In a world where former military officers often trade uniforms for predictable government consultancies, Michael J. Padilla chose a different path. After more than 31 years in the US Army, rising to the rank of colonel, he founded Al Thuraya Holdings, a global group that today spans 18 companies across risk management, security, technology, consulting, energy, and business services.

What distinguishes Padilla isn’t merely the scale of what he built, but the hard-earned experience behind it: decades of leading through uncertainty, operating in high-risk environments, and helping governments and multinational corporations navigate a world that rarely behaves the way strategy documents predict.

The origins and logic of Al Thuraya

Padilla’s decision to leave the military wasn’t driven by a single dramatic moment but by a slow accumulation of observations. Over three decades, he watched standards shift, organisations grow more political, and coalition partners pursue their own competing interests.

Also Read: The 3Cs+1 framework: Navigating geopolitical fragmentation as a founder

He understood discipline, planning, and decision-making under pressure. But he also saw companies making critical decisions about security and market entry without understanding what those choices looked like on the ground. Rather than take the conventional route into another government post or a large defence contractor, he wanted to build something independent, rooted in practical experience and commercial discipline.

That logic explains why Al Thuraya sprawls across security, energy, technology, and consulting without looking like diversification for its own sake. The real connective tissue, Padilla explains, is risk. In the markets where his clients operate, a security issue quickly becomes an operational problem, which becomes a financial one, and a technology weakness can just as easily become a security vulnerability.

Humans, he notes, are often the risk themselves, through poor judgement, inaction, or simply misreading an environment. Most of the group’s businesses emerged organically, as one client problem exposed another next door.

Even something as simple as counting the group’s holdings reveals this philosophy. Public materials have cited both 17 and 18 companies, a discrepancy Padilla attributes to a document that wasn’t updated after a new entity was created. But he pushes back against vanity metrics altogether, arguing that wholly owned operating companies, joint ventures, and purpose-built entities don’t all carry equal size or strategic weight. He’d rather be precise about what’s actually functioning than inflate a number for appearances.

Also Read: The founder-to-minister pivot isn’t the problem, ASEAN’s missing governance infrastructure is

Looking ahead, Padilla is explicit that the next chapter isn’t about acquiring more companies. The priority is deepening capability where it already exists, strengthening management, and applying technology more intelligently.

Expansion will be selective, and only where genuine client need justifies it, as seen in his cautious approach to Southeast Asia, where work has followed existing clients rather than a deliberate strategic push. He’s equally willing to sell or restructure businesses if another owner could scale them faster, rejecting the founder’s instinct to cling to every asset out of sentiment.

Leadership forged between two worlds

One of the clearest illustrations of Padilla’s evolution as a leader came early in Al Thuraya’s history, when an employee was kidnapped. His instinct was purely operational: mobilise, identify local influencers, and act decisively. The client, however, saw the crisis through a different lens entirely, one bound by insurance protocols, legal counsel, and HR procedures.

Neither instinct was wrong; they were simply different frameworks for the same emergency. Padilla borrowed a principle from his military past — that the enemy always gets a vote — and applied a civilian corollary: the client gets a vote too.

That recalibration extended to how he manages information. One Special Operations habit he had to consciously abandon was compartmentalising knowledge on a need-to-know basis. In the military, restricting information protects missions; in business, it strangles ownership. Employees who don’t understand why a decision was made can’t be expected to take real responsibility for executing it.

His early international experience taught a parallel lesson: Western assumptions about authority and process don’t automatically translate abroad. Seniority on an org chart doesn’t always equal influence, and in many markets, relationships must be established before transactions can follow.

For Padilla, authentic leadership began only after he left the structured military hierarchy behind. Without rank to command compliance, he found himself personally handling sales, accounting, and project management in Al Thuraya’s early days, a grounding experience that taught him people follow credibility, not titles. Leadership, he says, is the relationship between judgement and responsibility: making a call, explaining it, owning the outcome, and reversing course when proven wrong.

That same unsentimental logic shapes his stance on governance. Padilla has not separated the chairman and CEO roles, a structure he attributes to Al Thuraya still being founder-led, but he’s open to changing it if scale or institutional investment ever demands it. “I did not create the group to protect a title,” he says.

Resilience, risk, and moral boundaries

Padilla is sceptical of companies that call themselves resilient, only to evacuate staff or freeze operations at the first sign of trouble. For him, resilience isn’t a personality trait; it’s an engineered system, built by confronting uncomfortable questions long before a crisis arrives.

What happens if a major client disappears? If banking access or communications suddenly fail? The answers, he argues, aren’t found in motivational speeches but in cash discipline, cross-trained staff, and contingency planning done while decision-makers still have time to think clearly.

Also Read: The cloud is just someone else’s computer. Sometimes that computer gets hit by a drone

The same discipline applies to Al Thuraya’s own exposure. Operating in difficult environments by design means absorbing political, economic, and security risk, but Padilla draws a firm line between advising a client and making their decisions for them. The group’s responsibility is to deliver accurate, honest analysis; the client decides how much risk to accept.

Operating across governments with varying human rights records forces constant ethical calibration. Padilla is unambiguous: Al Thuraya will not knowingly provide services aimed at civilians, unlawful repression, or objectives it cannot defend. Legality, he insists, isn’t the only test. Something can be perfectly legal and still not be work he wants the company’s name attached to. His personal benchmark is simple: could he honestly explain the engagement to his employees and to himself? If not, the answer is no.

Reflecting on where his judgement has failed him, Padilla points not to fundamental misreads of dangerous environments, but to the gap between what his teams observe on the ground and how clients choose to interpret that intelligence. He’s also candid about his own missteps, chiefly letting the attractiveness of an opportunity outpace its commercial fundamentals. Real failure, in his view, isn’t closing a company when conditions shift; it’s continuing to fund one out of stubbornness rather than strategy.

Technology with ground truth attached

Padilla’s approach to artificial intelligence mirrors his broader philosophy: useful when paired with human judgement, dangerous when substituted for it. Al Thuraya deploys AI for open-source intelligence, anomaly detection, due diligence, and forecasting, but always alongside people actually embedded in the markets being analysed (Padilla himself lives in North Africa).

He remains openly sceptical of predictive threat-scoring claims, viewing much of that language as marketing ahead of operational reality. His test for any technology is blunt: does it improve a decision, an outcome, cost, or safety? If not, it’s just another slide in a presentation.

Also Read: “The AI did it” is not a defence; it is a confession

That caution extends to autonomous decision-making. Padilla is comfortable with AI flagging anomalies but uneasy about allowing unreviewed systems to make calls affecting someone’s liberty, safety, or reputation. Speed, he argues, is no justification for removing accountability; a bad process made faster is still a bad process. The more powerful AI becomes, he insists, the more important human responsibility becomes.

