A few weeks ago, one of the largest banks in Thailand made an announcement that marked a seismic shift in the Southeast Asian banking landscape and the Thailand tech and startup ecosystem.

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), a Thai full-service financial institution and growing corporate fintech powerhouse, announced a massive restructuring on the magnitude of Google & Alphabet.

The publicly-listed bank would be taken private in a share-swap arrangement that would see SCBx, a non-bank holding company, take its place on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, becoming the umbrella organisation for both the original bank entity and SCB’s growing tech portfolio, which has come to include one of the world’s largest bank corporate VC funds and a number of corporate venture-built fintech.

SCB essentially signalled that it would no longer be a technologically savvy bank, but rather that it would become a tech company that just happens to have strength in financial services.

Additionally, with the non-bank SCBx sitting atop the structure as the publicly-listed entity and the unlisted bank SCB as the subsidiary, the group retains access to capital markets while freeing up much of the group’s tech-oriented, non-bank subsidiaries from the scrutiny of financial regulators.

While a long, challenging road of execution lies ahead for the folks at SCB and SCBx, it definitely marks the boldest move yet from what techies traditionally view as a stodgy, bureaucratic, corporatised banking industry.

Also Read: Ascend Money becomes Thailand’s first fintech unicorn following US$150M funding

Succeed or fail, SCB has certainly signalled that it is prepared to take daring yet calculated risks normally reserved for tech companies.

In the hours and days that followed the announcement, a shell-shocked Thai business community and startup ecosystem (and I heard on good authority that even a major Southeast Asian bank had a bit of a freak-out/wake-up moment) asked themselves: “What are the implications?”

Amid the glitzy announcements, complex financial and organisational engineering, and SCB’s adrenaline-fueled stock price jump, what is the essence of SCB/SCBx’s strategy, and what does this ultimately mean for the Thai tech ecosystem and its participants?

In an attempt to unpack the complexity of SCB’s plan and divine any insights/implications/ predictions/fallout from their reorganisation, I connect the SCBx announcement with an opinion/ hypothesis I’ve been contemplating for the past few years, namely that Thailand’s startup ecosystem has a Seattle Problem.

An overarching issue that Thailand’s entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, government officials, academics and other stakeholders have struggled with over much of the past decade is how to boost Thailand startup formation, activity, growth, and exit.

How do we meet the aspiration of making Thailand a startup hub of Southeast Asia? How do we attract and build a community of global entrepreneurs and tech talent, and how do we attract an outpouring of venture capital to fund them?

While the Thai startup ecosystem has seen steady progression over the years, our growth relative to our emerging ecosystem peers has been adequate at best, and middling and lacklustre at worst. As a venture capitalist and as an advisor to various corporates, government agencies, and educational institutions, I always get asked these questions, and whether there is some magic bullet that will help the Thai ecosystem hit an inflection point that will send it on a rocket ship trajectory.

Also Read: Startup x Innovation Thailand Expo 2021: A virtual world of innovation

In my years as a VC, I have had the opportunity to get an up-close look at nearly three dozen developed and emerging startup ecosystems across six of the world’s seven continents and looking at the Thailand ecosystem has helped me to frame the issue in terms of a simple binary model: Silicon Valley vs. Seattle.

Silicon Valley vs. Seattle

Silicon Valley represents what I see as a relatively balanced startup ecosystem, where tech giants and fast-growing startups manage to compete yet co-exist in a delicate balance. While the balance of power lies with companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, and numerous others, small and fast-growing startups sprout up constantly, and many have more than a fighting chance to reach scale and even compete head-to-head against the giants, sometimes even becoming a tech giant themselves.

This established and proven path of growth, profitability, and often exit has attracted and created a rich community of serial entrepreneurs continuously launching startups, and venture capitalists who will fund them, knowing that there are ample opportunities to make attractive returns on investment.

Silicon Valley inhabitants include a healthy mix of those who enjoy working for large, prestigious tech giants, and those who want to launch or work for dangerously risky and sexy, hair-on-fire startups, as well as a demographic of talent who have done both.

It is this fighting chance to compete and succeed against tech giants (and individual predisposition towards risk and “flying without a net”) that spurs a constant infusion of new entrepreneurial talent and ventures.

Cities like London, Tel Aviv, and Singapore have similarly balanced ecosystems, with startups able to nimbly navigate amongst large international tech companies, as well as large-cap corporations with massive capital budgets to direct towards their own innovation initiatives.

On the other side of the binary are cities such as Seattle, which at first glance deeply resembles Silicon Valley and the Bay Area: tech giants in the form of Microsoft and Amazon; strong local universities generating pools of tech talent; and beautiful cities offering attractive lifestyles, modern infrastructure, entertainment options, dining scenes, and outdoor diversions.

Also Read: How Thailand’s Ricult uses deep tech to improve the lives of smallholder farmers

But a closer look at Seattle’s tech scene reveals a surprising dearth of startups and venture capital firms. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a startup and VC scene in Seattle, or that startups and VCs there don’t scale or make money.

But relative to the explosion of activity in Silicon Valley, the level of new venture activity in Seattle is quite muted. Why is this?

I speculate that it is a combination of

• Seattle’s homegrown tech behemoths Amazon and Microsoft (as well as other large tech companies with offices in the city) possessing such an overwhelming and lopsided balance of power relative to smaller tech ventures, which can stifle and smother startups before they can achieve sufficient scale to hold their own against the giants
• a disproportionately large pool of tech talent that actually prefers the comforts, stability, generous compensation, and perks of working for a tech giant. This creates a tech ecosystem where tech activity is overwhelmingly centred around large tech companies, compared to a more balanced split between the tech giants and tech startups.
• Additionally, amongst Seattle’s comparatively smaller startup ecosystem, activity is somewhat more tilted towards business-to-business (B2B) startups, much catering to Seattle’s numerous corporations and even the tech giants themselves, compared to the Bay Area, which harbours a more balanced split between B2B and B2C (business-to-consumer) startups. Seattle’s comparatively stronger focus on B2B startups means that entrepreneurial enterprises may involve longer sales and more measured growth cycles, and less the hyper-kinetic growth of their B2C cousins.

