The Startup Scene in Southeast Asia

0:00Golden Gate Ventures is one of Southeast Asia's most established early-stage venture firms, having backed companies across the region since 2011. They have invested in companies that are now household names in the region. Examples include Gojek, which started as a motorcycle taxi service in Indonesia and grew into a super app spanning payments, food delivery, and logistics. and Grab, which began as a ride-hailing service in Singapore and similarly expanded across Southeast Asia into food delivery and financial services. Jeffrey Payne is a co-founder and partner at Golden Gate Ventures. In this episode, Jeffrey joins Gregor Vann to discuss how the Southeast Asia startup ecosystem has evolved, why the regional copycat model is giving way to globally ambitious technical founders, what companies like Manus and Supabase reveal about Singapore's emerging role in the global tech landscape, and what advice Jeffrey gives founders today who want to build something that matters beyond their home market.

1:04Gregor Vand is a security-focused technologist, having previously been a CTO across cybersecurity, cyber insurance, and general software engineering companies. He is based in Singapore and can be found via his profile at van.hk or on LinkedIn.

1:34Hello and welcome to Software Engineering Daily. My guest today is Jeffrey Payne from Golden Gate Ventures. Nice to have you here today, Jeffrey. Hi and thank you so much for inviting me. Yeah of course so this is a slightly different one we've done a couple of these in the past on SE Daily where we actually get to hear more from the venture capital side of the industry and today I would say it's like extra special we get to hear from venture capital from Southeast Asia which is a whole different ball game in some respects and as we'll probably discuss maybe is trending more to a similar game as the US who knows so that's kind of what we're here to discuss today and hear about as usual just love to understand your background jeffrey i believe you were grew up in singapore and studied in the us but how like what was the connection i guess us back to singapore and then getting into vc so after working in california for a while i came back to singapore and then helped i guess a public listed company set up their first corporate venture fund so that was how i stumbled into this.

2:42And I originally wanted to do this. It's just this came on my lap and okay, this is something I can do from scratch, which is quite cool. Yeah, and then we ended up looking at deals globally, investing in a few. And then after maybe three and a half years, I moved on to do some private equity work in Shanghai. But the gist of where everything started was, I brought the program called the Founder Institute to Singapore back in 2010. So as you may know, FI started in 2009 in the Bay Area and Singapore was the first chapter in Asia. So that's how I got back into the super early stage. I mean, FI traditionally is the idea stage incubator.

3:21So that was a pretty interesting stage to be mentoring and advising founders on. So FI was actually the main push and we launched chapters in Southeast Asia. And then we flew mentors around from the region and from the US to Southeast Asia. So that was, I would say the timing was just nice. It gave us an excuse and leverage to meet as many of the ecosystem leaders as possible and really, really quickly. And that got me to meet Vinny, my co-founder of Golden Gate Ventures. He was backpacking in Asia after he sold his company. I met him for coffee. I was like, oh, since you're bouncing around, so maybe I can get the chapters, you'll fly you around.

4:05So that's how he was moving around, mentoring founders in the region. And then we came together and said, oh, there is something here. And we started the fund shortly after, probably in late 2012. Nice. And I mean, like, I'm quite familiar if I look at some of the names that you've invested in over the years through Golden Gate Ventures. I mean, two, I guess, that stick out. Gojek is one, which is at Uber, like company for those in the US. And then actually we've got Redmart as well, which is a Amazon-like company, or that's a supermarket delivery company. I think just talk us through, especially back then, and what were the kinds of companies that were evolving, and I guess you would deem the successful ones from that era.

4:50Sure. So to be clear, we did not invest in Gojek. We invested in a payments company in Indonesia that was acquired by Gojek, and it became GoPay. So that's how we ended up being shareholders of Gojek because there were some cash and share swap. I would say back then it was still very consumer, fintech, marketplace ideas. If you look back, it has almost always been copycats. I think the top 100 companies in Southeast Asia for the last 12, 15 years has been copycats. And that's perfectly fine because in emerging countries where things are kind of new, kind of raw, the problems still exist. It's just in a different timeline, in a different adoption rate cycle.