The measure of what comes next

Asked what his younger, uniformed self would make of what he’s built, Padilla doesn’t hesitate: surprise at the sheer breadth of sectors and countries involved, and unease at how much still depends on one individual. The question that once drove him “how much can we build?” has been replaced by a more demanding one: is what we’ve built strong enough to continue without me? Building the group, he reflects, was one challenge. Making sure it matures, adapts, and continues responsibly is the next one.

The post Michael Padilla: The costliest failure is refusing to stop when strategy no longer holds appeared first on e27.

In healthcare, booking an appointment is rarely as simple as finding an empty slot on a calendar. A patient may need a specific doctor, a particular procedure, a referral, a follow-up window, or a clinic that accepts certain rules around timing and availability. Much of this still sits in phone calls, WhatsApp threads and front-desk work.

Singapore-based Zeya Health is betting that this messy layer of healthcare access is where AI can create real value. The Antler-backed startup has acquired ConnectLah, a clinic automation company that helps healthcare providers manage patient communication and booking workflows through WhatsApp.

Also Read: Graas raises US$17M, acquires Trustana to build smarter retail AI agents

The deal brings ConnectLah’s product, technology and customer relationships into Zeya’s patient access platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Zeya said the acquisition comes after a year in which it recorded 15-fold revenue growth. The company currently works with healthcare providers in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam, as well as a hospital partner in Cambodia. It aims to reach 1,000 healthcare providers by mid-2027.

From chat automation to AI booking infrastructure

Zeya already helps clinics and hospitals manage patient enquiries, bookings, reminders and follow-ups across messaging and voice channels. With ConnectLah folded into the company, Zeya wants to deepen its ability to automate the steps between a patient asking for an appointment and a provider confirming it.

The company describes this as “agentic booking infrastructure”. In plain terms, that means building systems that allow AI agents to do more than answer questions. They must be able to understand a patient’s request, check clinic rules, match appointment types with the right practitioner, interact with existing healthcare software, and complete a booking without breaking the provider’s workflow.

“Booking an appointment should be as simple as asking for one,” said Agastya Samat, founder and CEO of Zeya Health. “The complexity sits behind the scenes: the schedules, systems and rules that determine what can actually be booked.”

That complexity is particularly visible in Southeast Asia, where healthcare systems are highly fragmented. Large private hospital groups, specialist centres, neighbourhood clinics and independent practitioners often use different software systems, communication habits and administrative processes. Many still rely heavily on WhatsApp, calls and manual coordination, especially in markets where consumer messaging apps have become the default front door for services.

Also Read: The future of healthcare AI isn’t more data. It’s better context

This makes healthcare access a difficult problem for generic AI tools. A chatbot can collect a patient’s name and preferred time, but it cannot safely confirm an appointment unless it understands the provider’s rules and can connect to the relevant system of record. Zeya’s argument is that the real opportunity lies not in another patient-facing bot, but in the infrastructure layer that lets AI work reliably with healthcare operations.

Why ConnectLah matters

ConnectLah’s focus on WhatsApp gives Zeya a practical entry point into how many clinics already communicate with patients. The company helps automate patient communication, appointment booking, reminders and front-desk workflows inside familiar messaging channels.

For Zeya, the acquisition is less about adding a standalone product and more about absorbing workflows that have already been tested in clinics. ConnectLah customers are expected to gain access to a broader set of tools connected to existing clinic systems, while Zeya expands its provider footprint.

“ConnectLah brought AI into the channels clinics and patients already use, proving the approach in real clinics and live patient workflows,” said Jules Pereira-Gomes, founder of ConnectLah, who will join Zeya as a strategic advisor.

The transition will focus on the workflows and integrations relevant to each provider, according to the company. In practice, that means Zeya will need to account for variations in how clinics handle different appointment types, practitioner availability, reminders and follow-ups.

If executed well, the combined platform could reduce the back-and-forth that often defines healthcare booking. A patient asks a question, a staff member checks availability, clarifies details, proposes a time, waits for confirmation, then sends reminders manually. For providers facing staff shortages or rising patient volumes, shaving down this coordination burden can be more than a convenience.

A regional race for the healthcare front door

Zeya is entering a crowded but still unsettled market. Across Asia Pacific, startups and incumbents are trying to own different parts of the healthcare access stack.

At the consumer-facing end, companies such as Doctor Anywhere in Singapore, Halodoc in Indonesia, Practo in India and HealthEngine in Australia have built large patient networks around online consultations, appointment discovery or health services marketplaces. Globally, firms such as Doctolib in Europe and Zocdoc in the US have shown how appointment booking can become a major platform category.

Also Read: Vietnam’s healthtech boom has a talent problem nobody is talking about

Zeya’s positioning is different. Rather than building primarily as a consumer marketplace, it is targeting the provider infrastructure layer: the workflows behind bookings, reminders and patient communication. That could make it complementary to some patient-facing platforms, but it also places the company in competition with clinic management systems, patient engagement tools and AI automation vendors trying to modernise healthcare administration.

The distinction matters in Southeast Asia. Many healthcare providers are cautious about surrendering patient relationships to third-party marketplaces. A tool that helps clinics keep control of their booking rules and communication channels may face less resistance than one that tries to redirect patients into a new app.

The AI assistant angle

Zeya’s longer-term ambition is to make healthcare booking workflows accessible to authorised personal AI assistants. The idea is that a patient could ask their preferred AI assistant to find and book an appointment, while the provider’s systems still enforce the rules around what can actually be scheduled.

This is still an emerging behaviour. Most patients today are not using personal AI agents to book medical appointments. But the direction is clear: as AI assistants become more capable, they will need reliable rails into real-world services. Healthcare is one of the hardest categories because accuracy, privacy, consent and operational fit all matter.

That is why Zeya’s bet is both timely and difficult. The company is not just trying to automate clinic chat. It is trying to become part of the connective tissue between patients, providers and the AI agents that may increasingly sit between them.

Also Read: The app worked, the product didn’t: Can we install judgement into AI agents?

For now, the acquisition of ConnectLah gives Zeya more product depth, more customer relationships and a faster route into clinics already using messaging-led workflows. The bigger test will be whether it can scale across countries where healthcare software adoption, regulation and clinic behaviour vary widely.

In a region where the first point of care is often still a phone call or a WhatsApp message, the company’s opportunity is clear: make booking feel simple for patients without pretending the backend is simple for providers.