This brings us back to Thailand, and specifically Bangkok. For much of the past decade, Bangkok has seen a steady and gradual build-up of grassroots entrepreneurial activity and venture capital investment, but such growth has been more linear (measured in percentages) rather than the explosive, exponential growth (measured in multiples) that world is characteristic of an ecosystem on a rocket ship trajectory.

A look at Thailand’s startup ecosystem

New venture creation is still largely at the hands of first-time entrepreneurs instead of seasoned serial/repeat entrepreneurs, with some seed funding provided by a very small but growing community of angel investors, and the bulk of institutional seed capital coming from 500 TukTuks, the Thai arm of 500 Global (previously 500 Startups).

Also Read: Angel Investors: leading the charge for startup growth in Thailand

While the most prolific seed-stage investor at over 70 investments across two funds, TukTuks is only one firm that can only cover so much ground, and its aggressive investment strategy can only fund a fraction of startups that have been created in Thailand.

While several regional VC firms have invested in Thai startups, most of them have been at Series A rounds, after startups have validated their products and services and have created a workable monetisation model. At the idea or pre-revenue stage, seed capital remains in desperately short supply.

2016 was a bit of a watershed moment in Thailand’s technology and innovation lifecycle. That was the year where the concept of corporate venture capital caught fire and a plethora of corporate funds was formed.

Thailand’s telecom operators had been operating CVCs and accelerators for years, but with Thailand’s largest banks, industrial conglomerates, property developers, and Agri/food companies all piling into technology and forming innovation and venturing units, Thailand transformed into the one economy in the region where the bulk of the country’s innovation activity and capital was almost exclusively focused on corporate innovation.

This was incrementally beneficial to local startups, as some of these large CVC funds invested in a handful of local Series A and B rounds, but still very little support has flowed to the idea and seed-stage ventures. Corporate innovation activity was directed largely towards in-house transformation and overseas startup investment.

Where this corporate activity did have a tangible impact on the local startup scene was to vacuum up tech talent that was already in short supply. Every tech ecosystem in Southeast Asia screams for evermore tech talent, from developers to salespeople, desperately raising funding rounds so they can outbid and outcompete for talent.

But when corporates form innovation and venture building units, they exacerbate these talent shortages. Cash-poor, ramen-eating entrepreneurs now need to contend with deep-pocketed corporates who hire by the dozens, in effect sucking out the oxygen from startup growth aspirations.

Large, sexy tech operations like Kbank’s Kasikorn Business-Technology Group (KBTG) or SCB’s Digital Ventures are very attractive career options for young, Thai, risk-averse tech workers who want to work on cutting edge technology projects but with the security that a large-cap, the blue-chip corporate can provide, in much the same way that Amazon and Microsoft are sexy-but-safe options for their Seattle counterparts.

Also Read: Flash Express adds US$150M more to its kitty, becomes Thailand’s first unicorn

SCB’s mega-reorganization represents another watershed moment, not just as a signal for how technologically savvy, aggressive, and woke a Thai corporate can become, but also for the tidal wave of forces it potentially unleashes.

As mentioned, banks and corporates across the Thai landscape had their “Oh, crap!” moments in the days that followed the SCBx bombshell, re-examining their own innovation and transformation strategies (and undoubtedly realising that much of it is more hype than real disruption, more sizzle than steak), and trying to figure out how to compete in the tech/innovation/disruption arms race that SCBx has touched off.

Competition for local limited partner capital will heat up tremendously; expect that Krungsri Finovate’s recently-announced startup private equity trust fund and the soon-to-be-formed US$600–800 million CP Group/SCBx venture fund will compete aggressively for corporate investment funds, family office money, and retail investor savings that might otherwise have gone to equity crowdfunding platforms or institutional seed funds like a 3rd 500 TukTuks fund or emerging angel syndicates.

Expect other Thai corporates to announce reactive and copycat innovation and transformation strategies in the coming months, giving birth to the next wave of both corporate venture capital and corporate venture building units.

Thailand has the potential to become a regional tech hub, but one dominated by large tech-oriented corporates rather than a community of startups. Hence, Thailand has a Seattle Problem.

Now, when I use the word “problem”, this is a bit of hyperbole. Seattle isn’t a “problem” in the negative sense, but rather in an unexpected, unintended, or divergent outcome sense. Seattle is a fabulous city (after a recent visit there a few weeks ago, I dare to say it might even be my favourite in North America), and its thriving tech scene, dominated by giants as it is, has led to the robust economic growth and development that has made it one of America’s great cities.

Also Read: How Thai food supply chain startup Freshket weathered through the pandemic

Bangkok is similarly becoming a vibrant, cutting edge tech ecosystem overwhelmingly dominated by large players, but from the standpoint of new venture creation, entrepreneurs looking to launch startups in Thailand could find the local ecosystem a desolate desert dried up of resources, with capital and talent flowing into those large corporates without any trickle-down to smaller, entrepreneurial enterprises.

Not necessarily a bad outcome if we want to emulate Seattle, but not so great if we want to follow Silicon Valley’s path.

This is not to say that it is all doom and gloom if we want to create a vibrant community of startups to balance our growing community of corporates-turned-tech-giants.

