Amra Naidoo, Co-Founder and General Partner, Accelerating Asia
It has been a busy period for Accelerating Asia, the regional network of startup programmes and an early-stage venture capital fund headquartered in Singapore. In addition to actively fundraising for its latest fund, the programme is also recruiting its seventh cohort, which is set to begin in October.
In an interview with e27, Accelerating Asia Co-Founder and General Partner Amra Naidoo shares her excitement for the upcoming cohort. “I was happy when we got our first cohort, and now we’re on to seventh,” she says. “Every cohort is a milestone [for us].”
The regional tech startup ecosystem might recognise Accelerating Asia as a programme that focuses on the Pre-Series A stage companies, defined as those with a level of traction, revenue, and active customers. These companies may have also had investors abroad; they join the programme with the goal of “taking things to the next level.”
Accelerating Asia is also known for making milestones such as having 40 per cent of the companies in its cohorts led by female founders.
“We would never drop that standard or change the criteria for anyone,” Naidoo says. “When we talk about that 40 per cent number, a lot of work has been done in the backend to create a culture where, hopefully, female founders would think of Accelerating Asia as a good investor they want to work with. It comes down to things like our Code of Conduct.”
Every individual – from mentor to founder to investor– who is working with the organisation has to follow this code of conduct religiously. “We’re strict about blacklisting people, not engaging them to work with us again. It is about being upfront with our values. I think that helps to create this kind of environment where, hopefully, lots of different types of people feel comfortable coming to us,” Naidoo elaborates.
In this feature article, she explains in detail the kind of company culture that Accelerating Asia built to support its mission. We divided the article into three parts:
- Saving the world, one startup at a time — where we focus on the history of the organisation and how it came up with its structure and mission
- Enabling innovation — a focus on the values that they implement and how they are using them to run their operations
- Supporting the ecosystem — a look into what the organisation offers to its portfolio companies, including how they measure performance
Also Read: Meet the first batch of startups that received investment from Accelerating Asia’s US$20M Fund II
Saving the world, one startup at a time
The journey of Accelerating Asia began in 2018. At the time, Naidoo and co-founder Craig Bristol Dixon were running an accelerator programme for a corporate when they found out that it was shutting down, and they had to figure out what to do next.
“We felt that there was a need for an independent accelerator programme that has high quality and that is serving a specific stage of a company. It is what we have been doing with the corporate accelerator, but not in the fullest sense. So that’s essentially how we started thinking about Accelerating Asia,” she explains.
When they first began, one of the first things that they needed to figure out was the revenue model of the business. “In the early days, we gave ourselves a little timeline to see if we could get something off the ground. We consulted a lot of industry professionals. We spoke to the Singapore government to other VCs. We spoke to the JFDI team, who is infamous in the region for their work starting up that accelerator programme, just to see what we needed to do to make this sustainable on its own. As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s just really difficult to have an independent programme.”
Following the research, the co-founders came up with three business lines:
- The accelerator
- The consulting/partnership arm
- The venture arm
These three business lines enable Accelerating Asia to balance the commercial and idealistic sides of the business. When starting up Accelerating Asia, the co-founders knew their passion lies in working with startups. Still, they were aware of the challenge that they were facing: how to remain financially independent and sustainable as it is “really hard” to charge the startups “enough money to continue a high-quality programme.”
“That is where the second part of our business came in, which is essentially a consulting or a partnerships arm. We run startup programmes for partners, be it governments, universities, or multinationals. That is the early revenue stream for Accelerating Asia before it evolved into a fund,” says Naidoo.
“We naturally started thinking, ‘Well, if we are working with all these startups, we should invest in them too.’ That’s essentially how Accelerating Asia ventures, the third part of what we do, was set up. Looking back on it now, it all made sense to do it the way we did. But we essentially started three businesses around the same time, and it was a lot of work.”
Naidoo admits that running these three businesses can be quite challenging. “They can be competing in terms of how much time it takes you. But we found that they all create a really strong ecosystem, and they all feed into each other.”
