Analyse Podcast

e-Conomy SEA 2026: Inside Southeast Asia's AI Economy with Nitin Gajria, Florian Hoppe & Cassie Wu

Bernard Leong — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:28:23 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, this marks the 11th year of the e-Conomy SEA report with Nitin Gajria, Managing Director, Southeast Asia & South Asia Frontier Markets, Google; Florian Hoppe, Partner at Bain & Company; and Cassie Wu, Director of Investments, Asia Pacific (excluding China and India), Temasek. Generative AI reached 240 million users, or 60% of the working population, in three years — a milestone the Internet took ten years to hit. Yet per capita token usage is one-tenth of the US, with the gap almost entirely in enterprises outside Singapore and Malaysia. The panel shows AI-assisted shopping journeys lifting average order value by 75%, sets four tests for durable AI companies in Southeast Asia, and argues the region's diversity is its moat as Southeast Asia enters its AI decade.

"62% of users in Southeast Asia feel more positively about AI this year than they did last year ... We're stepping into the AI decade for Southeast Asia. And we're just at the ground floor of that. So it's going to be fascinating to watch how the technology arc plays out."" - Nitin Gajria

"In Southeast Asia, I think we should use our diversity to our advantage. Our diversity is a feature, not a bug. You know, in our survey we say 70% of local usage is in local languages, that's just one reflection of that. Different culture, different cultural context, consumer preferences, user behaviors, also enterprise behaviors. And if you actually are able to build deep embedded local partnerships to have those contacts and to build tailored products for those verticals and users, I think that's important." - Cassie Wu

"We've consistently seen a picture of double-digit growth in the mid to high teens, even in countries and markets where wouldn't have expected this. E-commerce is up 17 to 18% if I quote correctly. Digital media and the whole kind of digital ad space up above 20%. Digital financial services in many pockets, like lending, is up above 20% as well." - Florian Hoppe

Profiles:

Nitin Gajria, Managing Director, Southeast Asia & South Asia Frontier Markets, Google

Florian Hoppe, Partner at Bain & Company

Cassie Wu, Director, Southeast Asia at Temasek

e-Conomy SEA Report 2026: https://economysea.withgoogle.com/

Episode Highlights:[00:00] Quotes of the Day [01:46] Introducing the e-Conomy SEA 2026 panel[05:10] Was Southeast Asia the most AI-curious region?[07:28] 17% growth and the path to US$1 trillion[08:24] AI integrations lift e-commerce conversions by 10%[10:08] How generative AI transforms the marketplace seller workflow[12:16] Tokenomics: Southeast Asia at one-tenth of US usage[15:42] AI makes purchase journeys richer, not shorter[18:10] AI reshuffles the cards for digital platforms[19:14] Broader investor participation in the AI economy[22:13] Two AI cohorts emerge across Southeast Asia[24:11] Sector performance and the digital economy's resilience[26:41] Who owns the customer when AI starts the journey?[27:22] Trust but verify: AI, search and Reddit[30:12] Digital advertising grows 20%+ and diversifies[32:26] Who is accountable when an agent buys wrongly?[33:13] AI applications take 80% of private funding[34:00] Four tests for a durable AI company[37:18] How Southeast Asian firms outcompete global AI providers[41:56] Is power the binding constraint on compute?[45:09] Pragmatic optimism defines Southeast Asian AI users[48:46] Beyond data centres: semiconductors and advanced packaging[50:40] Indicators to watch for next year's report[52:32] The ground floor of Southeast Asia's AI decade[53:21] Late-stage liquidity and IPO pipelines[54:19] Closing

Mapping the China AI Ecosystem with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 06:16:26 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Rui Ma, founder of TechBuzz China, returns to examine China's AI ecosystem on its own terms rather than as a horse race with Silicon Valley. She maps the atlas of China's AI labs by strategy, from DeepSeek's "cost curve rebels"; to the big-tech war over office agents, and explains why cheap intelligence comes from brutal domestic competition rather than an export plan. Rui Ma unpack why robotics enjoys a homegrown market that pure AI lacks, why robot hardware and software must co-evolve, and how China prices insurance for brain-computer interfaces before the devices ship. Last but not least, she shows how Chinese municipalities now act as startup service providers, raising the floor for everyone while letting markets pick the winners.

"The [Chinese] government's not looking to build a multi-trillion dollar AI behemoth. The government is like, 'What is the best outcome for my society?'The best outcome is that the best technology survives. I don't want it to go bankrupt, right, and die too early. But the best technology survives and it is deployed at scale using my own whatever self-sufficient tech stack. It is not subject to foreign interference and it is also increasingly cheaper, right ..." - Rui Ma, Creator of Tech Buzz China

Profile: Rui Ma, Creator of Tech Buzz China

Substack: https://techbuzzchina.substack.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruima/

Episode Highlights: [00:00] Quote of the Day by Rui Ma from TechBuzz China[00:45] Introduction: Rui Ma from Tech Buzz China [01:50] When intelligence becomes too cheap to meter[04:50] TechBuzz China pivots from e-commerce to AI and robotics[08:15] The biggest change since 2023: Chinese tech confidence[08:55] Independent labs versus big-tech labs in China[09:45] Distribution, cloud, and core business: why everyone builds models[11:05] Mapping China's AI labs by strategy, not benchmarks[12:05] DeepSeek as the "cost curve rebels"[12:45] Z AI, Moonshot and MiniMax: three distinct bets[14:35] The office agent war for China's enterprise software[18:15] The outdated Western belief about Chinese AI[20:25] Censorship and data fears versus real workflows[21:45] Brutal competition or deliberate export strategy?[25:05] Collapsing margins: where does the profit pool go?[27:05] Beijing optimises for society, not an AI behemoth[27:55] Why "China exporting tokens" is overblown[29:15] Investment decoupled, supply chains still entangled[31:05] China measures AI progress at the system level[35:05] Chinese investors want pilots; US investors want breakthroughs[39:55] Huawei's supercluster: cluster-to-cluster, not chip-to-chip[41:55] Embodied AI and China's ageing population[44:15] Brain-computer interfaces with insurance priced in advance[46:15] China's AI legislation is more advanced than assumed[47:25] What proves robots can cross the chasm?[50:05] AGVs and cleaning robots are effectively solved[51:15] The bottleneck: robot body, brain or data?[52:05] Why hardware and software must co-evolve[53:15] Why China may hold the robotics advantage[54:45] Chinese municipalities as startup service providers[56:45] Governments that drag decision-makers into meetings[58:05] Infrastructure building as a public service[59:15] Raising the floor, not king-making[60:25] Rui Ma's recommendation: homeschooling with AI and agents

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive". G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

China AI: From Challenger to Export Industry Globally with Jon Russell

Bernard Leong — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 19:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Jon Russell from Asia Tech Review and executive director at Ellerton & Co., returns to trace how Chinese AI crossed from technological challenger into a commercial industry and a geopolitical export model. He unpacks the first public earnings from Z.ai and MiniMax, where revenue growth above 300% still cannot explain the valuations, and why cutthroat domestic competition makes international expansion existential for Chinese labs. Bernard and Jon examine the hidden on-premises market, the sovereignty stacks forming in Europe and Asia, why the copying narrative around distillation collapses under scrutiny, and China's remaining bottleneck in lithography. Jon closes on what he calls the dome: an AI ecosystem now self-sufficient from technology through to capital.

"The really impressive thing isn't just that China's building its own tech stack. It's that—it's so integrated. Companies are going public, they're raising money. It's entirely self-sufficient from the technology to the financing side too, right? So I think that's the really crazy bit for me. It's not like they have to build these companies and at some point they have to go public in America, right? They can do this all now in China and Hong Kong. But that's the ultimate thing, right? Capital is what these companies need, and if they can also get that from China too, then that completes the system. So it's almost like a dome has now got on top, right? Everything's in there." - Jon Russell

Profile: Jon Russell from Asia Tech Review and executive director at Ellerton & Co

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmarussell/

Newsletter: https://www.asiatechreview.com/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Jon Russell
[01:30] Introduction: Jon Russell
[04:00] Chinese CEOs step onto the stage themselves
[06:30] Has China AI crossed from challenger to industry?
[07:00] Private AI valuations beyond anything ever seen
[09:15] Z.ai revenue growth above 300%
[10:30] Valuations conventional ratios cannot justify
[11:00] Moonshot postpones its IPO, waiting for Anthropic
[13:15] Cloud is marketing, on-premises is the real market
[16:00] Why most AI revenue stays out of public view
[17:45] Segmenting China AI companies from BAT to Upstarts
[19:45] First time the world cares about a Chinese model release
[21:15] The belief about Chinese AI the Bay Area gets wrong
[23:45] Qwen's problem: huge adoption, tiny revenue
[25:15] Chinese models undercutting US margins tenfold
[26:00] Not the dotcom bubble — the railway bubble
[29:30] Distillation, old books, and the irony of the copying claim
[33:30] AI as the next iteration of One Belt One Road
[35:30] Why Anthropic prioritises Japan, Korea and Australia
[35:45] The shift to ChatGPT Enterprise across the region
[37:00] Switching to Qwen and DeepSeek at one-tenth the cost
[38:15] Distribution is the real piece
[42:45] The surprise: enterprises run both Claude and ChatGPT
[45:30] Where is China's real bottleneck in the AI stack?
[47:15] China is not a monolithic organisation
[48:30] Lithography and ASML remain the hardest component
[50:45] The dome closes over the Chinese AI ecosystem
[51:00] The bigger prize: default infrastructure for the Global South
[53:00] Belt and Road, Central Asian rail, and long-horizon returns
[55:45] Most of the world cannot afford frontier models
[57:00] Closing

Simular AI and Computer Use is the Final Frontier in AI with Ang Li

Bernard Leong — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 05:32:39 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Ang Li, CEO and co-founder of Simular and previously a research scientist at Google DeepMind, joins us to explore why computer use is the last mile to AGI. Ang traces his path from studying catastrophic forgetting and continual learning at DeepMind to founding a company on a single conviction: models break in production because the data distribution never stops moving, and the only place to close that loop is the real world. He explains why the chatbot metaphor misleads enterprise buyers, why the right unit of measurement is tokens per task rather than price per token, and how the power law of practice should make an agent cheaper every time it repeats the same work. He separates capability from reliability through pass@k and pass^k, argues that deterministic work belongs in code rather than in a model, and makes the case that frontier labs exist to sell tokens while Simular exists to remove them. Last but not least, Ang shares his test for AGI — one you feel rather than see — and what it will take to bring autonomous work down to the cost of water.

"So when I go to the gym, [doing] the same workout everyday, as I do this more and more, more reps, more sets, I don't even need to think. It's called muscle memory. I just do the same in a standard way, my consumption or my tokens in my brain dramatically drops. And there's a term describing this behavior in human cognition called 'the Power Law of Practice'. So that's the whole idea. Do we see power law practice in AI agents? We don't have that yet."

Profile: Ang Li, CEO and co-founder of Simular AI

X: https://x.com/angli_ai

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angli-ai/

Simular AI: https://simular.ai

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Ang Li from Simular
[01:09] Why AGI arrives through the mouse and keyboard
[02:27] Legacy systems with no APIs block automation
[03:45] Computer use is the last mile
[04:05] One device, a hundred agents in the cloud
[05:51] The gap between research and production
[07:45] The day Covid became a dominant search keyword
[08:13] Continual learning over evolving distributions
[09:21] Catastrophic forgetting remains unsolved
[10:11] Why the learning loop requires a product
[11:04] Why AGI must be built commercially, not academically
[12:23] Chat versus work: two different problems
[13:40] Every company needs a repeatable playbook
[15:10] Tokens per task beats price per token
[16:13] Same task 100 times, 100 times the tokens
[16:34] The gym analogy and the power law of practice
[18:18] Where the scaling frame breaks for computer use
[20:46] Why AGI will not be a single model
[21:43] The 72.6% peak versus repeated-run reliability
[22:32] Hiring analogy: the interview versus daily work
[25:22] Replaying trajectories to drive token cost down
[26:17] The idea almost nobody in the industry discusses
[29:01] Democratising autonomous computers to the cost of water
[30:26] SMBs, not enterprises, are the real market
[32:59] Why healthcare and insurance came inbound
[34:06] Launching Sai on Windows virtual machines
[34:38] Simulang and the unity of opposites
[35:52] Frontier labs sell tokens; Simular removes them
[38:01] The hidden cost of self-hosting open models
[39:23] Why CPU and memory matter more than GPU
[41:10] You only have two hands: the physical constraint
[42:48] The AGI test you feel rather than see
[44:19] Why humanoids take longer than software
[45:23] The motivation: doing your work from the forest
[47:03] What Great Look Likes for Simular AI
[48:34] Closing

Attention Is the Scarce Resource, Not Creativity in the Age of AI with Steve Clayton

Bernard Leong — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 01:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, recorded in Singapore, Steve Clayton, Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer at Cisco, joins us to discuss what it takes for AI to scale inside enterprises globally. Steve argues that narrative belongs at the top of the AI pyramid, not the bottom — in an era when models generate more material than any organisation can absorb, the story a company can credibly tell becomes the scarce asset, not the technology itself. He explains why the truth lies in the field rather than at global headquarters, how regional dynamics reshape where a story lands, and walks through Cisco's advances in silicon and quantum computing networking. Showing a real customer deployment, he argues, is what earns permission to talk about security and trust at all. Last but not least, he shares what great look like for Cisco to build their story in the age of AI.

