I want to share some thoughts about The Last Dance from the lens of a basketball-obsessed venture capitalist. But l hate belabouring the obvious so I’ll focus on everyone not named Michael Jordan.

In retrospect, the talent across the board in that dynastic Chicago Bulls team is crystal clear. But that’s rarely the case at the moment. I have a six-peat worth of lessons to remember from “the others” in the docuseries.

Okay fine, let’s give MJ his proper due first. He is almost unanimously acknowledged as the Greatest-Of-All-Time in basketball.

While I am still optimistic that Lebron has a few good years in him left to prove otherwise, I am in absolute awe of the single-minded drive of His Airness to dominate a sport. And yet, he was actually cut from his high school basketball team and was just the third pick in his draft class.

“There was no one alive, not Coach [Dean] Smith, Not Rod Thorn, who drafted him, no one, none of the experts thought that he would become what he became.”

-David Falk, Michael Jordan’s agent from 1984–2003

The role of general managers, scouts, and coaches in varying degrees is to assess talent. It is now unfathomable that the GOAT was not even viewed as the Top 1 or 2 in the year he left college. In VC parlance, that’s an Anti-Portfolio that will haunt you forever.

Also Read: How to craft a problem statement that VCs will love

And recent NBA draft classes have shown that the ability to pick winners hasn’t improved much today based on some major flops (Hi Canada, Hello Serbia) and some all-time steals (Hi Greece, Hello Again Serbia).

Since I left banking to start a game design company a decade ago, I have completely changed the lens in which I view the world. Having now re-invented myself as a venture capitalist, I look at everything from the perspective of discovering outliers.

Also Read: What will VC funding look like post-COVID-19?

So while MJ is an outlier among outliers that completely changed basketball and sports marketing, there are many other outliers that require attention from The Last Dance. How they all came together into one of the greatest dynasties in professional sports history is a black swan case study worth a closer look for venture capitalists obsessed with finding the next big thing.

“We weren’t very good during the time leading up to Michael. The team was on a downward keel, if you will. Back then in Chicago, everyone was a Bears fan. Northsiders were Cubs fans. Southsiders were Sox fans. Blackhawks had fans scattered throughout, but there was no buzz about the Bulls.” — Jerry Reinsdorf, Chicago Bulls owner

Dennis Rodman

When evaluating founders, try to also look for good ideas that seem like bad ideas.

Ultimately, Jordan had proven his talent by the time he entered the NBA. The experts were just unable to imagine his full potential. In contrast, Rodman was never highly recruited and had become unwanted by the time he joined the Bulls despite winning two championships and coming off four straight rebounding titles.

He was universally seen as a bad idea due to his volatile personality. But the Bulls decided to invest in this misunderstood talent and he proceeded to top the league in rebounding for another three years coinciding with their second 3-peat. MJ called him “one of the smartest guys that I played with.”

As an investor, you don’t outperform the market by just betting on good ideas that seem like good ideas. Either everyone will be on that boat (who are you outperforming?) or competition will be through the roof (returns will be capped). By definition, true contrarianism is hard to come by and yet venture portfolio theory dictates it for success.

In a study of 3,100 venture portfolios worth more than US$100 million, Curalytics found that 593 portfolios had more than 50 per cent in common with each other. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of groupthink and herd mentality in venture capital.

Also Read: Beam scores US$26M from Sequoia, other VCs to scale its e-scooter rentals biz

The Rodman trade was one of the masterpieces in this story and very few people would have made that contrarian decision.

“Just leave him alone. You don’t put a saddle on a mustang.” — Detroit Pistons Coach Chuck Daly on Rodman

Jerry Krause

Even if you think you’re doing a good job of evaluating talent, there is a lot more room for improvement.

What’s funny about that brilliant decision is that the guy who made it, Bulls’ General Manager Jerry Krause, had to be convinced by his Assistant GM, Jim Stack. A decade earlier, Krause along with every GM in the league passed on Rodman (27th pick, 1986) as he was drafted in the second round.

To be fair, Krause may have thought he had the power forward of the future since he traded for Charles Oakley (ninth pick, 1985) a year earlier. Except in that draft, he may have tallied his worst Anti-Portfolio when he passed on Karl Malone (13th pick, 1985), who is second in the all-time scoring list and would be an unanimous top five power forward of all time.

Malone, who graduated from an obscure college, would end up becoming the primary hurdle for the last two Bulls’ championships. Viewed from those lenses, one of Krause’s major wins in drafting a power forward Horace Grant (10th pick, 1987) from a similarly little-known college is completely overshadowed. Had Krause drafted the Mailman instead, perhaps they could have expedited the beginning of the Bull’s dynasty a couple of years?

Lots of room for improvement. But let’s give the man some credit here because he himself was seen as a bad idea by many. When Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf considered bringing in Krause as the GM a year after drafting MJ in 1985, he spoke with executives around the league and everyone said “don’t touch the guy.”