I have a few ideas on how our ecosystem might tilt the balance a bit more towards grassroots entrepreneurship, boost new venture creation, and give Thailand’s most embryonic startup Davids a fighting chance against its corporate Goliaths:

• The Thai government needs to wake up and realise that nationalism and patriotism is a detriment to our Thailand 4.0 aspirations. Erecting barriers to foreign entrepreneurs and talent to come into this country doesn’t protect Thai startups, but rather hobbles them. We can either create a hyper-competitive yet vibrant ecosystem of both local- and foreign-founder startups, or a small, static, protected tribe of local startups that make little to no headway against Thailand’s emerging corporate/tech behemoths. I say open the floodgates and welcome all-comers who want to call the Thai startup ecosystem home. This means wholesale immigration reform, including a redesign of current smart visa initiatives, which are great in concept, but whose execution leaves much to be desired.
• Also, the Thai government needs to create attractive and feasible incentives that would spur regional VCs and Thai corporates to invest in the high-risk idea and seed-stage ventures, which could come in the form of co-investment, profit sharing, first loss capital, and tax exemptions, among others. Resources should also be directed towards building, training, and incentivizing a community of angel investors to provide seed capital.
• Government agencies and universities also need to find creative means of providing grant capital and non-monetary services that could substitute for equity seed funding to get new ventures from zero to one and survive and scale just long enough to reach the early-stage Series A investment window that will draw in traditional VC funds. In fact, displacing seed and angel funds with grant and non-monetary resources could create investible startups without the baggage of messy cap tables that so often ward off regional VC from the Thai early-stage investment scene.
• Alternatively, Thailand’s universities could consider establishing university venture capital funds, or UVCs, similar to those that have been set up by universities in the UK or the US. If integrated with university startup accelerators and technology transfer offices, along with the government and universities modernizing intellectual property rules and regulations that would share the spoils of innovative research with contributing faculty and students, we might see a proliferation of entrepreneurial activity coming out at the university (or even high school!) level, baking in entrepreneurial expertise, aptitude, and appetite earlier on in Thai people’s career development, steering them towards more daring career paths instead of just safe, conservative, conventional routes.

Also Read: Conicle bags US$3M Series A to grow its ‘cloud university’ in Thailand

There is an old Chinese curse that is often confused for a blessing: May you live in interesting times. Looking at the trajectory of the Thai tech and startup ecosystem, it is hard to deny that we are living in interesting if not exciting times, but rather than looking at that as either a blessing or curse, we might view that as a challenge or call to action.

Likewise, Thailand having a Seattle “problem” can be either a good thing or a bad thing, but it is best that we look at it as a challenge or divergent outcome if we are looking to grow our ecosystem and calibrate it for new venture creation.

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Singapore-based AI startup Sentient.io today announced that it has raised an undisclosed Series B funding round by Real Tech Fund, a fund managed by Japan-based Real Tech Holdings, making it the third company that the fund has invested in.

The funding will be used to scale its platform and business into the Asia Pacific markets, with a particular focus on fulfilling demands for digital transformation from Japanese corporations.

“Real Tech Holdings understands that building AI applications require a high level of expertise and a long period to master the technology. We believe that our collaboration with them will accelerate innovative solutions and bring these to the market at a quicker pace. This will also help to fulfil our vision of benefiting humanity with augmented intelligence,” said Christopher Yeo, Founder and CEO of Sentient.io, in a press statement.

With this funding round, Sentient.io has raised a total of more than US$6 million in funding since its inception in May 2017.

The company is also in advance talks with another potential investor for the funding round.

Also Read: These Artificial Intelligence startups are proving to be industry game-changers

Previously, the company has raised Series A funding round from A*ccelerate Technologies, the commercialising and venture arm of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR); BEENEXT; Digital Garage Group; and ABC Dream Ventures, the corporate venture capital firm of Asahi Broadcasting Group Holdings Corporation.

Sentient.io builds an AI and data platform of over 60 functions that software developers can “assemble like Lego blocks”, as the company described it. This aims to empower developers to pick from its pre-trained AI microservices to create AI-powered smart applications, and for big data owners such as government or multinational companies to generate new values for their data assets.

This funding round was raised with the background of the market size for voice and image recognition which is expected to reach US$98.8 billion by 2025.

“Sentient.io has developed an easy-to-use platform and UI/UX that allows pre-trained microservices to be integrated into business applications via
API, and is particularly popular in Southeast Asia,” says Daiki Kumamoto, Global Fund Leader and Growth Manager of Real Tech Holdings.

“One particular popular technology has algorithms that can process and hone in on voice activities from training data in order to recognise the unique English accent of Southeast Asia countries such as ‘Singlish’ in Singapore. As a strategic partner and investor, we will support Sentient.io’s entry into the Japanese market and will continue to accelerate collaboration with Japanese companies,” he continued.

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Worth The Health (WTH Foods), a Manila-headquartered alternative protein company, has secured US$1.2 million in seed funding. 

Investors are alt-protein fund Big Idea Ventures and Henry Soesanto, CEO of Filipino F&B company Monde Nissi.

WTH Foods intends to use the proceeds from the round to hone its plant-based products and expand to Singapore, other parts of Southeast Asia and beyond.

In addition, WTH Foods has also launched an R&D facility to enhance the texture and taste of its products, primarily Filipino dishes that target 2.2 million overseas Filipinos.

“Many people love the taste of meat but are looking for healthier and more sustainable options,” said Stephen Co, co-founder and CEO of WTH Foods. “At WTH Foods, we are developing plant alternatives for meat lovers, the same texture and taste of their favourite dishes but with the added health and sustainability benefits.”

Also read: Plant-based protein: Is it really meat?