"Take your phone and switch it into airplane mode and see how much you can do on your phone. Very little. You can use the calculator, but you can't use an AI model. You can't surf the web, you can't send messages. And people get excited about GPUs and data centers and models and applications and devices. But sitting at the center of all of that is the network. And that's what Cisco is all about. So that's our job, is to help people understand the value of the network and to realize that AI, as exciting as it is, it simply doesn't happen without the network." - Steve Clayton, SVP & Chief Communications Officer, Cisco

Profile: Steve Clayton, SVP & Chief Communications Officer, Cisco

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevecla/

Friday Note Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-friday-thing-7412856034161229824/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Steve Clayton from Cisco
[00:30] Introduction: Steve Clayton from Cisco
[02:13] Why storytelling began around the campfire
[02:55] Telling stories about impact, not technology
[03:43] Why the AI debate over-indexes on models
[04:51] The airplane mode test for AI dependence
[06:17] Steve inverts the pyramid, narrative on top
[07:04] Communicating without leading with the technology
[07:49] Breaking through by doing the opposite
[08:37] Why "content" has become a bad word
[09:59] Audience-first: meeting policymakers where they are
[11:10] The trap of filling the pipeline
[11:34] Attention, not creativity, is the scarce resource
[12:15] Curation and judgment against AI slop
[12:51] We are not entitled to people's attention
[13:26] Silicon One, the Cisco business nobody expects
[14:26] Cisco's universal quantum switch at room temperature
[14:57] Balancing ambition against credibility
[16:08] Show the possible, do not just describe it
[16:35] Earning permission to talk security and trust
[17:18] The truth lies in the field
[18:16] McLaren F1 and Networking Academy stories
[19:12] The question Steve wishes people would ask
[20:56] The Friday Thing: human first draft, AI editor
[21:26] Humans create the novel ideas, AI supports
[22:07] What Cisco should mean to business and to family
[23:21] Closing

AI Is Not an Efficiency Tool for Humanitarian Causes with Nur Hafiza Mutalif

Bernard Leong — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 23:34:21 GMT

Fresh out of the studio at the Dataiku Summit Singapore 2026, Nur Hafiza Mutalif, Assistant Head of International Affairs at the Singapore Red Cross, joins us to explore why the humanitarian sector distrusts AI, and what her team built once they worked through that scepticism. Coming to this from international law rather than data science, Nur Hafiza explains why the sector's caution is a feature rather than a lag: humanitarian work rests on doing no harm and on neutrality, and any solution must clear that bar before it clears a business case. Dataiku cleared that bar. Its pro bono experts taught the team how the models worked and let them set the boundaries — which is what earned their confidence. Hafiza walks through the disaster surveillance pipeline that freed four people from daily collation, and the Thailand leptospirosis model forecasting outbreaks from case and climate data. She argues AI should never be justified on efficiency, that data efficiency itself carries risk, and that acting on a forecast demands low-regret choices. Closing the conversation, she shares why capability outlasts any model.

"We cannot see efficiency, too, I think what I should see, as a humanitarian organization, is datasets and the different cases around the world be compressed into something that simplifies value and help us better serve communities." - Nur Hafiza Mutalif

Profile, Nur Hafiza Mutalif, Assistant Head of International Affairs, Singapore Red Cross

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nurhafizaab/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Nur Hafiza Mutalif from Singapore Red Cross
[00:55] Three angles: distrust, what they built, where the line sits
[01:45] From international law to leading an AI project
[02:53] What made a cautious team comfortable with AI
[03:24] Pro bono experts who did not impose solutions
[04:04] Attention is a luxury for humanitarian organisations
[05:13] "We curate, we don't create" — countering compassion fatigue
[05:59] Do no harm, neutrality, and innovating with care
[07:06] Why AI must not be treated as an efficiency tool
[07:55] Disaster surveillance: four people, days reclaimed quarterly
[09:09] Does AI only automate the boring work?
[10:24] The Thailand leptospirosis outbreak prediction model
[11:21] Getting humanitarians comfortable acting on a prediction
[12:47] Where AI changes the disaster cycle most
[13:44] What outsiders get wrong about data efficiency
[14:38] The line AI must not cross at the Red Cross
[15:40] Why internal capability beats the models themselves
[16:33] Where an organisation with no data team starts
[17:19] The question people ask, and the one they should
[18:04] AI as a cross-cutting theme over five years
[19:01] Closing

The Three Ingredients That Turn AI Into Value with Sophie Dionnet

Bernard Leong — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 22:33:26 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Sophie Dionnet, Senior Vice President of Product and Business Solutions at Dataiku, joins us at the Dataiku Summit in Singapore to discuss what turns enterprise AI investment into measurable value. She lays out the three ingredients Dataiku builds around — the right people, orchestration across technologies, and supporting controls — and makes the case that governance is a scaling mechanism rather than a brake. She points to Roche, where a patent lawyer encoded his own professional expertise into a working system of agents, discusses Dataiku's answer to agent sprawl with agent management launching in October, and closes on strong momentum across banking and the public sector in Asia Pacific.

"A lot of the changes that organizations need to do today actually don't require the latest model. That's not really the problem. It's about doing the hard thing, the change, the things that we talked about. It's easier to be excited by the new toy than by trying to use it. And so yes, I think this is why there is a bit of a gold rush of trying to figure out where is it going to end. We don't know." - Sophie Dionnet

Profile: Sophie Dionnet, Senior Vice President of Product and Business Solutions at Dataiku

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-dionnet-a176894/

Episode Highlights
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Sophie Dionnet from Dataiku
[01:00] Three angles: domain knowledge, orchestration, governance
[01:59] What has not changed: data still decides everything
[02:31] Data consciousness accelerated over the past twelve months
[03:05] The LLM explosion and the raw-power question
[03:51] Why Sophie pushed governance before the market asked
[05:30] What Dataiku is, and where the name comes from
[06:15] Three ingredients: people, orchestration, controls
[07:22] Roche: a patent lawyer builds his own agents
[08:51] Change management, not technology, is the gap
[09:41] Decision takes an hour, implementation takes two years
[09:58] Why domain knowledge beats model performance
[11:30] Most changes do not require the latest models
[11:58] The scaling belief the industry gets wrong
[12:50] Centralisation risk and the rise of shadow AI
[14:02] Where leaders still quietly choose to do nothing
[15:22] Vibe coding, conflicting outputs, and lost consensus
[16:43] The GDPR lesson on ex-post compliance cost
[18:42] Why the agent question starts at the board
[19:38] Agents are simply a new kind of API
[20:28] Is agent sprawl technology or organisational design
[21:28] What separates AI scalers from pilot purgatory
[22:58] The bear case: foundation labs absorb the middle
[23:45] Why every leading technology becomes self-centred
[24:57] Vibe coding your own Salesforce, and why not
[25:23] The pet store analogy for build versus buy
[26:22] Systems of record and the real switching cost
[28:30] Dataiku in Asia Pacific over the next three years
[29:59] Closing

Inside the War on Southeast Asia's Industrial Scam Economy with Rafael Frankel

Bernard Leong — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Dr. Rafael Frankel, Head of Public Policy for Asia Pacific at Meta, joins us to unpack how Meta is stepping up on the fight against scam syndicates in Southeast Asia along with a coalition of partners. He explains why today's syndicates operate with state-like capabilities and forced labor at scale and how AI has become both the scammers' sword and Meta's shield, powering the removal of hundred million scam accounts in 2025. Frankel walks through the disruption-sprint model that took down the million accounts in a single week alongside the FBI, Microsoft and Starlink, and argues that beating scams demands a coalition matched to the criminal supply chain. Closing out, he reminds us that crime is never zero — but through sustained, collective pressure, it can be cut by orders of magnitude.

"I think that people underestimate the criminals that are the drivers of the scams. Mostly what we're talking about at this point is extremely well-financed, highly sophisticated transnational criminal networks that have turnover in the billions, tens of billions, and have the finances, the technological know-how, the sophistication to really be trying to scam people 24/7, 365 days a year. That's a tough adversary to be up against." - Dr Rafael Frankel

Profile: Profile: Dr Rafael Frankel, Head of Asia-Pacific Public Policy at Meta

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-frankel/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Rafael Frankel from Meta
[02:38] From foreign correspondent to tech policy
[03:39] Career lessons: gut instinct and taking risks
[04:33] Why the Meta APAC policy role, and why now
[07:26] The one thing people misunderstand about scams
[09:13] What changed: industrial scale scam centers
[11:35] AI as Meta's shield, deployed at scale
[13:07] Genesis: the Bangkok 2024 convening
[14:14] First disruption: 59,000 accounts, six warrants
[15:45] June haul: 1.5M accounts, Microsoft, Starlink, 63 arrests
[16:52] Matching the coalition to the criminal supply chain
[18:52] Building trust: results create the feedback loop
[20:05] The Global Signal Exchange and the FIRE program
[22:50] Counter-intuitive lesson: Meta doesn't see everything
[24:13] Asia Pacific as front line of the solution
[26:20] Pulling on the same rope across governments
[27:30] POGO centers and pinpointed police action
[29:02] Is sanctioning a kingpin just theatre?
[30:52] Crime is never zero, but reducible by orders of magnitude
[31:02] The question Rafael wishes people asked: how can I help?
[32:52] What success looks like three years out
[35:08] Closing

How to Actually Read the China's AI Ecosystem with Jing Yang

Bernard Leong — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief at The Information, joins us to explore how China is building frontier AI under chip constraints, state capital, and open source ambition. Jing breaks down her scoop on DeepSeek's $7.4 billion round at a $50 billion valuation, unpacking a deal structure in which the founder wrote two-fifths of the check and outside investors got no voting rights. She explains why Chinese AI valuations trail US labs, why seven to eight language model players refuse to consolidate, and why DeepSeek chose Huawei chips before Huawei knew about it. Last but not least, Jing shares the indicators she is watching from now to 2027.

