Back in 2020, BRI Ventures CEO Nicko Widjaja approved a US$5 million investment in Indonesian agritech startup TaniHub Group, following a multi-stage due diligence process that received written sign-off from BRI’s board-level director and BRI Ventures’ board of commissioners.

Fast forward to the present day, after the collapse of TaniHub, Widjaja is being prosecuted for causing state financial loss. With a verdict scheduled for June 10, the prosecutors are seeking 11 years in prison for the investor.

Ahead of his defence hearing (pledoi) at the Anti-Corruption Court in Jakarta on June 3, e27 spoke to Ditho H. F. Sitompoel, Managing Partner at Hotma Sitompoel Law Firm — the legal defence team representing Widjaja. In this interview, the lawyer shares more details about the case, including the strategy the team plans to use.

The following is an edited excerpt of the conversation.

In your recent contributed post, you mentioned this inverted framework that the prosecutors are using in this case. Can we get a better understanding of why this approach is being used in this case?

The prosecutor’s approach to indicting Nicko is based on the idea that BRI Ventures is part of a state-owned enterprise (SOE), namely BRI. As part of BRI, when something happens to BRI Ventures — like a failed investment — it can be categorised as a state loss.

However, we need to understand that, as a subsidiary of an SOE such as BRI, BRI Ventures is considered a separate company. It cannot be classified as an SOE because corporate law applies to them, not SOE law.

If something happens, such as the director making a failed investment, it does not make sense to classify it as a state loss, as the law itself treats BRI Ventures as a separate entity.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Consumers want humans in CX | TaniHub ex-CEO hit in US$25M fraud | Salesforce: 4% CFOs still cautious on AI

Why do the prosecutors see 11 years as appropriate for this case, especially given that Nicko receives zero personal benefit from the transaction?

Because, according to our law, corruption is not only about who receives the money. It is also about the transfer of the money itself. Nicko, as part of BRI Ventures, transferred the money to TaniHub Group … that is why they classified this as a wrongdoing. Because it is not only to enrich oneself according to the law, but also to enrich other persons or companies.

During the due diligence process for the Tani Hub investment, BRI’s board-level director and BRI Ventures’ board of commissioners were involved. Does the fact that this institutional oversight exists effectively negate any claim of individual criminal liability?

Exactly. All due diligence processes were already conducted in accordance with the company’s standard operating procedures. However, the prosecutors still think that, when we were doing due diligence, we were not doing so with a fiduciary duty. According to them, we did not confirm whether the information in the company’s documents is correct.

If the documents they provided are fraudulent, we can treat it as a breach of the agreement and handle it in a civil case. It cannot be treated as a criminal case unless we can prove fraud.

What is the outcome that you expect to achieve on June 10?

We want to get Nicko free of the charges against him. Our legal arguments will first address the question of unlawful conduct … As we know, under Indonesian law, following the Constitutional Court’s 2006 ruling, an unlawful act in the corruption case must constitute a violation of a concrete right.

It is not enough to say that a decision was unwise in hindsight, and there is no rule that was actually broken here. Even the investment itself was made under the Financial Services Authority’s own regulations regarding the governing of venture capitals.

The regulation is far from prohibiting investment in loss-making startups. It actively encourages venture capital firms to fund growing companies. [This is important as] the prosecutor asked why BRI Ventures invests in a loss-making company. But of course, it is because it is a startup.

Also Read: Raising new funding round, TaniHub Group claims 600+ per cent gross revenue growth in 2020

It is confirmed by the law itself and by the Financial Services Authority. Every step followed the BRI Ventures internal investments [guide], and the decision was made collectively through an investment committee with involvement from the Board of Commissioners. So, our clients never made this decision unilaterally.

Second, on the question of enrichment. Nicko did not receive a single Rupiah. No shares, no kickback, no hidden benefit at all.