Also Read: The only advice VCs and founders in APAC need right now

Yet for all his flaws dismantling a dynasty too early and lots of late-career missteps, Krause compiled one of the best decade-long stretches as GM ever, building the first basketball empire around a shooting guard.

In VC, improving talent assessment entails going beyond the obvious. There is too much cognitive bias that goes unchecked. Too many investors have a framework that goes like this: Harvard = check, Mckinsey = check, Termsheet = check. Sure, there are many outliers that have that path, but I’m sure there is also a splattering of mediocre false positives in there who don’t get exposed until it’s too late.

Putting “MBA required” in a job description is both overrated and extremely lazy. It’s a shortcut for actually evaluating talent on a premise that graduate schools are completely meritocratic. Oh please. Everyone knows about the legacy admissions, nepotism, and inherited privilege.

The feedback loops are also skewed because too many decision-makers subscribe to that heuristic. For European investors, I don’t think that the engineering grad + PhD/MBA + research/software firm checklist is necessarily a large deviation from that lazy talent assessment.

Keep track of your anti-portfolio. Note why you passed on companies. Gather data on the founders. Do a periodic cross-reference to be properly informed about the founder profiles you regularly pass on and how your framework might need some work.

Scottie Pippen

Look for a commitment to bring in talent at every position.

According to MJ, “whenever they speak Michael Jordan, they should speak Scottie Pippen.” Pip was also a steal entering the league as a fifth pick in 1987 with little fanfare as he played college basketball for Central Arkansas, which was not a part of the prestigious National College Athletic Association. Less than a decade later, he was recognised as one of the top 50 players of all time.

There are few better Number 2s than Pippen in the history of the NBA. But it didn’t stop there. Down the line, Chicago brought in winners and gems in the rough. This was apparent in their search for a power forward. They also put importance on having a spot-up shooter, which John Paxson played well in the first 3-peat and Steve Kerr sustained in the 2nd one.

Also Read: 5 more VCs who are early adopters of e27 Pro

They even brought in opponents that excelled against the Bulls defensively in prior playoff battles including Rodman and Cleveland’s Ron Harper.

From a VC standpoint, it is critical to spend time with the founding team and other key first hires. Due diligence should be holistic with sufficient time spent on understanding the core team, especially in the earliest stages.

As an early-stage investor, I subscribe to the same philosophy that Pear VC put forward regarding differences at the various stages. I look for a similar commitment from the founders to build a team for the long term.

Bill Cartwright

Understand team dynamics and how the skillsets and personalities fit and complement each other.

Building the best team is not just about stockpiling on talent. How it all fits together is absolutely crucial. We saw this when Chicago traded Charles Oakley for Bill Cartwright. Apart from being the rebounding champion the prior year and Jordan’s “protector” against very physical teams like the Bad Boys Pistons, Oakley was also MJ’s best friend on the team. And yet, the pieces of the puzzle did not fit perfectly.

Jordan questioned the trade and did not respect Bill Cartwright, who they received in exchange for Oakley. In episode four, we see Jordan saying “I didn’t want Cartwright to have the ball with five seconds left.” Wanting that may be totally fair. But he took it a step further and threatened teammates not to pass them the ball if they passed to Cartwright.

Also Read: What can we learn from successful venture capitalists?

Yet Cartwright eventually earned Jordan’s respect by playing his role and standing his ground. Despite never being a star in the league and being past his prime when he played for the Bulls, he became a strong locker room presence and was even co-captain for that first 3-peat. His calm demeanor was the perfect counterbalance for Jordan’s aggressive obsessiveness.

Too often, team fit is interpreted as a lockstep alignment on beliefs, work styles, personality types, behavioural traits and sometimes even demographic profile. Yet, those really smart people at Mckinsey have shown that diversity literally pays, with a 25 per cent positive variance in FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE for the most ethnically and gender diverse teams.

From a startup standpoint, studies have shown that individual traits matter in relation to other traits and that contradictory traits within teams are a big driver of success. Especially in the world of startups where the goal is usually to become regional or global winners, team diversity is an asset as soon as startups leave their home market and need differentiated viewpoints to really understand other cultures and capture other customer bases. Venture funds need to lead by example. If you say you are looking for global winners then build a global team with an international mindset and differentiated perspectives.

I have been living full time in Germany for three years and there are still facets of German culture that I am yet to understand, what more the rest of a very culturally diverse Europe. So no, an analyst’s six-month student exchange semester in Hong Kong definitely doesn’t qualify as a sufficient perspective for Asian internationalisation. But even a GP’s 10 year international stint may not be enough if there was no intentional immersion in the foreign culture.

Most expats run around very small and homogenous circles. And please, don’t try to cheat diversity by just bringing in people who look different and yet are actually similar in background and perspective by most key measures. A second generation Asian American will have a very different perspective from an Asian who was born, raised, studied, and worked in the region. There is no substitute for a truly diverse team.