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The question on every trader’s mind as October begins is whether Bitcoin will deliver its legendary Uptober performance or succumb to the economic pressures that have defined much of this year. The answer, based on the data, is neither a triumphant rally nor a catastrophic collapse. It is something more nuanced and arguably more challenging: a month of range-bound volatility that rewards discipline over conviction.

Bitcoin trades at approximately US$83,070, wedged tightly between crucial technical structures and economic pressure points. This price level is not random. It reflects a market that absorbed significant leverage flush late last month and now depends heavily on spot order books for direction. The immediate trend hangs in the balance, and the battle between seasonality and economic headwinds has left crypto markets heavily divided as Q4 begins.

The bull case rests on a foundation of historical precedent and technical momentum. Between 2013 and 2025, Bitcoin averaged around 19 per cent gains in October and closed the month in the green 10 out of 13 times. This track record earned Uptober its reputation as a psychologically powerful sentiment driver. The momentum setup supports this narrative. BTC has logged consecutive monthly gains heading into Q4. If the market reclaims and firmly holds above US$84,000 to US$84,433, a technical path opens toward major resistance at US$87,360 and psychological levels near US$90,000.

The altcoin rotation signal adds another layer to the bull thesis. The OTHERS/BTC chart is testing resistance, and an expected rollover in Bitcoin dominance points to early liquidity rotation into majors like Ethereum, which saw US$624.1M in weekly ETF inflows. This suggests capital is beginning to explore beyond Bitcoin, a classic precursor to broader market strength.

Also Read: The sovereign shift: Why nation states are trading gold for Bitcoin

The bear case is equally compelling and grounded in present realities rather than historical patterns. October is never a guaranteed win. Last year, geopolitical and tariff threats drove a massive US$19 billion liquidation event that wiped out the Uptober narrative, leaving the month down roughly 4 per cent. That episode reminds traders that exogenous shocks can override seasonality.

The present economic picture offers several such shocks in waiting. Brent crude holds above US$100 per barrel due to ongoing conflict around the Strait of Hormuz. Energy-driven inflation is a lingering risk that feeds directly into consumer prices. US CPI sits at 3.4 per cent YoY, keeping fixed-income yields highly competitive. The 10-year Treasury yield hovers above 5 per cent, creating an explicit hurdle for risk assets. Ahead of the pivotal October 27 to 28 FOMC meeting, the market is bracing for another potential interest rate hike. These are not abstract concerns. They are concrete headwinds that constrain the upside for Bitcoin and other risk assets.

The synthesis of these opposing forces leads to a clear conclusion. Unless institutional ETF inflows dramatically surge past US$1 billion daily, the combined pressure of expensive oil, high yields, and monetary tightening will likely confine Bitcoin to a defined trading channel. A straightforward replication of the historical 19 per cent October gain is highly challenging in this environment. Instead, expect a highly volatile start to the month with major support anchoring near US$80,811 and deeper liquidity pools resting around US$74,000 to US$75,585 if economic conditions deteriorate further.

This outlook has direct implications for how participants should operate. The split between short-term leverage trading and spot positioning for Q4 requires entirely different operational frameworks given the current economic landscape.

For leverage traders, the arena is less susceptible to cascading 10 per cent flash crashes because futures open interest has levelled out around US$53 billion. It remains highly prone to stop hunting. Major options max-pain levels sit below the current price. If Bitcoin attempts to rally but repeatedly fails to break the US$85,000 resistance barrier, scaling into short positions targeting an inefficiency sweep back toward US$80,875 becomes a viable strategy. Do not chase longs inside the current cluster. Wait for a definitive daily close above US$85,000. Reclaiming this level triggers a short-squeeze vector toward US$87,397, with a final target near the US$90,000 psychological barrier.

Also Read: Can Bitcoin hold US$82,000? Inside the security fear and macro storm

For those positioning for the entirety of Q4, the entry strategy should anticipate economic friction in late October. With the 10-year Treasury yielding 5.17 per cent and oil above US$100, the market will likely experience a mid-month liquidity drain. Treat any geopolitical or economically driven pullbacks into the US$74,000 to US$75,585 demand zone as a high-probability spot-buy tier.

On the altcoin front, Bitcoin dominance remains elevated at 58.67 per cent. Capital is not yet flowing freely into high-beta assets. Keep spot allocations concentrated heavily in large-cap majors like Ethereum or Solana until Bitcoin dominance drops cleanly below 58 per cent, which will act as the green light for broader altcoin exposure.

My perspective is that the Uptober narrative, while emotionally satisfying, distracts from the structural reality. The market is not in a phase where historical averages dictate outcomes. It is in a phase where economic conditions set the boundaries, and technical levels define the trading range.

The most successful participants this month will be those who respect the range, manage risk around the FOMC meeting, and position for Q4 through patience rather than fear of missing out. The battle between Uptober and Downtober will not produce a winner in the traditional sense. It will produce a grinding, volatile month that rewards those who understand the difference between a seasonal pattern and a structural trend.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of e27.

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Singapore’s position as one of Asia’s most advanced digital economies is built on a simple promise: global companies can move data, capital and operations through the city-state with confidence. A new study suggests that promise is becoming harder to keep.

Research released by data storage and management company Everpure found that 89 per cent of Singapore-based enterprise leaders believe a data sovereignty failure could cost them their jobs. The fear is not only personal. The same proportion said such a failure could damage their organisation financially and reputationally.

Also Read: The new border: Why server farms are the battleground of AI sovereignty

Yet the more striking finding is the gap between concern and action. According to Everpure’s Global Data Sovereignty Report 2026, 81 per cent of Singaporean enterprises surveyed do not have a formal data sovereignty strategy in place, the highest share among the eight markets covered in the study.

That matters because data sovereignty is no longer just a legal question about where information is stored. It has become a business continuity, geopolitical and vendor risk issue.

At its simplest, data sovereignty refers to the idea that data is subject to the laws and controls of the country or jurisdiction in which it is stored, processed or accessed. In practice, the challenge is more complicated: companies must know who can access their data, which foreign laws may apply, and whether a cloud or software provider could be forced to hand over information or suspend services during a political dispute.

For Singapore, a regional headquarters for banks, tech companies, logistics players and digital platforms, the issue cuts especially close. The country’s economy depends on trusted cross-border flows of information. At the same time, its companies often rely on global cloud, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cybersecurity vendors whose infrastructure may span several jurisdictions.

Awareness is high, preparedness is not

Everpure commissioned research firm Vanson Bourne to survey 2,100 C-suite and IT leaders from large enterprises across the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India in June 2026. Singapore accounted for 100 respondents.