"This is one of the things that really surprised me when I was working on this story: DeepSeek had spent a lot of time last year retrofitting their models and software with Huawei chips. I think a lot of people assumed it's because the government ordered DeepSeek to work with Huawei to embrace the domestic ecosystem, but it's actually the opposite. It was DeepSeek that voluntarily started using Huawei, experimenting with the Huawei chips, and Huawei actually only found out after. Then they started sending people to DeepSeek to help..." - Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief, The Information

Episode Highlights:[00:00] Quote of the Day by Jing Yang from The Information
[01:30] What changed since September: the ByteDance mystery resolved
[03:00] Why China's AI must be read on its own terms
[04:10] Breaking the story of DeepSeek on their 7.4B fundraise
[05:40] How the valuation went from $10 to $50 billion
[08:30] The lab that became famous for rejecting scaling laws
[10:15] Unpacking the DeepSeek deal structure: four types of investors
[12:40] Five-year lock-up and no secondary market trading
[14:20] Reverse due diligence: DeepSeek vetting its own investors
[16:40] Balancing open source, AGI research and IPO pressure
[17:45] The irony: inclusive vision, exclusive deal structure
[20:35] How Anthropic's Mythos preview changed Liang's mind[21:30] Why Chinese AI valuations look tiny next to US labs
[23:00] Why Chinese founders go consumer when they go global
[26:45] "The worst of customers" — price sensitivity and zero loyalty
[27:45] The compute constraint that caps every Chinese lab
[28:40] New labs in China: weaker infrastructure, harder exit
[30:30] Can China leapfrog on hardware the way it did on models?
[32:50] Stricter compliance, not political muscle
[34:30] Founder power when your company becomes strategic
[36:40] Junyang Lin's new lab and the scarcity premium
[38:00] Open source influence versus sustainable commercial models
[39:30] Zhipu versus MiniMax: how sentiment diverged after IPO
[42:30] What is the right mental map for China's AI ecosystem?
[43:20] The consolidation that still hasn't happened
[45:00] Seven to eight serious players and nobody giving up
[46:40] The one thing Jing wishes people would ask
[47:20] Nobody ordered DeepSeek to use Huawei chips
[50:00] Indicators to watch from now to 2027
[55:30] Closing

Profile: Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information

The Information Profile: https://www.theinformation.com/u/JingYang

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/

X: https://x.com/jingyanghk

We Never Left the Industrial Age: AI and the Future of Work with Aneesh Raman

Bernard Leong — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn and co-author of Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI, joins us to dismantle the flattened narrative that AI is simply taking jobs. His counter-thesis: work is changing, not ending — and we never truly left the industrial age, only traded the factory floor for the office floor. Aneesh walks through his three-bucket framework for auditing your week, the move from the career ladder to the career wall, and why the org chart is giving way to the work chart. He closes by reframing the current AI moment as a battle of belief, urging leaders and workers to move from anxiety to agency and bet on themselves.

"We are in a battle of belief right now more than anything else. So stories matter a lot to humans. It's not just the tools we create, it's the stories we tell that have allowed us to become everything we've become. But whether it leads to better or worse... depends on the story we tell now. If we tell ourselves a story that it's going to lead to worse, it's more likely going to lead to worse. Because we have to unwind a lot of what the industrial age has told us to think about ourselves. A lot of industrial age work was about deficit management. I don't have the degree yet, I need to get it. I don't have the job title yet, I need to get it. We all started from a place of what we don't have, that we needed to get, in order to feel of value and succeed. This world..." - Aneesh Raman

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Aneesh Raman
[01:55] Aneesh's origin story
[04:00] The labour market: least efficient, transparent, dynamic market ever built
[05:45] Career advice: worry about what you can control
[07:19] Open to Work and the misaligned labour market
[09:00] We never left the industrial age
[10:36] Jobs are tasks, not titles — the software engineer example
[11:50] The three buckets: automated, augmented, uniquely human
[13:34] Gen Z: highest AI confidence, entrepreneurial by survival
[15:49] The real gap: mid- and late-career professionals
[16:13] Using the tool while rejecting the fatalism
[18:06] Auditing your week: list twelve tasks, sort three buckets
[20:22] Is there a cognitive ceiling? Bucket two for everyone
[21:00] Human capability is a fraction; it's human with AI
[23:34] Why the org chart emerged from the industrial age
[25:30] Work-chart principles: capabilities, not categories
[26:30] Managers as coaches and the rise of the super IC
[27:37] Asia Pacific: a responsible AI-era workforce strategy
[31:00] Anxiety to agency: we are in a battle of belief
[32:10] Bet on yourself: from deficit management to asset inventory
[34:07] How long is the window? Five years of experimentation
[36:04] The question no one asks: what's possible?
[36:23] The innovation explosion and the Lost Einsteins
[38:02] Fifty years to outdo the last five hundred
[38:17] What this all means for LinkedIn
[40:30] Recommendations

Profile: Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer, LinkedIn and Co-Author of "Open to Work"

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aneeshraman/

Open To Work: https://www.linkedin.com/opentowork/

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If AI Models Have No Moat, What Are Investors Buying? with Benedict Evans

Bernard Leong — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Benedict Evans, independent technology analyst and author of AI Eats the World, returns to explore whether the AI model layer is becoming commodity infrastructure. Benedict argues there is no winner-takes-all effect in models yet, drawing parallels to telecoms, cloud, chips and the fiber bubble to ask where durable value actually accrues when everyone runs similar infrastructure on similar tokens. He unpacks why the chatbot remains a poor interface, introduces the "blank screen" and "jagged frontier" problems that keep software companies alive, and explains why large language models inherently give you "the average." Closing the conversation, Benedict reflects on the indicators that would show AI has truly eaten the world — and why the answer is better products, not better models."When you automate away work, you can always see the jobs that are going away because they're right there. And you don't know what the new jobs are going to be. Human needs are infinite. How many people are earning a living from making podcasts now? Imagine predicting that 10 years ago. There's a stage in the evolution of the market where like if you're still arguing about that, you're an idiot. But there's a stage at the beginning where you might have opinions about some of these questions, you're probably not even asking the right questions. That, I think, is where we are with this stuff today." — Benedict Evans

Episode Highlights: [00:00] Quote of the Day by Benedict Evans from AI Eats the World[01:16] The public market test: what are investors buying?[04:21] How far up the stack can models go?[05:30] Models can't build all the apps themselves[06:00] The thesis: models as commodity infrastructure[07:52] "All the value went up the stack"[08:24] Chips and Rock's Law: down to three players[11:23] The 1999 reseller story: one-time sales[13:28] The S-curve framing of technology[16:38] You're probably not asking the right questions on AI[18:02] "If this works, we're competing with a Mac"[20:25] Incumbents make it a feature[22:14] Big tech "killing startups" is overstated[24:39] Cowork as the new spreadsheet[26:01] The blank-screen and jagged-frontier problems[29:00] The hard part isn't writing the code[31:25] "What a good answer would probably look like"[33:38] The job displacement debate[37:38] Jevons paradox and the lump-of-labour fallacy[40:30] LLMs inherently give you the average[42:36] Why you really hire McKinsey[45:33] Punk versus prog rock: outside the training data[49:00] Automating ever-higher human functions[49:55] Why this is unanswerable: no theory of scaling[51:30] Indicators that AI has eaten the world[54:53] The solution isn't a better model[56:39] Where to find Benedict Evans

Profile: Benedict Evans, Independent Technology Analyst

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans/

Website: https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletter

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

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Inside "Defending Taiwan": How to prevent a war between China and the US with Eyck Freymann

Bernard Leong — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Eyck Freymann, Hoover fellow at Stanford and author of Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, joins us to explore why the Taiwan question will be decided by economics and coercion, not by invasion. Eyck unpacks the Thucydides Trap as a warning, not a prophecy, traces how Xi Jinping's Belt and Road statecraft shapes his approach to Taiwan, and contrasts a kinetic invasion with the "quarantine" scenario he fears most. He reframes 2027 as a capability milestone, recasts TSMC as a "silicon magnet" binding America to Taiwan, and flags Taiwan's 2028 election as the real flashpoint. Last but not least, Eyck argues the real task is to deter the crisis, not the war.

"For Beijing, I hope they will say: the United States actually does have a strategy to use every element of its national power to preserve peace and stability without provoking us, and we should not assume the United States is incapable of an effective response. In Taiwan, I think the lesson is: the United States trusts the people of Taiwan to choose the best future for themselves, and ultimately Taiwan's fate is up to the people of Taiwan to choose. That is the heart of what the American One China policy is about and must be about. The people of Taiwan must choose, and the United States will respect their choices. That is a profound insight that doesn't get said often enough." - Eyck Freymann

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Eyck Freymann from the Hoover Institution at Stanford
[01:18] Eyck's origin story
[04:02] When Taiwan deterrence pulled the threads together
[06:33] Why the CCP embraces the Thucydides Trap
[07:36] Belt and Road as decentralized statecraft
[10:18] How Belt and Road consolidated Xi's power
[11:39] Xi's legacy project: why Taiwan comes next
[12:17] What gets lost without untranslated Chinese sources
[14:12] China's unexplained nuclear breakout
[16:23] Applied history: lessons from three mentors
[19:50] Reframing the timeline: 2027 vs 2049
[22:49] Declassifying the Davidson window
[24:27] Is 2049 bound by Xi's resolution?
[27:34] Cross-strait history and the counterintuitive lesson
[29:28] Two scenarios: kinetic invasion vs customs quarantine
[34:00] The TSMC financial-shock trigger
[36:48] Strategic ambiguity vs structured ambiguity
[42:39] The one thing few understand: it's all economic
[44:39] The right and wrong asks of Southeast Asian neutrals
[47:17] The silicon shield paradox and chip onshoring
[50:19] Why the CHIPS Act won't replace Hsinchu
[53:49] The January 2028 Taiwan election as a flashpoint
[55:24] Meta-question: the neglected domestic politics of Taiwan
[58:07] What success looks like for the book
[60:14] Closing

Profile: Eyck Freymann, author of "Defending Taiwan" and Hoover Fellow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eyck-freymann/

Personal Site: https://www.eyckfreymann.com/

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Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI with James Liang

Bernard Leong — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 23:42:28 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, James Liang — Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Trip.com Group, economist, and author of Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI — joins us to explore what becomes of human meaning when AI does the work. James argues that innovation and heritage are "the same coin": innovation measured by how much heritage it leaves behind. He unpacks why the individual, not the nation or firm, is the binding constraint on innovation, why aging societies stop producing startups, and how his Nature 2024 hybrid-work study reframes family-friendly policy as economically rational. Closing the conversation, James explains why he is bullish on China mid-term but bearish long-term — and why population, not chips, is the real race.

"To innovate and to innovate successfully is measured by how much heritage you generate. But you know what's a good innovation? What's innovation can have a lasting impact? In my definition, the good news is it's going to last." - James Liang

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by James Liang, Chairman of Trip.com Group
[01:06] Introduction: James Liang
[03:18] Stepping down twice — the mobile wave he didn't see
[05:57] Founder mode and returning to lead Trip.com
[07:31] Three life lessons: a rich life, experience, family
[09:44] Innovationism — why the book opens with his daughter
[11:24] Core tenets: innovation and heritage as one coin
[14:38] Innovation as writing a company's cultural values
[16:00] What heritage really means
[17:32] Distil to simplicity; learn more in the age of AI
[19:00] The Nature 2024 hybrid-work experiment
[19:44] Triple-win policies: employee, company, society
[22:52] Innovation capacity — neurons, scale, connection
[25:37] Three levels: nation, firm, individual
[29:00] Why innovation cannot be planned top-down
[30:21] Japan's missing startups; Korea and China compared
[32:14] Hierarchy, vested interests, and blocked young talent
[33:17] AI and moats — operators and the physical world
[35:36] Education reform — stop filtering children too early
[37:31] College as universal general education
[40:00] Understanding still matters in the age of AI
[41:46] What readers won't pick up from the page
[42:14] The AI end game — master, child, or pet
[43:27] Population as the safeguard against losing control
[45:14] Technology ethics at the frontier
[46:01] Longevity, fresh blood, and stagnation
[49:19] Interstellar trips as Trip.com's next frontier
[49:41] The biggest misconceptions about China's innovation
[50:36] The big-country advantage in digital technology
[52:23] Electric cars, life science, three times the talent
[54:16] The China–US race — researchers as the real bottleneck
[56:38] Why blocking China hurts the US more
[57:42] The question James wishes people would ask
[59:25] Success for innovationism — relax, travel, have children
[61:22] Closing

Profile: James Liang, Co-founder, Executive Chairman of the Board, Trip.com Group and Author of "Innovationism: A New Philosophy for the Age of AI"

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-liang-tripgroup/

Trip.com Group: https://investors.trip.com/board-member/james-jianzhang-liang

Incorruptible: The Chapter The Lean Startup Missed with Eric Ries

Bernard Leong — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:15:02 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Eric Ries — author of the new book Incorruptible, founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, co-founder of Answer.AI, and author of The Lean Startup — joins Bernard Leong to discuss his blueprint for building mission-controlled companies that resist financial gravity. Eric explains why trustworthiness is the most underrated asset in business and why success, far from being a shield, makes companies a target worth capturing. He walks through the governance fortresses that have kept Costco, Novo Nordisk, and Patagonia true to mission for decades, and argues that today's so-called best practices have destroyed billions in shareholder value. The conversation turns to AI: which parts of the Lean Startup it accelerates, which parts it cannot, and why validated learning still lives only between the ears. Eric closes with a radical redefinition of profit as the maximization of human flourishing, and a challenge to Asia-Pacific leaders to leapfrog the governance failures the West is about to live through.

