Mysty Rusk is the Executive Director of the Free Enterprise Institute at the University of San Diego School of Business, and the founder of the San Diego Angel Conference, which seeks to activate new angel investors at a local level while committing to investing a specific amount within a specific time frame to ensure great startups get the money they need to move to the next level.

What you will learn in this episode:
– What is angel investing?
– What made you interested in becoming an angel investor?
– How do you identify the right person to become an angel investor?
– What should potential angel investors be learning to become successful?
– What are angel investors looking for when reviewing a pitch deck?
– What are angel investors listening for during a live pitch?
– Why you should tell a story with a path to success?
– What you should prepare for the due diligence process?
– Why you should never ask investors to sign an NDA at first sight?
– Why the terms of the deal can make or break the investment?
– What can stop the investment at this point?

Also Read: Hacking your way into angel impact investing with just US$10K

Talk with other entrepreneurs here.

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The content was first published by We Live To Build.

Image Credit: inspirestock, 123RF Free Images

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Indian startup fundraising falls for third quarter to US$7.6B in Q2
The funding dropped almost 38% sequentially in Q2, from US$12B in Q1 2022; At 383, the deal volume was also the lowest since Q3 2021; The April-June period also saw massive layoffs at Byju’s, Ola, Unacademy, Vedantu, and Cars24.

Singapore’s 99 Group raises US$37M in first close of Series C
The lead investor is Gaw Capital Partners; The online property platform will raise an additional US$15M for the round in the coming months; Once completed, the deal will push 99 Group’s total funding to date to US$80M+.

How KKday saved for a rainy day when many travel startups called it a day during COVID-19
‘KKday reduced the marketing spend while acquiring new customers by developing new products, significantly lowering acquisition costs and more efficient customer engagement’.

IFC, French firm Proparco back impact investor Circulate Capital’s ocean fund
This brings Circulate Capital Ocean Fund I-B’s total commitments to US$53M and comes 7+ months after its US$25M second close; CCOF I-B invests in companies across the plastic recycling and waste-management value chains.

Carousell buys Indonesian recommerce firm Laku6 for US$25M
The deal was supported by the Singapore-based firm’s investor Heliconia Capital; The acquisition aims to serve the rapidly growing market for preowned phones and support sustainability in electronics.

Thai financial marketplace Rabbit Care raises Series C
Investors include Winter Capital and local media conglomerate VGI; The Bangkok-based fintech firm is a marketplace for insurance products, covering motor, health, life, travel, and corporate insurance.

Biofourmis raises US$20M from Intel Capital
This is the healthtech unicorn’s Series D round announced in April when it raised US$300M led by General Atlantic; The Singapore-founded company enables remote disease management using medical-grade wearables.

SuperAtom raises US$22M to expand its consumer financing platform to LatAm
The lead investor is Nue 3 Capital; SuperAtom has developed UangMe, a credit platform providing access to low-cost financing in Indonesia; In addition, SuperAtom also offers a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) feature.

East Ventures-backed Qapita buys Indian ESOP management firm
The combined entity will also manage more than US$12 billion in employee stock option plans; Its customer base in India and Southeast Asia will grow to more than 1,200 customers.

Dash Living buys Japanese proptech firm intheHood Hospitality
As part of the deal, which is a share-swap-based M&A agreement, Dash Living will manage over 100 units of co-living spaces in Tokyo; The firm will have a total of over 1,800 units in Asia Pacific.

AirAsia to explore air taxis in Malaysia with UK’s Skyports
Initial assessments will prioritize Kuala Lumpur; While AirAsia brings its aviation expertise to the table, Skyports has extensive experience creating electric vertical takeoff and landing gear for aircraft.

EDB earmarks US$14.5M for corporate venture programme
Dubbed Corporate Venture Launchpad 2.0, the programme aims to support large corporations to expand into new ventures such as those in sustainability, agritech, fintech, senior living, and the metaverse over the next two years.

Stripe, Saison Capital to launch SEA-focused insights programme
Singapore-based Saison Capital will directly connect founders and operators from its company portfolio with engineering, product, public policy, recruiting, and sales leaders at Stripe.

Nas Academy nets US$12M in fresh funding
Investors include Pitango, BECO Capital, FTX, and HOF Capital; Nas Academy said it caters to students from over 110 countries; In 2021, it announced that it will expand its team to 1,000 people in the next five years.