Also Read: Meet 4 VCs who are early adopters of e27 Pro

Phil Jackson and Tex Winter

Culture and process tie everything together.

Speaking of Cartwright being co-captain, the man who made that decision, Phil Jackson, is now one of the winningest and most well-respected coaches in professional sports. Jackson’s encore for the epic 90s Bulls dynasty was the first one in the 2000s by guiding a different team, the Los Angeles Lakers to another 3-peat.

By borrowing from Eastern philosophy to craft team culture, he became known as ‘The Zen Master’ and accumulated nine championships as a coach. In all of those championships, Jackson was assisted by Tex Winter who was the innovator of the ‘triangle offense’ basketball strategy.

As is the case in this organisation of black swans, both Jackson and Winter were question marks pre-dynasty. Jerry Krause again displayed his eye for talent by taking in Winter as his first hire after a modestly successful college coaching career. Jackson was an even bolder bet despite his championships won as a role player in the NBA and as a coach in the less competitive Continental Basketball Association.

Krause had to groom Jackson who was an unconventional ‘hippie’ that did not fit the traditional mold of a head coach. Personal grooming was even a part of it as Krause had to tell him what to wear during his second attempt at interviews after failing two years earlier.

Framing it from Native American history, which heavily influenced Jackson, both him and Winter were actually ‘Heyokas’ in their own way.

“In their tradition, you would be a ‘Heyoka’, a backward walking person. There were people that were different and you’re a ‘Heyoka’.” -Phil Jackson to Rodman

Company culture and process determine how all the talent fit in together. VCs should dig beneath the surface to truly understand these 2 components. There is a lot of fluff out there. Don’t expect to understand the culture by reading the company manifesto. Have a closer look for anecdotal evidence to support or refute their stated beliefs. Do the same with processes and frameworks.

Also Read: Afternoon News Roundup: Asia surpasses North America in corporate VCs-backed deals

Understand the chain of command and the distribution of authority. Look for bottlenecks and key decision-makers who need to be a part of due diligence.

Toni Kukoc

Keep an eye out for underrated pools of talent and build a knowledge base on how talent translates across borders.

In another move that is both visionary and a relative flop, Krause orchestrated the import of Toni Kukoc at a time when very few NBA teams put a value on sweet-shooting big men from Europe. Imagine the luxury of having both Michael Jordan and ‘the Michael Jordan of Europe’, which Kukoc was considered at the time.

The fact that Krause had been actively scouting for European talent, which were largely considered soft and unathletic, was impressive. And yet, he couldn’t properly assess how this talent translated into the American game. Kukoc was definitely ahead of his time and he contributed significantly to the second 3-peat.

However, he reached his peak as a sixth man of the year in 1996.

From less than two per cent in 1980 to roughly six per cent in 1994 when Kukoc entered the league, the number of foreign-born NBA players in the NBA has exploded to over 25 per cent with more than 100 international players this season. After being invented in the US in 1891, basketball has now become a global game with talent coming from every corner of the world.

The NBA rode the wave of internationalisation but also helped facilitate it through their Basketball Without Borders programme, which accounts for around 30 per cent of the current pool of international players.

Also Read: Bus ticketing app Jatri attracts funding from UAE VCs to revitalise public transportation in Bangladesh

The digital revolution is doing the same for technology companies. Information access democratisation is creating pools of talent all over the world. Yet, the playing field is nowhere close to being even. There are a lot more factors that determine success. That is an opportunity that a lot more VCs have been looking into post dotcom bubble.

In 2015, Cambridge Associates published research stating “international investments have accounted for a larger share of the top 100 gains: from 2000 through 2012, they represented an average of 20 per cent of the total gains in the top 100, compared to an average of just five per cent from 1995 to 1999, and they reached as high as 50 per cent of gains in 2010.”

Talent in emerging startup hubs will look very different and it will require effort to identify them and understand how they can translate to a regional or global playing field. The willingness to take a closer look will determine the next generation of VC winners. That’s what I hope to achieve as a cross-border investor looking for founders and technologies in Europe that can be scaled successfully in Southeast Asia.

Finding the Lost Rodmans

The ’90s Chicago Bulls dynasty is one of the ultimate black swans in sports history. The Last Dance showed us that, in fact, the entire organisation was full of black swans. What if the owner didn’t make a bet on an unpopular scout to become GM? What if that GM didn’t make a bet on little known coaches who would implement a revolutionary system? What if those coaches didn’t figure out how to bring out the potential from under-the-radar players that the GM picked and make all the personalities fit together? So many what-ifs down the line.

It is a story of identifying and investing in outliers, who ended up identifying and investing in outliers themselves. That is why it is so relevant for early-stage venture capitalists, but in fact, also for founders, recruiters, and anybody else who has daily decisions regarding talent.

