy where you have the network and I'm okay you know having a little bit of the risk in the region because you already did it in Latin America. Now the track record kind of you know came um in place and oh you know I think this is this is a good business model but over time I hope I'm going to increase more percentage to invest in Southeast Asia. Yeah but we have to build the exit market and we have to build the ecosystem together and different countries have to come together as a team. You know, the past few minutes, I've just been thinking you you can tell the stories really well, right? And I've I've been telling people that Southeast Asians are generally not great in telling stories on a global stage, right? I mean, what what what sort of tip do you have for the young generation in Southeast Asia as for them to be better storytellers, right, on a wolf stage? Yeah. I mean, I know Southeast Asians, they like to tell stories to each other, but they need to be able to tell stories to the world a lot better or I I don't know actually. Thank you. But I don't know if I'm a good, you know, storyteller at all. But no, wouldn't would it be nice if we had storytellers from Thailand, Lao, Cambodia, Myanmar? I think so. Vietnam. I think I think it's it it comes from the perspective of being an entrepreneur, being a VC, you have to be optimist. You have to be an optimist. Yeah. And if you are an optimist, you see comparative and competitive advantages of your own country. You know the weak, you know the strengths, but you also know the weaknesses. But we can f all fix all the weaknesses. But we have to use our strengths to our advantage. So that's number one. And number two, it has to be real. It has to be true. Yeah. And it is to be mad like why you are motivated to do that. And that's how you're going to go through all the challenges in your career and your life. Someone asked me the other day, you know, I failed before and how I go through all this and now that, you know, people see sort of like the 1% success that I have, but they didn't know that the 99% was failure like, oh, you're, you know, first women professor like type professor and so on like failures are you know, appetizer before you get to the main menu. Everybody failed before and I think this is something we have to be aware in our culture. You think failing fast is better than failing slow? I think it depends on what you do. Okay. I wanted to clarify that because I I interpret it as if you prefer people to fail fast. Yeah. I think I'm sort of like in a fail slow. Yeah. I think it depends on what you do. Okay. In venture capital because you take VC's money. You can't just keep raising money when you know it's not going to work because it's going to burn the bridge, right? Um that is more is is an art, not science. So in the tech industry because things evolve so fast um if you know you're not going to be successful it's actually better to tell the investors that oh you know let's say I have new competitors I don't think I can compete or oh Amazon actually decided to launch the product that competing with me I don't think I'm going to survive so the investor know and then they stop funding because they also know the market change they are there already to take risks and I think that's why the concept of um fail fast come usually come from the VC industry. Now in general people learn a lot from failure. Um Steve Jobs right I mean he failed. I I know some who don't but but for our culture I want to come back to this. I I think there's something about Asian culture, right, in in Southeast Asia that we don't talk about this or we feel we feel embarrassed or failure is bad and sometimes it's the expectation we had from our parents, right? Oh, you're going to get like, you know, 4.0 whatever it is, right? Like it's like a little bit of everything in life that you want to be a perfectionist. It's not about that. Being an entrepreneur, you have to hustle. Sometime you made mistakes and you are okay about making the mistakes, right? And you learn from it and it make you 10x if not 20x better in the next thing you do. And I think this is what it's all about. Um when I'm talking about failure. Yeah. Well, you know, I I just want the young generation to understand that failing slow, I think, allows you to digest wisdom a little bit better, right? And and I and I've seen so many, you know, members of the young generation kind of like moving from one to the other very quickly without actually deepening their insights. Yeah. You know, about what's to learn from that particular failure. I see. Right. And that that tends to repeat. I see. you know, in the next gig or episode. And that I think is quite unsettling. Mhm. You know, to me by way of just really absorbing, you know, the experience a little bit longer, I think it allows you to gain more, if not a lot more insights. Yeah. And that's going to help you help prepare you for the next episode or whatever. Agree. Agree. there this hopping mentality amongst I it it's it's unsettling no grit they don't have any grit like oh I don't like this job I quit in 3 months and absolutely I know they they even like to move from one apartment to another very quickly the young generation you know I mean I'm like you know I'm comfortable moving is such a pain how could they do that look you you mentioned the Paris Accord Trump has just decided to pull off right from the Paris accord How do you think that will impact you know the sustainability narrative? Absolutely. I mean unfortunately you know we are the US is the leader in the world in a global market and anything that we do always have repercussion and you know that one I believe that other countries that pledge and be a part of this they still be a part of