BRI Ventures itself recorded the investment, even though it was a loss. They have not sold any shares; they have not exited the company. That is why it cannot be categorised as a real loss. It is still an unrealised loss.

The third is quite critical because the prosecutor has always raised the argument of state loss. As we know, the prosecutor is working with BPKP, the government’s internal audit body. However, under our constitution and law, the authority to formally determine the state’s financial loss lies with the BPK. So it is not BPKP that has the right to make an audit.

As I mentioned earlier, the constitutional court has held that the state’s loss in this case must be certain. Not a projection, not unrealised. However, what we have here is portfolio valuations, a paper figure on investment that simply underperformed.

Our financial and criminal law experts have already testified to these exact points in court, including the business judgment rule.

The company law explicitly protects a director who acts in good faith, and I think everything Nicko does is already aligned with the business judgment rule. He acted professionally; he had no conflict of interest when he sensed trouble at TaniHub.

He did not even make another investment in the company’s Series B … even though the committee had already approved it. At the last minute, he noticed something fishy in the company.

Nicko is certainly not the first person in Indonesia to be criminalised for making a business decision that does not involve illicit enrichment. So, why does this pattern keep on showing up, and do you plan to tie this case up to similar cases in your defence?

We had experience as the defence team at the Pertamina case in 2019, and the decisions have already become jurisprudence. At that time, we defended Pertamina CFO Frederick Siahaan. The CEO back then was Karen Agustiawan, who was also on trial that time.

We also presented the argument about the business judgment rule. The District Court insisted on it being a corruption case. However, when we went to the Supreme Court, they agreed with our positions in our argument. It actually became a landmark decision on the business judgment rule.

I hope that when people read about this case, they can look past the word ‘corruption’ and ask the simpler question: Did Nicko steal from the state, or did he simply make an investment that did not work out?

The evidence already points clearly to the second. We are confident enough for this case.

—

Image Credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

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We were told technology would save time.

For decades, every major productivity breakthrough came with the same promise: automation would reduce manual work, improve efficiency, and free people up to focus on higher-value tasks. In many ways, AI is finally delivering on that promise. Tasks that once took hours can now be completed in minutes. Research is faster. Drafting is faster. Editing is faster. Workflows are smoother than they were even two years ago.

And yet, many workers today feel more stretched than ever.

After spending the past 18 months job hunting while continuing to run lean operations across media, marketing and content, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern in the market: companies are increasingly looking for one person who can do the work of two or three.

AI did not create this expectation entirely. Startups and modern businesses have been leaning toward smaller teams and “multi-hyphenate” employees for years. But AI has accelerated it dramatically.

Because if technology now allows people to execute tasks faster, the assumption from many organisations is simple: surely one person should now be able to handle more.

The result is that AI is not simply replacing certain jobs. It is quietly redefining what employers expect from one person within the same amount of time.

The rise of the multi-function employee

In marketing alone, the shift has become obvious.

A role that once focused primarily on communications or content may now also involve video editing, analytics reporting, SEO strategy, social media management, AI prompting, newsletter creation, community management and even light design work.

In startups, especially, the logic often sounds reasonable. Teams are lean. Budgets are tight. Founders are under pressure from investors to grow efficiently. AI tools genuinely help accelerate execution. Why hire three people if one highly capable person, supported by AI, can theoretically produce the same output?

The problem is that “same output” rarely stays the same for long.

Once workflows become faster, expectations increase alongside them. More campaigns. Faster turnaround times. More platforms. More reporting. More visibility. More responsiveness. More content.

Technology improves efficiency, but instead of translating into more breathing room, those gains are often absorbed back into the system as increased productivity demands.

Also Read: SEA’s AI infrastructure sector draws US$1.2B as deal activity reaches record high

This is not unique to AI. Historically, many technological advances have followed the same pattern. Email sped up communication, but also normalised constant availability. Smartphones improved flexibility, but blurred work-life boundaries. Collaboration tools made remote work possible, but also created endless notifications and fragmented attention.