Also Read: How the ‘Paris agreement’ for plastic is accelerating climate justice in SEA
Despite its importance, the commercial side of the business was not the only thing that Naidoo and Dixon set up at the beginning of their journey. Beyond that, Naidoo and Dixon also figured out the values they wanted to promote through Accelerating Asia.
The co-founders believe that entrepreneurs are one of humanity’s greatest catalysts for positive change –this becomes the guiding principle for the organisation.
“Craig was the one who put it down into such a beautiful sentence. And then … our marketing team had a go at it and made it even better. It embodies everything that we’re trying to do at Accelerating Asia … for [Dixon], he’s spoken a lot about how there are some entrepreneurs out there that could be working on some incredible things. If they just had the resources and the support, they could make [their impact] a reality and change the world,” Naidoo elaborates.
“I’m approaching it from a different perspective. I was working for UN Women for quite a while, working with a lot of social entrepreneurs. I got to see so many different business models and thought that if we could make these more scalable and sustainable and use technology as a tool to do that … The change and the impact that you could make could be amazing. So, we arrived at the same thing around the same time, but just different ways of getting there.”
I asked Naidoo how far along does she think they are in this journey of fulfilling their mission? As a response, she believes they are still at the “very beginning” of their journey. In our conversation, she also mentions how she was inspired by the works of other organisations in the industries –and the challenges faced by the community.
“The tech and investment space is not exactly known for its diversity or inclusiveness. We want to be different or even more than that, to set a standard for what it could be in this region and what it could look like.”
Enabling innovation
With the level of complexity that their operations can have, there is a need for Accelerating Asia to be methodical in how they are running things. The organisation believes that it can achieve this by implementing a culture that promotes the values they live by. Those three values are:
- Flexibility
- Trust in disagreement
- Clarity
The first value they implement is flexibility. “We’ve always been quite flexible regarding where and how you work and how many hours you work. We don’t have any set office hours in the organisation. We do have team meetings and things like that; as long as you make it to those team meetings [then it is fine]. If you’re a night person and want to work in the evening, go ahead. If you’re a super early morning bird, you can do that too,” Naidoo elaborates.
An example of an initiative they implement is a Flexi Friday, where team members are not allowed to host meetings or events during the day. They would also be freed from the expectation to answer messages immediately on Fridays, enabling them to travel for the weekend and return to the office on Mondays.
“All of this is based on trust. The whole idea is that work should be something that you enjoy coming to; hopefully, you can thrive and find your flow … that’s the kind of environment we wanted to create.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic strikes, this flexibility that the team has implemented allows them to adjust and transition to remote working smoothly –they would even attribute their survival during the crisis to their ability to be flexible.
Also Read: Accelerating Asia to launch Fund II in H2, ups investment size to US$250K
Another value that they implement is related to handling conflict and disagreement in the team.
“We have a disagree-and-move-on policy. Everybody in the organisation can be very opinionated. That’s why we hire people … to have their opinions about certain things. But there has to be a point where we just have to decide. And so, even if you disagree with something, the decisions must be made, and then you move on,” Naidoo says. “There are so many different things we’ve tried to implement; we’re constantly testing different things and frameworks.”
Another aspect I am curious about is how the team members work with each other, as some companies in the startup ecosystem are known to have a unique approach to it. Some are more project-oriented, while some are more team-oriented. In the case of Accelerating Asia, the first thing that one needs to know is that the company is being divided into three divisions that work on the different aspects of the business: The accelerator, the fund management, and the partnerships.
The accelerator is certainly the core of the activities in the company. Still, there is the fund management division that works closely with the LPs and the partnership division, which works on business development relationships and partner programme executions.
Despite these divisions, Naidoo points out that there are team members whose role sits across these three different areas. “For example, I’m more on the operational and administration sides, but much of my work also sits across the fund as the general partner. Whereas Craig is more on the portfolio and the startups as well as sitting across the fund.”
The team managed the role of its members using a matrix approach or swim lane diagram, which Naidoo sees as helpful in clarifying who is responsible for what, especially when many projects are happening with competing levels of priorities.
“We have just started testing out something called the DICE framework. When you’re running a project, who is the Decider? Who are the people that just need to be Informed of the project but don’t need to be actively involved in it? And then who are you bringing into the team to Consult on certain things, from marketing to legal? And then who are the team members Executing?” she explains each acronym.