The study found that 93 per cent of Singapore organisations recognise data sovereignty as a business concern, compared with 90 per cent globally. Some are already changing procurement behaviour. About 41 per cent of Singapore respondents said they are limiting their use of SaaS providers that rely on non-domestic infrastructure, while 86 per cent said they would compromise on advanced features to work with a local or sovereign provider.

Also Read: Should cybersecurity be nationalised?

But recognition has not translated into operational readiness. In Singapore, 63 per cent of enterprises said they lack full visibility into who can access, control and manage their data. More worrying, 68 per cent said they have no mitigation plans for geopolitical data exfiltration or service disruption.

This is the heart of the “sovereignty gap” highlighted in the report: executives know the risk is material, but many organisations have not built the governance, technical controls or response plans needed to manage it.

Nathan Hall, Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific and Japan at Everpure, said the risk for Singapore lies in the disconnect between digital maturity and organisational preparedness.

“Singapore is one of the most digitally mature markets in the world, yet 81 per cent of enterprises here are operating without a formal data sovereignty strategy. That gap between awareness and action is the real risk,” he said. “Sovereignty is not simply about where data sits — it is about knowing who can access it, which jurisdictions apply, and whether critical services could be disrupted.”

The point is especially relevant in Southeast Asia, where regulation is still uneven across markets. Singapore has a mature data protection regime under the Personal Data Protection Act, while neighbouring economies are developing or refining their own privacy, cybersecurity and localisation rules. For regional companies, this creates a patchwork problem: data may be generated in Indonesia, processed in Singapore, analysed through a US-headquartered SaaS platform, and stored on infrastructure distributed across several markets.

The AI factor

The sovereignty question is becoming more urgent because of artificial intelligence. As companies feed more enterprise data into AI systems, the boundaries around storage, access and reuse become harder to track. Sensitive operational data may move into model-training environments, analytics platforms or third-party applications without executives fully understanding where it goes or how it is governed.

Also Read: AI governance is moving from promises to proof

This is not just a theoretical risk. Banks, insurers, healthcare groups and government-linked enterprises in Southeast Asia are under growing pressure to adopt AI while maintaining strict controls over customer data. For startups and scaleups, the challenge is different but no less serious. Many depend on global cloud platforms and AI tools from day one, often without the resources to conduct deep vendor risk reviews.

Everpure’s survey suggests that companies are still treating sovereignty as an extension of cybersecurity or compliance. That may be too narrow. Cybersecurity focuses on preventing unauthorised access or attacks. Compliance focuses on meeting legal obligations. Sovereignty adds another layer: whether an organisation retains effective control over its data when foreign laws, vendor dependencies or geopolitical shocks come into play.

Rahiel Nasir, Research Director and Lead Analyst for Worldwide Digital Sovereignty at IDC, described the shift as a board-level issue. “The challenge for executives is not just about knowing where their data are hosted,” he said. “It is about being in total control of all data access and transfers, including all metadata, guaranteed protection against extra-territorial data requests, and managing IT and vendor risks in the light of geopolitical uncertainties.”

From compliance checklist to operating model

Everpure argues that companies should move towards “sovereignty by design”, where governance and controls are applied based on the risk of each data set, application and workload. In practical terms, that means mapping critical data, classifying it properly, understanding vendor access, and deciding which workloads require stricter controls.

The distinction matters. Not every piece of enterprise data needs the same level of protection. A marketing dashboard, payroll file and national infrastructure system carry different risks. A blanket localisation strategy can be expensive and restrictive; a purely global cloud approach can leave companies exposed. The harder but more useful path is to decide which data must remain under tighter corporate control and which can safely sit within global platforms.

Also Read: Southeast Asia’s AI buildout is racing toward a power wall

For Singapore, the findings should be read less as an indictment and more as an early warning. The country has spent years building itself into a trusted digital hub for Asia. Maintaining that position will require not only strong national regulation, but also stronger internal discipline among enterprises using cloud, SaaS and AI systems.

The boardroom fear captured in Everpure’s report may sound dramatic. But in a region where data flows underpin finance, trade, healthcare and digital services, sovereignty failures are no longer abstract policy debates. They are operational risks, and increasingly, leadership risks.

The post Why Singapore firms fear data sovereignty failures but remain underprepared appeared first on e27.

Indonesia’s agritech sector looks different in 2026 than it did when TaniHub raised its Series B in 2021. The cohort of platforms that emerged in the late 2010s — TaniHub, Crowde, iGrow, Sayurbox, and others — aimed to do for smallholder agriculture what fintech had done for SME credit: build technology infrastructure for a segment the formal banking system could not serve at scale.

Some platforms have grown. Several have restructured significantly. A few have wound down. The credit arm of the sector, in particular, has been through a harder cycle than founders or investors anticipated.

After fifteen years inside Indonesian risk functions, I have watched this cycle with direct visibility into the structural risk questions it raised. The story underneath the platform-level outcomes is more useful than the company-by-company narrative.

What the first agritech generation built

The Indonesian agritech sector that emerged after 2016 built two adjacent infrastructures. On the commerce side, platforms built marketplaces connecting smallholder farmers directly to institutional and retail buyers — restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, modern trade. On the credit side, P2P lending platforms targeted agricultural working capital specifically — seeds, fertiliser, equipment, harvest financing.

TaniHub, founded by Pamitra Wineka, Ivan Arie Sustiawan, William Setiawan, and Michael Jovan in 2016, was one of the most prominent platforms to combine both sides through its TaniFund credit arm. Its Series B in 2021 was one of the largest agritech rounds Indonesia had seen.

Also Read: Why Southeast Asian agritech must build for acquisitions, not IPOs

What turned out to be harder than expected

Three things proved structurally more difficult than early models priced in.

• Harvest cycle credit timing. Agricultural loans do not behave like consumer or SME credit. They are paid back from a single harvest event that can be three, six, or twelve months out, and that may or may not arrive at the expected volume or price. A platform’s cash flow timing assumes regular monthly repayments. A farmer’s cash flow timing does not.
• Default correlation. Agri-credit defaults are not independent in the way SME or consumer defaults mostly are. A drought, a flood, a pest event, a commodity price collapse — any of these correlate defaults across hundreds of borrowers in the same region simultaneously. Models that treat each loan as independently distributed misprice this correlation, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
• Operational cost per loan. The cost of underwriting, monitoring, and collecting a small agricultural loan — often spread across remote geographies, often involving in-person verification — is high relative to the loan ticket. Platforms that priced loans against urban operational assumptions ended up subsidising rural credit from other revenue lines.

Lessons learned

Six principles emerge from the Indonesian agritech credit cycle.