Founded in 2019 by Co, Carlo Antonio Ng, and Carissa Lim, WTH Foods produces plant-based, ready-to-eat meals that are “kinder to the planet.”

The company replicates the taste, nutritional, textural and functional properties of local and sustainable ingredients, such as microalgae, mung beans, jackfruit and seaweeds, and makes these into plant-based versions.

To date, the startup claims to have developed 60 dishes made by 60 types of plants, bringing in sustainable, healthier meal versions of Filipino classics and Asian favourites.

A new line of products, called Umani, is slated to go live in 2022. It will offer plant-based versions of popular Asian processed meats such as sausages and luncheon meat.

The plant-based meal has become a trendy topic in recent years due to the rising global demand and technological advances in new protein sources such as pea and chickpeas.

As per a report by Markets And Markets, the global plant-based meat market was US$12.1 billion in 2019. It is projected to grow at a CAGR of 15 per cent from 2019 to 2025.

Since 2016, venture capitalists have infused around US$4.2 billion into 363 disclosed deals within this domain, according to Crunchbase data. As of March 2021, VCs had invested in 39 transactions worth US$602 million.

This year, Southeast Asia’s alternative protein startups, such as Malaysia’s Phuture, Sinagpore’s Growthwell Foods, Mohjo, Next Gen, and Float Food, bagged funding.

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Image Credit: WTH Foods

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Admix, a London-based online monetisation platform for in-game advertising, has closed a US$25 million Series B funding round with participation from Asia-focussed VC firm Rocket Capital.

Elefund, Force Over Mass, DIP Capital, Notion Capital, Speedinvest, Colopl Next, Sure Valley Ventures, and Sidedoor Ventures, besides London-based growth investors Kuvi Capital and unnamed angels from the gaming industry, also joined.

This funding will enable Admix to expand to the Asia Pacific, the fastest-growing e-sports and gaming market. Asia accounts for more than 50 per cent of the global gaming audience, while monetisation is in its infancy.

Also read: Metaverse is around the corner and you should play a role in it

Founded in 2018, Admix provides a system that uses non-intrusive product advertisement placements embedded into video games, creating a better experience for players, brands, artists, and marketers.

Its platform utilises drag-and-drop software development kits (SDKs) for game publishers to incorporate into their games. It also assists advertisers to get access to the gaming world, independently certified measurement, and data reporting.

To enable creators to make money from their content, the startup plans to iterate on its proprietary rendering technology, which can digitally inject complex 2D or 3D constructions into any 3D environment with little influence on virtual world engine performance.

So far, Admix claims to have collaborated with over 500 advertisers worldwide to monetise more than 300 gaming and virtual-world experiences.

The next phase of the product development into a set of monetisation tools for the creator economy in the metaverse will also have a wide application in the Asian market, which is one of the early adopters of NFT and metaverse gaming.

Rocket Capital is an early-stage VC fund investing in new media technology startups. It helps its portfolio companies to scale and expand into new regions, with a specific focus on Asia.

The fund has offices in Manila and Amsterdam.

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Image Credit: Admix

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Love, Bonito — an omnichannel womenswear brand based in Singapore — has announced the closing of its US$50 million Series C investment round.

Chinese VC firm Primavera Capital Group, an investor in Alibaba and ByteDance, led this round. Adastria (a public-listed Japanese retail giant) and Ondine Capital (China) also joined.

In 2018, Love, Bonito had raised US$13 million from investors led by Japanese comparison shopping site Kakaku.com.  Openspace Ventures is also an investor in the startup.

Also Read: Be authentic in crowded industries says Love, Bonito Co-founder Rachel Lim

The new capital will enable the brand to bolster its efforts in existing omnichannel markets and supercharge its international expansion in markets, including Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines and the US. It is also exploring categories outside of fashion as part of its plan to create a female ecosystem.

The company will also double down efforts within markets such as Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia that have an omnichannel presence. The brand will expand its omnichannel and new business verticals in Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, and the US.

Launched in 2010, Love, Bonito has since expanded into ten markets. They include Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Cambodia in Southeast Asia; Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia in East Asia; and the US.

To date, the brand claims it has achieved over 120 per cent growth y-o-y in international markets and 208 per cent growth for its online sales. It believes the Asian diaspora communities have extremely high potential, especially in the US, where online revenue growth exceeded 1,200 per cent y-o-y as of September 2021.

It also plans to increase offerings within the fashion line to include active apparel and accessories. In addition, it will look to venture into a content platform (LiBrary) and explore new categories (LaB), including wellness.

Also Read: Singapore’s Love, Bonito raises US$13M to expand its online womenswear business in APAC

“We have built a strong foundation in understanding the everyday Asian woman to be pre-emptive in catering to her needs,” said Dione Song, CEO of Love, Bonito. “We are primed to become a true life partner for our community of women, in and beyond fashion. We have yet to see a womenswear brand from the region stand proud on the world stage amongst industry heavyweights. We want to be the first brand to achieve that by being purpose-driven, community-focused and innovative.

In the next phase of its growth, Love, Bonito aims to create a thoughtful and well-rounded female ecosystem, supporting different facets of women’s needs within Asian countries and reaching further into the Asian diaspora communities across the globe.

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In the past year, I have become a little obsessed with Web 3.0. The pace of growth is so fast that changes take place daily.

People worldwide are pivoting careers. The most talented professionals join the decentralised web movement because of a) their ideology and b) the underlying technology.

While Web 2.0 and software as we know it are still eating the world and bearing fruit, we are at the threshold of the following significant paradigm shift in internet applications– Web 3.0.

It isn’t easy for non-tech folks like me to understand the impact Web 3.0 will have. I spent a lot of time reading and following intelligent people to start understanding the basics.

