A newly minted collaboration between the Viet Nam International Financial Center in Ho Chi Minh City (VIFC-HCMC), Touchstone Partners, and Temasek Foundation seeks to convert Vietnam’s climate innovation promise into funded, scalable businesses and to make Ho Chi Minh City a regional conduit for sustainable finance.

Signed on 29 May at the Vietnam-Singapore Tech Connect Forum in the city-state, the trilateral agreement commits the three parties to mobilise international capital, expertise, and networks to accelerate Vietnam’s green transition.

Also Read: Vietnam wants more than factories; it wants the future of tech

The pact names Net Zero Challenge 2026 as its first flagship initiative, elevating the annual climate technology competition into a broader platform for investment and market creation.

A pragmatic aim: turn pilots into payoffs

Vietnam has become a high-priority market for climate technology in Southeast Asia. The country has strong comparative advantages: a sizeable manufacturing base, significant agricultural activity, and an increasingly skilled technology workforce. It makes it attractive for both homegrown and imported climate solutions. But moving from pilot projects to commercial outcomes remains a perennial challenge for startups and investors alike.

The new agreement targets four practical levers: support for innovation and the green economy; capital mobilisation and strategic partnerships; ecosystem and market development; and international collaboration. That mix is intentionally pragmatic, focusing on the gaps that typically stall commercialisation, from investment readiness and regulatory sandboxes to market entry and scale.

“Mobilising international capital, accessing advanced technologies and connecting global expertise will be critical,” said Dr Truong Minh Huy Vu, chairman of the VIFC-HCMC executive agency. He framed the financial centre as a regulatory and infrastructure gateway designed to attract “global financial institutions and channel international capital” to Vietnam’s long-term growth priorities.

Touchstone: an investor’s view

Touchstone Partners, a Vietnam-focused investment fund, has been involved with the Net Zero Challenge since its inception and views the new collaboration as a way to leverage existing dealflow and deepen commercial outcomes. The fund has been building an ecosystem around climate tech investments, including a climate fund and vertical programmes such as an energy-efficiency accelerator.

Also Read: The Vietnam startup visa gap: Why founders are renting, not residing

“This collaboration builds on Touchstone’s successful journey alongside Temasek Foundation and agencies of the Government of Viet Nam to mobilise catalytic capital in support of the country’s green transition,” said Tran Nhat Khanh, managing partner at Touchstone. “Climate solutions made in Vietnam can generate sustainable commercial returns alongside meaningful emissions reduction outcomes.”

Net Zero Challenge: from competition to platform

The Net Zero Challenge began in 2023. Across the first three editions, it attracted some 1,500 climate innovation submissions, mobilised millions of Singapore dollars and supported “tens of” startups and organisations deploying climate solutions in Vietnam. Under the new arrangement, the challenge will be repurposed as an integrated pipeline: source promising technologies, de-risk pilots through partnerships and channel investment and market access via VIFC-HCMC’s financial and regulatory frameworks.

Temasek Foundation’s involvement provides philanthropic and regional convening assets that help bridge public and private sector interests.

“This shared commitment is more than a partnership; it is a catalyst for action,” said Jennie Chua, chairman of Temasek Foundation, signalling an intent to push beyond grantmaking into blended mechanisms that spur commercial adoption.

Regional implications for Southeast Asia

The trilateral pact is notable for more than domestic policy signalling. It represents a Singapore-Vietnam axis that could shape flows of capital and innovation across Southeast Asia. Singapore has been positioning itself as a hub for sustainable finance and a gateway for deploying capital into ASEAN. VIFC-HCMC’s promise of an internationally aligned regulatory platform is attractive to investors seeking clearer frameworks for cross-border transactions and risk management.

For regional startups and corporates, an outcome to watch will be whether the partnership creates repeatable pathways for foreign investors to fund and scale solutions inside Vietnam and then export them across ASEAN markets. If successful, the model could be replicated in neighbouring countries that share similar deployment bottlenecks: insufficient consumer demand signals, regulatory uncertainty and the need for integration with existing industrial systems.

