In a compelling fireside chat at Echelon Philippines 2025, Raffy Montemayor, Co-Founder of Salmon, shared insights into the startup’s remarkable journey from zero to one million users and the launch of a bank within just 18 months.

Moderated by Thaddeus Koh, Co-Founder and Programs Director of e27, the discussion highlighted Salmon’s ambition to become the leading credit-led modern bank in Southeast Asia, starting in the Philippines.

Montemayor emphasised the importance of a strong founding team, stating that they offer the most attractive Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in the region. He noted that the decision to establish a bank stemmed from a need to provide comprehensive financial services to underserved populations. “I can now understand why some companies have co-CEOs because it is not something that I want to do on our own,” he remarked, illustrating the collaborative spirit that drives Salmon’s growth in the local startup ecosystem.

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During a recent visit to Singapore from February 2-4, Endeavour CEO and Co-Founder Linda Rottenberg engaged with local entrepreneurs and leaders at a pivotal moment for the organisation. Her trip coincided with Endeavor’s first International Selection Panel (ISP) of the year, gathering founders from across Asia and beyond for the final stage of Endeavor’s global selection process.

This visit also marked the soft launch of Endeavor’s global hub in Singapore, ahead of an official launch later this year.

In an email interview with e27, Rottenberg shared her insights on the evolving landscape of entrepreneurship in the region.

“Being back in Singapore for our first ISP of the year feels like a shot of adrenaline,” she remarked. “The shift in founder mindset across Asia is unmistakable and a lot more optimistic than when I was here last year.”

She highlighted Singapore’s emergence as a global hub, attracting businesses such as GoTyme Bank and fostering a new generation of founders eager to scale their ventures internationally. According to Rottenberg, Southeast Asian (SEA) entrepreneurs have developed a remarkable discipline, thriving in challenging capital environments and honing their focus on unit economics and operational resilience.

Also Read: Echelon Philippines 2025 – Zero to 1M users and a bank in 18 months

The following is an edited excerpt of our conversation with her.

After nearly three decades of building Endeavor, you have seen multiple waves of entrepreneurship worldwide. In your view, what distinguishes the small percentage of founders who go on to achieve the true 10x scale?

After almost thirty years of working with founders, one thing still holds true: “Crazy is a compliment.” The ones who scale 10x are willing to dream big and be misunderstood.

But dreaming big is not enough: It is also critical to build operating systems early, focusing on governance, culture, and a repeatable go-to-market strategy. While startup founders are understandably focused on product-market fit and unit economics, we have seen that the softer skills, such as culture and team building, are often what trip people up at scale. You cannot grow your company by 10x if you haven’t tackled these people-and-culture issues early on. The entrepreneurs who succeed also treat constraints as advantages and combine humility with the ability to attract top talent and capital.

Endeavor’s Global VC Trends for 2026 highlights shifting investor priorities globally. What signals are you seeing in Asia’s venture landscape right now that founders should be paying closest attention to?

We are entering what I would call a “Funding Spring”, but it is a cooler, more disciplined one. Seed deals are down sharply, while late-stage rounds are getting bigger. Capital is concentrating behind proven, resilient winners.

The biggest shift is what we call the profitability reset. Investors are no longer impressed by topline growth alone. They want to see EBITDA, strong margins, and defensible technology, especially in AI. In sectors such as fintech, consolidation is accelerating. A handful of deals now account for the majority of funding.

The message is clear: be the consolidator, or get consolidated.

In terms of AI, nearly all conversations in 2025 focused on foundational models, which are being built in Silicon Valley and China. The next wave of AI value creation, Endeavor believes, will be built in the application layer. Much of that innovation will come from elsewhere, including Asia.

Also Read: Why most tokenised real estate startups in SEA fail

In relation to the previous question, Endeavor Catalyst has become a key part of your model for backing high-growth entrepreneurs. How has the role of long-term, founder-first capital evolved as markets become more selective?