In the VC world, a lot of things have to work properly to find and help that 10x or 100x company achieve its potential. And I believe that the outcome is largely a function of understanding talent and it’s many faces across the entire journey.

Clearly, my other obsession is discovering outliers. I have talked about Finding the Lost Einsteins before. For the sake of Zeitgeist, I will temporarily rebrand my North Star to Finding the Lost Rodmans.

Disclaimer: This article is not meant as a commentary or indication of support on the individual beliefs, personal decisions or societal impact of Dennis Rodman or anyone else from that Chicago Bulls team. I speak of them as outliers only from a basketball standpoint and how they created a lasting impact on the game.

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Singapore Exchange-listed Yoma Strategic Holdings announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Yoma Strategic Investments, has agreed to purchase all of Telenor’s equity stake in Vietnamese Digital Money Myanmar, which owns and operates mobile financial services platform Wave Money.

The stake comprises 510,000 ordinary shares and 17,878,050 redeemable preference shares.

This comes just over a month after Ant Financial Services, operator of Alipay, announced a US$73.5 million investment in Wave Money.

Also Read: gojek to let go of 430 employees as it shutters GoLife, GoFood Festivals

According to Lars Erik Tellmann, Head of Financial Services at Telenor, this deal comes at an “opportune time” for the group to divest its stake in Wave Money.

“Both Yoma Group and Ant Group’s core operation is financial services and technology and they are therefore the strongest owners to take Wave Money forward,” she said.

Yoma Strategic CEO Melvyn Pun added that Wave Money continues to see sustained growth in its agent and digital platforms, with Wave Pay gaining strong traction during the COVID-19 pandemic through the acceleration in and adoption of cashless payment solutions.

Launched in October 2018, Wave Money is a joint venture between Telenor, Yoma Bank and Yoma Strategic. The firm provides mobile financial services through a nationwide network of more than 57,000 agents or what it calls ‘Wave Shops’ in urban and rural areas, covering approximately 89 per cent of the region of Myanmar.

In 2019, Wave Money’s transfer volume claims to have more than tripled year-on-year reaching US$4.3 billion. More than 21 million people have used its platform for services such as remittances, utility payments, airtime top-ups and digital payments.

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Image Credit: Wave Money

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East Ventures (EV), an active early-stage tech investment firm based in Indonesia, has announced that it aims to raise “no more than US$88 million” for a new seed fund to support  innovative startups in Southeast Asia.

This is EV’s eighth investment vehicle to date and announced the first close without divulging further details.

The firm said in a statement that the latest fund under is intentionally kept under US$100 million as this makes it easier to deploy money into early-stage companies.

Also Read: Post-pandemic, we are going to see a slim unicorn

The sector-agnostic fund is designed for digital companies emerging in the post-lockdown aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the world has slowed down in the time of the virus attack, businesses in the region continue to struggle and lives have been changed forever. Local entrepreneurs are forced to rethink how they operate, understand what is truly essential, and learn how to live with less physical contact.

As a result, many are now accelerating to the point where they’re leap-frogging into digital transformation and bypassing years of the usual adoption process.

EV’s management team believes new global conditions have provided unprecedented clarity for startup decision-makers.

“The pandemic has created a chance for a new breed of entrepreneurs to think about new problems and how to solve them in efficient ways via technology,” said Managing Partner Willson Cuaca.

“We remain optimistic about the future of Southeast Asia’s digital economy, and we’re particularly bullish on the Indonesian market. We feel the current situation proves our core hypothesis that great founders will find a way to make their companies thrive, even in times of crisis. Great people withstand the test of time,” he added.

Also Read: Key management areas for businesses to address during and after the pandemic

Founded in 2009, EV has supported more than 170 companies in the region that are present across Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

EV is also an early investor in Indonesian unicorns Tokopedia and Traveloka. Other notable companies in the portfolio include Mercari, Ruangguru, Warung Pintar, Fore Coffee, Kudo (acquired by Grab), Loket (acquired by gojek), TechInAsia, Xendit, IDN Media, MokaPOS, ShopBack, CoHive, Koinworks, Waresix, and Sociolla.

Two days ago, BRI Ventures, another Indonesian VC firm, announced the launch of an independent venture fund, called Sembrani Nusantara, to help local tech startups survive and grow amid COVID-19.

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Image Credit: East Ventures

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The pandemic has loomed over us for months now. As the world gets back to business, we thought who would be better than Southeast Asia’s leading entrepreneur-turned-VC, Peng T. Ong of Monk’s Hill Ventures, to shed light on how to prepare your startup for the “new normal”.