it. Okay. But the fact that the US is not committed, it sends the message that the momentum is declining and you're going to start seeing the replication at least from my perspective in a private sector. If usually when we invest in climate tech, right? um food tech, argiculture, EV, batteries, green materials, anything that reduce CO2 emission. Those companies they also receive grants, non-dilutive grants from the government one way or another. Right. Right. Now we might see that those grants are reduced or if not completely inated already. Yeah. Depending like NIH. Yes. Yeah. The US aid has already been pulled out and Yes. M um the private sector like the VC we are still here to support or to invest in those companies if they are really good but it actually hurts the entrepreneur that if you are trying to do something really novel and take times and use IP to commercialize that might take longer than other you know say just pure software company then it's going to hurt their chance to stay survive longer in order to get funding from private sector right this is from VC perspective from global perspective I think we're going to start to see some of the consequences the momentum that we have already built in the you know past years that is going to be reduced I don't think that other countries going to pull back immediately but unfortunately you know um we have to we have to see what's going to happen I I get the sense that He's 2.0 seems to be surrounded by more competent people. Mhm. Just just generally speaking, right? And it it seems to send the right message to, you know, investors from around the world as to put money into the US. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. If you believe the rhetoric, right, you know, MBS has decided to put 600 billion dollars. MASA from Soft Bank decided to put $500 billion into the US and all that. These are crazy amounts, right? Huge. Yeah. And and that's that's got to have an impact on capital allocation to other parts other parts of the world, right? One of which is Southeast Asia. You're not troubled by that, right? You know, actually to tell you the truth, I think that Trump administration is good for business. Yeah. In the US, in the VC industry. Yeah. Um Yes. I mean, there's going to be the certain grants um that got cut and so on. But overall, say overall theme. Um, I'm I'm still troubled by some of the things that happened, but but overall I'm also positive in a way that you're going to see more companies. I expect to see more companies um going through M&A because it's easier to do so. the companies that didn't get to IPO in the past few years because the market was down, they're going to come out and start to you're going to start to see more IPO, right? In our region, as you mentioned, because the administration is pro business, I think it's upon us to develop the relationships. Yeah. With the US. I agree. Because we still have we mean the US and China, we still have geop political problems. But Southeast Asia, we do not. So if we develop good business relationship with the US, it's a good upside for us. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to see a lot of things that we don't want to see. But overall, it's also pro business environment. You know, I always tell, you know, friends here that Southeast Asia is sort of like on the periphery of global consciousness. It's it's a region of 700 million people for trillion dollar economy that nobody talks about. I thought we the epicenter of everything. I Well, we need more storytellers. We need to be able to communicate Yeah. with China and the US. Yes. you know, in terms of how we could actually be relevant and useful and helpful and and and at the rate that the US and China are going to get more and more increasingly decoupled, this region of 700 million people I think could play a role in interlocu between the two, right? Yep. Absolutely. And and if I get asked what what's the logical intersection between Southeast Asia and the US and China, I said it's, you know, there's many, but the two obvious ones are AI and energy transition. Yeah. And and I would have thought that the US was going to be much more proactive in AI, but having seen deepseek being a Sputnik moment just recently, well, maybe China could play a more proactive role on AI with Southeast Asia. But on energy transition, I'm a big believer that China is going to be a big player. Yep. In Southeast Asia because it's just so damn cheap. Yep. You know, whatever they make and they have the asset, they have the land area, they have money and Yeah. No, I I I agree with that. um we need to really think more and this is something I would like to learn from you as well on the energy transition on what we need to do in the region given that the energy consumption now is like exponential and and even if there's a new AI model that is more power efficient and so on. I mean there are global population a lot of people the vast majority of people they don't deploy the AI yet and they going it's kind of like the first time when people have the internet the vast majority of the population didn't get access to the internet but now say every almost everybody is on the internet so it's going to be the same as AI so we need to I would like to know learn from you what do what we need to do as a region to get you know to the transition well the the you know I've been saying the techn technology is there for energy transition purposes but the money is not there. Mhm. In terms of the affordability, whatever technology is available, it's at this level. The affordability is here. Yeah. Big gap, right? And to acquire that technology. Mhm. It's not cheap either. And then if you take a look at the capital formation in Southeast Asia, money