I will be writing a series of essays on the topic to accelerate my learning. Hopefully, helping other people understand what’s going on, too—starting with this one.

Web 1.0

In Web 1.0, we discovered the internet through dial-up modems, which helped us access static web pages. By today’s standards, Web 1.0 was a laughable experience.

I still remember how during my childhood, an average movie took three days to download. The internet was slow, expensive, and had a terrible user experience.

Also Read: Creating a trusted internet with augmented whitelisting

Yet, the fact that we could share information so easily with pretty much the entire world had an incredible impact on our progress. Before the internet, we relied on printed books. We could spread information only at the speed of physical distribution.

Access to information was slow, gated, and not even possible in some parts of the world. For example, growing up in the suburbs of Bulgaria’s capital city Sofia, I had access only to three sources of information a) books at home, b) what the local school forced me to study, c) the two libraries in my neighbourhood.

With the arrival of Web 1.0, information exchange became possible like never before. I could download books and content from all over the world, which had a lasting impact on my life. In turn, the access to more and better content led me to make some contrarian choices at the time.

While my family’s expectations boiled down to getting a stable job, I moved abroad for studies. Then I travelled half the world, even though I never met anyone who travelled to that extent in my childhood. Later, I was the first person ever to start a business in my family.

Making such choices and reaping the benefits that followed would not have been possible without access to a wide variety of content written by other like-minded people.

“The ”World Wide Web” was just a set of static websites with a load of information and no interactive content. It was connecting meant dialling up through rickety modems and blocking anyone in the house from using the phone.

“It was the web of AOL chat rooms and MSN messenger, of AltaVista and AAskedJeeves. It was maddeningly slow. Streaming videos and music? Forget it. Downloading a song would take at least a day.”

In 2021, the memory of slow internet and crappy static websites has gradually faded away. We have come a long way since. Today, we refer to the internet as Web 2.0.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is everything we take for granted, like faster internet speed, interactive content, social, mobile, cloud, and user-generated content.

Also Read: Tackling misinformation and creating a safer internet through blockchain amidst Asia’s lockdowns

Some argue that the rise of Web 2.0 was driven by three core innovations: mobile, social, and cloud.

The iPhone in 2007 enabled mobile internet access on the go. We moved from using the internet for just a few hours a day to an “always connected” mode. Our phones gave us access to web browsers and mobile apps throughout the day.

In ~2004, companies such as Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn transformed brought the next wave of innovations. Changing the internet from a dark and anonymous place to what it is today.

Social networks encourage good user behaviour. In the process, such platforms enabled content generation, recommendations, referrals and connected the world.

Last but not least, web 2.0 brought the cloud. The rise of cloud computing decreased the costs of starting new businesses considerably. Suddenly entrepreneurs did not need to invest heavily into servers, hardware, and maintenance.

Instead, companies such as AWS launched data centres worldwide. They allowed businesses to shift from buying and maintaining their infrastructure to renting storage, computing power, and other relevant resources at low costs.

In turn, the lower costs of starting a business unleashed innovation like never before. Simply put, Web 2.0 enabled founders to build prototypes and run experiments while keeping the costs down.

Thanks to all that innovation, more and more people have joined the internet. The UN estimated that internet users have increased from 1.1 billion to 4 billion between 2005 and 2019.

Also Read: New-age internet platforms are breeding grounds for financial crimes. Here’s how to tackle them

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ITU estimates that at the end of 2019, a bit more than 51 per cent of the global population, or 4 billion people, are using the internet.​​​

In the process, we generated data like never before in human history. Companies realised how personal information has immense value.

Big tech brands such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google started collecting all that information. Everyone’s identities, browsing habits, searches, and online shopping information were sold to whoever could pay the most.

Web 2.0 was all about improving the experience of browsing the internet, which resulted in the centralisation of data, abundant connectivity, and new opportunities. While that was great for education and wealth creation, some downsides were inevitable.

The most significant problem is consolidating too much power in the hands of big tech companies, which leads to giving up on privacy. So this begs the question, how will the web adapt, and what’s next?

The next wave of the internet will be all about decentralisation and privacy. Everyone’s information will be returned.

Also Read: What is web 3.0 and why should you care?

Web 2.0 centralised all the data in the hands of a few large organisations with questionable motives. Web 3.0 is working towards decentralising information and bringing back privacy.

Web 3.0 boils down to a few core concepts: open, trustless, and permissionless networks.

• Open: web 3.0 is built on the blockchain, most often from open-source software by a community that operates transparently.
• Trustless: because there is no need for third parties to interfere. They are eliminating slow transactions and higher rates because of the third-party cuts. The blockchain enables participants to interact publicly or privately through intelligent contracts.
• Permissionless: as there is no need for authorisation from governing bodies.

While Web 2.0 democratised many power structures and created new opportunities, the economic engine is primarily privatised and monopolised. Facebook, Uber and Airbnb have made private networks for public infrastructure, which they dominate.

Web 3.0 is the antithesis of this; it’s’ about multiple profit centres sharing value across an open network.

When I speak of blockchain, I do not refer only to Bitcoin. Some folks argue it triggered the development of Web 3.0 as a whole.

Yet, for the sake of this essay, I do not want to focus on Bitcoin. Instead, I am referring to an architecture of blockchains with tokens, aka crypto networks.

Also Read: Building a privacy-first internet: How developers and enterprises can adapt to the new privacy normal

It could be generalised to a lot of different applications like Solana. That’s why let’s use the following definition of blockchain by Chris Dixon:

Blockchain: A virtual computer that runs on top of a network of physical computers that provides strong, auditable, game-theoretic guarantees that the code it runs will continue to operate as designed.