"We're helping people create this asset and we're teaching them the wrong idea. We're teaching them that success will protect them. But that's backwards. Success makes you a target worth capturing. And so that explained to me all these companies I saw that failed—not because they went out of business, not because they failed to create value, they failed because of their success." - Eric Ries

Profile: Eric Ries, Founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, co-founder of Answer.AI, and author of The Lean Startup.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/

Personal Site: https://www.incorruptible.co/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Eric Ries from *Incorruptible*
[00:45] Introduction: Eric Ries, author of "Incorriptible" & "The Lean Startup"
[01:11] Pulling the thread from programming to accountability
[03:12] Lean Startup built companies; didn't teach protection
[05:15] The billionaire dancing alone at the party
[06:09] Trustworthiness: business's most underrated asset[07:18] Why success makes you a target
[08:19] Today's best practices destroy value
[09:19] Costco's governance fortress defends customer experience
[09:54] Novo Nordisk's 100-year foundation structure
[11:12] AI and the Lean Startup on steroids
[14:09] MVP advantage dies when everyone has AI
[15:39] The professor with the dangerous biotech breakthrough
[17:13] Investors revealed as amoral actors
[18:13] The builder's intuition: create then capture value
[20:52] Protecting research from capital's gravitational pull
[23:30] Organizations are literally alive
[25:26] More humans, worse collective problem-solving
[25:46] Moral character as an emergent property
[27:25] Current profit definition has fatal blind spots
[30:13] Hitman marketplace: humans as input factor
[32:29] Surrogation: the measurement becomes the target
[33:51] The pre-IPO team laughing after CEO leaves
[36:36] Vatican conference on AI governance
[38:00] Emperor-for-life founders carry impossible burden
[41:31] Best practices young; ancient wisdom forgotten[44:40] Closing

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Steve Jobs in Exile with Geoffrey Cain

Bernard Leong — Wed, 27 May 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile and Samsung Rising, returns to the Analyse Podcast to argue that the twelve years between Jobs's 1985 ouster and his 1997 return to Apple were not a footnote but the forge. Drawing on private archives at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, unbroadcast footage from inside NeXT, and interviews with the people who lived it, Cain reframes the wilderness decade as the cause, not the gap, in Jobs's transformation. We trace the NeXT collapse and the failed IBM licensing deal, the parallel crucible of Pixar where Catmull and Lasseter barred Jobs from creative meetings, and the deep Japanese and Zen influences — Akio Morita, Sony, the beginner's mind — that Isaacson and Schlender underplayed. We close on Apple at fifty, John Ternus's ascent, and what Jobs would have done with AI.

"The successes that we see in the world for every iPhone there is, for every SpaceX rocket there are perhaps dozens or maybe even hundreds of failures behind that we don't see. And so the wilderness, as they call it, this is the greatest moment in the lives of many founders. It's the wilderness that we all have to go through before we can achieve greatness, and if we don't go through that, then we don't learn those lessons." - Geoffrey Cain

Profile: Geoffrey Cain, author of "Steve Jobs in Exile"

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gcain/

Personal Site: https://geoffreycain.net/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile
[00:30] What Geoffrey has been up after his first book: Samsung Rising
[04:05] Working in the US House on technology policy & rebuilding America's industrial base
[04:50] De-industrialisation, and rebuilding America's industrial base
[05:24] The central thesis on Steve Job's exile [07:13] The Steve Jobs we don't know — before the turtleneck and the iPhone[09:07] The wilderness — where every great founder is forged[12:30] The failed coup against John Sculley[14:10] Was Jobs early or wrong about what universities needed?[16:31] Object-oriented programming — the real innovation Jobs couldn't see[18:36] Jobs of 1997 was not the Jobs of 1985[20:00] Technology does not change the world — it makes things easier[22:38] The butterfly effect — if NeXT had gone differently, no iPhone[25:13] A failure of ego — Jobs versus the company he hated[28:49] NeXTstep — twenty years into the future in 1990[32:24] Pixar as the parallel crucible — bought for $5 million[35:25] Toy Story and the IPO that made Jobs a billionaire[38:57] What the NeXT and Pixar years really reveal[40:38] Three biographies, three frames — Isaacson, Schlender, Cain[45:26] Why NeXT became the ugly duckling of Apple lore[48:12] The Japanese influence Isaacson never pulled on[51:30] Apple at fifty — Ternus and the era of execution over reinvention[54:11] How Jobs would integrate AI — quiet, in the background[55:10] The Apple-Google Gemini partnership and swallowed pride[56:38] Jobs as second mover — Macintosh, iPhone, the bicycle for the mind[57:30] Why ChatGPT and Claude would look ugly to Jobs[1:00:30] What NeXT veterans say about the Ternus appointment[01:02:33] What success means for the book[01:03:13] Closing

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Inside Singapore's AI Bet for 2030 with Kiren Kumar

Bernard Leong — Mon, 18 May 2026 21:55:14 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Bernard Leong sits down with Kiren Kumar, Deputy Chief Executive of the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) Singapore, for a conversation on how Singapore is building trusted AI at national scale. Kiren traces IMDA's arc from the 2018 Model AI Governance Framework to the Agentic AI framework launched at Davos this year, the four AI missions — advanced manufacturing, finance, connectivity, and healthcare — anchoring the next strategic bound, and the programs moving enterprises from pilots to production. He argues the real blocker is leadership rather than policy, that trust is Singapore's enduring competitive moat, and that the country must shift from 10% productivity gains to 10X transformation. The conversation closes with a preview of ATx Summit 2026 and what great looks like for Singapore's AI economy by the early 2030s."What would be amazing to see in Singapore is, number one, we have our large companies truly transforming themselves and becoming way bigger than they are today in the global competitive landscape—in manufacturing, in finance, in healthcare, and in connectivity. That's one. The second one is we are known globally as an economy where everybody in our workforce is AI-ready. Yeah, is AI fluent. The third thing I'm hoping to see is we have amazing AI native startups being born in our ecosystem, which are global in the niche areas that they can play in. We may not have the next OpenAI, but I'm hoping that we have a lot of new AI native technology companies that are developing products and services and solutions enabled by AI, powered by AI, transforming industries and creating a lot of growth." - Kiren Kumar Episode Highlights: [00:00] Quote of the Day by Kiren Kumar from IMDA Singapore[02:24] Origin story — Singapore, Stanford, dotcom crash[05:00] Digital economy now 19% of Singapore's GDP[08:08] Career advice — start at a startup first[09:04] IMDA's four core mandates explained[11:47] Trust as Singapore's enduring brand advantage[12:48] Co-create with industry rather than regulate[14:09] Why agentic AI changes the governance equation[15:18] Pilots versus production — the hard transition[17:18] Forward deployed engineers as scarce commodity[18:55] Why agentic AI needed a separate framework[20:23] SME AI adoption tripled in a single year[21:36] From 10% productivity to 10X transformation[24:20] SME Go Digital — 100,000 SMEs in ten years[25:40] Leadership, not policy, is the real blocker[30:46] National AI Impact Program upskills 100,000[34:50] Four missions — manufacturing, finance, connectivity, healthcare[35:49] Owning the global AI standards layer[38:01] ATx Summit 2026 themes and headliners[41:07] What Singapore must get right by 2030[42:05] AI is a contact sport — just start[44:36] What great looks like — companies, workforce, startups[46:52] ClosingProfile: Kiren Kumar, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Infocomm Media Development Authority (or IMDA), Singapore (LinkedIn) Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the Analyse Podcast show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

Inside Pulse ID's Playbook for AI-Driven Banking with Alex Topaloski

Bernard Leong — Thu, 14 May 2026 00:53:01 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Alex Topaloski, CEO and Co-founder of Pulse ID joined us in a conversation on his company's customer engagement infrastructure powering Visa's cardholder offers across Asia Pacific. Drawing on Pulse ID's recent white paper, The Age of Knowing, Alex unpacks the three forces reshaping bank loyalty: interchange, partnerships, and intelligence. He explains why banks have solved the data problem but still struggle with engagement, walks through agentic AI architectures and the minimum effective nudge principle, and lays out why Asia-Pacific diversity demands distinct playbooks for Australia, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Closing out, Alex argues the next 12 months belong to banks that prioritize the last mile — where ROI on a decade of data investment finally lands and lays out what great would look life for Pulse ID moving forward.

"So we are making that transition from being a system-of-record platform for engagement, loyalty, and rewards to being a system-of-action platform that drives measurable behavioral change. And I think that is quite a big step forward. The efficiencies that clients are able to get—the outcomes, the revenue, ROIs that it can get on interactions—it's something that people are now going to start experiencing." - Alex Topaloski

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Alex Topaloski, CEO of Pulse ID
[01:13] Introduction: Alex's career journey
[03:41] Pulse ID: Infrastructure platforms as invisible organs
[06:26] Lifelong learning as the hardest conviction to hold
[08:11] What Pulse ID does as a B2B fintech infrastructure company
[09:26] Defining the era of intelligence
[10:56] Two stages: data architecture, then engagement
[12:56] Why super apps deliver smoother journeys than banks
[16:11] Why loyalty platforms struggle to absorb new signals
[17:26] Why customer engagement is the wrong primary KPI
[19:41] MCP as a way to act without seeing the full data
[20:26] The Visa, GCash, JCB partnership playbook
[22:41] Why move-fast-break-things fails in B2B finance
[24:11] Smart pricing as the hardest model to scale
[25:26] Operating across Singapore, Japan, ANZ, UAE, Oman
[27:56] Multiple AI brains across the stack
[29:26] The guardrail principle: AI selects tools, not data
[31:11] System of record to system of action
[34:11] Where the moat sits when foundation models commoditize
[35:56] The Asia-Pacific market diversity playbook
[38:41] The boardroom decision in the next 12 months
[40:56] What great looks like for Pulse ID
[41:41] Book recommendation: The Fountainhead

Profile: Alex Topaloski, CEO of Pulse ID

Main Site: https://www.pulseid.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/topaloski/

From Copier to Innovator: The Tech Titans of China with Rebecca Fannin

Bernard Leong — Mon, 04 May 2026 21:43:03 GMT

"Many of these AI advancements, where the U.S. is more on the innovative theoretical side of creating new models... China's really ahead on commercializing them, and that's their advantage. I think saying that China and the U.S. are equivalent in AI is probably an overstatement. I think the AI center of innovation continues to be in Silicon Valley. This could change—the gap is closing. I do think the U.S. is still ahead, but I think China is catching up."

Fresh out of the studio, Bernard Leong reconnects with Rebecca Fannin, founder of Silicon Dragon Ventures and author of Tech Titans of China, six years on from their first conversation about the original landmark book. Rebecca traces China's transformation from copier to innovator, the decoupling of US-China venture capital and the reroute of capital flows toward the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and an AI race where China commercialises while the US theorises. The conversation moves through Chinese EV dominance, humanoid robotics, and semiconductor self-sufficiency, before opening out to a multipolar tech order with India and Saudi Arabia rising. She closes with a hopeful note on reopening US-China collaboration.