supply to GDP ratios, they're all suboptimal with the exception of some countries, but the large scale countries like Philippines and Indonesia, money supply to GDP ratios are way less than 100%. Indonesia is at 45%, Philippines at 80%. This I think is reflected on how difficult it is to recycle capital within the capital markets. The pipeline is full of things that don't that don't exit. You know I you know if just recently in the last year the capital markets in Malaysia are just killing it much better than that in Indonesia. even better than that in Singapore. And it's it's all I think to some extent a function of how much money you have locally. If you don't have money locally, then you've got to get money overseas. FDI. How do we get money from FDI? Well, it goes back to your mantra, right? Rule of law, political stability, and education. Mhm. But it's all about directionality. It's it's not about, you know, whether or not this is good today. But if it's better tomorrow than today, if it's better day after tomorrow then tomorrow, if it's better next week, then day after tomorrow, then I think the thinking of the investing community will be quite favorable. Mhm. But again, going back to that Southeast Asia being at the periphery of global consciousness, Mhm. there needs to be much more robust storytelling. Agreed. I think Mhm. I want I want to ask you about crypto because I I I hold a slightly different view. Okay. particularly with respect to Bitcoin. Yeah. And and this is on three attributes. The first is somewhat philosophical. It it just seems to be a logical intersection between what travels over time. Mhm. And what travels over space, right? Over time, gold over space. Press of a button, it moves from one end to one one point to another. Second is technological. Mhm. It's never required a CEO ever since the white paper came out in 2009. Satoshi. And the third is the finite nature. Yeah. Of supply. Yeah. I mean at the rate that the supply is finite. Yeah. Within intuition, the intrinsic value per unit should be well preserved. Mhm. And and this I think goes against the fact that in the last few decades we've seen overly massive quantitative easing. Yeah. And and that I think is troubling. Yeah. It has inflated, you know, economic activities unnecessarily. Aside from all the other cryptos, but if I take a look at Bitcoin, it seems to fit the bill. Yeah. I think Bitcoin is is is one of the early ones. Yeah. As as you know, um from the technology perspective, VC perspective. What I don't like about the overall crypto currency was because it's from speculation and people thought they can just at one point they could launch any coin like Dogecoin, whatever coin and then manipulate the market. um you know drain someone else's savings and and whatnot that coming from you know the underground market I do not like that aspect of it. Okay. There are a lot of companies try to pitch me um using some I'm not pitching you by the way just but maybe we can do this together in the right way. I I would be in that venture by the way if doing it with you. So there there was some company um pitching me um a few years ago and if you remember a few years ago Venezuela failed as a country it's democracy right okay it's so I told um the startup company that instead of trying to do any other coin and create you know more speculation and consume like mining and electricity and power. If you can use cryptocurrency to solve macroeconomics problem, the failure of macro problem in Venezuela, imagine if you grew up in that country, you have all savings in local currency and then when you are retired, everything is gone. hyperinflation, the country basically went bankrupt, right? If we can use this kind of like third uh you call third party third currency to secure right be the backbone of those kind of and in those kind of environment I would invest that would be a good use right of um market failure to solve market failure problem it's just that the way it has been used in so many companies in Silicon Valley it's kind of like a wrong purpose. Yeah. Bitcoin is not actually one of them. Yeah. Okay. Um, stable coin, I mean, Ethereum, I mean, there are only a few pockets of them, right, that did not involve, you mean largely did not involve in those kind of speculation activities. Interestingly, as you mentioned, um these this year um starting last year, the uh cryptocurrency industry started to pick back up, right? To the level that the policy makers in different countries thought about this. Yeah. Um but to me, it is still unclear why we need it. I'm talking about stable countries, okay? and not like Reneuela which I think that can be good use cases and I would love to see the implementation there. El Salvador or Sal Yes. that they've basically adopted it as legal currency. Yes. Bitcoin. Yeah. Because it's you know trying to solve the market failure problem and and I think it's a great idea by the way. um or you know um uh currency fluctuation like in Argentina you know one day is up one day is down one is it's just like so hard to manage this can be a good instrument but in a vast majority of cases I would like to dig a little bit deeper in a stable country like in our region we don't have honestly we don't have hyperinflation like in Latin America I mean it's it's crazy we used to in the late '90s in later that kind of like 1997 when we start a podcast I was there too. So anyways yeah so I I think we have to think a little bit harder whether I I I think it it serves the purpose of store of value. It serves to some extent the purpose of medium of exchange. Yeah. But it's it's not to the level where you can actually buy shampoo. Yeah. Easily. Yeah. Using Bitcoin. Yeah. Right. But but you know, if I take if we