Singapore’s Mighty Bear Games raises US$10M funding
Investors include Framework Ventures, Mirana, and Polygon; Mighty Bear will be using its fresh funds to launch its blockchain arm, which will develop triple-A Web3 games.

Filipino mobile ERP firm Packworks nets US$2M seed funding
Lead investors are Fast Group and CVC Capital Partners; Packworks aims to digitalise sari-sari stores by offering inventory, accounts, and data management services.

AC Ventures, Alpha JWC co-lead US$3.8M round of Indonesia’s Ideal
Ideal is a digital mortgage platform that helps people apply for property mortgages at different banks; It takes commissions from banks and property developers for every successful loan application.

Omni HR raises US$2.4M in pre-seed money to digitise employee management in SEA
Lead investors are Alpha JWC Ventures and Picus Capital; Omni HR enables firms to digitise employee records, automate administrative tasks, and interact employee data across different systems.

Robinsons Retail co-leads Filipino Q-commerce startup DART’s US$1.3M round
DART, which currently serves Makati and Mandaluyong, will use the funds to expand to new cities in the Philippines; The Q-commerce firm has also entered into an operational and supply partnership with Robinsons Supermarket.

Chope invests US$720K in F&B digital payments provider Getz Group
The Getz deal comes after local hawker SaaS and delivery vendor WhyQ raised US$360K from Chope as part of its Series A2 in November last year; The deal comes after local hawker SaaS and delivery vendor WhyQ raised US$360K from Chope.

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Recently Coinbase released a great memo on operating efficiently at scale.

I greatly respect Coinbase because they operate in perhaps the most unpredictable sector. One year they are growing 200 per cent YoY. Then a crypto winter arrives, and they need to shrink the business considerably. It’s very hard to adapt to such conditions at scale.

So I find their internal memos as some of the best written in the tech sector.

Here go my top five takeaways, alongside quotes from Brian Armstrong, CEO and Co-Founder of Coinbase:

Products are run as independent startups

The larger the company becomes, the more bureaucracy starts creeping in. It’s not easy to maintain a culture of innovation and frugality when that happens.

“We believe the right way to compete is to incentivise our product leaders to also run their product more like a standalone company. Companies must achieve profitable growth on some reasonable time horizon.”

Organise teams into small pods

Building on the previous point, the smaller the team, the more effective it is. There is no room for politics in small groups of people. Also, it’s clear to see who truly delivers on their targets.

“Within each product, we will be defining pods of <10 people working on a specific feature or area. If a pod grows to be more than 10 people, it will be time to split it in two and assign each one a more specific goal or focus.”

Ship products, not slide decks

It’s easy to get into a never-ending cycle of preparing proposals and fancy decks instead of shipping products or features. If you truly want to have a culture of execution, then you need to make it clear to each team what kind of output is rewarded.

Also Read: Funding Roundup: EventX bags additional US$8M; Coinbase, Grab execs join Ethlas’s US$2M round

“We’re experimenting with banning slide decks in product and engineering reviews. Instead of a slide deck, you can show:

• A dashboard with your metrics, hopefully, your team is looking at this at least weekly anyway
• Figma mockups
• But most importantly, show the product itself and use it live!”

APIs instead of meetings

The larger the organisation, the more people waste time on internal meetings. A simple solution is to have a process that forces each product and engineering team to publish APIs. In turn, that unlocks instant collaboration between different units.

“We need to move to a model where all product and engineering teams (not just shared services) publish APIs so that other teams can benefit from what they’re building without ever needing to schedule a meeting.”

Maintain an insurgent mindset

Armstrong said it best, it all comes down to having a founder mentality. A culture of ownership and accountability.

“Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to retaining the founder mentality inside the company and acting like owners. Most companies start off by being anti-establishment, seeking to right some wrong in the world. But as they grow bigger and more successful, they start to become the new establishment. They get complacent, feeling that they’ve won, and bureaucracy sets in.”

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Image credit: Coinbase

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The autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) industry has grown in the past decade, driven by e-commerce. Companies in the sector has adopted AMRs to support the rapid movement of products within warehouses and around the world. This has helped them keep up with the competition, enhance productivity and increase efficiency.