Episode Highlights:[00:00] Quote of the Day by Rebecca Fannin from Silicon Dragon Ventures
[01:00] Introduction: Rebecca Fannin
[03:00] From copier to innovator: the global perception shift
[04:00] BAT plus ByteDance: still the tech titans
[05:30] Beyond BAT: TMD, ByteDance, DiDi go global
[07:00] Temu and the de minimis tariff hit
[09:00] Cross-border VC decouples: Sequoia, GGV split
[10:00] Capital reroutes to the Middle East and Singapore
[11:30] No more golden era for cross-Pacific VC
[12:00] AI, quantum, semiconductor funding dries up
[13:00] The 2020-2023 crackdown and Beijing's reset
[15:00] Apple's supply chain dependency hard to unwind
[16:00] The AI race: Chinese open-source models surge
[17:30] China commercialises, the US theorises
[18:30] Silicon Valley adopts 996 and Chinese-style attacks
[20:30] Chinese EVs surpass Tesla and European makers
[22:00] Why Xiaomi built a car where Apple couldn't
[22:30] DJI, Unitree, UBTech: China's robotics dominance
[24:00] Humanoid robots and the policy maker dilemma
[25:00] China's semiconductor self-sufficiency push
[25:30] Nvidia export controls and the SMIC question
[27:00] What few in the West truly understood five years ago
[28:00] Quantum computing as the long-term frontier bet
[29:00] Beyond binary: India, ASEAN, Saudi Arabia, Israel
[31:30] Why China's rise became the biggest tech story
[33:00] Hope for a reopening of US-China collaboration
[33:30] Closing

Profile: Rebecca Fannin, Author of "The New Tech Titans of China" and Silicon Dragon Ventures

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-fannin-533128/

How AI Is Rewriting the Future of Trust and Safety with Yoel Roth

Bernard Leong — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 01:31:10 GMT

"The word I always come back to when I think of the future of trust and safety is governance. We are no longer just making moderation decisions. We're no longer just banning people or deleting posts or removing accounts. We are ultimately responsible for overseeing the health of the platforms and communities that we've created. Especially in an age of AI, I think there's a huge role for the field of trust and safety in overseeing the decisions that AI makes. In a world where we automate more of our decisions, that doesn't mean that we don't have jobs anymore. It means that our jobs change. And our jobs change to being auditors and overseers of automated decisions. And then when we find problems, we're the people who are now responsible for engineering solutions to them." - Yoel Roth

Fresh out of the studio, Yoel Roth, Senior Vice President and Head of Trust and Safety at Match Group, joins Bernard Leong to trace how trust and safety has evolved from a behind-the-scenes function into a board-level discipline. Drawing on his earlier work in Twitter (now known as X) and his current work across the different portfolio companies under Match Group: Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid, Yoel reframes online fraud as an economics problem — why a new face costs scammers more than a new SIM card. He unpacks why anonymity does not cause online abuse, compares the American, European, and Chinese regulatory models, and argues trust and safety belongs alongside customer acquisition cost (CAC) as a growth lever. The future, he closes with what great would look like, is governance — AI shifting practitioners from moderators to auditors.

Episode Highlights
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Yoel Roth from Match Group
[01:13] Introduction: Yoel Roth from Match Group
[04:30] Content moderation as governance, not just policy
[06:30] A front-row seat to platform governance debates
[09:00] Protecting public-facing employees from threats
[10:30] First shift in trust and safety: regulation goes global
[11:30] Shift: from reactive to proactive
[14:30] 98% of Match Group's revenue depends on safety
[16:30] Tinder Face Check and the case for friction
[18:00] Biggest mistakes in building trust and safety
[23:30] Why scammers target dating platforms specifically
[26:00] A new face costs more than a new SIM
[30:30] AI as decision enablement, not replacement
[34:00] Detection plus intervention against AI deepfakes
[38:00] Three regulatory regimes shaping the internet
[40:00] What regulators misunderstand about dating apps
[44:30] Why the future of trust and safety is governance
[47:30] Spencer Rascoff and the CAC reframe
[49:00] Resilience and mission in trust and safety work
[51:30] Closing

Profile: Yoel Roth, Senior Vice President, Trust & Safety, Match Group

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoelroth/

Personal Website: https://yoyoel.com/

From Token2049 to SuperAI: Architecting Global Tech Convergence with Peter Noszek

Bernard Leong — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Peter Noszek, co-founder of SuperAI and TOKEN2049 join us on a conversation that maps the widening gap between Silicon Valley's creative intensity and Asia's underutilised compute infrastructure — including 900 megawatts of GPU capacity in Johor, Malaysia sitting at low utilisation because the routing layer between US demand and Asian supply simply doesn't exist yet. Peter introduces Pax Silica, his thesis that Singapore can serve as the neutral ground where fragmented AI communities from East and West converge through curated rooms, cultural bridging, and unreasonable hospitality. They explore why the Bay Area still doesn't understand Asia, the 12-to-18-month window before GPU backlogs clear, Singapore's unique "one to a hundred" positioning for enterprise distribution, and why AI agents — from Coinbase x402 transactions to Meta's agent-to-agent one-on-ones — are already reshaping how coordination happens at scale.

"I'm of like a hundred percent conviction that the majority of times when something is not aligned, it's a case of miscommunication. An inability of information to flow properly between people. And in this highly digitalized, highly fragmented and siloed world that we operate in, those things are usually not present. So bringing people into the same room and bringing them into an environment where they feel natural—as long as that room is curated in the right way—that's really going to open up these sort of icebreakers that then lead to creativity, to ideation, and to realizing that we're actually all trying to do the same thing and we're all just trying to make this entire pie grow bigger." - Peter Noszek

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Peter Noszek, co-founder of SuperAI and TOKEN2049
[01:21] Peter Noszek's origin story
[04:30] SuperAI as bridge across siloed frontier tech nodes
[07:34] The Bay Area hive mind and its velocity on AI
[08:27] Bay Area fragmentation versus Singapore's unified strategy
[10:14] Chinese frontier models: fork on approach, convergence on distribution
[14:41] The infrastructure shift from GPUs to energy
[17:08] Data centres in space versus a 15-hour flight to Asia
[19:15] Pax Silica: composing rooms that break the ice
[22:10] The 12 to 18-month window for Asia's underutilised compute
[24:13] Gulf energy, European bottlenecks, and the geography of compute
[26:00] Is AI in Asian financial services still pilot theatre?
[28:42] When does an AI agent stop being a tool?
[31:25] Coinbase x402 and AI-agent transactions
[32:47] OpenClaude adoption: Singapore ahead of Silicon Valley
[33:42] SuperAI 2025 Pulse survey: the agent thesis, called correctly
[34:59] SuperAI 2026's six tracks — from frontier models to society
[38:26] Collaboration over competition in the paradigm shift
[41:16] Five-year view: open models and agent-run logistics
[44:32] Closing

Profile: Peter Noszek, Co-Founder, SuperAI and Token2049 Conference

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petergnoszek

Our Official Site: https://www.analysepodcast.com

The Agentic SOC: How Splunk Security Transforms Enterprises in the Age of AI with John Morgan

Bernard Leong — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio with John Morgan, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Splunk Security at Cisco. The conversation unpacks the AI inflection point reshaping security operations — from the explosion of machine data (set to more than double in three years) to the rise of the agentic SOC, where AI agents handle detection, investigation, and response while humans focus on high-stakes decisions. John breaks down why attackers armed with AI now exploit zero-days in hours instead of weeks, why security must start with observability (including the challenge of "shadow AI"), and how CISOs are evolving from technical gatekeepers into board-level business enablers. His parting message: the entire world is learning AI together — get to it with his perspective on what great looks like for Splunk Security moving forward.

"The volume is increasing quite a bit. We expect in the next three years it’s gonna double. Attackers do not have a governance of regulatory and compliance restrictions on them. They just go at it and see what works. And so the volume, sophistication, speed of attacks—the only way to defend against it is to automate your responses to it. One thing that folks outside of the industry don’t maybe get is just how large the attack surface is. And how hard it is to stop—attackers need to just find one way in, and you’re trying to defend all ways in." - John Morgan

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by John Morgan from Splunk Security
[00:50] John's path from technologist to cybersecurity leader
[01:35] Leading Splunk Security: the mandate and mission
[02:20] Why Cisco and Splunk have a disproportionate AI advantage
[03:18] It's not the technology — it's the human beings
[04:26] Why more data demands better curation and context
[05:00] AI as both signal generator and attack surface creator
[06:12] Where the bottleneck sits: ingestion, analysis, or response
[07:10] Splunk at the intersection of observability and security
[08:29] The evolving CISO role: gatekeeper to board-level risk officer
[10:22] Defining the agentic SOC and where it's heading
[12:00] Alert fatigue and how agentic approaches change the dynamic
[13:56] Singapore Airlines: real customer outcomes from AI security
[14:47] The AI arms race: who has the structural advantage
[16:11] What a mature AI-native security platform looks like
[17:19] How AI is changing detection from rules-based to correlation
[18:35] Advice to CISOs: observe, trust, automate
[19:41] The one question John wishes more CISOs would ask
[20:22] The next five years — and why five years is too slow
[21:20] Closing

Profile: John Morgan, GM and SVP, Splunk Security, Cisco

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmorganinc/

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Building the World's Largest Podcast Studio Network: Poddster & Podyx with Borko Kovacevic

Bernard Leong — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 03:40:22 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Borko Kovacevic, Co-founder of Poddster and Podyx, joins us to explore how he is building the world's largest podcast studio network and the operating system behind it. He shares his career journey from nearly 17 years at Microsoft across Central Europe and Asia Pacific, to making the entrepreneurial leap and launching Poddster's first flagship studio in Dubai, followed by Singapore. Borko explains how Poddster scaled by treating operations like software — standardizing over the operational framework to run studios from UAE and Singapore to now globally across the world while building a flywheel connecting corporate brands with authentic content creators. He unpacks how Podyx, the software spinoff, hit 24 markets with zero churn on day one. Closing the conversation, Borko shares why frequency and consistency in content creation — not polish — is the single most underestimated edge in the AI era, and what great looks like for Poddster and Podyx as a global studio network and platform.

"So what people underestimate is frequency and consistency in posting content beats everything else. Because the future internet is about you being available online and you providing enough content, enough material, that the algorithms learn about you. If they learn enough about you, you will be recommended in searches, you will do better on SEO, you will become more discoverable than anybody else. And that's the part which I think people underestimate." - Borko Kovacevic

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Borko Kovacevic [01:00] Introduction: Borko Kovacevic [03:17] The danger of corporate complacency & achieving success too early[07:00] The leap: why he finally decided to leave Microsoft and build something[10:13] The origin story of Poddster — not planned, born from a co-founder complaint[13:00] Building a mini studio prototype inside Microsoft; discovering the market gap[16:33] Modelling Poddster like McDonald's: 90% of operations standardized and repeatable[18:23] Building the flywheel: connecting corporates with content creators at scale[23:00] The global studio partner network — a community of 150+ studio owners globally[26:12] The roadmap: New York by September, then Los Angeles and London[32:10] How Podyx was born — a prototype to solve Poddster' own booking chaos[33:47] Why existing booking tools (Calendly, Acuity) didn't fit the podcasting workflow[36:55] Podyx metrics: $6M+ in transactions, 160 paying studios across 24 markets, zero churn[37:15] Stripe named Podyx fastest-growing vertical SaaS startup from Singapore[38:34] Founder-led sales: Borko personally onboarded the first 50+ studios on calls[42:23] Making a services business operate like software — what can actually be productized[44:48] The test for every new process: can you repeat it 10 more times across locations?[49:48] The one thing most people don't know about podcasting: frequency beats polish[50:42] LLMs and agents will train on your content — why posting consistently is the real SEO[54:14] Creators vs. corporates: fundamentally different problems.[56:00] Corporates discovering long-form: the end of scripted media interviews[58:22] The AWS-Cisco example: executive dialogue that earns trust without selling[01:03:13] What great looks like for Poddster and Podyx in the next few years

Profile: Borko Kovacevic, co-founder of Poddster and Podyx

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/borko-kovacevic/

Poddster Website: https://poddster.com

Podyx Website: https://podyx.com

Elastic: From Search Recipes to AI Infrastructure at Scale with Ken Exner

Bernard Leong — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Ken Exner, Chief Product Officer at Elastic, joins us to explore how Elastic evolved from the world's most popular open-source search engine into the context layer powering modern AI applications and agent systems. He shares his career journey from database programming to over 16 years at Amazon building AWS resilience practices, and now leading product strategy where search, observability, and security converge into a unified AI platform. Ken explains why context engineering is the defining discipline of the AI age, where developers become managers of agents, and how Elastic's 15-year enterprise head start positions it as the foundational retrieval layer between enterprise data and LLMs.