• Agri-credit is not consumer credit with mud. The underlying risk physics — harvest cycles, weather correlation, commodity volatility — is structurally different. Models built for one will misprice the other.
• Correlation is the silent killer. The single biggest pricing error in early agritech credit was underestimating how correlated defaults can become inside a single weather or price event. Diversification across crops, geographies, and harvest cycles is solvency infrastructure, not a marketing point.
• Operational cost is destiny. Platforms that did not build for the cost of remote, small-ticket lending from day one ended up cross-subsidising it forever — or stopped lending. There is no version of agritech credit at scale without operational cost discipline designed for the segment.
• Funding tenor must match harvest tenor. Short-term retail or institutional funding does not pair well with agricultural cash flows. The platforms that survived better had funding partners willing to hold positions across full agricultural cycles, not calendar quarters.
• The buyer side is more durable than the credit side. The commerce infrastructure built by Indonesian agritech — connecting farmers to buyers, aggregating produce, building cold chain — has aged better than the credit infrastructure built alongside it. Future capital allocation should reflect that.
• The credit gap is durable, the model needs to mature. Indonesian smallholder agriculture will still need credit access whatever the platform-level outcomes of the first generation. The next models will need to absorb the lessons the first generation paid for, or they will pay for them again.

Also Read: Agritech investors are learning that infrastructure matters

The macro stakes

TaniHub and the agritech cohort built something Indonesia had not had before: a market-facing technology layer on top of smallholder agriculture. Not all of it survived. The parts that did, and the lessons from the parts that did not, are now the foundation for whatever comes next.

Indonesian smallholder agriculture employs tens of millions of people and produces a significant share of the country’s food supply. The credit gap at the farm gate is one of the most important development finance questions in Southeast Asia. The first generation showed that the gap could be addressed by technology platforms — and that it is harder than the original models predicted. The next generation has the data to do better. The opportunity is still there.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. You can also share your perspective by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of e27.

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Bitcoin shifts from a speculative retail asset to an institutional cornerstone of global finance. Recent developments in sovereign wealth fund allocations, the creation of institutional financial products, and massive ETF inflows demonstrate a profound structural shift. The data reveals a market maturing rapidly, even as it grapples with inherent tensions between traditional financial co-option and cryptographic sovereignty.

Recognising the deep correlation between traditional financial markets and cryptocurrency markets allows us to see these institutional moves not as isolated events, but as a synchronised realignment of global capital. I consistently challenge mainstream narratives that dismiss this asset class, relying instead on independent analysis of on-chain data, derivatives volume, and macroeconomic indicators to form a clear picture of the future trajectory.

The inaugural Institutional Crypto Adoption Report by Bitwise Asset Management provides compelling evidence of this macroeconomic shift. At least one major sovereign wealth fund recently liquidated portions of its gold and foreign exchange reserves specifically to purchase Bitcoin. This action treats the asset as a direct substitute for traditional reserve holdings, validating the digital gold thesis at the highest levels of state finance.

Gold has served as the premier safe haven for centuries, making this direct substitution a monumental validation of cryptographic money as a legitimate store of value alongside traditional fiat reserves. The report also highlights remarkable conviction among large-scale holders. None of the 15 large institutions surveyed liquidated their positions during the severe 50 per cent price drawdown that occurred between late 2025 and mid 2026. This behaviour indicates the emergence of a structural, non-speculative source of demand.

Such conservative state-level validation suggests that the asset will experience reduced volatility over the long term, anchoring its value proposition firmly within global macroeconomic strategy rather than fleeting retail sentiment cycles. Traditional financial frameworks often attempt to apply outdated regulatory tests to decentralised systems, a practice I have long argued remains fundamentally unsuitable for cryptographic networks that operate outside conventional corporate hierarchies.

Also Read: Can Bitcoin hold US$82,000? Inside the security fear and macro storm

Beyond simple accumulation, institutions now actively build sophisticated capital markets around this digital asset. Research from TD Cowen following the Bitcoin Treasuries Conference outlines a clear evolution in corporate strategy. Firms now develop bitcoin-backed bonds, preferred shares, and advanced custody solutions.

Companies like Strategy continue to actively acquire the asset for their corporate treasuries, signaling a permanent allocation shift that moves Bitcoin from a speculative holding to a foundational balance-sheet asset. This financial engineering expands the network’s utility far beyond that of a simple spot asset. It creates new yield and financing mechanisms that appeal to a much broader spectrum of institutional portfolios. We must critically assess this integration.

Traditional finance often attempts to fit decentralised technology into familiar, centralised boxes to extract rent and exert control. The challenge lies in harnessing this institutional capital without sacrificing the decentralised architecture that gives the network its unique value and censorship resistance. True decentralisation requires us to remain vigilant against the centralising forces of traditional finance seeking to dominate the infrastructure and impose legacy compliance burdens that contradict the core ethos of peer-to-peer electronic cash.

Market liquidity and ETF flows currently serve as the most accurate indicators of investor sentiment, and recent data presents a striking picture of renewed institutional demand. United States spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded approximately US$2.4 billion in net inflows during the week ending around September 25. This represents the largest weekly influx since roughly US$2.7 billion in early October 2025, according to SoSoValue data. This single week successfully reversed a year-to-date deficit of approximately US$5.8 billion recorded in mid-July, pushing the 2026 net inflows to roughly US$0.9 billion.

Cumulative inflows since launch now hover near US$57.5 billion. BlackRock IBIT, Fidelity FBTC, and ARK 21Shares ARKB products dominated this activity, collectively accounting for over 90 per cent of weekly flows in some specific tallies. Consequently, spot funds now hold between US$108 billion and US$111 billion in assets. This constitutes roughly 6 per cent to 6.5 per cent of total market value.

This concentrated buying power successfully supported prices in the low to mid 80,000s, even as total cryptocurrency market capitalisation experienced slight dips near US$2.8 trillion and dominance held steady at approximately 58.7 per cent. Regulated funds have become a major structural buyer, cushioning drawdowns effectively and providing a reliable bid during periods of macroeconomic uncertainty, thereby decoupling the asset from pure retail sentiment cycles.

Also Read: Bitcoin dominance at 58.5% and the 55% line that still blocks altseason

Despite these strong aggregate numbers, the internal composition of this demand warrants careful scrutiny. The weekly inflow data reveals a heavily front-loaded pattern. Investors injected roughly US$999 million on Monday, but daily inflows shrank to approximately US$135 million by Friday. This represents an 80-90 per cent drop in daily momentum. Sustained positive flows will dictate the next market leg higher, not isolated blockbuster weeks.