take a look at the current government in the US, they're they're mulling over the adoption of it for the strategic currency, right? Strategic reserve. Uh, I I I think it seems to resonate to me at the rate that the fiat has gotten carried away with printing too much and that I think is correlated with the inflating of the economy. I mean, you know, when I went to university in the 80s, you know, would it would cost a lot cheaper than how much I'm paying for my daughter's education, my kids education, right? and and I think to some extent that's got to do with quantitative easing, you know, the the application of interest rate and all that. Yeah. So, yep, you can argue also that it create diversity. So, you don't peg just only you know on a large currency like US dollars and whatnot, right? So, you have we have more diversity in the region. Yeah. I mean, if if you take a look at the global asset classes, right? I mean real estate is what valued at about $300 trillion and fixed income at about 140 $150 trillion. Equities 130 140 trillions. Gold probably 10 trillions. Bitcoin is only two trillions. It's too small. If if I take a look at these asset classes, I think real estate is exposed. It's it's due for a correction. Well, that's why Asian economy crisis start from real estate and the next asset class which is fixed income. I think that's bloated. Yeah. Because of the printing of money, right? I think what what's got room to grow is equities because that's propelled by increasing productivity on the back of AI. So if if I take a look at these asset classes, I think the ones that have room to grow would be equities and crypto or Bitcoin. I'm not sure about gold because gold you can only dig the ground at a certain rate and it's never gone up. You know, it's the supply side has only grown about 1.4% per year whereas money has grown at a rate of 14% per year for the last 60 years. So that that explains the seemingly overvaluation of the fixed income, you know, asset class. I see your point. We got to be careful and then I'm in for the for the good cause. I'm in. I'm just philosophically. Yeah. You know anyway any other message Jeep for our listeners about the world about Southeast Asia about tech about you know carbon neutrality or sustainability anything it's really a pleasure to be here this is the first podcast that I do for Southeast Asia um am very optimistic about our region we are really in the right place at the right time. We have to work together and I would love to see the next generation build our region in a way that you know much much better than my generation or your generation have built. Um most importantly I want us to work together like a one country almost like an EU. Yeah. And that's how we going to win. You think that's possible? not to the extent as EU but I think it's possible that we tack team and take advantage of each other's strengths and show this to the US that we are capable um and we have a lot of good assets and they should take a look at us we are the epicenter we are not peripheral one final question how how do you convince your friends anywhere outside Southeast Asia that diversity within Southeast Asia plays to our strength as opposed to weakness. Because I don't know, I get the sense that when I talk to some people, the diversity of Southeast Asia could be disadvantageous as opposed to advantageous. Mhm. Meaning, you've got a country that earns less than $2,000 per capita per year, another one 85,000. Mhm. That's diversity. Some people call it divergence, right? But should that play to our strength or to our weakness? How do you how do you craft a story in that it it serves more as a strength as opposed to weakness? One C, one Southeast Asia depends on what they want to do. Yeah. I would highlight I would start by highlighting competitive advantages of of each country. say if they want to do manufacturing um you know like Nvidia microprocessor I would highlight Malaysia and Thailand uh they don't want access to the broad market with large population I would highlight Indonesia Philippines and the Philippines Vietnam if they want to if if they're looking for the financial market um and the headquarter I would recommend Singapore and then they use Singapore or as a hub to travel to to um different countries cuz it's very easy like an hour or two and then you get to everywhere um in Southeast Asia with direct flight. Um I think it depends on what they are looking at. If they're looking at listings Singapore and Thailand um if they're looking at food and travel, now we have to argue which country is better. Thailand. Guilty is charged. Not Bali. Um, no. It's, you know, you go to the airports in Thailand, particularly Bangkok, the way they package the foods. Oh, it's just on a different planet. You know, and it tastes better, I think. I mean, you you guys have taken I'll take you out for dinner tonight. No, no. You guys have taken everybody else's lunch when it comes to agricultural products. In agricultural product and Yeah. I mean and tourism and whatnot. No, but but I would the way I pitch is the same way that I pitch to my portfolio companies. Yeah. Why they should come to us. Yeah. Instead of others. And this is how I pitch them. That simplifies the story. So that it allows them to just, you know, zoom in on, you know, which depending depending on what they're looking for. And I said, take a look at us. We can force you, but we want to make sure we are the option. And we are very good option because when when we are working with the investor and we have you know you are also in a network they will be taken care of and that's how we got start. Very good. Thank you so much Jeep. Thank you. That was Jeep client from Racewell Ventures. Thank you Endgame. [Music]