Four Singapore-based robotics enthusiasts sensed an opportunity in this space early on and started Botsync, a heavy-duty, intelligent, industrial AMR startup. The startup envisions becoming the go-to automation solution provider for internal logistics movement in the APAC market.

Botsync was founded in 2017 by Nikhil Venkatesh (CTO), Prashant Trivedi (Chief Commercial Officer), Singaram Venkatachalam (COO), and Nambiar (CEO) — all graduates of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University — to turn their passion into an industrial breakthrough.

Its flagship product is MAG, a deep learning engine-powered AMR that can autonomously navigate the operating site to transfer loads of up to 1,500 kg, utilising the base map and multiple integrated sensors. The product comes in two variants: MAG300 and MAG1000.

Also Read: Why robotics is just entering its prime phase

Botsync has also developed Volta, a compact indoor mobile robot for ROS (robot operating system) learning, teaching and research, and Copernicus, an all-terrain mobile robot for outdoor robotics research or solution prototype.

Wong Fong Engineering’s strategic investment

Last week, Botsync announced a pre-Series A funding round from Wong Fong Engineering, SEEDS Capital, Angel Central, VentureCatalysts, Amit Pachisia, ZB Capital, Iterative, Locus Ventures, Funderbeam, Nalin Advani and Roger Crook to support the “growing demand”.

The strategic investment by Wong Fong Engineering, a leading Singapore-based industrial machinery maker, is particularly crucial.

“Wong Fong Engineering has been a strategically aligned investor since our seed round,” says Nambiar. “Our strength as a company lies in our ability to design and develop intelligent systems. However, providing heavy-duty solutions requires an equally strong background and capabilities in engineering to provide high-quality solutions to our users. In this respect, Wong Fong has been a great partner to us, providing the collective engineering and production capability to improve the technical quality of our offerings,” he adds.

With offices in Singapore and Bangalore, Botsync plans to deploy MAG AMRs across Asia over the next two years. In addition to expanding to these two markets, it also aims to build a network of partners with local offices to drive commercial expansion in countries like Malaysia and Thailand. These plans are already underway in Thailand, and the firm looks to do the same in Malaysia moving forward.

Besides deploying its flagship product, Botsync will enhance syncOS. This no-code interface allows site managers with no formal or technical background in robotics to build customised and complex workflows. This removes the necessity of recruiting and building an expensive in-house robotics task force.

“Our AMRs are versatile as they do not require infrastructural elements to navigate. Users can explore and fully design solutions with the syncOS platform simply by dragging and connecting building blocks on the interface,” explains Nambiar.

AMRs becoming prevalent

In Nambiar’s opinion, with the increasing supply chain challenges, the usage of AMRs to drive productivity in intralogistics has become prevalent, especially in the manufacturing and hospitality industry.

Three factors drive this usage: Firstly, the use of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) to support production lines has been phasing out. Companies in the automotive and electronics sectors now prefer to transit to AMR technology to drive their lines.

Secondly, there has been a greater push for digitalisation and visibility across the supply chain down to the manufacturing floor to improve companies’ response to supply chain shocks. A well-designed AMR solution integrated with the right tools can enhance this visibility on the production floor for users, giving them a greater understanding of where and how their inventory is used.

Lastly, the limited availability of forklift drivers has increasingly pushed companies to rely on AMRs. For operations that involve the movement of heavy materials that weigh close to one ton, forklifts continue to be the primary means to drive the intralogistics processes. With the greater availability of gig economy-driven jobs, companies now find it challenging to attract and then train and certify forklift drivers in shorter intervals due to higher retrenchment rates.

With the decreasing sensor costs and greater computing power, unit costs of robots have come down over the past decade. This has opened new opportunities for the sector to capitalise on and build better, more autonomous, flexible and cost-efficient robotic solutions.

“Having said that, lower costs and a cost reduction-based value proposition alone will not suffice to drive the adoption of AMRs.
Greater interoperability between the different robotics solutions for easier integrations and the ability to operate in more challenging environments will be instrumental for developments like low-code or no-code systems. This will allow users to derive more significant value from robotics, like overall process improvement and supply chain visibility, to justify their investment in robotics. Such initiatives can and will help drive the robotics density in the region to higher levels,” Nambiar explains.

Also Read: Southeast Asia paves the way for new value in robotics

Nonetheless, the AMR industry has yet to see significant growth. Several vital challenges prevent the growth.