Key takeaways

• The new normal is unlike anything we have seen before. Zoom is shooting through the roof while airlines are going bankrupt. There is not a lot of clarity on what the new normal is and how. We are in a very difficult environment due to a lack of predictability.
• This is a long downturn, not a short one. In the short term, people try to optimise valuation but in the long run its more important to be alive and healthy. 
• Even what is doing well now, may slow down when the world goes back to being the way it was. So this is the time to make the most of acquiring consumers that you can work with later.
• We don’t know what’s going to happen to the travel industry in the next few years, but at some point, there will be recovery and if you’re in the travel business focus on surviving the bend and you’ll be fine.
• Any startup surviving this will end up being stronger. Like Google surviving dot com boom, FB surviving the great financial crisis (2008).
• Pre-COVID-19 there was the idea that you can burn money and go higher (almost to the point of failure, sometimes). this trend was enabled by a few large funds who would try to take a startup public But now the investors are being more cautious.
• Peng said he doesn’t see a big burgeoning of enterprise deals because the markets in SEA is very small for enterprises unless you also work globally or at least in China.
• Singapore and Jakarta are the hotspots in SEA for startups to boom. Peng sees Jakarta slightly taking over Singapore. He added that Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City look promising as well, since the economy in Vietnam is doing well even amidst COVID-19.
• When it comes to e-commerce, the trend will look a bit like China. Economies of scale will make it hard for even governments to control monopolizing. But there will be a lot of specialised product sites with lesser market share.
• Social e-commerce will be a saving grace for the SMEs selling online instead of selling via Amazon. Like Tokopedia in Indonesia is one of the big examples. The seller will become more like a micro brand with its own presence and identity.
• There are two ways to fund your startup: investors or customers. If investor activity is low, you got to build real value and steer towards your customer.
• This is a time when, if your business has no takers (e.g travel), it may be cheaper to hibernate and save runway then build up once the industry jumps back in.

Also Read: Be a rainmaker: The only advice Monk’s Hill Ventures’ managing partner wants to give us

Advice for founders

• There is only one golden rule: Build a strong business!
• Doing business is like fighting a war. If you are standing in the wrong place, you will be hit. There is such thing as the wrong place, the wrong time.
• A pro forma statement will not be the same in 12 months in time. But as an investor, when I read it, I am trying to assess if the entrepreneur is logical in their projection. 
• A lot of founders fail to think about how and where the money/revenue comes from. They focus on how they will spend their investor money. So stray away from that.

Resources

You can catch the full video recording of the webinar here:

Food for thought

Will the carbon offsetting market an interesting sector now with health and environment taking center stage?

Plant-based and cultured meats are getting attention. Is there a greater future for this sector?

Coming up next

As pivot becomes the buzzword in a post-pandemic world, this webinar with PatSnap CEO and Founder, Jeffrey Tiong; decodes it for you and teaches you how pivoting your startup direction can help you hack growth. Register for our next webinar: How to pivot your growth strategy post COVID-19

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A carefully chosen advisor can serve as a strategic resource to help you guide your business especially when you’re just starting out as a tech company or an early-stage startup.

Difference between an advisory board or a formal board

As a company, you may choose to have an advisor in an advisory board or a director in a formal board. Unlike an advisory board, a formal board director will also be taking the usual director’s legal responsibilities and duties attached under the companies law.

While there are no prescribed rules on who should be on the board, it may be a good idea to have a diverse mix of people in terms of both experience and knowledge.

Also, if your company is in an early stage, our advice is to select a handful of people who can really add value, rather than spending so much time building a large advisory board (usually to entice investors).

Appointing an adviser in a startup

Any advisor appointment needs to be formalised in an advisory agreement like how you hire an employee or contractor. Their role, compensation, and legal relationship should be clearly spelt out. A good advisory agreement will have these commercial terms including how the compensation will be paid by the company.

Also Read: The startup advisor cheat sheet

This also includes the board procedures and rules and how and best way to deploy advisers, so that you can spend less time obsessing over the board structures and more time developing your business.

There seem to be an ongoing debate in Silicon Valley on whether having an adviser is really going to make a huge difference in terms of your fundraising or business prospects. We are on the fence here as we too feel that a good adviser can open doors, but you need to be really careful and selective when deciding to hire one.

Having a well-drafted appointment letter between your company and an adviser may help avoid common pitfalls and misunderstandings.

Speak to a legal counsel on how they can help you address high-level issues on what to look out for before onboarding an adviser in your tech company or startup.

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Thirty per cent of the world’s top startup ecosystems are now in Southeast Asia, compared to 20 per cent in 2012, finds a Startup Genome study.

Of the 11 new ecosystems that made it to the top ecosystems list, six are from the region.

The findings are from Startup Genome’s Global Startup Ecosystem Report (#GSER2020).

As per this research, the 2020 rankings have seen the growth of many R&D powerhouses (those ecosystems growing largely building upon their strengths on research and patent production). Tokyo and Seoul are the prime examples of this, with both ecosystems scoring the maximum in the knowledge factor, a measure of R&D activity.