What’s missing from the release

The announcement emphasises strategy and intent but is light on specifics that investors typically seek: the scale of committed capital, timelines for regulatory sandbox rollouts, and precise governance structures for how projects will be selected and financed. The release notes “millions of Singapore dollars” were mobilised by earlier Net Zero Challenge editions (equivalent to several million US dollars), but refrained from firm commitments for the new collaboration.

That opacity is understandable during launch events, yet the hard work will be measured in dollars deployed, pilots commercialised and, crucially, emissions reductions achieved. Observers and market participants will want to see clear metrics and transparent selection processes once Net Zero Challenge 2026 is detailed in July.

Where this could lead

If VIFC-HCMC succeeds in attracting global financial institutions through a credible legal and market framework, Vietnam could access a broader palette of instruments: green bonds, blended concessional capital, and institutional allocations from asset managers seeking climate exposure in emerging Asian markets. For startups, the most immediate gains would be increased access to pilot partners (utilities, agricultural firms, manufacturers), regulatory guidance via sandboxes, and clearer exit pathways for investors.

Also Read: Vietnam and Hong Kong join Singapore in global crypto top ten

For Southeast Asia more broadly, a working model that links philanthropic platforms, domestic financial centres and local venture funds into coordinated pipelines could accelerate the region’s ability to deploy climate technologies at scale. The proof will be in the follow-through: actual capital flows, regulatory reforms enacted and technologies adopted at commercial scale.

Net Zero Challenge 2026 will be the first test of that pipeline. The initiative’s ability to attract higher-quality submissions, de-risk pilots and secure follow-on investment will determine whether the trilateral collaboration remains a strategic statement or becomes a practical engine for Vietnam’s green transition.

The post Singapore-Vietnam collaboration targets climate-tech scale-up as VIFC-HCMC opens doors to global capital appeared first on e27.

The post Why US$73,000 is the most important Bitcoin level right now appeared first on e27.

I.W.G Inc., a Tokyo-based healthtech startup, has raised US$1.8 million in a pre-Series A round led by Golden Gate Ventures, with participation from Antler and individual backers, including radiologist-entrepreneur Dr Toshihiko Sato.

The funding will be used to scale an AI-driven interoperability platform that maps and routes clinical data across incompatible hospital systems and languages, a problem that is particularly acute across Southeast Asia and Greater China.

Also Read: The most-funded healthtech startups in Southeast Asia: A decade in review

The round is notable for being the first Japanese investment from Golden Gate Ventures Fund IV, underscoring investor interest in infrastructure plays that tackle cross-border healthcare frictions in the region.

Why interoperability matters in Asia

Hospitals and clinics across Asia operate on a patchwork of legacy systems, bespoke hospital information systems, and different data standards. That fragmentation translates into stalled referrals, delayed overseas checkups, and administrative bottlenecks for providers, insurers and patients, especially when care crosses national borders.

“In many cases the records exist, but formats, systems and languages do not match,” said Xiaoyan (Fiona) Zhou, CEO of I.W.G. “Our goal is to make medical information flow as easily and securely as communication on the internet.”

The company cites market research that values global healthcare interoperability solutions at US$3.9 billion in 2024. It projects to reach US$14.7 billion by 2034, with Asia Pacific expected to be the fastest-growing region. That growth is driven by rising cross-border care — medical tourism, overseas checkups and multinational insurers — and uneven digital maturity among providers, which makes plug-and-play solutions rare.

How the product works

I.W.G’s platform does not require hospitals to rip out existing IT. Instead, it ingests documents in multiple formats (PDF, XML, HL7, DICOM, etc.) and uses an AI referral agent to understand clinical context. The agent extracts and maps relevant data into the format required by a receiving institution, reducing the need for bespoke integrations or hardware installs.

Critically for Southeast Asia, the platform handles both language and structural mismatches. The AI can translate and reformat referral documents so that a specialist in Singapore, for instance, can receive and process records from a hospital in Indonesia or Japan with minimal friction.

Also Read: Why Antler is going all-in on Japan’s earliest-stage founders

Beyond format conversion, I.W.G is developing features to check referral content against clinical guidelines and institution-specific protocols automatically. That assists clinicians by reducing manual cross-referencing and the risk of relying on outdated references, a small but meaningful efficiency gain in busy referral pathways.