AI is simply accelerating the cycle at a much larger scale.

Faster execution does not always mean sustainable work

One of the biggest misconceptions in the current AI conversation is that productivity gains automatically create healthier ways of working.

In reality, they often create pressure to produce more within the same working hours.

A marketer who once needed three days to develop a campaign concept may now produce a first draft in a day with AI assistance. But instead of reclaiming the extra time, they are often expected to fill it with additional campaigns, faster iterations or expanded responsibilities.

The benchmark quietly shifts.

This becomes especially challenging because AI still requires human oversight in areas that matter most: judgment, context, strategy, emotional nuance and decision-making. AI can accelerate execution, but it does not eliminate the mental load of prioritising, evaluating and refining work.

In some cases, it may even increase it.

People are now expected to:

• Evaluate AI-generated outputs
• Fact-check information
• Refine tone and positioning
• Adapt content for multiple platforms
• Keep up with rapidly evolving tools
• Continuously learn new systems while maintaining existing workloads

The labour has not disappeared. Much of it has simply changed form.

The entrepreneurial escape is not necessarily easier

At the same time, more people are leaving traditional employment to pursue freelancing, consulting or entrepreneurship — either voluntarily or because the job market has become increasingly difficult to navigate.

Also Read: AI shopping companions and the talent reset in retail

There is a growing perception that owning a business offers more freedom and autonomy. In some ways, it does. AI has also made it significantly easier for small founders to launch projects, automate workflows and scale personal brands without large teams.

But entrepreneurship often comes with its own version of workload expansion.

Founders today are not only expected to build products or services. They are also expected to become content creators, community builders, marketers, operators and personal brands simultaneously. AI helps reduce friction, but it also raises the baseline expectation for how quickly a business should move.

My friend, who is an entrepreneur, has been discussing how she created a digital twin of herself to automate tasks and reclaim time. It was an impressive example of how technology can create leverage for entrepreneurs operating at scale.

But it also raised a bigger question: how accessible is that level of automation really?

Not everyone has the resources, audience, infrastructure or operational maturity to build AI-powered systems around themselves while still ensuring a healthy bank account. Many workers and small founders are still simply trying to keep up with increasingly compressed expectations while learning these tools in real time.

The real question companies should be asking

None of this means AI is inherently bad for work. On the contrary, AI is already proving incredibly useful across industries. It has lowered barriers to entry, improved operational efficiency and created opportunities that would have been impossible for many smaller businesses just a few years ago.

But there is a difference between using AI to create sustainable leverage and using it to justify permanently overstretched teams.

That distinction matters.

Because eventually, companies will need to ask themselves whether they are genuinely building healthier and more effective ways of working or simply compressing more labour into fewer people under the guise of efficiency.

The organisations that adapt best to the AI era may not necessarily be the ones extracting the maximum possible output from the leanest teams. They may be the ones who understand human capacity still matters, even in highly automated environments.

AI is undeniably changing how we work.

But perhaps the bigger shift happening quietly alongside it is this: it is redefining what organisations believe one person should reasonably be able to handle.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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

Every great leader has a clear sense of taste. It is what separates a competent decision from the right one. Taste is your internal sense of what good work looks like in your domain, built up from years of doing the work, calibrated against outcomes, and carried forward into every judgment call where the rules stop short of the answer. When several options are all acceptable, and only one of them is right, taste is how you pick it.

Taste is also what makes you dangerous to your own organisation.

Because taste lives in your head. It is invisible. Your team sees the output of your taste – the decisions you make, the directions you set, and the standards you hold – but they cannot see the reasoning underneath. And if they cannot see it, they cannot replicate it. So they come to you. Every ambiguity, every close call, every situation where “good enough” and “actually good” look almost identical. They come to you because you are the only one who can tell the difference.

You have become irreplaceable. And that is the problem.