"I like to think of the future of software development is—developers will be managers of agents. They're no longer going to be ICs [Individual Contributors], they’re going to be managers. Every developer is going to be a manager of agents and they’re going to be doing context engineering. They’re going to be figuring out how to pass context and data to an LLM or an agent. And they’re going to be goal setting. They’re going to have their team of agents, and they’re going to give them goals, and they’re going to review the output." - Ken Exner

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Ken Exner from Elastic
[00:51] Ken's origin story: database programmer to Amazon
[02:07] What attracted Ken to Elastic
[02:51] Lessons from building resilient systems at AWS
[04:34] How Elastic evolved from search to AI infrastructure
[07:06] Elastic today: context engineering, observability, security
[09:42] Why observability will be fundamentally transformed by AI
[10:48] How early vector search prepared Elastic for GenAI
[12:53] Context engineering: ingestion, retrieval, evaluation
[15:39] The 10-year head start over purpose-built competitors
[20:57] A developer's day is now all context engineering
[24:16] Elastic as the bridge between enterprise data and LLMs
[26:13] Agent Builder capabilities for customers
[28:09] Data, tools, and context in the Elastic framework
[29:39] Elastic on battleships and a Mars rover
[31:00] The disorienting acceleration of AI coding models
[32:07] Developers will be managers of agents
[34:00] Authentication and identity for autonomous agents
[35:30] Great in five years: the foundational AI layer
[36:14] Disrupting observability and security from within
[36:36] Closing

Profile: Ken Exner, Chief Product Officer, Elastic

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-exner-b914542/

Beliefs Are Tools, Not Truths: Beyond Belief with Nir Eyal

Bernard Leong — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 22:24:30 GMT

"Motivation is a triangle. It requires: Behavior: What am I going to do? Benefit: Why am I going to do it? Belief. If you don’t have those three areas of your life in concert, all the advice in the world is going to go in one ear and out the other. Beliefs are tools, not truths. The majority of our problems today—cultural, geopolitical, personal—come from the fact that we think our faith is fact, and we confuse facts for what are beliefs. Everything worth having in life is on the other side of discomfort. So if you can learn to manage discomfort through the power of belief, what couldn't you accomplish? Everything." - Nir Eyal

Fresh out of the studio, Nir Eyal, best-selling author of "Hooked," "Indistractable," and the forthcoming "Beyond Belief," joined us in a conversation to explore how deeply held beliefs quietly shape our attention, decisions, and success. Nir shared his personal origin story of childhood obesity that revealed how we escape uncomfortable feelings through habitual behaviors, and progressed through the Hook Model that democratized Silicon Valley's habit-formation secrets for building products like Duolingo and Fitbod. He unpacks the critical insight that the opposite of distraction isn't focus—it's traction—and introduces the Motivation Triangle framework explaining why knowing what to do isn't enough without belief. Throughout the conversation, Nir demonstrates how 90% of our distractions stem from internal triggers rather than technology itself, and challenges the moral panic around AI by drawing parallels to historical fears from the written word to social media. Last but not least, he argues that beliefs are tools, not truths, revealing how our hidden convictions fundamentally alter what we see, feel, and do—and provides a science-backed path for transforming limiting beliefs into liberating ones that unlock previously impossible performance.

Episode Highlights
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Nir Eyal
[01:02] Introduction: Nir Eyal
[04:45] Hook model democratizes habit-forming product secrets
[06:42] Startups sell painkillers not vitamins
[08:59] Traction versus distraction defines intentional living
[10:24] Distraction is behavior not medical addiction
[11:28] AI triggers predictable moral panic cycle
[14:21] First generation without mass starvation faces excess
[16:58] Hook model: trigger action reward investment
[23:26] Persuasion helps people achieve their goals
[29:39] Internal triggers cause ninety percent of distractions
[32:36] Indistractable readers didn't implement the steps
[34:46] Motivation triangle requires behavior benefit belief
[36:19] Steve Jobs willed reality through liberating beliefs
[43:43] Facts beliefs faith require intellectual humility
[45:41] Beliefs are tools not truths
[48:32] Beliefs reshape attention anticipation agency
[51:30] Closing

Profile: Nir Eyal, author of "Beyond Belief", "Indistractable" and "Hooked"

Main Site: https://www.nirandfar.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nireyal/

Arize AI in Asia Pacific: LLM Evaluation, Observability & Scale with Patrick Kelly

Bernard Leong — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 01:23:18 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Patrick Kelly, Vice President for Asia Pacific at Arize AI, joins us to explore the critical world of AI observability, evaluation, and infrastructure and how Arize AI will start their go to market across the region. Beginning with his transition from Databricks to Arize AI, Patrick explained how the company's mission centers on making AI work for people by helping teams observe, evaluate, and continuously improve their AI agents in production. Emphasizing that evaluations are the most important requirement for AI systems in 2025-2026, he revealed a striking insight: approximately 50% of AI agents fail silently in production because organizations don't know what's happening. Through compelling case studies from Booking.com, Flipkart, and AT&T, Patrick explained how Arize AI enables real-time observability and online evaluations, achieving results like 40% accuracy improvements and 84% cost reductions. Patrick concluded by sharing his vision for success across Asia Pacific's diverse markets - from regulatory frameworks in Korea and Singapore to language localization challenges in Vietnam - emphasizing the three pillars that remain constant: helping customers make money, control costs, and manage risk in an era where AI governance has become paramount. Last but not least, he shares what great would look like for Arize AI in the Asia Pacific

"The mission is to make AI work for the people. It’s about getting AI working for everybody—consumers, customers, and businesses at large. Evals are the most important things that we’ve seen through 2025 and will see more of into 2026; they are the most important thing for systems to work. When I'm working with a customer, I ask: How are we going to help them make money? How are we going to help them control costs? And how are we going to help them manage risk? A lot of AI now is about managing risk."

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Patrick Kelly
[01:10] Bernard introduces AI evaluation and infrastructure topic
[02:24] Patrick's journey from Databricks to Arize AI
[03:20] Arize AI's mission: making AI work for people
[04:00] Understanding agentic systems and their complexity
[05:18] Observability, evaluation, and development framework explained
[06:27] Creating continuous feedback loops for AI improvement
[07:00] On-premises and air-gapped deployment capabilities
[08:00] Open Telemetry and Open Inference standards
[09:08] Evaluations are critical for 2025-2026 success
[10:36] Booking.com case: real-time production AB testing
[14:36] Phoenix open source and Open Inference: entry to Arize ecosystem
[16:00] Travel industry use cases: Skyscanner and Flipkart
[17:53] AT&T case: 40% accuracy improvement, 84% cost reduction
[19:36] 50% of production agents fail silently
[20:26] Korea and Singapore MAS launches AI risk management framework
[22:08] Arize AI CEO's 10 predictions for AI 2026
[22:41] Cursor for X: AI engineering everywhere
[24:06] Context and session state matter critically
[26:27] Harness: new buzzword for agent orchestration
[34:13] Three pillars: make money, control costs, manage risk
[36:00] Asia Pacific diversity: India to Japan
[37:12] Language and cultural nuances in evaluations
[38:00] Closing

Profile: Patrick Kelly, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Arize AILinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-kelly-aab6168/?ref=analyse.asia

This Week in Asia: Is the AI Bubble About to Pop? with Daniel Cerventus and Michael Smith Jr

Bernard Leong — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 02:49:41 GMT

By popular demand, Michael Smith Jr., co-host of The Generalist podcast, and Daniel Cerventus Lim, semi-retired entrepreneur and community builder in Malaysia, return for another candid deep-dive into Southeast Asia and India tech landscape. Fresh off India's record-breaking IPO wave that's drawing regional companies like Pine Labs to redomicile, they dissect what this exit boom means for a Southeast Asian ecosystem still struggling with venture returns. Michael delivers his characteristically unflinching take on why "the year of [insert country]" never materializes beyond Singapore and Indonesia, while making the provocative case that most VCs fundamentally misunderstand B2B distribution strategy—specifically how hyperscaler marketplaces like AWS and Microsoft provide the GTM playbook that separates successful exits from perennial fundraising. Daniel shares emerging insights from the SME acquisition space, revealing the stark reality that traditional businesses are "seeing black" while venture-backed startups continue "seeing red." Together, they debate whether we're witnessing an AI infrastructure bubble that will pop or simply taper, examine why Southeast Asia leads globally in AI adoption despite the disconnect with venture outcomes, and question the fragility of cloud infrastructure after recent AWS and CloudFlare outages. The conversation culminates in a sobering assessment: the region has achieved a remarkable $300 billion digital economy milestone, but the path forward may require accepting longer timelines, smaller profitable exits over unicorn dreams, and modernizing traditional businesses rather than building the next ByteDance.

"If you don't think we're gonna get there, then you should all get outta tech because we're gonna get there. And if you're gonna get there, we barely have the horsepower to do the Google Docs that we have today, let alone the world I just described." - Michael Smith Jr

On AI Assistance - “If you can get 90% of the stuff done, I just need to say yes or no. And that is like my [ideal state]." - Daniel Cerventus

Episode Highlights: [00:00] Quotes of the Day by Michael, Daniel & Bernard[02:12] Record India IPOs signal redomiciling trend from Singapore[03:53] Pine Labs exit provides significant Southeast Asia returns[04:41] Indonesia's venture funding freeze despite strong exit activity[11:29] Year of whatever narrative never materializes for any country in ASEAN[15:05] AI infrastructure bubble debate: does it pop or fizzle?[18:42] OpenAI's unprecedented growth speed creates new tech pantheon[21:00] Recent AWS and CloudFlare outages highlight infrastructure fragility[24:00] AI agents remain in early stages of development[28:00] Real-world robotics models still lack adequate data foundations[34:00] AppPoint's dual NASDAQ-SGX listing demonstrates successful B2B strategy[38:00] B2B marketplace strategy provides essential distribution for startups[44:00] Reflections on eConomySEA 10th Year Report 2025[53:00] SME market offers modernization opportunities with lower risk[54:00] Southeast Asia modernization surprises many American visitors[56:00] SME acquisition market shows profitability versus startup losses[57:00] Closing

Profile: Michael Smith Jr., Tech Evangelist from Oracle & Co-Host, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smittysgp/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGeneralistsPodcast

Daniel Cerventus Lim, semi-retired entrepreneur, Community Builder in Malaysia and TEDxKL founder. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cerventus/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/80164351656

Raise Your Level of AI Ambition - Microsoft's AI Strategy for Developers with Jay Parikh

Bernard Leong — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 03:04:07 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President of Core AI at Microsoft, joins us to explore how Microsoft is fundamentally transforming software development by placing AI at the center of every stage of the development lifecycle. He shares his career journey from scaling the internet at Akamai Technologies during the dot-com boom, to leading infrastructure at Facebook through the mobile revolution, and now driving Microsoft's AI-first transformation where the definition of "developer" itself is rapidly evolving. Jay explains that Microsoft's Core AI team, is moving beyond traditional tiered architecture to a new paradigm where large language models can think, reason, plan, and interact with tools—shifting developer time from typing code to specification and verification while enabling parallel project execution through specialized AI agents. He highlights how organizations like Singapore Airlines cut project timelines from 11 weeks to 5 weeks using GitHub Copilot and challenges both individuals and enterprises to raise their level of ambition: moving from being amazed by AI to being frustrated it can't do more, while building cultural experiments that unlock this exponential technology. Closing the conversation, Jay shares what great looks like for Microsoft's Core AI to enable AI transformation for every organization around the world.