From radiology roots to cross-border ambition

Founders Zhou and Xiaoxi (Bruce) Guo bring a decade of medical AI experience in Asia. Zhou previously led overseas operations for a China-based AI medical imaging company, navigating hospital deployments and regulatory approvals across multiple markets. The team’s prior work included securing one of the earliest Japanese regulatory clearances for a foreign AI diagnostic solution, an experience that the new investors see as relevant for regional expansion.

“What initially drew us to I.W.G was simple: Fiona and Bruce have already done this once,” said Justin Hall, partner at Golden Gate Ventures. “Their operational depth and early customer retention told us something fundamental about the product and team.”

Antler’s co-founder Jussi Salovaara highlighted the importance of the infrastructure layer: “That infrastructure layer is especially important across Asia, where compatibility, language and workflow differences create enormous friction. It’s exciting to see the team validate their approach through real customer adoption beyond Japan.”

Early traction across Asia

I.W.G says it already has deployments across Japan, China, Singapore and Indonesia. Customers include regional hospitals, community clinics, teleradiology centres, medical tourism firms, and health checkup centres. The company has also seen interest from premium insurers and credit card programs that support overseas medical checkups, services where language barriers and incompatible systems frequently create operational delays.

These early adopters point to a practical, demand-led path for the company. Where many digital-health startups chase flashy diagnostic applications, I.W.G is building the plumbing that lets those applications work across institutions and jurisdictions — a slower, less glamorous but arguably more foundational problem.

Why investors are paying attention

Investors are betting on the network effects of interoperability. If hospitals, insurers, and medical facilitators adopt a common AI-mediated exchange layer, the value of participating increases with each new node on the network. For Southeast Asia, a region defined by diverse languages, differing regulatory regimes, and high cross-border patient flows, such a shared layer could reduce time-to-care and administrative overhead for both private and public providers.

The involvement of Dr Toshihiko Sato, a well-known radiologist and healthtech entrepreneur, gives the startup clinical credibility in Japan and signals clinicians’ willingness to experiment with AI-mediated workflows.

Next steps and challenges

I.W.G plans to use the fresh capital to expand engineering and business development teams, deepen integrations with healthcare providers and enhance multilingual and workflow automation features. The company also points to its participation in the Mayo Clinic Platform Accelerate programme as part of its attempt to align with global clinical standards.

But challenges remain. Interoperability is not just a technical problem; it involves regulatory, contractual and cultural obstacles. Hospitals can be slow to adopt third-party middleware, and data governance regimes vary widely across Asian markets. Success will depend on the startup’s ability to demonstrate measurable time and cost savings, and to navigate local regulations on patient data sharing.

A pragmatic approach

I.W.G’s approach is deliberately incremental: rather than replacing systems, it augments them. That pragmatic posture should make sales conversations easier in markets where hospital IT budgets and regulatory risk-aversion make wholesale change difficult.

Also Read: AI is detecting cancer earlier in Southeast Asia but our policies and capital have not caught up

For Southeast Asian stakeholders, from insurers in Singapore to teleradiology hubs in Indonesia, an AI layer that eases data exchange could be an operationally attractive proposition. If I.W.G can convert pilot projects into long-term contracts, it could carve out a rare regional interoperability footprint that bridges Greater China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

Whether that vision scales will depend on execution: securing larger institutional customers, proving cross-border workflows at scale, and winning over conservative clinical and IT buyers. For now, US$1.8 million gives the Tokyo startup room to iterate and push into markets where the friction of incompatible records is felt most sharply.

The post Japan’s I.W.G raises US$1.8M to stitch Asia’s fractured medical records appeared first on e27.

In the relentless pursuit of profit and productivity, gratitude is often dismissed as a soft skill, a pleasant but ultimately non-essential workplace courtesy. This view is fundamentally flawed and financially shortsighted.

The truth is that gratitude is the unbeatable multiplier in any organisation. Intentional acts of appreciation, such as a genuine thank-you, a specific recognition, or the shared celebration of a win, do not end with the recipient. They spark a profound Ripple Effect of Gratitude that cascades into heightened morale, accelerated innovation, and fierce customer loyalty. Leaders who treat gratitude as a strategic discipline, not just a feeling, multiply their growth by cultivating a high-trust, high-engagement culture.