The bottleneck nobody talks about

AI did not come for the leader’s job. It came for everything around the leader’s job.

When AI handles the drafts, the summaries, the research, the scheduling, the analysis – all the execution work that used to fill your team’s day – what is left? Decisions. Judgment. Taste. The work requires a human who knows the difference between looking good and being effective.

If you are the only person on your team with that sense, you just became the narrowest point in the system. Every decision waits for you or risks rework. Every ambiguity routes to you. AI made execution abundant, turning your taste into the potential bottleneck.

This is the part that stings. The very thing that makes you great is the thing that is slowing everything down. Not because your taste is wrong. Because your taste is limited.

Also Read: The quiet renegotiation of human value: What the AI talent reset means for how we work, hire, and become

How it happens

It is never a single moment. It accumulates.

You make a good call. The right call. So the next similar question comes back to you. You provide context that no one else has, so meetings cannot start without you. You catch something subtle that would have shipped wrong, and now the team routes every review through your desk. You are not doing anyone else’s job. You are doing yours. But the system has learned to rely on your presence rather than on capturing your thinking.

The phrases become familiar. “I’m in too many details.” “I can’t step away; everything would freeze.” “I’m the only one who knows this history.”

These sound like the complaints of a busy leader. They are actually the symptoms of a system that cannot function without one person’s taste. And the busier you get, the less time you have to fix the problem, which makes the problem worse. It is a trap that tightens the harder you work.

Three shifts that change everything

The way out is not to work harder or hire someone who thinks like you. It is to make your taste visible.

• The first shift is to stop answering every question and start encoding how questions should be answered. Every judgment call you make is a chance to leave something behind. Not just the decision, but the reasoning. Why did you choose this direction over that one? What signals did you weigh? What would have changed your mind? A leader who resolves an ambiguity brilliantly but keeps the logic in their head has solved one problem. A leader who makes the reasoning visible has solved every future version of that problem.
• The second shift is to name the scenario context. Most teams are guessing at priorities because priorities and constraints live in the leader’s head. Name the situation you are operating in. Are you in growth mode? Cost discipline? Crisis response? When people know the scenario and the reaction posture, they stop waiting for you to interpret every signal. They start applying their own judgment because they understand the organisation’s current values. You have given them the frame. Now they can see what you see.
• The third shift is to watch where work stalls, not what people are doing. When the same handoff repeatedly causes problems, or the same type of decision keeps escalating to you, that is not a people problem. That is a design problem. Something about the way work flows is creating a dependency on you that does not need to exist. Fix the flow. Reshape things so the blockage stops forming.

Also Read: AI startups are hiring around answers they haven’t earned yet

Delegation is not what it used to be

Traditional delegation means assigning tasks. AI-era delegation means something harder: designing the reasoning that allows decisions to happen without you.

It means making your taste explicit. The trade-offs you weigh. The signals you watch for. The boundaries you refuse to cross. The instinct you apply when two options look identical to everyone else, and you can see exactly why one is better. Most leaders have never articulated these things because they never had to. The taste just lived in their head, expressed through decisions but never explained.

That invisible taste is exactly what makes a leader irreplaceable in the worst sense. If nobody else knows how you decide, nobody else can decide. The team is not weak. Your reasoning is just invisible.

Getting it out of your head is the new leadership skill. It does not mean dumbing down your judgment. It means teaching it. It means the quality of decisions no longer depends on whether you were in the room.

The real test

Look at your last two weeks. Every meeting, every decision, every escalation. Ask yourself: what would have happened if I were not there?

If the answer is “it would have stalled,” that is not your value. That is your cage.

The leaders who will matter most are not the ones their teams cannot live without. They are the ones who built something that runs beautifully whether they are in the room or not. Not because they stepped back. But because they invested their taste into the system instead of keeping it locked inside their own head.

That frees them to do the work that truly requires them: the problems nobody else has the judgment or the taste to solve yet. And that is what irreplaceable should actually mean.