"There's this set of people that are using these AI-powered tools and they're like, 'Wow, that's amazing!' Stunned as to how incredible the response is from AI. Then there's another set of people that have these experiences when they work with AI—they’re frustrated with it because they're just like, 'Why can't it do this for me yet?'And they're pushing the envelope of what this LLM or what this system can do, what this tool can do. If you are in the former group, then you need to raise your level of ambition. You need to delegate harder things to it. And if you're in the second group, then you need to learn more about how these things work." - Jay Parikh

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the day by Jay Parikh
[01:00] Introducing Microsoft's Core AI strategy and transformation
[02:34] Career philosophy: pursuing hard problems and discomfort
[04:08] Core AI team's mission: empowering every developer
[06:00] Reinventing the entire software development lifecycle
[09:17] Parallel projects and agents transforming development workflows
[12:12] AI first strategy across Microsoft's product ecosystem
[15:37] GitHub platform beyond code: context and orchestration
[20:33] Building AI platforms: lessons from scale experience
[21:00] Two mindsets: amazement versus frustration with AI
[22:15] Raising ambition and pushing AI tool boundaries
[25:00] Enterprise adoption challenges: tools and cultural transformation
[28:00] Learning loops: shrinking circles to accelerate growth
[31:00] Alignment without tight coupling across global teams
[36:56] Concrete trends: use tools, understand model development
[40:27] Responsible AI and security built from start
[43:30] Asia innovation: two thirds of developers here
[46:19] Raising ambition to unlock human creativity collaboration
[48:35] Goal: AI transformation for every global organization

Profile: Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President, Core AI, Microsoft

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayparikh/

Solving Asia's Private Market Information Crisis with Raghav Kapoor

Bernard Leong — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 22:00:00 GMT

"Public markets are behaving more like private markets. Private markets want to behave more like public markets. So actually, they're just one market.What's not the same is the level of research, information, data disclosure. Correct. That's the only difference. It's this information gap that, to us, is the single biggest opportunity now.We think over the course of the next five to 10 years, there'll be more trading venues, more liquidity providers, more market makers, more investor types—all of that. And I think what Smartkarma has always done is be the information flow for part of capital markets.In fact, that sort of 74 billion number, I think, is quite conservative. I've seen other estimates that are close to 120 billion. So it depends on what you see as sort of growth and what you see beyond. But regardless, I think it’s very large numbers, and the ratio of exit to invested capital is extremely low. A 50 billion hole is a pretty big hole." - Raghav Kapoor, CEO of Smartkarma

Raghav Kapoor, CEO & co-founder of Smartkarma, joined us for a conversation on the launch of PvtIQ and the structural transformation of Asia's private markets. Drawing from his experience building Smartkarma's independent research platform, Raghav explained how client demand for pre-IPO coverage led to creating PvtIQ, an intelligence platform designed to bridge the critical information gap in Southeast Asia's private markets. We discussed the striking imbalance where $74 billion has been invested into the region's tech ecosystem but only $23 billion has been returned through exits, highlighting the urgent need for better data infrastructure and price discovery. Raghav shared unique insights on how families dominate the region's investment landscape, why private and public markets are converging into one, and his vision for PvtIQ to become the intelligence backbone supporting companies, investors, and regulators in bringing more transparency and efficiency to Asia's rapidly evolving private market ecosystem.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Raghav Kapoor
[00:57]] Smartkarma launches PvtIQ for Asia's private markets
[03:11]] Investors requesting coverage three years before IPO
[04:08]] Supporting MAS equity market development program
[05:24]] Singapore's public markets languished despite private growth
[06:13]] Path from fundraising to public listing explained
[08:37]] $74 billion invested, only $23 billion exits
[09:45]] Companies need support to achieve IPO readiness
[11:00]] Capital chasing deals shifted to improving disclosure
[11:57]] Southeast Asia's extreme market fragmentation challenges
[13:23]] Families dominate and influence Southeast Asian markets
[14:38]] Lack of data creates serious structural challenges
[19:01]] Private market investors transitioning from momentum investing
[20:18]] Digital banks provide disclosure model for research
[21:24]] Late stage private rounds resemble public IPOs
[23:26]] Liquidity without information is just volatility
[24:06]] Private and public markets converging into one
[25:30]] Information gap is the single biggest opportunity
[27:00]] Private market research TAM already $8 billion
[28:57]] What great looks like: intelligence backbone for Asia's private markets
[30:57]] Closing

Profile: Raghav Kapoor, CEO and co-founder, SmartkarmaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ragkap/

The AI Industry Is Building Modern Empires with Karen Hao

Bernard Leong — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 02:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Karen Hao, investigative journalist and author of "Empire of AI" joined us in a conversation to unravel how companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI have become modern empires reshaping society, labor, and democracy itself. Karen traces her journey from mechanical engineering at MIT to becoming one of the tech industry's most critical voices, sharing how Silicon Valley's innovation ecosystem has distorted toward self-interest rather than the public good. She unpacks the four characteristics that make AI companies mirror colonial empires: resource extraction through data scraping, labor exploitation of annotation workers, knowledge monopolies where most AI researchers are industry-funded, and quasi-religious quests to build an "AI God." Throughout the conversation, Karen reveals OpenAI's governance dysfunction stemming from its contradictory non-profit-for-profit structure and shares the inspiring story of Chilean water activists who successfully blocked Google's data center from draining their community's freshwater resources. She explains how Sam Altman's plans for 250 gigawatts of data center capacity—equivalent to four dozen New York Cities—would be environmentally catastrophic, while demonstrating how China's export restrictions paradoxically spurred more efficient AI innovation. Last but not least, she argues that empathy-driven journalism remains irreplaceable and calls for global citizens to hold these companies accountable to the broader public interest.

"These empires are amassing extraordinary amounts of resources by dispossessing a majority of the world. That includes like the data that they're extracting from people by just scraping it from online or intellectual property that they're taking from artists and creators. Most AI researchers now work for the AI industry and/or are funded in part by the AI industry. Even academics that have stayed within universities are often funded by the AI industry, and the effect that that has had on knowledge production is akin to the effect we would imagine if most climate scientists were bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry. I cannot stress enough how much they genuinely believe that they are on the path to creating something akin to an AI god, and that this is going to have cataclysmic shifts on civilization." - Karen Hao, Author of Empire of AI

Episode Highlights:[00:00] Quote of the Day by Karen Hao[00:47] Introduction: Karen Hao, Author of "Empire of AI"[01:44] From MIT engineering to investigating AI journalism[02:51] Silicon Valley distorts innovation toward self-benefit[04:12] AI companies as modern empires of power[06:00] Four traits of Empire: extraction, exploitation, monopolies, ideology[09:01] Quasi-religious movements driving Silicon Valley AI development[10:04] AGI believers speak specialized fanatical vocabulary[11:16] OpenAI founding: nonprofit facade, profit ambitions[13:53] Sam Altman firing: board's failed governance attempt[17:13] Fragmentation: every billionaire building their own AI[19:06] China's export controls sparked efficient AI innovation[21:57] Silicon Valley lacks American democratic values entirely[25:06] Chilean activists successfully blocked Google's water extraction[28:51] Sam Altman's 250 gigawatts: four dozen New York cities[31:21] Scaling continues despite base model asymptote reached[32:53] Benchmarks faulty: training data unknown, results unreliable[39:11] Success: sparking conversation about AI's human costs[39:40] Closing

Profile: Karen Hao, Author of Empire of AI and Investigative Journalist LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karendhao/Personal Site: https://karendhao.com/

Open Source AI: Faster Innovation Through Community Across Asia Pacific with Simon Milner

Bernard Leong — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

Simon Milner, Vice President of Public Policy for Asia Pacific at Meta, joins us to explore how Meta's deliberate commitment to open source AI is reshaping innovation across the world's most diverse and dynamic region. He shares his journey from the BBC to nearly 14 years at Meta, where he built policy teams from the ground up to lead Meta's Asia Pacific strategy. Simon unpacks Meta's open source philosophy behind the Llama models, explaining how openness accelerates innovation through community scrutiny, provides governments greater control over sensitive data, and enables local developers to fine-tune models for languages like Korean, Vietnamese, and Bahasa Indonesia. He highlights compelling use cases across the region in Japan and Korea. Looking ahead, Simon reveals why the future of AI is not on our phones but in wearables like AI-enabled glasses that create always-on assistants seeing what we see and hearing what we hear, enabling us to be more present in the world while Meta supercharges its family of apps serving billions globally. Last but not least he shares what great looks like for Meta in the Asia Pacific on open source AI.

"We believe that openness is actually a really key feature of accelerating innovation because it fosters inclusion, it builds trust, and it ensures that the benefits of AI are more evenly distributed around the world.The openness of models allows other people to, as they were, push and pull and prod at the models at a fundamental level in order to see where might the problems be. And so that kind of community, the developer community scrutiny around open source is fundamental to spotting issues and addressing them quickly.Actually, the story of AI is about yes... that is important. The investments that companies like Meta and others are making is important, but actually, it's really about local ownership and local innovation." - Simon Milner

Episode Highlights: [00:00] Quote of the Day by Simon Milner from Meta[01:37] Simon's journey: BBC, BT, Meta's 14-year evolution[03:12] Navigating diverse regulatory landscapes across global markets[05:24] Career advice: Take risks, embrace unexpected opportunities[07:54] Open source AI democratizes access and innovation[10:21] Meta sparked open model trend, others followed[14:49] Open models enable faster innovation through community[16:21] Government control and data sovereignty with open[19:13] Governance mechanisms: transparency, red teaming, community engagement[22:49] Meta learned responsible AI through 20 years experience[25:49] Singapore, Japan, Korea developers using Lama locally[28:26] AI isn't just big companies and includes local innovation[31:15] Keeping AI open prevents fragmented national bubbles[34:01] Governments balancing open innovation with national interests[37:00] Future AI: wearables and glasses, not phones[38:19] Always-on AI assistants seeing and hearing you[41:35] Supercharging Meta apps and building new products[42:00] Closing

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: Energetic Sports Drive and the episode is mixed and edited in both video and audio format by G. Thomas Craig. Visit our Analyse main site: https://analyse.asia

How Oracle Became the Backbone of Enterprise AI with Chris Chelliah

Bernard Leong — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of Oracle AI World 2025, Chris Chelliah, Senior Vice President of Technology and Customer Strategy for Japan and Asia Pacific at Oracle, joins us to unpack how Oracle is positioning itself as the definitive enterprise AI platform across the region. He shares his career journey from a computer science geek working on distributed databases to leading technology strategy across a market representing two-thirds of the world's population. Chris explains Oracle's comprehensive four-tier AI stack—infrastructure, data platform, applications, and agentic orchestration—emphasizing how this unique full-stack ownership enables enterprises to consume AI out of the box and extend seamlessly without ripping and replacing existing systems. He highlights compelling use cases from financial fraud detection and healthcare automation to precision agriculture and energy grid optimization. Closing the conversation, Chris shares his vision for what great Oracle will look like in Asia Pacific, continuing its 50-year legacy as the behind-the-scenes platform provider powering everything from OpenAI and TikTok to global banking infrastructure.

What's been consistent for Oracle is to be a platform provider that helps organizations unlock full value of their data. Today it is all about AI and unlocking the value of your data in AI, and cloud is a mandatory enabler. With AI and agentic AI, an agent is effectively an employee—it's an automated employee, a process, a workflow. You want your employees to be within your ecosystem, within your firewall. AI thrives at the edge because that's where inference happens. With AI and agentic AI, an agent is effectively an employee—it's an automated employee, a process, a workflow. You want your employees to be within your ecosystem, within your firewall. AI thrives at the edge because that's where inference happens. - Chris Chelliah

Profile: Chris Chelliah, Senior Vice President of Technology and Customer Strategy for Japan and Asia Pacific at Oracle https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrischelliah/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the day by Chris Chelliah
[02:10] Chris's journey from computer science to enterprise tech
[03:13] Technology tinkering and Oracle's innovation culture explained
[04:17] Two-thirds world population drives APJ market potential
[05:06] Career advice: Find passion, own your brand
[06:54] Oracle's mission: Unlocking data value for enterprises
[07:58] 47,000 customers, 44% yearly consumption growth in JPAC
[08:51] Oracle AI World 2025: AI changes everything announcement
[09:12] Four-tier stack: Infrastructure, data, applications, agents
[11:25] AI Data Platform enables production-grade AI systems
[14:14] AI Agent Studio and Marketplace solve scaling challenges
[15:12] Agents as higher-level abstraction for enterprise automation
[16:27] Real-world AI use cases across industries shared
[18:49] Multi-cloud strategy accelerates enterprise AI adoption
[21:16] Partners enable scale with 100 marketplace solutions
[23:01] Convergent AI: Consume applications then extend capabilities
[26:51] Multi-cloud and multi-model future requires strong governance
[27:31] Four-tier security isolation from infrastructure to applications
[29:57] AI agents need enterprise-level data residency controls
[31:02] Using AI to accelerate cloud migration skills
[[33:08] Design thinking to working prototype in days
[36:10] Success metrics: Beat your personal best daily
[39:55] Why Oracle differs: Only four-tier stack player
[43:01] What great looks like for Oracle in the Asia Pacific
[45:51] Closing

Southeast Asia's $300B Digital Economy: How They Exceeded Everyone's Expectations with Sapna Chadha, Florian Hoppe & Cassie Wu

Bernard Leong — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, we commemorated the 10th anniversary of the e-Conomy SEA [Southeast Asia] Report with Sapna Chadha from Google, Florian Hoppe from Bain & Company, and Cassie Wu from Temasek, celebrating a decade of tracking Southeast Asia's digital transformation. The panel reflected on the region's remarkable achievement of reaching $300 billion in GMV—exceeding the original $200 billion goal by 1.5x—alongside revenue growth of 11x over the past decade. The panellists examined pivotal themes including Southeast Asia's position as the world's most AI-curious region with three times more interest than elsewhere, the explosive rise of video commerce and the maturation of digital financial services. The conversation explored the expansion from SEA-6 to 10 ASEAN countries, the ecosystem's resilience through multiple crisis cycles, and the shift from growth-at-all-costs to sustainable profitability. The episode concludes with each panellist sharing their vision for 2030, emphasizing building trust in AI adoption, creating an inclusive AI economy that benefits SMEs alongside large platforms, and navigating the AI transition gracefully to unlock innovation while addressing employment challenges—underscoring Southeast Asia's evolution from digital catch-up player to global innovation leader rewriting the playbook for digital adoption.