Macroeconomic liquidity conditions heavily influence this dynamic. The recent surge coincided with United States Treasury plans to increase long-dated bond buybacks, which typically inject liquidity, while high yields and persistent geopolitical risks continue to pressure broader risk assets. Simultaneously, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP ETFs attracted hundreds of millions of dollars, indicating a gradual rotation of capital within the regulated crypto universe as investors diversify their exposure across multiple digital asset classes. Operational risks also remain ever-present.

The recent United States Attorney civil forfeiture case regarding a 2023 scam highlights this reality. Scammers used fraudulent text messages impersonating Coinbase to steal 33.7 BTC, valued at roughly US$900,000 at the time, from a family trust. The Federal Bureau of Investigation successfully traced these funds to a Binance account and converted the seized assets to Tether for recovery. While this demonstrates regulatory capability and the authorities’ ability to trace illicit flows, it also underscores the persistent social engineering vulnerabilities that plague the ecosystem and require ongoing user education.

The convergence of sovereign adoption, institutional financial engineering, and massive ETF inflows confirms that the asset has firmly entered a new phase of market maturity. Regulated institutional demand now forms a core component of the demand stack, effectively cushioning drawdowns and altering historical price cycles.

Viewing these speculative financial activities through a realistic lens reminds us that they remain a form of gambling with better odds than traditional markets. The sharp day-by-day slowdown during this record-inflow week proves that sustained capital commitment, rather than transient headline numbers, will determine the longevity of this bull phase.

As we move forward, market participants must closely monitor daily fund flows, total assets under management, and the ongoing tension between institutional co-option and decentralised integrity. The future of this asset class depends on maintaining its foundational cryptographic principles while successfully navigating the complex realities of global financial integration.

We must champion independent analysis and reject mainstream narratives that seek to dilute the revolutionary potential of decentralised money, ensuring that the original vision of financial sovereignty remains intact and accessible to all.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. You can also share your perspective by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of e27.

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Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) CEO Anuar Fariz Fadzil will leave the national digital-economy agency when his current contract ends on 2 October 2026, closing a two-year tenure marked by a sharper focus on artificial intelligence, high-value investment and measurable economic outcomes.

MDEC said in a statement that Anuar had informed its board he would not seek a contract renewal and intends to pursue opportunities outside the organisation.

The announcement gives the agency a long runway to manage leadership transition at a time when Malaysia is trying to position itself as one of Southeast Asia’s more credible hubs for AI, digital services, data infrastructure and technology talent.

Also Read: Malaysia’s digital economy’s second wave looks nothing like the first

The departure is significant because MDEC sits at the centre of Malaysia’s digital-economy agenda. Its work touches foreign investment, local tech company growth, digital exports, talent development and the Malaysia Digital status programme, which supports companies operating in the country’s digital economy. In a region where governments are competing to attract cloud providers, semiconductor investments, AI labs and regional headquarters, continuity at such agencies matters.

A transition at a sensitive moment

MDEC chairman Ganesh Kumar Bangah thanked Anuar for his service, saying he had “led MDEC with both head and heart”. Ganesh said Anuar brought “judgement, candour” and commitment to the agency, while pushing it to measure its work by tangible outcomes.

That emphasis on outcomes became a central part of Anuar’s tenure. From 2025 to August 2026, MDEC secured close to US$44 billion in digital investments from more than 1,000 Malaysia Digital status companies, according to the agency. These investments are expected to generate more than 42,000 high-value jobs for Malaysians.

Those figures are large, but the more important question for Malaysia is how much of the investment converts into durable local capability. Across Southeast Asia, governments have become increasingly successful at announcing digital investments. The harder task is ensuring that capital produces skilled jobs, strengthens domestic firms, creates exportable technology and avoids becoming merely real estate for data centres or outsourced service operations.

Also Read: From paddy fields to small shops, Malaysia maps an inclusive AI future

Anuar’s stated focus was to move MDEC in that direction. The agency said he anchored its performance on jobs, exports, revenue and investments, while repositioning MDEC as Malaysia’s specialist digital implementation agency.

The AI Nation 2030 push

One of Anuar’s most visible priorities was MDEC’s drive towards AI Nation 2030, Malaysia’s ambition to become an inclusive, trusted and globally competitive AI-driven economy by the end of the decade.

That goal reflects a broader regional race. Singapore has long had a head start in AI policy, cloud infrastructure and enterprise adoption. Indonesia is using its large domestic market to attract digital investment. Vietnam has built momentum around engineering talent and software exports. Thailand and the Philippines are also trying to move beyond traditional outsourcing into higher-value digital services.

Malaysia’s pitch sits somewhere in the middle: strong connectivity, a multilingual workforce, a sizeable base of shared-services operations, competitive costs compared with Singapore, and growing investor interest in data centres and advanced manufacturing. But to stand out, it needs more than infrastructure. It needs local companies capable of building and deploying technology, talent that can work with AI systems, and regulatory trust around data and digital services.

This is where MDEC’s role becomes more than promotional. Agencies such as MDEC are expected to translate national plans into programmes companies can actually use. Under Anuar, MDEC prepared for responsibilities under the Malaysia Digital 2030 action plan, which focuses on AI adoption, high-value digital investments, industry transformation, talent development and the growth of “Made by Malaysia” technologies.

The phrase “Made by Malaysia” is important. Like many Southeast Asian economies, Malaysia wants to be more than a destination for foreign technology. It wants local firms to create intellectual property, serve regional markets and become part of global digital supply chains.

From activity to accountability

In his statement, Anuar said leading MDEC had been “one of the greatest privileges” of his professional life. He framed his tenure around a shift from activity to impact.

“I wanted us to be judged not simply by the number of activities we announced but by the results we delivered for the country, for industry and for the rakyat,” he said, using the Malay term for citizens. “Everything we have achieved belongs to the extraordinary people of MDEC and to our partners across the technology ecosystem who believed in our mission.”

Also Read: Malaysia fines, Singapore funds: How two governments are forcing SEA’s second digital wave

The remark points to a persistent challenge in public-sector digital programmes. Startup events, memoranda of understanding, accelerator launches and investment announcements are common across the region. What founders and investors often want, however, is less ceremony and more execution: faster approvals, better talent pipelines, clearer incentives, access to customers and consistent policy direction.

Malaysia has several strengths on which to build. Its digital economy already includes fintech, e-commerce, cybersecurity, animation, gaming, software services and electronics-related technology. The country is also benefiting from renewed interest in Johor and the Klang Valley as data-centre and cloud-infrastructure locations, partly because of proximity to Singapore and access to land and power.