5:33And back then, many founders are not very, very technical. So it's not unusual to see a lot of copycats. So back then, it was mostly consumer issues, consumer problems. How do I pay online? How do I pay for a game? That kind of thing. Yeah, so marketplaces, logistics that surrounds marketplaces, payments that surround marketplaces, all these stuff, things that are needed because it's very silo here and every country is different. So back then, yeah, it has been consumer and fintech for a long time. Yeah, I guess I moved to Hong Kong from the US. I was in the US for about three years and I moved to Hong Kong about 2014.

6:10And that was the kinds of, I was usually sitting in co-working spaces in Hong Kong. But yeah, that was exactly the kind of companies I was seeing. I noticed, I think Trade Gecko is another one that you guys invested in. So that was definitely on my radar back then of a player. I think that's interesting. They were a bit more global, though, in the sense that that just happened to be a platform that was based out of Hong Kong or somewhere. But is that right? Yeah, I mean, they have a Hong Kong office, but they're headquartered in Singapore. They were started by Kiwi Founders. It's basically an order management software for people who start online businesses, right?

6:43Which is literally the growth of marketplaces and Shopify and that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I guess if we maybe fast forward to today, I think that's what I'm most interested to dig in a bit on. If we take Grab as an example, so Grab, for those that aren't aware, is Singapore's Uber, effectively. And they have reached into other geographic markets, but still Southeast Asia generally. So if I fly to Malaysia or to Thailand or something like that, I can usually open up Grab and there is now a service operating, especially with the ride share model but then seeing where they're going for example like they're into flexi loans now and i think the number of almost like 1.2 billion i think sing dollar maybe or if it is us but like a loan book of that size that to me says there's a not a problem but what's going on there like in terms of how are these companies supposed to grow to me that just feels like the wrong direction for like a company of what it's doing otherwise but i guess from the investment side yeah i don't know how do you look at that?

7:46I would say you can kind of compare Grab and Uber, but then you can also kind of compare Grab and WeChat, right? So Grab is a little bit more multi-featured and they have different services. And obviously, once you're in many countries in the region, I think they probably have over 40, 45 million consumers from merchants to drivers to passengers, right? And they've been been operating for a while so they have a ton of data so from right activity to payment history so this technically if you want to actually build a credit bureau based on that you probably can because most people have used scrap at least once by now so this is something i would say it is inevitable if that's your strategy right to provide more value to your consumers and not only passengers it could be the drivers if they needed something if you needed some loans quickly or even your merchants so this is something i would say not every right sharing company would do or try but yeah this is something they obviously did and they're doing very well yeah that makes sense analogizing it slightly more to like a wechat if we look at again just to take a comparison for a second if we do take uber uber technically i guess could have gone that way having that touch point with so many people in the u.s but instead i think they are focusing much more predominantly on transport especially driverless now and trying to play that game where is the divergence like i don't know where in your mind is it like that's why a u.s market player goes and doubles down on their core thing and and here we see them actually spreading tentacles into like many other things which we see yeah especially like that that influence from say the chinese super apps yeah i think it's like southeast asia and the geography i think it's partly strategy partly cultural and then partly regulatory right so if they go into fintech there's another ton of regulatory requirements they have to do and there are incumbent competition as well so potentially it is a strategy kind of thing so it's like asking how come like facebook messenger did not become wechat right so it's kind of the same thing i would say it's probably more strategy than anything but at the same time i'm sure they know what's happening around the world so it's either they chose not to do this or they have plans but not now yeah okay that makes sense and i guess now thinking about founders here i became aware of you going through another accelerator here in singapore and you kindly came and gave a hour-long pep talk to us as we were navigating things and And that was just at the cusp of like the AI boom, like ChatGPT was out.

10:29But I don't think any of us even then fully got like where AI was going. And we were still being kind of encouraged, not necessarily by you, I just mean, we were encouraged in that cohort to really still look at the copycat model effectively. Like think of these B2B ideas, copycat. and I would say no more than like three months later I felt a seismic shift between that kind of approach and actually you can't really sit here and create something competitive unless you're basically competing with the US because everything is global now and don't create AI it's specialized on Indonesia for example you just create the best AI yeah like how are you now seeing that I mean in terms of any investments you are making these days or like just advice you're giving to people especially in the region like can you maybe just walk through what you saw because that was like me as a founder watching from the outside a little bit or trying to understand what i was being advised to do but as somebody who didn't particularly want to go and sit back in the us again for example but yeah how would you look at it now yeah so let me rewind back i think back then when i was speaking there is a period where maybe about a year where everybody don't really know what's happening they're enjoying the products being released they're astounded by the amount of money being spent, but then they don't know what's happening.