The post If you’ve become irreplaceable, you’re the problem appeared first on e27.

There is a recurring scene in social entrepreneurship support programmes. A founder walks in with fire in their eyes and genuine conviction about the problem they want to solve. They have seen the gap. They have felt the injustice. They have spoken to the people who live with the consequences. What they cannot quite do – yet – is explain how they will get from here to there.

Most programme advisors reach for familiar tools: a business model canvas, a pitch deck template, a grant application framework. These are not bad tools. But they are answers to a question the founder has not yet fully formed. And that, quietly, is the real problem.

The biggest bottleneck facing early-stage social entrepreneurs is not passion. It is not even capital, though capital is scarce. It is cognitive scaffolding – the structured mental architecture that allows a person to think clearly under uncertainty, sequence decisions wisely, and convert deep intention into an operational model that others can understand, trust, and fund.

What cognitive scaffolding actually means

Scaffolding, in the original educational sense, refers to temporary structures that support learning until the learner can hold the weight themselves. Cognitive scaffolding for founders means something similar: frameworks, reasoning processes, and mental models that help a person navigate complexity without becoming paralysed by it.

This is distinct from having a plan. Plans assume you know enough to sequence the future. Scaffolding helps you figure out what you do not yet know, and in what order things need to be resolved.

For social entrepreneurs, the complexity is compounded. They are simultaneously managing a commercial logic – revenue, margins, unit economics – and a social logic – impact outcomes, community trust, vulnerability, and systemic change. These two logics often pull in different directions. A decision that maximises revenue may compromise access for the very people the enterprise was created to serve. A decision that deepens social impact may make the business less attractive to investors.

Without strong cognitive scaffolding, founders oscillate between these tensions rather than integrating them. They become reactive rather than strategic. They communicate differently to different stakeholders – not because they are being dishonest, but because they have not yet built a coherent internal model that holds both logics together.

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

The gap in the support ecosystem

Most social enterprise support programmes invest heavily in outputs: the pitch deck, the financial model, the impact report, the grant application. These matter. But they are downstream of something more fundamental – the quality of thinking that produces them.

When a founder struggles to articulate their theory of change, the conventional response is to give them a template. But the template does not solve the problem. It papers over it. The founder learns to fill in boxes without developing the underlying reasoning that would allow them to defend, adapt, or rebuild what is in those boxes when circumstances change.

What is underinvested in is the reasoning process itself: how to frame a problem before trying to solve it; how to distinguish between symptoms and root causes; how to test an assumption without building the whole model first; how to make a decision when information is incomplete; how to communicate the same strategic logic to a grassroots community and a corporate funder without losing coherence.

These are not soft skills. They are strategic capabilities. And they can be developed deliberately.

How social entrepreneurs need to shift their thinking

The shift required is not from passion to pragmatism. That framing is too simple, and it dismisses the very thing that gives social enterprise its distinctive energy. The shift is from intuitive conviction to structured sense-making – without losing the conviction.

Concretely, this means several things.

• First, learn to separate the problem from the solution. Many founders are in love with their solution before they have fully understood the problem. Spending more time in the problem space – mapping it, stress-testing it, understanding who else has tried to solve it and why they fell short – produces better solutions and stronger ventures.
• Second, develop comfort with layered causality. Social problems are rarely caused by one thing. A person experiencing chronic unemployment may face intersecting barriers: skills gaps, mental health challenges, discrimination, lack of networks, and inadequate transport. A social entrepreneur who targets only one of these layers will produce limited impact. Strong thinkers learn to hold multiple causal layers simultaneously and decide, explicitly, which layer they are addressing and why.
• Third, build the habit of making your assumptions visible. Every business model rests on assumptions – about who will pay, at what price, how often, for what reason, through what channel. Social enterprises carry additional assumptions about behaviour change, community uptake, and institutional response. Making these explicit allows them to be tested. Hidden assumptions become hidden risks.
• Fourth, practise translating between logics. The ability to speak the language of impact to a beneficiary community, the language of sustainability to a funder, and the language of growth to a commercial partner – without contradicting yourself – is a cognitive skill, not just a communication skill. It requires a deeply integrated internal model.