But the country faces constraints too. Competition for AI and engineering talent is intense. Local startups still struggle with later-stage funding compared with peers in Singapore and Indonesia. And as more global technology companies enter Malaysia, policymakers will need to ensure that local small and medium-sized enterprises can adopt new tools rather than be left behind by them.

What comes next for MDEC

Anuar said that after “considerable reflection”, he decided the completion of his contract was the right time to pursue new opportunities outside MDEC.

“This has not been an easy decision precisely because MDEC, our people and our mission have come to mean so much to me,” he said. “I leave with immense pride in what we have accomplished together and with complete confidence in MDEC’s future.”

For MDEC, the next phase will be about sustaining momentum while avoiding drift during the leadership transition. The agency will need to continue courting digital investments, but also prove that those commitments translate into high-value work for Malaysians. It will also have to keep industry confidence as AI regulation, data governance and digital trade become more central to economic policy.

Also Read: Malaysia’s OSKVI and Affin Hwang move into venture debt with Pothos Fund I

The timing gives MDEC’s board and the government room to plan succession carefully. The choice of the next CEO will signal whether Malaysia intends to deepen Anuar’s execution-led approach or recalibrate the agency’s priorities.

Either way, Anuar’s exit will come at a moment when Malaysia’s digital ambitions are becoming more concrete. The challenge for MDEC is to ensure that the foundations laid during his tenure continue to produce outcomes after he leaves the building.

The post MDEC chief Anuar Fariz Fadzil to exit after US$44B investment push appeared first on e27.

MoneyHero Limited is facing a public push from its largest unaffiliated shareholder to consider a sale, as the Singapore-based personal finance platform contends with leadership uncertainty, stalled revenue growth and a sharp fall in its Nasdaq-listed shares.

Jonathan Honig, who says he beneficially owns about 9 per cent of MoneyHero’s outstanding Class A ordinary shares, issued an open letter to the company’s board on 29 September 2026 calling for an immediate strategic review. He urged the board to retain an independent financial adviser and explore strategic alternatives, including a potential sale of the company.

Also Read: MoneyHero’s winning quarter has a US$6.7M problem

The letter marks a more confrontational turn for MoneyHero, which operates digital financial comparison and marketplace platforms across parts of Asia. The company helps consumers compare products such as credit cards, personal loans and insurance, a model that can be lucrative when banks and insurers are spending heavily on customer acquisition but vulnerable when growth slows or marketing budgets tighten.

Honig said he originally invested in MoneyHero because he believed in the platform’s potential and was encouraged by its high-profile backers, including Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and Richard Li, founder and chairman of Pacific Century Group. But he argued that the company has not delivered the discipline or urgency shareholders expected.

“Unfortunately, that has not been the case,” Honig wrote.

Pressure builds after CEO exit

A central issue in Honig’s letter is MoneyHero’s leadership transition. On 2 April 2026, the company announced that Rohith Murthy’s tenure as CEO had ended and that CFO Danny Leung would serve as interim CEO. Nearly six months later, Honig said, the company had yet to appoint a permanent chief executive.

Murthy later resigned from the board, effective 26 May 2026. Honig said the circumstances around the departure remain unexplained to shareholders.

“The company cannot afford to operate indefinitely under interim leadership, particularly given the competitive dynamics of the markets in which it operates,” he wrote. “A business of this nature requires a permanent CEO with a clear mandate and the confidence of shareholders.”

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: GoTo turns profitable, but the story has changed

For a listed technology company still trying to prove its public-market story, the absence of a permanent CEO can become more than an internal matter. It affects investor confidence, strategic clarity and the ability to strike partnerships with banks, insurers and fintech firms. In Southeast Asia’s financial services market, where distribution partnerships and regulatory credibility are critical, leadership uncertainty can quickly become a commercial problem.

Revenue miss and market frustration

Honig also pointed to MoneyHero’s financial performance. According to the letter, annual revenue fell from US$80.7 million in FY2023 to US$73.4 million in FY2025, despite management having stated in April 2025 that the company expected to reach US$100 million in revenue.

He acknowledged that MoneyHero reported its first profitable quarter in Q4 2025, but noted that the company still posted a net loss for the full year. In his view, the gap between management’s targets and actual results has become too large to ignore.

The share price has deepened that frustration. Honig said MoneyHero’s most recent closing price was US$0.675, down more than 88 per cent from when it began trading publicly in October 2023.

“This is not a case of modest underperformance, it represents a near-total destruction of shareholder value,” he wrote.

MoneyHero went public during a difficult period for technology listings. Many companies that reached public markets through the 2020-2021 special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) wave struggled after listing, as interest rates rose, investor appetite cooled and public markets began demanding a clearer path to profitability. Southeast Asian tech firms, in particular, have had to adjust from a growth-at-all-costs era to one focused on margins, cash discipline and durable revenue.

That shift has been especially challenging for consumer-finance marketplaces. These platforms depend on a balance between consumer demand and financial institutions’ willingness to pay for leads or approved customers. When banks change credit appetite, tighten underwriting or reduce marketing spend, marketplace revenue can take a quick hit.

Why a sale is now on the table

Honig is not merely asking for better communication. He is asking MoneyHero’s board to explore a sale.

In the letter, he argued that a sale offers the best risk-adjusted path for shareholders to halt further losses and preserve value. He said he believes there are “numerous parties” that would be interested in acquiring the company if the board launches a credible review process, and that MoneyHero is worth at least US$1.50 per share in a transaction.

Also Read: Circle to acquire Tazapay for US$400M as USDC push moves into cross-border payments

That proposed value is more than double the US$0.675 closing price cited in the letter. Whether a buyer would pay such a premium depends on several factors: the quality of MoneyHero’s customer acquisition channels, the strength of its banking and insurance relationships, the sustainability of its revenue, and whether its regional footprint offers strategic value to a financial services group, media company, fintech platform or private equity buyer.

Honig also criticised what he described as a lack of insider confidence. Based on his review of public filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, he said no director or executive officer appeared to have bought MoneyHero shares on the open market. Investors often read insider buying as a signal that management and directors believe a company is undervalued. Its absence does not prove the opposite, but with the share price this depressed, it can add to concerns.

Rivals across a crowded comparison market

MoneyHero operates in a competitive category with both regional and global pressure. In Singapore, MoneySmart is a long-running rival in financial product comparison, while Seedly has built a personal finance community that overlaps with consumer decision-making around money products. In Malaysia, Jirnexu’s RinggitPlus has played a similar role in credit-card and loan discovery. Indonesia has Cermati, while broader global comparables include NerdWallet in the US and Moneysupermarket in the UK.