11:49But at the same time, there are people already shouting what's happening. They're shouting this is going to change everything. They're shouting this is 10 times bigger than the internet, but people are kind of not listening back then. And actually that's pretty normal, right? Because generally you should not be jumping in and believing whatever people are saying right off the bat. You have to be a bit skeptical and trying to figure out what does it mean to you. But on the hindsight, what is actually happening is the people shouting are the top 1 % of influencers and they actually know more things than everybody else in the world.

12:21So if they are shouting, that means you should be leaning in a little bit more. The problem is people do not know that they are the most important people in our current generation of AI. And then like you say, fast forward three, six, nine months, then you're like, okay, this is getting real. You can see maybe the shift of venture capital, right? went over to VC. It moved away from probably climate tech, that kind of thing. And it completely swung over and it's like 70, 80 % of the money went there. And because of that vacuum, which is Silicon Valley, most of the money went to the US. It didn't go anywhere else.

12:58So then we started realizing, okay, there's something here. And then after one more quarter, we're like, it's still the same. Way more money is just flying there. Then we realized, okay, this is real. And then what you normally see is you see the ideas start changing. You see startups having AI everywhere. The top accelerators, most of the pictures are AI. So then you start the entire global. The way people understand this is definitely important, started changing really fast. And then you start joking, every startup has an AI. My grandma don't know what LGBT is, that kind of thing. Now, as of today, it is still going on.

13:33It's probably not stopping. Is there a bubble? There is a bubble, but it depends. So what I can explain to people maybe outside of the Bay Area is, if you're not in the US, you're probably about 6 to 12 months behind what's happening. And I say that a lot here in Singapore. So the only way to really understand what you should be building, you need to close the knowledge gap a little bit more. You need to be traveling a little bit, attending conferences a little bit. You need to be reading research papers a little bit. I think technical guys don't normally read research papers unless you were a grad student before.

14:09So it comes naturally to you. I can almost say most investors don't read research papers. So everybody needs to catch up. Now, most things are in English. Most things you can find on podcasts like yours and others and YouTube channels. So you definitely can catch up. It just takes effort and a little bit of inquisitiveness and just keep asking questions. So at the moment, what we are seeing is obviously a lot more B2B, a lot more deep tech, a lot more founders who are highly technical. You can tell just by looking at YC's graduate pools, I hardly ever see MBA students anymore. Most of them are highly, highly technical or they will drop out of MIT and Stanford.

14:49So things have shifted. Even the batches at YC can give you a signal. In the past, there's copycats from every country that will go to YC. Now you don't see that very much maybe one or two percent the rest of them are global from day one and it doesn't matter where you're from there's a bunch of founders from europe but they are global from day one most of them will move to the bay area so things have changed it's pretty drastic change actually probably it's been one and a half years and it's been like this and i think it will continue to be like this for a bit of time so i think here i would say if our mode of operation has always being copycats.

15:25Then founders here should be copycatting what's in the US, which is actually happening. But to copycat this kind of stuff, it takes a different kind of founder, right? So you need to be slightly highly technical. So we will see less startups being formed, which is true. And then the teams are a little bit more technical than before, which is true. Then lies the problem. The problem is the region is probably too early for what you're copying. That's one problem. The second problem, the region might not be as big as you think. So I would say the AI copycats will still raise money if they focus on one country or the region but how big they can be that's a separate topic which is exactly what we went through in the back in the day right which is consumer and fintech now consumer fintech we are definitely big enough depending on where you go and timing but not every idea is big enough right even in consumer and fintech yeah not every idea is big enough yeah i mean to take an example i'm just trying to think like when we talk about copycat i can't imagine easily literally just go to one extreme like an anthropic copycat coming out of singapore in the next year for example but i could imagine like a harvey legal copycat coming yeah yeah is that more of the level or oh yeah yeah you can see it already i think every country probably have three to five of these and then at some point what will normally happen is lawyers are hardest to sell to and then they'll push back and then sometimes the top down right sometimes the law societies will ask the legal firms to try it out and they may give some incentives or grants.