Also Read: East Ventures forms new US$88M seed fund for startups weathering COVID-19, announces first close

Tokyo (#15) and Seoul (#20) have also made it to the top 20 ecosystems list, displacing Bangalore (which fell primarily due to low levels of funding) and San Diego.

In addition to Tokyo and Seoul, new entrants among the top 30 include Shenzhen (the advanced manufacturing hub, at #22), Hangzhou (home to Alibaba, at #28), and São Paulo (#30, returning to the top ecosystems list after falling off in 2017).

Among the activation phase ecosystems, Nur-Sultan (the capital city of Kazakhstan) is ranked second in high-growth ecosystems, ahead of Frankfurt, Cairo, Manila, the mid-Eastern region of Ireland and others.

Moreover, according to the results of the #GSER2020 study, Nur-Sultan has achieved maximum funding growth index value. This indicates that the ecosystem of the capital overall has a high potential for further development and for increase in funding for local startups.

Other key findings

● In 2020, the State of the Global Startup Economy can be seen through two main angles: the calm before the storm, up to December 2019, and then the consequences of the COVID-19-triggered crisis.

● Until December 2019, things generally looked positive for startups globally. Startup Genome analysed companies in the billion-dollar-club, with exits or private companies in technology with over US$1 billion in valuation. In 2013, only four ecosystems produced unicorns or billion-dollar exits. Today, a cumulative 85 ecosystems have produced companies unicorns or had billion-dollar exits, astoundingly.

● As the COVID-19 crisis hit across the world, startups have found themselves in a double bind, being hit hard from two main shockwaves: capital shock and demand.

● Four out of every 10 startups today are in the Red Zone: they have three months or fewer of capital runway. This means that they will collapse if they do not raise additional capital and their revenues and expenses remain unchanged, risking a mass extinction event for startups globally.

● The fundraising process has been dramatically disrupted. Even for startups that already had term sheets from investors before the crisis, signed or unsigned, three out of every four startups have had the fundraising process disrupted. A dramatic 18 per cent of those startups with term sheets have had a funding round cancelled by the investor, and 54 per cent have had their funding round delayed or the lead investor become unresponsive.

● Total VC funding has dropped dramatically across every single continent. Globally, it is down by 20 per cent in the three months of 2020. In some regions of the world it dropped even more sharply. China, the first country hit by the crisis, had funding drop by over 50 per cent relative to the rest of the world, as we have written for the World Economic Forum. While the country is experiencing a rebound in investments in March, it still faces lower activity than it had in December 2019.

● About 72 per cent of startups saw their revenue drop since the beginning of the crisis, with the average startup experiencing a decline of 32 per cent. Shockingly, almost 40 per cent of companies of the companies saw their revenue drop by 40 per cent or more, and only about 12 per cent are experiencing significant growth.

● Over 60 per cent of startups have laid off employees or reduced salaries. For startups reducing full-time equivalents (FTEs), an average of 33 per cent of jobs were cut, as the Startup Genome COVID-19 Impact Insights survey shows. This is also reflected in crowdsourced data about startup layoffs globally, with the number of employees laid off identified in these crowdsourced lists growing 5x between March and May 2020.

● 71 per cent of startups have reduced their expenses, with an average cost cutting of 22 per cent. The combination of drop in expenditures, salary cuts, and layoffs have downstream effects for the rest of society, not just today but also tomorrow’s potential for economic growth and innovation capacity.

● However, the news is not all gloomy: Every crisis creates opportunities, and this crisis is no different. For instance, over half of Fortune 500 companies started during a contraction. Over 50 unicorns were created in the Great Recession alone, as Startup Genome data shows. The list of companies funded during the Great Recession is impressive. It includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Palantir, and Dropbox — all of these based in the Bay Area. This shows the need for funding startups during down periods.

● Startups need help now and if policymakers don’t work to support them, the economic effects will be dire. Global venture capital funding has dropped roughly 20 per cent since the onset of the pandemic in December 2019, creating ripple effects throughout startup ecosystems.

● Governments stand to make money by injecting at least six months worth of cash into technology startups. Even with a negative 10 per cent return on equity, the cost per job saved is 41 per cent lower for startups than for small and medium businesses (SMBs), respectively costing US$14,766 or US$24,928 per job saved. It simply costs less to save a job in a startup than elsewhere.

Also Read: Key management areas for businesses to address during and after the pandemic

● Startups not only are a good engine for jobs, but without startups, there’s less innovation at larger corporations and at SMBs.

● Governments around the world are taking actions to help businesses during COVID-19, but they aren’t doing enough to assist startups. Government relief programmes typically have strict eligibility rules and emphasise companies with revenue, profitability, and collateral. But this leaves a lot of startups out in the cold.

● 43 per cent of startups globally are not receiving assistance and/or do not expect to be helped by national or local government relief measures.