In an environment where trust is scarce, founder-first capital matters more than ever. Endeavor Catalyst’s high-conviction, high-trust model backs founders as a co-investor, seeking to “crowd in” smart, connected capital. Our role is to look past the cycle’s noise and back the founder’s long-term vision.

We show up at pivotal moments, whether that means facilitating introductions, offering a sounding board for ideas, or helping provide “reverse due diligence” to help founders really get to know their potential investors. We aim to always do the right thing for the long-term interests of the founders and the company, even if that means pricing a new round of capital as a flat or down-round. There is too much “short-term thinking” in venture today; we aim to play for the very long-term.

In 2025 alone, we made over 320 investor introductions and invested in companies such as Astro and Staffinc in Indonesia. We remain focused on long-term outcomes, not market cycles.

Endeavor’s mission has always been about building multiplier effects—founders helping founders. How do you foster that kind of pay-it-forward ecosystem across very different markets in Asia?

At Endeavor, success is not just measured by valuation. It is measured by what we call the Multiplier Effect: how many others you lift as you rise.

We curate trust-based communities of the top one per cent of entrepreneurs and intentionally break down hierarchy. It is founder-to-founder mentorship, not top-down advice. From day one, there is an expectation to give back.

What is so meaningful is how it compounds. Role models such as Carro, GoTyme Bank, and Thunes do not just scale their own companies; they mentor, invest in, and inspire the next generation.

Also Read: Everyone wants AI agents, but few have the plumbing

When liquidity happens, that capital, experience, and confidence stay local.

Looking ahead, Endeavor is clearly doubling down on Asia at a pivotal time. What is your long-term vision for the region’s role in the global entrepreneurship movement over the next decade?

Asia is at a true inflexion point. We see Singapore serving as the regional nerve centre for capital, talent, and diaspora founders. With upcoming exits, secondaries, and IPOs, we anticipate liquidity that will fuel more multipliers.

But what excites me most is the shift beyond commerce and manufacturing. Deep tech is emerging at scale – robotics and physical AI in Japan, hardware innovation in Vietnam, superapps and integrated platforms serving hundreds of millions, and financial infrastructure that is being exported globally. We are watching R&D leave the lab and turn into real businesses.

Last year alone, we selected new Endeavor companies from Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Founders such as Yoshi Yokokawa of Alpaca represent this next generation: global from day one, technically ambitious, and committed to paying their success forward.

Ultimately, Asia is emerging as the global home of platform-scale companies, and Endeavor’s role is to convert today’s “Funding Spring” into a decade of durable growth.

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Image Credit: Endeavor

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Does your team use GenAI tools to review contracts or other sensitive documents?

If you answered yes, you’re not the minority. It seems harmless enough — you paste company text into ChatGPT, type “Help me review this,” and within seconds, you have an analysis of a confidential document.

It feels fast, easy, and harmless. Yet, many do not realise that they have just uploaded confidential corporate data into a public AI model, now beyond your organisation’s control.

This scenario is anything but theoretical. A 2025  report notes that nearly 1 in 20 enterprise users regularly use GenAI tools, and internal data sent to these platforms has surged 30 times year‑on‑year. The same report found that 72 per cent of this shadow AI use, or employee use on personal accounts, occurs outside IT’s purview.

Crucially, this isn’t about bad actors; it’s about convenience. Employees are simply trying to work smarter. But in the process, they’re unwittingly pivoting into insider threats, leaking data outside detection, under the watch of traditional security systems.

The GenAI-driven insider threat landscape

GenAI tools introduce new risks beyond data copy-paste. Prompt injection attacks, where hidden commands are embedded in documents or queries, can co-opt these systems into revealing confidential info or ignoring security protocols. There are real-world exploits like University of California, San Diego’s (UCSD) Imprompter, which had nearly an 80 per cent success rate in extracting personal data via obfuscated prompts.

The risks are compounded when employees unknowingly expose sensitive information like API keys, login credentials, or confidential files in GenAI platforms. Once that data is retained or intercepted, attackers can exploit it to impersonate trusted users and access corporate systems undetected. In such cases, traditional security tools often fail to flag the activity because the access appears legitimate and the data flows may traverse encrypted channels.