16:55So there's a little bit of hustle and push from the industry. And then some of us will say, there are three of you in one country and then how many law firms are there? So how can I make my 20x return? It's impossible. And then by the time you go to another jurisdiction, there's another five competitors, which is exactly what happened back in the day. right so every e-commerce company has 20 copycats around the region so it's the same thing so it will repeat again so then the question is what do they do right so that is the challenge that most founders are facing now now over the years what has changed we have a little bit more experienced founders in the region we have a little bit more technical people in the region right and their level is getting better and better, higher and higher, because there are more R &D centers in Asia, including Australia and New Zealand and Taiwan, that kind of thing.

17:50So there are founders who, maybe I don't do this, maybe I do something bigger. For example, maybe I do a Harvey, but for construction law, and I'm number one in the world, right? I just do something small, but then I'm number one in the world at something small, as opposed to do something horizontal for one country, right this is something the founders have to go through to quickly realize okay this is not big enough this is harder than i thought i am probably two years too early because the lawyers just don't understand they don't want to use me they don't believe in what i do whatever reason right or they might want to still charge that rate right and they don't want to perceive to a customer that they're cutting corners and still charging that rate and then they don't want to fire half the team so there's many many political reasons but this is what the founders have to slowly slowly realize once they're out there in the market.

18:40And sometimes they realize, yeah, the market is actually too small and it takes too long. Sometimes the investors tell them, you should think bigger. And then some of them will change, some of them won't change. But that's the way it is. You're shipping faster than ever with AI coding agents. But those agents don't vet the packages they pull in, and they don't have security contacts built in. Ori by Endor Labs fixes that. It plugs directly into your editor via MCP, catching vulnerabilities, blocking malicious packages, and flagging exposed secrets in real time. No separate tool to switch to, no dashboard to babysit, security that fits how you actually build.

19:15Teams using Ori see 10 times fewer security tickets and 6 times faster fixes. Free for developers. Get started at www.endorlabs.com. If you're running Postgres in production, you've probably felt the moment analytical queries start fighting your transactional workload. Most teams end up adding a second database and all the pipeline complexity that comes with it. Tiger Data, creators of TimescaleDB, takes a different approach. We extend Postgres with hybrid, row, and columnar storage, so one table handles both writes and analytical scans. Native compression cuts storage costs up to 95%. Continuous aggregates keep dashboards live without bash jobs.

19:53And it scales to petabytes without you re-architecting. Companies like Cloudflare, Octave Energy, Schneider, Axpo, and Floco run production workloads on Tiger Data today. No stale data. No second system to operate, just Postgres. Managed for you, ready for the workload you're building toward. Try it free at tigerdata.com. You're building agents that can write code, summarize documents, and automate workflows. But they're missing one thing. Awareness of the world around them. X-Weather combines enterprise-grade weather intelligence with agent-ready APIs, natural language capabilities, and an MCP server built for tools like Clawed, Codex, Copilot, and modern IDEs.

20:29So your agents can adapt workflows, automate responses, and make better decisions based on real-world conditions. Backed by Vaisala, whose instruments fly on NASA missions to Mars, XWeather delivers trusted data and unique insights that go beyond conditions to actual impact, from real-time lightning strikes to road surface forecasts. Start with 15 ,000 free API calls every month and pay only for what you use as you grow. Your full weather stack, for developers, by developers. Start building for free today at xweather.com. thinking about singapore specifically for a while there was a entrepreneur first cohorts used to be here and they dried up and left singapore i think three or four years ago and at least if i look to the one that i went through i got the feeling there were probably less and less especially international people maybe coming here for that they would rather try and do the same one in a different jurisdiction and the one i went through not that long ago opened up a US version of what they're doing.

21:32So I'm trying to think, I mean, when people hear that I live in Singapore, they say, oh, that's like the tech hub of Asia, right? And I say, well, actually, I think it's got a bit of an identity crisis right now, because it can be quite conservative in how it looks at investing in things generally from like both a, if you want to call it a government standpoint, as well as private investment, like VC investments. To me, it's still kind of looking for the safe investments, which is like, to me, the, you know, the anti of VC. So yeah, like where is it just, I don't know from what you're saying, are founders actually just saying, well, I don't need to come to Singapore to start a company if I want to start it from Southeast Asia and have a lower cost base somewhere else.