“One significant challenge is that investment in robots is often justified by how much can be saved in labour costs. For example, lower labour costs in India remain a key factor in ensuring sufficient throughput is delivered while maintaining reasonable ROI timelines,” he remarks.

“However, in Singapore and Thailand, the adoption of robotics is higher than wage levels predict. While labour cost is one factor, the adoption of robotics differs based on the industry and national goals or plans around robotic development and adoption,” the CEO adds.

Another key challenge is the quality of the infrastructure and processes within a facility. Currently, many facilities in Asia run manual operations without a clear breakdown of processes. This impedes robotics implementation as there is no repeatable process to automate, especially in intralogistics and material handling.

“Additionally, the building infrastructure is crucial to support the logistics and operational service of AMRs, for instance, the flooring condition. Firms that cannot meet these quality standards may miss out on the opportunity to adopt robotic solutions,” he elaborates.

Pinning hope on India

For Botsync, AMRs’ adoption by e-commerce companies in India presents great opportunities. They use the systems to reduce operational costs and improve their overall delivery time.

“It has been amazing to see the traction in other sectors, particularly within the manufacturing space. More active conversations on AMR installations have started in companies of automotive and electronics sectors and sectors of other machines with greater importance placed on improving overall process standards, operating conditions and inventory visibility, driving increased adoption,” Nambiar notes.

The AMR market is still in its infancy, with less than 4 per cent of total potential sites globally today with an AMR implementation, thus presenting a huge growth potential within this sector. Intralogistics in the manufacturing sector, particularly within the automotive, electronics and machine component space, will be one of Botsync’s primary targets in this region. The third-party logistics space will be equally attractive in the future for us as we expand our product portfolio and system capabilities.

Over the past 18 months, the company grew from 15 employees to 30. During that period, it also expanded its business in India and moved to a 15,000-square feet office facility in Bangalore to support product manufacturing and testing and set up a dedicated sales and project team.

Nambiar admits that challenges such as relying on manual operations with constant retrenchment, associated training challenges, and the need for higher supply chain visibility are here to stay, regardless of the current economic situation. This is prevalent in Asia, where corporations have only recently started driving this initiative after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the various recent supply chain challenges.

“However, we expect that customer expectations from the same investment will increase. This requires products capable of delivering high levels of throughput with minimal downtime. This has always been a prime focus for our engineering work at Botsync, and with our syncOS developments, we are well positioned to deliver on this,” Nambiar concludes.

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Packworks, a Filipino mobile ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform for sari-sari store owners, has received US$2 million in a seed investment round.

Led by Fast Group and global PE firm CVC Capital Partners, the round also has been joined by ADB Ventures, Arise, Techstars, and IdeaSpace Foundation.

Packworks will use the funds to develop The Pack: SuperStore App, increase the breadth of offerings and improve its user journey.

It also plans to build a department that directly engages the sari-sari stores, provide additional services with partners, and build an open platform for financial institutions and brands to connect directly with store owners.

“We bootstrapped our way to helping 150,000 sari-sari stores. We’re helping communities all over the Philippines to grow and become more resilient. Imagine how many more we can help with all these awesome partners. Our vision is now global,” said Co-Founder and CMO Ibba Bernardo.

Also Read: GrowSari announces a US$77.5M Series C funding round, brings total funding to US$110M

Packworks started in 2018 as a solution for multinational companies in the Philippines to connect with neighbourhood stores. The company enables store owners to process their business inventory, bookkeeping, and data collection through The Pack: SuperStore App. They can also avail themselves of financial products and order supplies for a lower price without the hassle of coordinating and purchasing new stocks.

By 2019, Packworks rolled out nationwide with 220 stores and a gross merchandise value (GMV) of US$400,000. After a year, it gathered 27,828 stores with US$30 million GMV, reaching 130,000 stores with US$139 million GMV in 2021.

It targets to onboard 220,000 stores by the end of 2022 and 500,000 by the end of 2023.

“We think of ourselves as the railway or expressway infrastructure and not as the gas station or fast food shop operator. We expand partnerships to provide these services to our stores, such as inventory financing, e-payments, and micro-insurance,” Bernardo said.

It also aims to reduce the interest cost and handle money through access to e-payments.

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