Also Read: Bridging the gender gap in GenAI learning: Strategies to get more women involved

Why traditional security alone isn’t enough

Network-level defences like Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and behavioural analytics (such as User and Entity Behaviour Analytics, or UEBA) are vital parts of a layered security strategy. These software tools monitor activity across the network and applications, scanning for risky behaviour like large data exports or unusual file access patterns. They can flag when an employee uploads sensitive files to unsanctioned cloud platforms or external GenAI tools.

But there are limitations. Many rely on visibility into network traffic or sanctioned applications. But when employees upload sensitive documents into public GenAI platforms, these actions can easily bypass logging and monitoring — especially if traffic is encrypted or routed through personal accounts. And in cases where credentials are compromised, attackers can operate from within, circumventing network protections entirely.

A critical missing puzzle piece lies with elevated security, where data lives in the memory of the endpoint.

Layering hardware-based zero trust into GenAI risk management

This is where hardware-level zero-trust comes in, and I’m not talking about passive security like encryption or key management. Encryption is essential for protecting data at rest, and effective key management ensures only authorised parties can decrypt that data. But neither prevents a legitimate user or a GenAI tool with granted access from reading and exfiltrating sensitive information.

Dynamic hardware-level zero trust moves beyond passive safeguards, enabling organisations with:

• Continuous validation of access attempts at the chipset or SSD level
• Anomaly detection for abnormal data reads/writes, including large transfers or mass deletions
• Autonomous lockdowns that block suspicious activity before data leaves the device

Imagine an employee, unaware of the risks, pastes sensitive login credentials or confidential documents into a public GenAI platform to “streamline” a task. Those details are now retained in the AI model or intercepted by threat actors exploiting vulnerabilities in the platform. Later, hackers use the leaked credentials to access corporate systems and attempt to siphon large volumes of sensitive data.

Also Read: GenAI in lending: Faster approvals, smarter risks, and personalised credit

Traditional security tools might miss this, especially if the attackers use the compromised credentials to operate under the guise of a trusted insider. Network monitoring could also be bypassed if the data exfiltration happens over encrypted channels or through sanctioned apps.

Dynamic hardware-level security, however, can detect unusual access patterns — like mass file transfers or abnormal read/write activity– at the physical layer. It does not rely on user credentials or network visibility. Instead, it autonomously blocks the suspicious transfer before any data leaves the device, effectively neutralising the threat even after the breach of access credentials.

Building a GenAI-aware insider threat strategy

To circumvent this threat, a multilayered strategy beyond traditional network security is critical:

• Governance and AI-ready policy: Define which AI tools are approved, specify allowed data types, and require employee attestation.
• Education and culture: Many employees may not be aware of the dangers associated with feeding GenAI tools sensitive data. It’s important to empower them with the right literacy and clear guidelines so AI can be an ally, not an adversary.
• Hardware-level endpoint security: Equipping drives with embedded zero-trust capabilities provides the final defence, autonomously detecting and preventing unauthorised data movement at the most fundamental layer.

Fix the problem, don’t ban the tool

The goal is not to choke out innovation by banning GenAI; it is to make it as safe as possible. A sample playbook could look like:

• Approve a selected set of GenAI services
• Configure DLP and behavioural tools to watch for large data exports
• Enforce intelligent hardware-secured storage on all endpoints
• Train staff on what data should not be shared and why

In the GenAI era, employees are usually well-intentioned, not malicious. Yet, without proper safeguards, they can unintentionally act as insider threats. Bridging governance, training, network monitoring, and hardware-based zero-trust turns GenAI into a secure asset rather than a hidden vulnerability.

Security needs to follow the data to the drive, because that’s where the invisible line between productivity and exposure is drawn.

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Most startup and growth-company boards talk about “good governance.”

Very few talk honestly about power.

In Venture Capital and Private Equity backed companies, boards are often presented as a collection of equals: executives, nominee directors, and independent directors all sitting around the same table, bound by the same fiduciary duties.