The chain reaction of success

The power of gratitude is in its chemical and social domino effect. When appreciation is genuine and specific, it immediately changes the internal state of the recipient, moving them from a transactional mindset to a trust-based mindset.

• From transaction to trust: A genuine thank-you validates a person’s value, not just their labour. This increases organisational trust capital, which is the foundational currency of resilience. High-trust teams make decisions faster, share information more openly, and are far less risk-averse.
• From compliance to innovation: People who feel genuinely seen and appreciated are more likely to offer their best, often riskier, ideas. They move from merely complying with their job description to actively contributing their unique genius. Gratitude acts as the fertiliser for innovation.
• From retention to loyalty: The Ripple Effect extends externally. Employees who feel appreciated are vastly more likely to pass that positive energy to customers. They become passionate advocates, leading to higher customer satisfaction, retention, and word-of-mouth growth.

Also Read: Lifted by women, leading with gratitude

Multiplying growth through cultivated gratitude

Warm, heartwarming accounts of leaders who multiplied their growth reveal that their greatest investment was in the culture of appreciation, not technology or marketing.

• The specificity anchor: One CEO mandated a simple practice: any recognition must be anchored to a specific behaviour and its positive impact on the customer or the business. Instead of “Good job,” the standard became: “Your decision to spend the extra hour helping Client X last night directly saved the deal and proved our core value of commitment.” This intentional specificity made the gratitude feel earned and provided a clear behavioural blueprint for others to follow.
• The shared win ritual: Another company created a weekly five-minute “Win Share” ritual, where team members acknowledged each other’s efforts, not just their manager’s. This decentralised the source of appreciation, transforming it from a top-down mandate into a peer-to-peer norm, making the culture self-sustaining.

Also Read: The tiny habits that secretly built giant companies

Transformative practices to start ripples today

Cultivating a culture of gratitude requires simple, daily practices that anyone can integrate immediately:

• The 5:1 appreciation ratio: Aim to give five pieces of specific, positive recognition for every one piece of critical feedback you must deliver. This ensures that the overall emotional balance of the relationship remains positive and supportive, making the tough conversations easier when they happen.
• The gratitude pause: Start your one-on-one meetings not with the agenda, but with a question: “What is the one thing you are genuinely thankful for this week, at work or outside of it?” This simple pause grounds the conversation in positivity and validates the human dimension of the employee.
• The customer echo: When a customer sends a thank-you note or compliment, ensure the person who caused the compliment (the engineer, the salesperson, the admin) hears it directly, immediately, and publicly. This links their daily effort directly to the external success, amplifying the pride and connection to the mission.

The Ripple Effect of gratitude is the most reliable, long-term strategic investment a leader can make. It is the fuel that transforms a group of talented individuals into an inspired, high-performing team capable of achieving exponential business triumphs.

What is the one specific, intentional act of appreciation you can make today to start a powerful ripple within your organisation?

—

The post The unbeatable multiplier: How gratitude fuels exponential business growth appeared first on e27.

In 2026, angel investing looks deceptively similar on the surface: pitch decks, warm intros, 30-minute calls. Underneath, however, the filtration of founders has undergone a structural shift.

The best angels are no longer betting on whether a startup can be built. They are underwriting whether it can win.

This subtle shift has changed everything.

The founder still dominates, but in a new way

Founder quality remains the single largest variable in early-stage decisions, accounting for roughly 30 to 40 per cent of investment decisions. But what constitutes quality has evolved.

In the past, charisma and storytelling could open doors. In 2026, angels are running a deeper diagnostic: decision-making under uncertainty, speed of learning, and founder-market fit.

Silicon Valley’s top angel investors are leading the charge. Chris Sacca, once drawn to founders chasing massive markets with flashy pitches, now bets on teams with deep technical expertise and a knack for solving complex problems. Aileen Lee, the investor who popularised the unicorn concept, has shifted her focus from chasing high growth metrics to backing founders who demonstrate resilience, adaptability, and the ability to pivot under uncertainty.