22:14To me, that's never been a draw. I'm someone who's drawn to cities that I feel the networks are in that city and so on and so forth. I've never been drawn to find the lowest cost base and operate from there. But yeah, I'm trying to think and I'll just bring in Sweden for a second here. Like Sweden has shown that you can generate some really exceptional companies from quite a small population base. And that does rely a lot on like if we think of like Lovable, for example, a lot of Lovable team now is international. But they all do relocate to Stockholm and they're working from there. So I'm curious why Singapore can't do that or where else in the region is doing that.

22:52I don't know. Yeah, good question. So I was speaking to someone from New Zealand yesterday. So I think I've said this before a while back where if you launch a company in Singapore, regardless of your background, right? So you can be local, you can be a foreign expert, you've been working in APEC offices based in Singapore. Generally, you are a little bit confused where you should expand to. So, for example, because we are distracted very easily. Now, partly because where we're from, partly because how we are as a country. So, for example, we speak English, but Americans don't understand what I'm talking about because I speak too fast.

23:29I speak Chinese, but the Chinese have no idea what I'm talking about because I'm not Chinese. So, founders back in the day, they think they can attack China. Then after a while, they're like, okay, even the Taiwanese gave up. So, I probably should give up too. Then they tried the US. because then obviously back then the skill set everything's not as good and then we'll definitely do Southeast Asia which is predominantly most most companies I would say so here is a little bit tricky where you either go China and then they shut it down or you go develop Asia which is like Singapore Hong Kong Taiwan maybe KL maybe Bangkok right and then after that you're like okay this is actually way too small then you may try to go to Middle East you may try to go to Europe you may try to go to New York.

24:12Generally, Bay Area is usually not something people think about, actually. And then Australia is one, Japan is one. So we are kind of like a little bit lost because we are being pulled by different places and then we assume we can do different places, right? So part and parcel of knowing maybe two or three languages. Then we realise, oh, Indonesia is different from Malaysia. Vietnam is extremely difficult if I'm not local. Thailand and Philippines is quite unique by itself, then you realize, okay, Southeast Asia is really, really hard. And then the only similar country is probably Malaysia. Even then, when I add everything together, it's still too small.

24:52So after all this ding-donging, then we realize, oh, we waste a lot of time. That's why I think Singapore is a bit, sometimes they're spinning around a little bit. But Sweden and New Zealand by now, they should know that our home country is too small, Nordics is still the same, Europe is weird and doesn't make sense. And if I want to dominate, I should go to the US, right? So it's the same thing. New Zealand will say New Zealand is too small. Adding Australia doesn't mean anything. Still too small. Asia is not New Zealand and Australia. China is not any of that, right? So they know straight away.

25:28They have to be either in the UK or in the US. So they are less distracted. So that's why I would say by now, right? probably 2014 onwards. Most investments, most founders, they know for a fact, I have to think bigger. Otherwise, it's going to be tough. Now, sometimes it's not I have to think bigger. Sometimes it's I can think bigger, right? I am much more educated. I am much more experienced. I can do better. I can do, I can think bigger. I can be the company that go public in the US. I don't have to be the company that someone in the US will buy. right i buy them they don't buy me right so i would say over time confidence levels go up which is good right that needs to continue yeah i think that's very interesting and if i think back to like when spotify was released i was living in the uk back then i think uk must have been one of the first markets they kind of targeted i guess and then it obviously seems natural that the us was another one but yeah i mean i assume they didn't get you know think to release it in singapore at the same time as the uk for example like that just isn't a thing so taking a slightly different example of late is this company manis manis.ai which some of our listeners will heard about probably more recently because it was acquired by meta for about two billion at least reportedly but this is a really interesting case we have a monthly news slot we did cover some of this in that so apologies to anyone who listened and this is a bit of a repeat but this is a company that did start in china and then re-domiciled itself from a corporate perspective in singapore and it's got american investors like benchmark global user base and like i mean there's another example i'll give in a second where i work now that's a slightly different case but manis is let's stick on matters for a second.