That’s the theory. The reality is far more asymmetric.

The most important difference between nominee directors and independent directors isn’t experience, intelligence, or intent. It’s who they represent and what incentives they carry into the room.

Nominee directors: Speed, capital, and outcomes

VC and PE nominee directors are appointed for a reason: They represent capital with expectations.

They often bring:

• Pattern recognition from dozens of portfolio companies
• Access to funding, talent, and acquirers
• A bias for speed, decisiveness, and accountability

They ask hard questions early:

• Are we growing fast enough?
• Is the CEO still the right person?
• What’s the path to liquidity?

And in many cases, they create enormous value, especially in early and scaling stages where momentum matters more than elegance.

But nominee directors don’t operate in a vacuum.

Their incentives are shaped by:

• Fund return targets
• Exit timelines
• Portfolio-level risk management

This doesn’t make them “bad governors.” It makes them focused owners.

The problem arises when boards pretend those incentives don’t exist.

Independent directors: Stewardship without a sponsor

Independent directors are meant to represent something very different: The institutional integrity of the company itself.

At their best, they:

• Pause board momentum when risk exposure is uneven
• Protect minority shareholders and management credibility
• Ask uncomfortable second-order questions
• Focus on sustainability, culture, and leadership depth

They are often the only people in the room without a liquidity clock ticking.

But independence alone doesn’t create impact.

Many independent directors are:

• Appointed too late
• Poorly briefed on power dynamics
• Treated as ceremonial rather than influential
• Outnumbered in moments that matter most

When that happens, independence becomes ornamental, not functional.

Also Read: Cybersecurity and data governance in the boardroom: A strategic imperative for Asian boards

The real tension isn’t strategy — it’s incentives

Most board conflicts aren’t about market opportunity or product vision.

They’re about:

• Exit timing vs enterprise readiness
• Speed vs resilience
• Control vs stewardship
• Replacement vs development of leadership

Nominee directors tend to optimise for velocity and outcomes. Independent directors tend to optimise for coherence and longevity.

Neither is wrong.

But pretending they are the same role is how boards drift into dysfunction.

Where each role creates the most value

Early and Growth Stages

Nominee directors often create disproportionate value:

• Faster decisions
• Clear accountability
• Capital discipline

Independent directors can struggle to gain traction if the company isn’t ready to listen.

Scaling, pre-IPO, and complexity

Independent directors become essential:

• Risk management
• Governance maturity
• CEO succession
• Reputation and regulatory readiness

This is often where tensions with nominee directors intensify, especially when fund timelines and company readiness diverge.

Also Read: From labs to boardrooms: QAI Ventures bets on Singapore’s quantum future

What great boards do differently

High-performing boards don’t choose between nominee and independent directors. They design the balance deliberately.

They:

• Acknowledge incentives openly
• Empower independent directors early, not late
• Ensure committees aren’t dominated by a single shareholder voice
• Expect nominee directors to govern, not just push outcomes
• Expect independent directors to challenge, not just observe

The most effective boards understand one thing: Speed without guardrails is reckless. Guardrails without speed are irrelevant.

A final provocation

If your board discussions feel “civil” but unresolved, ask yourself:

• Are independents truly independent, or just polite?
• Are nominee directors acting as stewards, or as enforcers?
• And when incentives diverge, who actually decides?

Because governance isn’t about how many seats are independent. It’s about whether power, incentives, and accountability are aligned, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

That’s where real boards earn their keep.

This article was first published on The Boardroom Edge.

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The post Nominee directors vs independent directors: Who really governs the company? appeared first on e27.

A global wave of AI-driven layoffs is reshaping the tech industry in 2026, with companies citing efficiency gains from artificial intelligence as they trim headcounts amid macroeconomic pressures and massive investments in AI infrastructure. Over 245,000 tech jobs were cut globally in 2025 alone, and early 2026 data shows continued momentum, including significant reductions at major players like Amazon, Meta, and others redirecting resources toward AI. AI luminaries like Geoffrey Hinton have warned that 2026 could mark the onset of more permanent job displacements as the technology gains capabilities to replace roles across sectors.