“That helped us get some clarity internally, especially when you’ve got lots of different people doing lots of different things.”
In terms of the tools that they are using, Accelerating Asia relies on “the classics” such as Slack and Google Drive.
Supporting the ecosystem
So, what kind of support does Accelerating Asia give to its startups? Naidoo gives the answers by explaining what sets them apart from a similar organisations.
Also Read: A snapshot of the 11 startups joining Accelerating Asia’s 4th cohort
“Our accelerated programme is not the typical theory-based programme. We are very hands-on. We’re probably better described as hands-on investors rather than an accelerator programme because people just have preconceived ideas about what accelerator programmes are. So, our team are there for the startups.”
In the three months that a startup is involved with Accelerating Asia, the organisation assists them in hiring, restructuring the company, and legal matters such as contracts and agreements. They also assist the startups in marketing. fundraising, and even storytelling.
“We tend to work very closely with the founders themselves. But we have also worked with some of the smaller teams with the senior leadership team because that’s just as important at that stage,” says Naidoo.
As investors, Accelerating Asia does not set specific performance targets for its portfolio companies. However, they still expect to see growth. To ensure this, following graduation from the programme, they will catch up with the startups through phone calls every six months to see if they can help with anything.
“During the programme, we’re much more hands-on, and the feedback circle is quicker than six months. We’re seeing them almost every day, so it’s about creating an environment where they can trust you with any problems that they’re having. If there is a slowdown in growth, we can see why and what’s going on there and help them as appropriate.”
But what happens if a portfolio company fails to perform? What actions will the organisation take to prevent and handle that? To answer these big questions, Naidoo begins by explaining the qualitative and quantitative aspects of measuring a portfolio company’s performance.
“The quantitative side is easier. We look at the company before they apply for the programme, and we have a certain set of metrics that we look at, things like monthly recurring revenue, user retention, and growth rates. We track them for every month of the programme until graduation and then every six months after that to see growth,” she elaborates.
“The qualitative aspect includes things like new partnerships or media coverage that they have, or growth of the founders themselves. Several founders were recently announced as Forbes 30 under 30. So, it is the other things that signal growth in the company and of the founders themselves,” she adds.
With all that they get to offer to startups, how does Accelerating Asia promote their works to the startup ecosystem?
The organisation’s website is certainly the starting point for learning about its mission and how to apply to its programmes, but Accelerating Asia also runs webinars and events to help promote its activities, such as a monthly open house session at the Draper Startup House in Singapore.
Also Read: Accelerating Asian IPO markets: How long can the initial public offering boom last?
“When we do travel around the region, we also have several startup events that we run. We’re always hopping around so they can get in contact with us. When we are in a recruitment cycle as we are right now, and applications are open, this is the best time to approach us. Just come and talk to us, drop by the office and things like that,” Naidoo says.
“Outside the recruitment cycle, it’s better [for startups] to put themselves down in the pre-application. Because they can start the application process, we can keep tabs on them and keep in contact with them.”
Last words
In an ecosystem where most accelerator programmes are affiliated with a corporate –from telco companies to banks– an independent programme has an opportunity to stand out and provide a unique experience for its participating startups. Most importantly, to stand out from the rest, an independent accelerator programme has to have a mission.
As explained by Naidoo at the beginning of her conversation with e27, there is a certain “homework” that Accelerating Asia needs to do when setting up its organisation. It had to figure out a way to support itself and be sustainable as a business. In addition to that, they have to set up a system that can help support its mission.
So far, if we look at the organisation’s portfolio companies, many of them are imbued with missions that align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), from quality healthcare and education to employment and economic growth. While many of their companies, including Dana and Waitrr, may not secure unicorn status yet, they are experiencing steady growth. They are working in a field that creates an impact –in addition to making money.
This is not the first time that values such as flexibility and the willingness to disagree come out as key values that enable an organisation to stay resilient and grow. These are some of the traits that are often associated with the startup ecosystem. Still, it is always fascinating to see how each organisation implements it in their unique flavour.
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Image Credit: Accelerating Asia
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