The first generation of ASEAN’s unicorn founders is moving on. Some have stepped back from operational roles. Some have moved into investing. A few have taken government appointments and, more recently, moved back out of them. The question I keep coming back to, fifteen years into a risk career that has run alongside this generation’s rise, is what the next cohort of founders is supposed to learn from all of it.

Nadiem Makarim’s trajectory is the most prominent example of the full cycle. He founded Gojek in 2010, built it into one of the region’s first true super-apps, took the role of Indonesia’s Minister of Education and Culture in 2019, served until 2024, and has since returned to private life under public scrutiny over decisions made during his ministerial tenure. The specific facts of any ongoing matter are for the courts to determine. The structural patterns underneath the trajectory are for the rest of us to learn from.

What the first generation built

The unicorn cohort that emerged from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines between 2010 and 2018 did something previous ASEAN business generations had not. They built consumer technology platforms that absorbed enormous segments of daily economic life — payments, transport, food delivery, e-commerce, financial services. The largest became regional infrastructure, not just products. That scale changed what ASEAN governments expected from technology founders. Public consultations included them. Regulatory drafts circulated through them. The relationship between unicorn founders and the state moved from arm’s-length to participatory inside a decade.

The pivot to public service

It is in that context that the founder-to-public-servant pivot became a recognisable category. Nadiem’s appointment as Minister of Education and Culture was the most prominent example. Sandiaga Uno’s earlier trajectory from private equity to multiple ministerial roles foreshadowed it. Patrick Walujo’s transition from Northstar to GoTo’s chief executive seat in 2023 represents the inverse — a public-facing technology role assumed by someone with an investment background, in a moment where the line between the two was getting blurrier.

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Each version solved real problems for the institutions concerned. Founders brought operational discipline, technology fluency, and direct user-side experience that career officials often lacked. The institutions, in return, gave founders access to systems and constraints that pure private-sector roles cannot teach.

The governance tensions that emerged

Three structural tensions are now visible enough to name.

Dual-role separation. A founder who moves into public office still owns a meaningful stake in the company they built. The mechanisms for managing that separation — blind trusts, board recusals, family-arm-length arrangements — exist on paper. They are tested only when specific decisions cross the boundary between private interest and public mandate. Most of the legal scrutiny that follows founder-to-minister transitions globally — not just in ASEAN — comes from the friction at that boundary.

Decision velocity asymmetry. Founders are trained to decide quickly with imperfect information. Senior public roles require slower, more documented, more procedurally cautious decision-making. The instinct that produced unicorn-scale results in a startup is the instinct that produces governance friction in a ministry. The transition between the two cultures is real and underestimated.

Reputational concentration. In the private sector, a founder’s reputation is concentrated in their company. In public office, it is concentrated in their portfolio’s outcomes — slower, more contested, more politically interpreted. The reputational risk in public service is structurally larger than the founder’s private experience would suggest.

What the next generation should absorb

Three lessons are worth carrying forward.

Decide the role boundary before the offer arrives. The most defensible transitions I have observed are the ones where the founder has thought through what their company ownership, family economic interests, and public stewardship obligations would look like in combination — before the appointment is on the table. The founders who decide that boundary under public pressure decide it badly.

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Build the second line before the first line leaves. The institutions that survive the founder pivot best are the ones where the founder had already built a deep operational team capable of running without them. The transitions that get into trouble are the ones where the founder’s exit reveals how much was running on the founder’s personal capital.

Treat public office as a different risk category. The skills, networks, and instincts that build a unicorn are not the same skills, networks, and instincts that protect against the scrutiny of public office. The transition requires its own preparation — legal, governance, communications — that founders typically underinvest in because the private-sector playbook has gotten them this far.

The macro stakes

The relationship between technology founders and the state in ASEAN is not going back to where it was in 2010. The companies are too big, the economic stakes are too high, and the regulatory complexity is too dense for governments not to want founders close to policy decisions. That proximity is not the problem. The lack of standard governance infrastructure around it is.

Makarim’s specific trajectory will be litigated by people closer to the facts than I am. The broader pattern it sits inside — the founder-to-public-servant pivot, the governance gaps that come with it, and the ecosystem’s collective underpreparation — is something every next-generation ASEAN founder will need to think about earlier than they currently do. The right time to plan for that transition is before it becomes available, not after.

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