In this environment, Singapore and broader Asian tech workers are feeling the chill, with social media amplifying stories of restructuring, senior engineers losing positions, and debates over mid-career crises. Two compelling cases highlight a common vulnerability: over-reliance on legacy Windows Server ecosystems in an era dominated by Linux-optimized AI workflows.

Consider Tommy, a veteran Taiwan-based IT leader with over 25 years mastering Windows environments from Active Directory to Azure migrations. Despite strong credentials and high past earnings, he struggled in 2025 interviews at AI-forward companies. Feedback was consistent: solid Windows experience, but a pressing need for Linux talent to handle modern AI deployments.

Similarly, Joycelyn, a Gen X IT manager in London, built her career on Windows Server dependencies, outsourcing complex tasks and advancing through vendor relationships and presentations. When her firm underwent private equity acquisition, scrutiny exposed gaps—she couldn’t manage basic Linux commands or deploy local AI models with tools like Ollama. Insisting on Windows Server in a critical bid backfired when younger engineers flagged it as costly and regressive, leading to lost contracts and her eventual exit.

Also read: Costing comparison of top 7 popular ERP software for food manufacturing in Singapore

These stories share stark parallels in the AI era:

• Windows as a liability: AI frameworks like PyTorch, TensorFlow, and LLM fine-tuning tools are optimized for Linux, where GPU management, multi-card parallelism, and CUDA perform efficiently. Windows’ complex drivers and opaque kernel create bottlenecks for AI workloads.
• Cost scrutiny rules: Enterprises apply rigorous FinOps in 2026, viewing Windows Server licensing and maintenance as expensive compared to Linux plus Kubernetes, which slashes costs and integrates seamlessly with AI pipelines.
• Depth over delegation: Outsourcing core technical work leaves professionals vulnerable. Basic AI tools now enable even novices to run local models on Linux, while managers unfamiliar with command lines risk obsolescence. Companies seek leaders who build and optimize AI systems hands-on.
• Generational shifts: Gen Z engineers prioritize technical integrity and efficiency over traditional hierarchies, viewing legacy commitments as debt. Senior roles once protected by tenure now appear burdensome in agile, AI-centric firms.

The result? Comfort zones become layoff traps amid open-source AI explosions, talent influx, and economic tightening. For Singapore IT workers—operating in a competitive hub with heavy finance-tech overlap and rapid AI adoption—these dynamics hit close to home. Local firms mirror global trends, prioritizing cost control and agility as they integrate AI agents and cloud-native setups.

To avoid becoming the next casualty, Singapore-based IT professionals, especially managers, must act decisively in 2026:

• Prioritize Linux and open-source AI mastery: Treat Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS) as core, not secondary. Daily practice with commands, Docker/Kubernetes deployments, CUDA setups, and tools like Ollama or Hugging Face enables hands-on pilot projects. Singapore enterprises increasingly demand cloud cost efficiency and AI speed—Linux is now mandatory.
• Reclaim technical ownership: End over-reliance on vendors. Lead teams in dissecting systems, enhancing AI workflows, and applying FinOps to compare Windows vs. Linux TCO. Managers who personally construct AI agents demonstrate irreplaceable value.
• Adopt Gen Z perspectives and lead with AI: Embrace technical honesty and efficiency. Shift from being replaced by AI to commanding it—master prompting, agentic workflows, and internal pilots to position yourself as an accelerator, not a bottleneck. Monitor mental health amid widespread upskilling anxiety.

Also read: AI agents and ERP: Why Singapore businesses must act now

AI isn’t the enemy—it’s a transformative tool. Staying entrenched in Windows-centric comfort zones risks mirroring Tommy and Joycelyn’s fates. For Singapore IT workers, survival boils down to outpacing machines and outrunning the layoff wave: upskill faster, transform sooner.

Why we write this article

PRbyAI aims to share updated market news using our team’s tech knowledge, helping B2B customers make informed decisions.

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