Also Read: The business of social responsibility: Why brands are redefining their social conscience

What commercial entrepreneurs can learn

This is not a one-way lesson. Commercial entrepreneurs have much to learn from the cognitive demands placed on social entrepreneurs.

Running a social enterprise requires holding a double bottom line in genuine tension – not as a marketing position, but as a real operational constraint. This builds a kind of strategic discipline that pure commercial thinking rarely demands. When you cannot simply optimise for profit, you are forced to develop more sophisticated decision frameworks. You learn to weigh trade-offs rather than simply maximise a single variable.

Social entrepreneurs also develop unusual skills in stakeholder translation – understanding the different value languages of communities, government, funders, and partners, and finding strategies that create value across all of them simultaneously. This is increasingly relevant for commercial enterprises navigating ESG expectations, community relations, and regulatory environments.

Perhaps most importantly, social entrepreneurs are skilled in designing under constraint. Limited resources, underserved markets, and complex social dynamics force creative problem-solving that produces genuinely novel approaches. Many commercial innovations in inclusive design, last-mile distribution, and community-led growth have roots in social enterprise experimentation.

A different kind of intelligence

What these points point to is a form of intelligence that is different from the analytical precision valued in management consulting, or the creative risk-taking celebrated in startup culture, or the empathic listening cultivated in social work. It is integrative intelligence – the capacity to hold complexity, operate across multiple logics, and build coherent action from genuinely competing demands.

AI, used well, is beginning to play a meaningful role here – not as an automation tool, but as a thinking partner. The highest-leverage use of AI for social entrepreneurs is not generating pitch decks or writing grant applications. It is cognitive augmentation: helping founders surface their assumptions, stress-test their logic, sequence their decisions, and build the internal clarity that makes every downstream output stronger.

That is a significantly different relationship with technology than most people are being told to have. But for founders who are trying to change something real, it may be exactly the right one.

The scaffold is not the building. But without it, you cannot build anything that stands.

The post The missing scaffold: Why social entrepreneurs need better thinking, not just better plans appeared first on e27.

Southeast Asia has spent years talking about the capital gap.

Founders say there is not enough patient capital. Investors say there are not enough investable companies. Development institutions say local ventures need more technical assistance. Accelerators say founders need more readiness.

Everyone is partly right.

But one uncomfortable point still gets avoided: many ventures asking for impact capital are not yet serious enough for the money they want.

This is not a moral judgment. It is an operating reality.

Impact capital is not charity with better branding. It is not a soft landing for startups that failed to raise venture capital. It is not a backup option for founders who discovered too late that their market is small, their margins are thin, or their unit economics are fragile.

Impact capital has its own logic. It asks a sharper question than venture capital in many cases.

Not only, “Can this grow?”

But also, “Should this be funded, by whom, through what structure, with what proof, for what outcome, and with what consequences if it fails?”

That is a harder test.

Many Southeast Asian founders still approach impact capital with the wrong posture. They take a normal commercial deck, add a social problem slide, insert a few beneficiary numbers, mention climate, health, inclusion, livelihoods, or women, and assume they are now ready for impact-aligned capital.

They are not.

A grantmaker does not exist to fund your burn. A catalytic investor does not exist to clean up your missed equity round. A foundation does not exist to subsidise a business model with no path to resilience. A development finance institution does not exist to validate your ambition because a local VC passed.

The problem is not only that capital is hard to access. The problem is that too many ventures do not understand what type of capital they are asking for.