27:22Do you think this is more what Singapore is going to be helpful for, kind of being that neutralizing ground for anyone that needs that, I guess? I think that there is a trend, not because of Manus, but there is a trend before Manus for Chinese founders that wants to do global business to move out. Probably started somewhere in 2018, 2019. That's the first batch. We call them Chu Hai, right? They're leaving the sea. And then with the geopolitics issues, I think if they can ever set up in the US and just move to the US, they would have done that. Singapore is probably a slightly easier way to do it.

27:55You know, the rule of law, IP protection, setting up companies, getting your visas done, you know, moving your family. That's actually easier in Singapore than in the US. So I would say that there will be more people doing this. Now, is Singapore a launchpad or like a place of convenience? I would say it's both, right? Because Singapore is set up that way for many, many years so but do you forget the world do you forget not to go to the us no right singapore is just a place where you have your apartment but then you're just going to bring your luggage everywhere right so those teams will still be flying and then trying to figure out ways to set up trying to figure out another visa for me to stay longer in the us whatnot so that's probably what they will be doing but the difference is probably they are doing a bit more consumer AI type product, right?

28:45Which is what the Chinese is very good at doing, right? You look at the top games in the world, mobile games, most of them are Chinese. They don't need to set up an office anywhere. So maybe certain models, this works very well. But imagine if this was a company selling drones to defense in the US, I can guarantee you they will not do that well. So it all depends what they do. Yeah, because the other example, different, but where I work today, super base people think it's a u.s company and actually did start as a singapore company and yeah i founded by a kiwi you know new zealand person and a couple of british guys but i think that has at least to me that's what drove the culture there of being a bit different as a singapore founded company and we have many singaporeans in the company but we nowadays it's a fully remote company it's a fully async company but the team that is based here is not a team that I would normally have come across, if I can say.

29:44It's an interesting mix of Singaporeans with a very global outlook, I would say. And then just other people from around the world, like Australia and Germany and so forth, living here. I say that, I mean, the majority of our employees do now live in the US or they are American people. But yeah, I think it's a shame that not the only reason for any means, but one of the reasons I wanted to join space was because struggled to find any other company that I thought fitted that culture model. Again, just curious to get your take. Why weren't there more of those? It just seemed like this could have been such a great place for so many people to take that road.

30:17My feeling is just confidence, right? It's just the ability to, I'm going to start this kind of business and then just going to go global and then we'll see what happens, right? So I think back in the day, because I didn't invest in them, but I would assume it is a problem they are seeing. There was not many good options and they're technical enough to try to do this. And sometimes it is actually that way, right? So for example, there are really, really good technical people in Singapore and many of them have told me before, I don't know how long this was. I think I was in Sydney. I think I visited one of them.

30:50He works for Atlassian as well. So back then, I don't know where he is now. But yeah, he was saying, I want to build things for my people, right? So I want to build things for developers and then I want to build things that don't exist. And many of them who have been through multiple copycat startups, they're like, I don't want to build another copycat startup anymore, right? Because they don't need to anymore. And they just want to build something that I want and build something that my people want, right? And if it's a small business, so be it. I don't have to raise money. I can break even right away.

31:21If it's a big business, then so be it, right? So I think that's probably what's happening. As you can see, you know, there's a lot of dev tools, a lot of highly technical guys, you know, building open source things purely because they are just solving their issue, right? So my feeling is probably started because of that. It's interesting because in both cases, it is more about like what the product is that enables somewhere like Singapore to actually be a vaguely suitable base, at least to begin with, or as in the Manos case, come over here to springboard, be more attractive to a US acquirer, investor, that kind of thing but yeah as you say there are other industries like military drones that's that's going to be a tough one to bring out of here so i guess you as an investor now i mean are you still making the same kind of the numbers of investments you used to make or like just what do you look for i think at some point you talked about the 700 million number this was like a few years ago saying if you're not going to get to 700 million in valuation that it's like not even worth our time kind of thing, which makes a lot of sense.

32:25But where is that number now? Or where is your sort of investment thesis now, I guess? So I think the investment pace, we are gradually starting to go up. I think this year, it started going up last year. Many people don't know we stopped investing in April 2021. I think maybe you might not even know. So we drastically stopped in 21 because it's too high. And then we predicted the crash in 22 and 23. So for a while, we didn't invest very much. We only do small seed deals. Then we started coming back in 25 and then 26 seems okay. So at the moment, what I'm seeing is a few things. One is there will be companies started for the region, for potentially one country only, potentially a few countries in South Asia.