In traditional applications, the organisation running the business may decide to change how the product works. With blockchains, you need a critical mass of independent users to change their minds collectively for that to happen. Hence why, “guarantees that the code it runs will continue to operate as designed.”

To illustrate that, let’s dive deeper and take a look at the past ten years of Web 3.0’s’ history. To truly grasp the development in the space, we need to have context around all relevant activities. The more context we have, the easier it is to understand the true potential of Web 3.0.

Unfortunately, economic opportunities inevitably bring some bad players. In turn, the sentiment in some communities is that crypto is a bubble. Many people believe that there is no real value to those assets, and the bubble will pop sooner or later.

Like any other new technology, crypto develops in cycles. Most people got into crypto early on because the price was very attractive; think of Bitcoin in 2011.

Also Read: Understanding how the internet has changed business with Greg Zen

The attractive price prompted early adopters to start reading about blockchain. The combination of promising tech and attractive prices hooks you further. Over time that interest converts into new ideas, which naturally results in startups.

I like the following chart because it tracks growth across different activities. While token prices are essential, there is a lot more happening in the space. To truly understand why Web 3.0 is exciting, you need to consider growth in price, developer, startup, and social media activity.

It turns out there is a similar level of activity taking place across all those dimensions, which results in a steady and gradual growth until we reach the third wave of crypto in early 2016. At about that time, we saw exponential growth across all dimensions mentioned above.

Also Read: How the spatial web is changing the internet as we know it

There was a lot of initial coin offering (ICO) activity in that period. Unfortunately, many ICOs were led by bad players. In turn, things got a bit quiet after that up until COVID took place.

Now, we see growth in developer, startup, and social media activity once again. In a nutshell, throughout the past decade, we have seen consistent growth.

Today we are seeing the first attempts of building decentralised versions of Web 2.0 popular applications. That combines the utility of tools like Spotify while adding crypto back-end power.

In simple terms, Web 3.0 allows you to create solutions that pay people to use them through tokens. Imagine if all players in the Airbnb ecosystem could get financial incentives. Thus, get a piece of the wealth the platform created?

Today, only the founders, investors, and employees are sharing the upside. Tomorrow, we can reward the hosts, guests, and all sorts of partners too. Web 3.0 aligns incentives like never before while bringing back privacy.

Just as Web 2.0 didn’t automatically extinguish Web 1.0 (still gathering dust around some parts of the internet), the move to 3.0 will take time and integration with existing online systems.

The wheels have already been set in motion, and the train has left the station. Web 3.0 is a revolution in action; we are past the point of no return.

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Jiwon Moon and Changseong Ho, founders of US-based video streaming company Viki, has launched a venture builder to invest in Southeast Asia’sAsia’s startups.

TheVentures Singapore (TVSG) will invest in e-commerce, community, fintech, O2O, biotech, healthcare, foodtech and sustainability.

“We aim to help over 100 high-growth startups incorporate or relocate to Singapore within the next five years,” said Changseong Ho, co-founder of TVSG.

Leveraging Singapore as the base camp, TVSG will create a new incubation system to strengthen early-stage, high-growth tech startups in terms of their intellectual properties, business models, and global expansion strategies.

“The country [Singapore] is well positioned with an ecosystem that is driven by finance and innovation, which helps to facilitate the cross-pollination of businesses and technologies internationally,” said Jiwon Moon, co-founder of TVSG.

The duo’s objective is to replicate the success of TheVentures in South Korea, which is backed by blue-chip LPs and investors, including Kakao, NCSoft and Com2Us. Since 2014, the firm has taken stakes in over 100 startups and possesses a portfolio value exceeding US$1 billion.

Also read: 5 ways for venture builders to reduce startup failures

Ho and Moon founded Viki in Silicon Valley when they were studying at Harvard and Stanford. The startup was later acquired by Rakuten for a reported US$200 million in 2013, after six years of operations.

Besides TVSG, the duo also runs Impact Collective, a community-driven impact investment programme aiming to evaluate the social impact of startups.

Heading forward, Moon and Ho unveil their plans to expand Community Alliance Network (CAN), a SaaS tool for entrepreneurs without an in-house tech team, and CANnovate, a SaaS-powered startup incubation programme targeted at entrepreneurs in the community, education, and commerce sectors.

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As Malcom X once said, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” This statement rings true especially for today’s interconnected globe, where the education system has to prepare learners for the modern world challenges.

In the global educational community, every day, new opportunities present themselves in the form of tech tools, communication channels and new learning approaches. Despite this, adoption tends to be slow, and usage is lacklustre. 

Education systems cannot afford to fall behind, especially when we consider the fast-paced needs of the modern world. However, to be better at delivering knowledge, development, and training, educators need to upgrade their practices first.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came, however, there was a silver lining. Amidst the school closures and social distancing, edutech was finally given a chance to thrive.

Lack of right development for educators

Teachers are at the heart of a robust education system. These are the individuals that possess the skills and knowledge to shape the next generation. However, what happens when teachers are not given the optimal environment to transfer knowledge? Or when qualified educators leave the system due to a lack of support?

On the surface, it appears that teachers have it all. They are given sufficient training, a decent starting salary, and usual career benefits. Diving deeper, various issues plague the teaching workforce, threatening classrooms across the globe.

Also Read: Edutech is surging, but here are the 3 issues it is facing

Particularly in Asia, countries like Singapore are celebrated for a stellar quality of education. However, a closer look will reveal that teachers in Singapore work 46 hours on average a week, seven hours higher than the global average.

In Japan, teachers typically clock in 56 hours a week. These nations rank seventh and first place in the list, joining their counterparts globally, such as Canada, Alberta and Kazakhstan.

When you rank these results against the Best Education System in the World Index, Singapore and Japan aren’t even in the Top 10.