• Equity wants upside.
• Debt wants repayment capacity.
• Grants want a fundable public or strategic outcome.
• Catalytic capital wants a specific market failure to be reduced.
• Blended finance wants risk to be allocated deliberately, not randomly.
• Institutional capital wants governance, reporting, controls, and evidence that can survive scrutiny.

These instruments are not interchangeable.

Yet many founders still use one generic fundraising narrative for all of them.

That is why they get ignored.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: How next-day delivery killed crowdfunding in SEA

A founder may think, “The funder did not understand our vision.”

Often, the funder understood it perfectly. They just did not see a fundable structure.

There is a difference between a good mission and a financeable case.

A healthtech company serving underserved populations may have a strong mission. That does not automatically make it suitable for grant capital. A climate venture reducing waste may have strong environmental language. That does not automatically make it ready for catalytic capital. An inclusion-focused platform may talk about access, affordability, and empowerment. That does not automatically make it institutionally fundable.

Impact capital does not fund adjectives. It funds proof.

• Proof of who benefits.
• Proof of why the intervention matters.
• Proof of why commercial capital alone is not enough.
• Proof of why the proposed capital type is appropriate.
• Proof of what milestone will be reached.
• Proof of what happens after the money is spent.

This is where Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem has a training gap.

Founders have been trained to pitch markets, traction, TAM, product, and growth. They have not been trained to map capital pathways. They know how to say they are raising a round. They often do not know how to explain whether they need validation capital, implementation capital, working capital, concessional capital, recoverable grant funding, project finance, corporate partnership capital, or institutional co-funding.

So they default to what they know: “We are raising.”

That sentence is now too lazy.

Raising from whom? For what proof point? Under what structure? With what reporting burden? With what expected outcome? With what matching capital? With what pathway after this cheque?

These questions are not administrative details. They are the actual fundraising strategy.

Also Read: Funded: The startup world has a fundraising addiction

In Southeast Asia, this matters more because many ventures operate in messy markets. Fragmented regulation, uneven purchasing power, weak public procurement, informal distribution, long enterprise sales cycles, and complex cross-border realities are not side issues. They shape what kind of capital the company can absorb.

A startup selling to low-income users cannot pretend it has the same capital path as a SaaS company selling to regional enterprises. A hardware-heavy climate venture cannot pretend it has the same financing logic as a software marketplace. A health venture requiring validation, pilots, approvals, and partnerships cannot pretend it is just one seed round away from scale.

The funding path must match the operating reality.

This is where ecosystem players also need to take responsibility.

Accelerators cannot keep producing pitch-ready founders who are capital-confused. Funds cannot keep telling every impact founder to become VC-ready when the business may need a different financing pathway. Advisors cannot keep preparing beautiful decks without asking whether the capital target makes sense. Founders cannot keep using the word “impact” as a fundraising decoration.

The next phase of SEA impact capital will not be won by louder storytelling.

It will be won by a better capital design.

That means founders need to know which parts of the business are commercial, which parts are public good aligned, which parts reduce market risk, and which parts create measurable outcomes that someone else may legitimately want to fund.

They need to separate company survival from impact-proof.

They need to stop asking funders to pay for confusion.

This may sound harsh, but it is useful. Because once a founder stops treating all capital as the same, more doors open.

A pilot can be positioned for grant or corporate partnership support. A market-building activity can fit catalytic or ecosystem capital. A validated revenue engine can fit equity. A proven procurement pipeline can fit debt. A regional expansion case can fit strategic capital. A public health or climate outcome can fit institutional co-funding.

The point is not to chase every source of money.

The point is to stop asking the wrong money to do the wrong job.

Southeast Asia does not simply need more impact capital. It needs more founders who can absorb it responsibly.

Because capital is not just fuel. It is a test of seriousness.

And too many ventures are still failing before the first cheque, not because their mission is weak, but because their capital logic is.

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The post Funded: SEA does not need more impact capital, it needs fewer weak capital seekers appeared first on e27.