The company also competes indirectly with banks, insurers and digital lenders that increasingly prefer to acquire customers through their own apps, content channels and partner ecosystems rather than pay third-party marketplaces.

This backdrop makes scale and trust important. Consumers need transparent comparisons, while financial institutions need quality leads that convert into profitable customers. If revenue growth stalls, marketplaces can find themselves squeezed between high acquisition costs and partners demanding better economics.

The next test for MoneyHero’s board

Honig has asked the board to respond by the close of business on 5 October 2026 on whether it is willing to engage in discussions. He also called for greater transparency on the CEO search, including the expected timeline for appointing a permanent leader.

MoneyHero had not responded publicly to the letter at the time of writing.

For the board, the immediate challenge is to show that it has a credible plan. That could mean appointing a permanent CEO, explaining how the company intends to restart growth, or formally reviewing strategic options. Ignoring the letter may not be easy, given Honig’s stated 9.0 per cent stake and the severity of the share-price decline.

Also Read: Fintech funding in Singapore drops to US$499M as dealmaking becomes more selective

For Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem, the dispute is another reminder that public markets are unforgiving. Backing from prominent investors can help a company reach the market, but once listed, shareholders judge management by execution, growth and capital returns.

MoneyHero’s board now faces a clear choice: defend the standalone strategy with more detail and urgency, or test whether the company is worth more in someone else’s hands.

The post MoneyHero shareholder urges board to explore sale after stock slump appeared first on e27.

In July 2011, a 27-year-old Stanford dropout secured a 10-minute slot with George Shultz at the Hoover Institution. The meeting ran two and a half hours. Before the month was out, the former secretary of state had joined the Theranos board, won over, he told Fortune, by her “purity of motivation.” Nothing said in that room could be tested.

Across the country, Katalin Karikó had the opposite problem. She had spent years at the University of Pennsylvania producing evidence that messenger RNA could be modified to slip past the body’s immune alarm. Penn demoted her in 1995 after her grant applications kept failing. The 2005 paper that would later win her a Nobel Prize drew, in her words, no interest.

One had a story and no proof. The other had proof and could not get the room.

I have spent decades on the investor side of that table: in banking, inside a global corporation and later running an asset manager in Hong Kong. Founders arrived with more evidence than any committee could digest: patents, market studies, customer logos, 30-page decks. The uncomfortable pattern was that the weight of the evidence rarely decided whom I wanted to see a second time.

The research suggests I was typical. When Paul Gompers and three co-authors surveyed 885 venture capitalists for the Journal of Financial Economics, 47 per cent called the management team the most important factor in a deal; only 37 per cent put business model, product or market first. DocSend’s data shows investors spend under four minutes on a deck. And decades of deception studies, as Timothy Levine has documented, put human accuracy at telling truth from lies at about 54 per cent, a shade better than a coin toss.

The con man grasped this long before venture capital existed. In 1849 the New York Herald reported the arrest of William Thompson, a genteel stranger who struck up conversations on Manhattan streets, then asked whether the gentleman had confidence enough to lend him his watch until tomorrow. Many did, assuming he was an old acquaintance they had forgotten. The paper called him the “Confidence Man.” Thompson carried no evidence at all. He supplied familiarity and let his victims supply the rest.

Also Read: Asian investors aren’t choosing between crypto and TradFi anymore

A century and a half later Rudy Kurniawan, a young Indonesian in Los Angeles, added the missing piece. He poured rare Burgundy for America’s most seasoned collectors, who nicknamed him “Dr. Conti,” and in 2006 an auction of his cellar fetched a record US$24.7 million. Many bottles had been refilled with cheaper wine at his home. The evidence sat in the glass, and the experts drank it.

That is the sequence investors actually run: attention, then recognition, then trust, then a hypothesis, and only then evidence. Within minutes, it takes shape: this founder may be exceptional. What follows is often read as confirmation. Evidence does not create attention. It validates a belief already forming.

Founders, especially technical ones, get this backwards. They treat the first meeting as compressed due diligence, and it is not. The investor is deciding whether there is a hypothesis worth diligencing at all, and a patent cannot do that job. Neither can a TAM slide or a customer list. They answer questions the investor has not yet decided to ask. The failure is sharpest in Asia, where many of the strongest companies build things that take a paragraph to explain: surgical robots, diagnostics, industrial software. By slide 14, a verdict has formed, and the remaining slides rarely overturn it.

The first meeting and diligence do different jobs. The meeting answers why should I care? Diligence answers why should I believe you? Founders who spend the first meeting on the second question seldom reach the second meeting.

Also Read: Why Singapore investors hold more Apple than Singtel, and why it should worry you

The con artist exploits the same gap from the other side, corrupting evidence after belief has formed. Charlie Javice told JPMorgan her student-aid startup, Frank, had 4.25 million users; it had about 300,000, and prosecutors said she paid a college friend US$18,000 to fabricate the rest. The bank paid US$175 million anyway; the judge who later sentenced her said JPMorgan had “a lot to blame themselves” for.

I met Gibran Huzaifah in Jakarta in eFishery’s earliest days, and have written about him before. His story was among the best in Southeast Asian venture: a small-scale fish farmer whose smart feeders would modernise Indonesia’s ponds. It carried SoftBank, Temasek and Malaysia’s public pension fund KWAP to a US$1.4 billion valuation. A forensic audit later traced two sets of books back to 2018; for the first nine months of 2024, eFishery reported US$752 million in revenue against roughly US$157 million in reality. Neither Frank nor eFishery lacked sophisticated investors or due diligence. Fabricated numbers survived both.

Even inside Theranos, evidence lost to belief. When Tyler Shultz told his grandfather the lab’s technology did not work, the statesman sided with Holmes. “He didn’t believe me,” Tyler later told NPR.

The same psychology demands opposite discipline from each side of the table. Founders must earn attention before they offer proof. Investors must doubt hardest at the moment attention turns into belief. The better the story, the more dangerous ordinary diligence becomes. Levine’s own work points to the fix. In one 2014 experiment, five experienced US federal agents allowed to question subjects freely identified deception correctly in 87 of 89 interviews. Don’t read the founder better. Change how you test the claim.

The lesson is not to imitate the con. It is to understand the sequence it exploits. A con artist asks you to believe before you verify. A weak founder asks you to verify before giving you any reason to care.

Karikó’s evidence found its audience. It took a pandemic.

Look at your deck. How many of its slides answer a question no investor has yet decided to ask?

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. You can also share your perspective by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of e27.

Join us on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn to stay connected.

The post Why con artists get the meeting that honest founders can’t appeared first on e27.