● The first major goal of governments should be to inject capital quickly to save at least 80 per cent of startups that are at risk of folding in 2020. The second goal should be to inject capital to increase the rate of new seed and Series A investments over the next two years, to ensure these types of investments do not drop as dramatically as they did during the 2008 recession.

● With startups struggling to generate demand they had before the COVID-19 crisis, policymakers can step into help with the development of government-led innovation procurement programs. Startups can help with addressing problems rising from the COVID-19 crisis especially startups in healthcare, social services, and online services.

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Ideosource Entertainment, the subsidiary of IDX-listed NFC Indonesia, has made another investment in an entertainment platform in the country.

After investing in gojek’s on-demand video platform GoPlay earlier this month, the company made an undisclosed investment in Cinepoint, a rating and box office app for local and international movies.

Cinepoint’s system allows for ratings gathered through an exit polling post-movie-launch, verified real-time. It records spontaneous reactions, followed by showcasing the box office data of local and international movies distributed in Indonesia in a weekly chart.

They also provide historical data and infographics.

With the investment, Ideosource Entertainment will also work together with GoPlay and Cinepoint to support film industry workers affected by the pandemic by introducing a GoPlay voucher programme through Cinepoint app. Users will get cashback rewards for every GoPlay’s subscription purchase; the whole transaction can be done through Cinepoint’s WhatsApp.

Also Read: Innovation is not an issue in Indonesia: Ideosource’s Andrias Ekoyuono

Half of the revenue collected from the programme will be given to the film industry workers.

Ideosource Entertainment was established in 2017 with the focus in investments directed to the national movie and media sector. The company’s business line includes film and media production, digital marketing agency, and film and media analysis platform.

It was founded by Andi Boediman, who is already known in the Indonesian startup ecosystem as the founder of Ideosource Venture Capital.

The founding of the entertainment company is part of a recent trend in the ecosystem of VC firms branching out into non-tech sectors, from F&B to hospitality, to widen its portfolio.

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ICE71 (Innovation Cybersecurity Ecosystem at BLOCK71), Singapore’s hub for cybersecurity entrepreneurs and startups, has introduced the nine startups graduated from its accelerator programme, ICE71 Accelerate.

These startups are focussed on the topic of the increasing cyber threats related to data security and privacy as companies accelerate their digitalisation and more people study or work from home during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

They hail from Singapore, Australia, Israel, the UK, the US, and Poland.

Below is a snapshot of each of the nine startups

Assimi8 (Australia): Develops a solution to help SMEs recognise and handle raw threat data without relying on external specialists and in a cost-efficient manner. Its solution is the Intuitive Data Relationship Inference System (IDRIS), which uses graph technologies to provide easy-to-read visual network views for decision-makers to make sense of large complex data sets.

Chainkit (US): Originally known as PencilData, Chainkit provides a solution in form of Cyber Stealth Radar that uses military-grade tamper detection for security, forensics, and compliance to expose cyber attacks in real-time, preventing cyber attackers from hiding their tracks or dwelling within a network or system. Chainkit’s solution can mitigate insider threats, contain damage, and immediately isolate all tampered code or data.

Also Read: ICE71 announces top ten cybersecurity startups from second batch

GamaSec (Israel): Combines cybersecurity and cyber insurance, using virtual hacker technologies to identify and prevent cyberattacks via websites. Through proactive minimisation of cyber exposure and loss prevention for cyber insurance policyholders, GamaSec significantly reduces risk and helps them prevent potential cyber-attacks.

Guardara (UK): Focussing on fuzz testing, a software testing technique for discovering coding errors and security loopholes with its solution, Fuzzlabs, which helps product security teams discover such loopholes early by identifying software, operating, and network issues in a quick and integrated manner.

Kapalya (US): Launched Kapalya’s Encryption Management Platform (EMP) to address organisational needs for files and folders to be encrypted across multiple platforms, like desktops, portable devices (including laptops, smartphones and tablets), cloud storage, and servers, especially when some of these are used remotely with more people working from home during COVID-19.

Kinnami (US): Offers a solution called AmiShare, which enables organisations to manage data security by defining dynamic policies that decide who can access the data and where the data should be stored – in the cloud, data centres, or end-user devices.

neoEYED (US): Developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution that helps banks, fintech applications, and e-commerce businesses secure their digital identities and accounts from unauthorised users to prevent fraud. Its solution uses AI to learn and recognise users’ behaviour, based on how they interact with the web, and mobile applications and use their devices and raises an alert if there is suspicious activity on an account.

Also Read: Meet the 10 cybersecurity startups graduating from ICE71 Accelerate programme

Olympus Sky Technologies (Poland): Provides secure communication and credential management for IoT-related hardware and virtual (concerning software and electronic images, etc.) assets. Its solution, Autonomous Key Management (AKM), enables enterprises to efficiently create and authenticate credentials for IoT applications, facilitating the adoption of these advanced technologies across industries.