In 2026, the spotlight has moved from superficial charm and immediate traction to grit, skill, and the long game – the traits that separate founders who endure from those who fade.

A 2025 meta-analysis of startup success predictors shows that team structure, adaptability, traction signals, and investor quality consistently outperform credentials like elite education or prior big-tech experience. Founder pedigree explains surprisingly little variance in funding outcomes. What matters instead is execution density: how much progress a founder can generate per unit of time.

From “can you build?” to “can you defend?”

The most important shift in 2026 is what angels are actually evaluating.

With AI dramatically reducing the cost of building products, technical risk has collapsed. As a result, angels have moved upstream in their thinking. They now prioritise proprietary data advantages, distribution moats, and early enterprise or customer validation.

AI startups alone accounted for roughly 25 per cent of angel deals in 2025, intensifying competition and compressing time-to-market. When everyone can ship fast, defensibility – not speed – becomes the filter.

This is why angels increasingly ask: why can’t this be copied in six months, and what unfair advantage compounds over time?

Also Read: Forget the cloud: Why AI is becoming the new heavy industry (and what investors must know)

Due diligence is no longer lightweight

The romantic notion of angels writing quick checks on instinct is fading.

By 2026, the rise of solo GPs and micro-funds – who now lead up to 60 per cent of sub-US$5 million funds – has institutionalised early-stage investing. These investors operate with LP capital and carry incentives, which means customer reference checks are standard, technical architecture is reviewed, and financial models are stress-tested.

In other words, pre-seed now looks like seed did five years ago.

This has created a mismatch: many founders still show up expecting a conversational pitch, while angels are running structured diligence pipelines.

The experience premium is back

Another quiet but important shift: experience is being revalued.

Data shows that founders of billion-dollar startups now average 13.8 years of experience, up sharply from a decade ago. This reflects the rise of deep-tech, AI, and enterprise startups, where domain expertise compounds advantage. But this is not about age – it is about earned insight.

The best angels are asking: has this founder lived the problem, and do they have insider context that others do not? Tourist founders are increasingly filtered out early.

A real example: Extreme selectivity at scale

Consider Antler, one of the most active early-stage investors globally. In 2025, it reviewed thousands of founders and invested in just 2.7 out of every 1,000 applicants, a 0.27 per cent acceptance rate, more selective than most Ivy League universities.

What is notable is not just the selectivity, but what they screen for: founder velocity during short residency programmes, ability to form strong co-founder relationships, and rapid iteration based on feedback. Antler’s model reflects a broader truth: angels are increasingly filtering on observed behaviour, not projected potential.

The new signals angels trust

In this environment, traditional signals – polished decks, big visions – carry less weight. Instead, angels look for behavioural evidence, micro-traction, founder-market fit, and learning velocity.

Also Read: Why investors are betting big on Asia’s social impact startups

• Behavioural evidence means how a founder responds to pushback in real time and whether they update their thinking
• Micro-traction means that even at pre-seed, there must be some signal: waitlists, pilot users, or early revenue experiments
• Founder-market fit means insider knowledge is now a stronger predictor than general intelligence or ambition
• Learning velocity means the best founders compress feedback loops – angels test this aggressively during conversations

Even small signals, like how a founder tracks time or manages priorities, are used as proxies for discipline and execution rigour.

The SAFE trap and financial literacy filter

Another emerging filter is financial sophistication.

With 90 per cent of pre-seed rounds now using post-money SAFEs, many founders are unknowingly over-diluting themselves. Surveys show that 61 per cent of first-time founders do not understand their dilution until later rounds. Experienced angels now treat this as a red flag. A founder who cannot model their cap table is seen as someone who may struggle with future fundraising strategy.

The bottom line

The best angels in 2026 are not just picking ideas – they are running compressed, high-signal experiments on founders themselves. They are asking: Can this person learn faster than the market changes? Can they build something defensible in a world where building is cheap? Can they navigate dilution, hiring, and distribution before it is obvious?

In a market where capital still exists but patience does not, the filtration bar has risen quietly but dramatically.

For founders, the implication is stark. You are no longer pitching a vision. You are being tested as a system.

—

The post How the best angel investors are filtering founders in 2026 appeared first on e27.