This brings about the worrying question: are we overworking our teachers for no reason?

It’s important to create support systems educators can turn to if they want to improve the quality of their work and deal with current challenges.

The teaching workforce, like their peers in other industries, is susceptible to burnout and overworking stress. Surely there must be a way to nurture good teachers by giving them the right development opportunities.

It’s common to hear educators in some countries who have been drawing the same salary since they started years ago and depend on passive income to survive.

This is rather astonishing since it significantly impacts the quality of their jobs in the day-to-day.

Also Read: ‘Education is not a content business but a human one’: Nas Academy’s Nuseir Yassin

The need for tech solutions

At the same time, the whole educational industry is falling behind in terms of technology. There are a lot of barriers that need to be overcome.

Given that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the edutech adoption, the rapid influx of new tools and solutions may have come as a surprise to many who have not had the time to adapt to the new world.

Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic showed these weaknesses. Almost overnight, educators had to replicate the “chalk and talk” online without knowing the right tools or methodology. 

Pre-pandemic, the ASEAN region did not see much LMS success. Perhaps this is since they lacked scalability, were cost-inefficient and only in English. There is a severe lack of tech infrastructure orientation in this industry.

Especially in developing Asia, where lessons were conducted in their native language, it seemed unnecessary to invest in an LMS at all. These shortfalls were brought over when the pandemic happened, which is why there is a significant disparity in the impact of COVID-19 on education across Asia and even the rest of the world.

Suddenly, everyone wanted in on the edutech market. Promising new players were coming up almost every month, hoping to bank in on the initial edutech surge. Schools, colleges, and other educational institutions were getting learning management systems at a low price to shift their efforts online.

The whole LMS market in the Asia Pacific market grew fast, driven by several factors. Still, we found ourselves in conversations with teachers. We found that even though the schools had invested in LMS platforms and several other edutech apps to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, most of the teachers still preferred to use video conferencing systems like Zoom or Google Meet.

But this teaching method had its inherent problems – for starters, not all students had digital devices or stable internet connections. The ones who did may or may not be engaged through the lesson, and there was no realistic way to find this out.

Also Read: Why customer education plays an important role in Wise’s international expansion plan

Just because teachers started teaching online using various learning management systems, it didn’t mean that all the challenges had just disappeared. There’s still a long way to go in perfecting the educational systems, support, and mechanisms. 

A new approach for resolving the teaching crisis

Beyond every groundbreaking technology, there lies a need to make it valuable and usable to the average person.

We found that most teachers had never received any relevant training on designing engaging courses for their learners using digital tools. As such, video conferencing apps were the channel of choice, since it was after all, the most usable. 

Again, teachers didn’t have the suitable development courses available to them to overcome these obstacles. In other words, the teachers didn’t know where to turn.

There was little to no support teachers could get to help them transition into teaching online and improve their work quality. The lack of teaching development will naturally lead to poor results with students.

These issues weren’t limited to SEA. They were a global problem. That’s why Akadasia focused on the worldwide issue with Freejoo.

The goal was to create a digital ecosystem that would support educators globally and give them the knowledge, resources, and connections they need. 

Through Freejoo’s Digital Learning Community, teachers can instantly access a wide range of professional development courses that help them improve their teaching skills, create more engaging online courses, and collaborate with their peers on various projects. 

Over 60 per cent of teachers globally feel that they have limited access to relevant and valuable development courses to help them do their jobs in the 21st century.

Also Read: SMU’s Protégé Ventures as a catalyst for entrepreneurial education

The problem is that teachers can communicate with their friends on mobile devices but can’t handle holding e-learning courses in the same manner.  

To help people keep teaching, we need to support them and improve their work environments. More than ever, teachers need to be nurtured and provided with a community that can help them share experiences and practices of working online. 

On top of that, they need to stay relevant in the job market by acquiring new skills. That’s why development is essential to keep up with the latest e-learning practices and technologies.  Ultimately, this will help increase their salaries and bring in more people towards careers in education. 

The pilot programme started in 2020, and by September 2021, it was used by more than 130,000 teachers from 36 countries. The platform has been growing at a rate of around 8,000 users per month. On top of that, over 18,000 teachers were on the waitlist before the launch.

Education needs a significant change for the future

We cannot divorce the classroom setting from the increasingly globalised and complex world that it exists in. If what students need to learn goes beyond rote, then there needs to be a simultaneous shift in teacher pedagogy.

All industries are working on adding innovative solutions and digitising various processes. It’s essential in a field where professionals and organisations work directly with their clients or, in this case, students.

As edutech rises to the forefront of education, it needs to do more to empower and support educators by first recognising the notion of teachers as learners. In other words – education needs to enter the 21st century. 

There shouldn’t be a gap between tech solutions and the teachers’ ability to use those technologies to deliver knowledge through different mediums in a digital-led generation. 

Also Read: 1 tech, 4 ways: How blockchain disrupts the education sector

Online learning is here to stay, even after the pandemic. Organisations and individuals have invested a lot in setting up digital environments for their students to thrive.

On top of that, 73 per cent of students say that they would like to continue with their online courses even after the pandemic has ended. Hence, it is essential to empower educators everywhere on a war footing.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

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Sipher, a blockchain-powered gaming studio in Vietnam, has completed its US$6.8 million seed round of financing, co-led by Arrington Capital, Hashed and Konvoy Ventures.

Also participated in the round are Defiance Capital, Signum Capital, Dragonfly Capital, CMT Digital, BITKRAFT Ventures, Delphi Digital, Alameda Research, Fenbushi Capital, Sfermion, Hyperchain, GBV, Kyber Network, Coin98 Ventures, YGG and Merit Circle.