Scantist (Singapore): Finds and addresses vulnerabilities in software applications and products which have been the preferred target for hackers worldwide in recent years. Scantist’s solution, Scantist Software Composition Analysis (SCA), secure apps by scanning all software codes and binaries in a single platform with high accuracy.

With the intention to provide a platform for the startups to attract investors and secure funding, the three-month programme for early-stage cybersecurity startups was first started in July 2018.

From the third batch, 16 of the startups have collectively raised US$13 million, including funding from ICE71’s founding partners Singtel Innov8 and NUS Enterprise.

To date, ICE71 Accelerate has supported a total of 34 cybersecurity startups through four cohorts.

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Ascent Capital Partners, a Singapore-registered VC firm with a focus on the Myanmar startup market, has raised US$80 million for its debut fund, DealStreetAsia report said, citing its Founder and Managing Partner Lim Chong Chong.

With a corpus of US$100 million, the Ascent Myanmar Growth Fund 1 (AMGF) made its debut by leading a US$26 million investment round in Frontiir.

The fund has not made its final close yet.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Traveloka reportedly close to raising US$100M; Cradle allocates US$6.2M for 2 startup schemes; Bukalapaks Fajrin Rasyid joins Telkom

Launched in 2018, Ascent is a Monetary Authority of Singapore-registered fund, with offices in Singapore and Yangon.

The VC firm seeks to invest in various sectors, including consumer-related, education, healthcare, TMT and financial services, aiming to commit from US$5 million to US$20 million in each opportunity.

The fund is supported by strategic institutional, corporate and individual investors.

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Great Eastern buys 21.9% stake in Axiata’s Boost Holdings for US$70M

Singapore-based Great Eastern has announced that it has entered into a share subscription agreement with Boost Holdings, a fintech company incorporated in Malaysia.

Boost is Malaysia’s largest e-wallet and lifestyle app with over 7.5 million users and 170,000 merchants.

The company is currently wholly-owned by Axiata Digital Services, the digital services arm of Axiata Group.

The agreement was signed by Great Eastern’s wholly-owned subsidiary Great Eastern Digital on Thursday.

Under the agreement, Great Eastern Digital will subscribe for a 21.875% stake in Boost for a cash consideration of US$70 million.

Upon completion of the transaction, Axiata Digital’s stake in Boost will be reduced to 78.125 per cent.

Chun Li replaces Pierre Poignant to become Lazada’s new CEO

Alibaba-owned Southeast Asian e-commerce major Lazada has appointed Chun Li as its new group CEO, says a Reuters report.

He has replaced Pierre Poignant, who is stepping down from the top post to become a special assistant to Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group’s Chairman and CEO.

Li has been described as the “chief architect” behind Lazada’s technology platform and organisational transformation in 2017. He became its Indonesia CEO in July 2019. Before joining Lazada, he was the CTO of Alibaba’s B2B unit.

Lazada said Li would work to improve its competitive advantage through data technology application and business localisation.

Indian edutech giant Byju’s raises funding from BOND

Byju’s, India’s largest edutech company, announced today a new round of undisclosed investment from BOND, a global technology investment firm.

In response to schools being shut down due to COVID-19, Byju’s has made content on its learning app free for all students. The app has also introduced live classes to further student engagement.

“This crisis has brought online learning to the forefront and has helped parents, teachers and students alike to experience and understand the value of it,” Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO, said.

“We have the opportunity to positively influence how teachers teach, students learn and school’s function. The ‘Classrooms of Tomorrow’ will have technology at the core, empowering students to cross over from passive to active learning. The result will be a combination of the best of both online and offline educational offerings,” he added.

In the past year, Byju’s has seen good growth and now has over 57 million registered students, more than 3.5 million paid subscribers and annual renewal rates as high as 85 per cent.

The firm doubled its revenue from INR14 billion to INR28 billion in FY19-20.

BukuKas hires John Mathew as SVP (Product), Gurteshwar Singh as SVP (Engineering)

500-backed Indonesian financial management platform BuKuKas has hired John Mathew as SVP of Product and Gurteshwar Singh as SVP of Engineering.

Both are experts in their respective fields and have held successful tenures across a diverse range of multinational companies.

Formerly a Lead Product Manager at social game developer Zynga (famous for titles like FarmVille and Zynga Poker), Mathew then became VP of Product at Hansel.io for three years before joining BuKuKas.

For Gurteshwar, he derived his expertise in solving complex technical problems from his time at leading mobile communications provider Karix, where he served as the Director of New Product Development, and before that, as Engineering Lead at online supermarket Grofers.

Since launching in December 2019, BuKuKas, which helps Indonesian MSMEs manage their bookkeeping via a mobile app, has on-boarded 500,000 merchants from 700 cities as of June 2020.

BuKuKas was also part of Sequoia Capital’s third Surge cohort.

The startup is currently closing a pre-Series A round.

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