Angels, including Holly Liu (Kabam), Kun Gao (Crunchy Roll) and Alex Svanevik (Nansen.ai), also joined the round.

Also Read: Metaverse is around the corner and you should play a role in it

Sipher will utilise the money to develop its upcoming World of Sipheria game and build the tools needed to create “compelling, fun and engaging gaming experiences” based on blockchain technology.

Founded by prominent Vietnamese entrepreneur Nguyen Trung Tin (CEO), Sipher is on a mission to unify state-of-the-art blockchain tech, artwork, storytelling, multiplayer gaming with decentralised financial technologies.

Its vision is to create an expansive world that attracts and keeps the player base engaged for years to come as new worlds, characters and factions are introduced.

Sipher intends to create an ecosystem where people can play for fun while earning rewards for their time spent in-game. It also provides the community with ownership of in-game assets, which directly contributes to the growth and success of the gaming industry.

“First and foremost, games are meant to be fun,” Tin said. “They are meant to be social. They are meant to invigorate, excite, and bring people together to enjoy time spent with each other for a common purpose. This is true for the most classic and for the most futuristic of games. This is what makes games the most powerful medium for sharing and discovering amazing moments together.”

Jason Chapman of Konvoy Ventures noted: “Gaming has always been home to creators, thinkers, and competitors, and it is time that we see games show their communities financial loyalty. More than three billion people are playing games across the globe, and less than 0.1 per cent of gamers are experiencing direct profit sharing. Sipher is renegotiating what players should expect from their games and is here to bring joy to their players both through entertainment and financial freedom.”

Sipher’s Discord community has over 60,000 members. Its first playable NFT character, Sipherian Surge, is available for trading and secondary purchase on OpenSea.

Sipher will also launch the playable MVP of the first gaming experience in the World of Sipheria. The experience will introduce a cooperative dungeon game mode that onboards new waves of native and non-native blockchain users. This is done through beautiful design and graphics, compelling gameplay, expansive world lore hidden with secrets to be discovered and the ability to take part in the game economy.

Also Read: a16z leads Axie Infinity parent Sky Mavis’s US$152M Series B round

It is also preparing to release its second collection called the Sipherian Flash.

Michael Arrington of Arrington Capital stated: “Sipher builds on innovative P2E economics while leveraging both the spirit of crypto culture and mainstream gaming. The art blends a futuristic world of sci-fi and captivating animals; it is internet-native and inspiring. We believe that Metaverse gaming will unlock a new economic frontier where users can reap the rewards of their time and creativity, and we fundamentally believe in the passion and energy behind Tin and his team.”

Early this month, another Vietnamese game studio Sky Mavis raised US$152 million in a Series B financing round led by US-based VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Sky Mavis is the company behind the popular NFT-based game Axie Infinity, which has been developed on the play-to-earn concept for people to play, live, work and earn within virtual worlds. Axie Infinity enables players to breed, battle, and trade digital pets called Axie.

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Image Credit: Sipher

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Bug bounty and security services provider Immunefi today announced a US$5.5 million funding round from a list of investors that included Blueprint Forest, Electric Capital, Framework Ventures, Bitscale Capital, P2P Capital, IDEO Colab, The LAO, BR Capital, 3rd Prime Ventures, North Island Ventures, and other individual investors.

The company plans to continue acquiring cutting edge security tech and building the “most elite” emergency response team in the industry with the new funding.

They are especially interested in building vulnerability prediction technology and hacker tooling that makes it easier and easier to find vulnerabilities, according to a spokesperson.

Singapore-based Immunefi is a bug bounty platform for smart contracts and crypto projects. It enables security researchers to review code, disclose vulnerabilities, and get paid for it while allowing companies to secure their projects with top security talent.

Immunefi said it was the first on the market to introduce a scaling bug bounty standard, meaning rewards grow accordingly with the severity of an exploit and the volume of funds at risk. By far, it has paid well over US$7.5 million in bounties to whitehat hackers.

Also Read: Why Malaysia is quickly becoming a cybersecurity hub for the rest of the world

The company was built with the background of rising concerns for security in DeFi protocols.

In a contributed post to e27, Antony Ma, CEO at Hoplite, wrote about the current “arms race” of the cybersecurity industry.

“Cybersecurity services providers and products are increasing their efforts in detecting new attacks (called zero-day vulnerability exploitations) … At the same time, cybercriminals are finding unheard ways to exploit networks. So far, ransomware gangs are winning – now is the time to invent or re-think if the current detection-only methodology is working,” he said.

“In 2020, hackers stole about US$120 million from DeFi protocols in 15 separate attacks. As of the midpoint of this year, there have been at least 23 attacks, netting hackers more than US$1.7 billion in value. The statistics prove security practices are becoming more important than ever, and the Immunefi team uses its expertise to ensure the safety of DeFi projects,” Immunefi said in a press statement.

“DeFi is unique because vulnerabilities in code represent a possibility of a direct loss of users’ money … Bug bounty programmes are open invitations to security researchers to find those vulnerabilities in exchange for a reward, and have proved one of the most effective ways to deal with critical security holes. We believe that by helping launch such programmes on Immunefi, we contribute not only to protecting DeFi projects for today, but also to shaping the tech industry for the future,” says Mitchell Amador, Founder and CEO of Immunefi.

Also Read: Privy raises US$17.5M in Series B to further expands its IT, security infrastructure

Synthetix, Chainlink, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, Bancor, Cream Finance, Compound, and Alchemix are examples of projects that have been using Immunefi to ensure their safety.

Some case studies that the company provided included Belt Finance’s US$1 million payment to a whitehat hacker who discovered a critical vulnerability in the protocol which put more than US$10 million of capital at risk.

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