"We set this audacious goal of 200 billion by 2025. People told us we were crazy. In 2016 when we put that ambition out there, we've actually reached 1.5x that and we've hit 300 billion. And so it's just reflective of this incredible economy." - Sapna Chadha"Indonesia e-commerce still I think is larger or about the same size as all of India e-commerce. And yet the attention tends to be a little bit veering away from Southeast Asia, but this is actually a real economic powerhouse I think for all of Asia Pacific." - Florian Hoppe"Southeast Asia as a region, as we think about digital economy adoption, we are not playing catch up anymore. In many ways we're leading the digital adoption. We're writing how digital economy, how digital adoption could look like for a population and demographic like us." - Cassie WuProfiles: Sapna Chadha, Vice President Southeast Asia and South Asia Frontier, Google Asia PacificFlorian Hoppe, Partner at Bain & CompanyCassie Wu, Director, Southeast Asia at Temaseke-Conomy SEA 2025: https://economysea.withgoogle.com/Episode Highlights:[00:00] Quote of the Day by Sapna Chadha, Florian Hoppe & Cassie Wu[01:17] 10th anniversary of e-Conomy SEA Report[03:00] Digital economy hits 300 billion, exceeding goals[04:09] Ecosystem resilience through multiple crisis cycles[06:10] Report expands from SEA-6 to ASEAN-10[08:13] Southeast Asia most underappreciated AI opportunity[09:31] Indonesia e-commerce matches all of India[10:04] Region leading digital adoption, not catching up[12:13] Cash no longer king, payments fully inverted[13:00] Revenue growth 11x over past decade[15:00] 300 billion GMV despite headwinds and tariffs[16:00] Video commerce grew 5x in three years[19:03] Digital payments north of 60% of transactions[23:32] Super apps unique to Southeast Asia ecosystem[25:45] Data center capacity growing faster than anywhere[27:01] Lower labor costs delayed AI adoption initially[31:00] Ecosystem healthier than ever before[33:08] Talent is the critical AI bottleneck[35:19] Digital infrastructure must align with green economy[39:00] Southeast Asia remains globally underappreciated[40:39] Can Southeast Asia leapfrog into AI era[43:00] ClosingPodcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

The Sentient Startup: Building Companies in the Age of AI with Arnaud Frade

Bernard Leong — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 06:56:46 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Arnaud Frade, Managing Partner at Mesh Advisory and author of the upcoming book The Sentient Startup, joins us to explore how AI is fundamentally transforming entrepreneurship through the radical concept of AI as a true co-founder rather than merely a tool. He distinguishes between startups that are merely "AI-onboard" versus true sentient startups where AI operates as part of how the business is run, and introducing the concept of Machine Resources (MR) as a new organizational function alongside Human Resources to manage evolving AI models and maintain knowledge integrity. He emphasizes the co-intelligence model over the sterile human-versus-machine debate, highlighting how the 95% AI project failure rate stems from organizational issues rather than technology problems—a reality perfectly captured by the Banani framework (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible) that explains why companies struggle with AI readiness. Closing the conversation, Arnaud shares what great looks like for The Sentient Startup: being part of the essential conversation about AI governance, accessibility across income levels, child safety, and building better regulations.

"The entire debate on human versus machine is extremely in a way sterile because it very quickly veers towards the science fiction, the movies, the images we have, and it forgets the point about what can we gain. but what can we gain in the context of having accountability and integrity with it? I think this is where the debate becomes more complex. So for me that's the bigger point is this is not about having less people. It's about having people doing better things and using their talent to really scale what they can do in that model of co-intelligence. " - Arnaud Frade

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Arnaud Frade

[01:00] Introduction: Arnaud Frade

[02:49] Arnaud's career journey

[05:27] Advice: stick to values and volunteer for opportunities

[07:21] Arnaud's story on his first book about algorithmic marketing

[09::32] Sam Altman's solopreneur unicorn comment was the epiphany

[10:04] Sentient startup: AI as co-founder, enhanced by co-intelligence

[12:15] AI onboard versus AI as true co-founder distinction
[16:45] Barriers to entry reducing with AI and agentic models
[23:40] MIT report: 95% of AI pilots fail organizationally
[28:15] Need overlay systems for effective agentic AI
[30:45] Culture: retain humanity when engaging with AI
[36:10] Governance frameworks for AI decision-making transparency
[40:10] Banani framework: brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible
[42:16] Co-intelligence model versus human versus machine debate
[43:19] Goal: be part of the conversation on AI
[44:15] Focus on regulations, access equity, and child safety[45:00] Closing

Profile: Arnaud Frade, author of "The Sentient Startup" which will launch on May 19, 2026 via Penguin Random House. Register at thesentientstartup.com for community updatesLinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnaudfrade

Microsoft's Global Partner Strategy: 400M Businesses & 1 Platform with Ralph Haupter

Bernard Leong — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 02:51:22 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Ralph Haupter, President & CRO, Small Medium Enterprises and Channels at Microsoft, joins us to explore how Microsoft is empowering 400 million small and medium businesses globally across 56 counties through a partner-first strategy that combines platform standardization with deep specialization. He shares his career journey spanning over 20 years at Microsoft, from running Europe to leading Greater China, building Asia's geographical operations in Singapore, and eventually taking on global SME strategy. Ralph explains that Microsoft's unique advantage lies in being a platform company at its finest, offering a complete technology stack from productivity to infrastructure, security, and applications—all with core AI integration—while relying on a specialized partner ecosystem to deliver local expertise and support. He highlights how partners are creating entirely new business models on agentic AI while emphasizing the four critical partnership moments from transaction to ongoing support that most companies neglect. Closing the conversation, Ralph shares what great looks like for Microsoft.

“The partner program for us is a place where we want to have expertise for our customers. The only way to make that happen is to standardize on portfolio and standardize on offering.If you don’t provide standardized offers — if the experience in Word, for example, is different in one country than in another — you can’t build an ecosystem that helps partners scale with expertise. I call that a platform company at its finest.We have the full assortment — from the productivity world to infrastructure, security, and applications. And if you’re a small or medium enterprise, the last thing you want is to have four meetings with four people, serving four different types of coffee to four different vendors, just to get a full-stack solution for your business.” - Ralph Haupter

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Ralph Haupter
[00:54] Ralph's 20+ year Microsoft career journey from Europe to China to Global
[02:19] Ralph's Experience in Microsoft Greater China
[04:24] Giving space to local country leaders
[06:16] Career advice: Get out of comfort zone
[08:02] Microsoft's 400 million SME customer
opportunity
[11:00] AI accessibility for small business competitiveness
[13:09] Satya's vision: Empower every organization globally
[15:00] Microsoft as AI platform company strategy
[17:24] Standardization enables partner ecosystem at scale
[21:22] Security partners drive consultative innovation
[25:15] Full stack portfolio simplifies SME technology
[28:00] Training investment for partners and customers
[32:00] Four critical partnership moments: Sales to support
[35:00] Local partner presence matters by geography
[40:36] Scale requires clarity, simplicity, and standards
[42:36] Global Leadership Lessons: Learning from positive performance signal deviations
[45:22] Customers should ask partners for expertise
[47:34] What does Great Look Like for Microsoft SME & Channel Globally
[48:00] Closing

Profile: Ralph Haupter, President and CRO, Small Medium Enterprises and Channel (SME&C), Microsoft

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphhaupter/

500 Episodes Later: What I Learned From 11 Years of Podcasting with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 03:41:03 GMT

Fresh out of the studio and we hit our 500th episode milestone, guest host Yana Fry from Yana TV turns the tables on Bernard Leong, CEO of Dorje AI and host of Analyse Asia, in a special ask-me-anything format. We start with Bernard's journey from finding his first guest to navigating 11 years of podcasting, revealing his 12-word life philosophy: "Learn from everyone, follow no one, observe the patterns, work like hell." Following on, Bernard shares how his theoretical physics background provides the tools on everything from digital transformation to building Dorje AI's vision of reimagining ERP systems. The conversation dives deep into Bernard's pragmatic idealist worldview, product management philosophy and focus on the future. Bernard announces a major rebrand: Analyse Asia is dropping "Asia" to become the Analyse Podcast as it expands to a global audience, marking a new chapter in the show's evolution."For Dorje AI, what great looks like is being able to solve the ERP problem for businesses. It could take five years, ten years, or even two decades — because every technology adoption cycle takes time. We’re at the beginning of a massive shift, but many still cling to the old ways of doing things. The one thing I’ve learned about digital transformation is this: everyone loves transformation, but they hate to change. Everything that people say will happen in two years usually takes five.When I think about Analyse Asia, greatness for me is being able to do an interview without looking at a set of questions — to tease out a guest’s story authentically, without prejudice, without being a fanboy. Just getting the story out. If I can do that, that’s great. Of course, hitting a million subscribers would be fantastic — that’s the next milestone I’m chasing. But for me, it’s always: ‘I’ve reached this milestone — what’s next?’When you think about frugality at the highest level, it’s not about resources — it’s about time. The real measure is how much time you can spend doing what truly matters. That’s what great looks like for me: asking, what’s the minimum amount of time I can make the maximum impact? Maybe I’ll never fully get there. But if we can say we lived this life without regret — that’s enough." - Bernard LeongEpisode Highlights:[00:00] Quote of the Day by Bernard Leong[01:00] Introduction: Yana Fry (Guest Host) and Bernard Leong[02:05] Early Days of Analyse Asia Finding first guest was biggest initial challenge[04:30] Looking at Everything from a corporate executive like a theoretical physicist[06:23] Podcast interviews are combinations of science and art[08:19] Pragmatic idealist philosophy shapes Bernard's worldview[10:17] 12 Word Advice: Learn from Everyone, Follow No One, Observe the Patterns & Work like Hell[13:00] Dorje AI solving fundamental ERP ledger problems[16:15] Attacking competitors' strongest strength - Lessons of history from Kublai Khan[21:34] New is Easy and Right is Hard for Product Management[24:00] Audio to video was hardest podcast pivot[29:25] Japanese craftsman approach keeps Bernard going[33:09] Analyse Asia rebranding to Analyse Podcast globally[39:55] Father's 50-year loyalty shaped Bernard's management philosophy[44:00] Asia is diverse cities, not monolithic continent[46:00] Most problems aren't AI problems after questioning[51:00] What does Great Look Like for Dorje AI, Analyse Asia and Bernard Leong?[52:10] ClosingProfile: - Bernard Leong, Host of Analyse Asia Podcast, CEO of Dorje AI https://dorje.ai, Adjunct Associate Professor from NUS Business School & Institute of Systems Science. - Guest Host: Yana Fry from @yanatvsg which we highly recommend and subscribe to: https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsgLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanafry/Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

Mastercard and The Future of Money: Crypto, AI Agents & Digital Payments with Ling Hai

Bernard Leong — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 20:47:20 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa at MasterCard, joins us to explore how payment networks are evolving to embrace stable coins, AI agents, and the future of digital commerce across diverse global markets. He shares his career journey from management consulting to retail banking and eventually to MasterCard. Ling Hai shares that MasterCard is a global technology company that creates interoperability and universal acceptance, with technology services like cybersecurity, data insights, and consulting increasingly contributing to revenue beyond traditional payment processing. He highlights compelling innovations from Asia Pacific leading the way, including Singapore's nationwide open loop transit system and MasterCard's approach to stable coins as settlement vehicles alongside traditional currencies, while emphasizing how the company bridges the DeFi universe with the physical merchant world through on-ramp and off-ramp solutions for crypto adoption in markets like Latin America. Closing the conversation, Ling Hai shares what great looks like for MasterCard to become the operating system of commerce and the digital economy.“MasterCard, in the end, is a global technology company. We run a global network, and we’re very much a data company. So, in all of this, when we handle people’s money and when we handle people’s data, trust is the most important thing. If we lose that, we lose our business. For us, that trust factor is absolutely critical — it’s embedded in everything we do.As the world evolves, we’ve gone from handling payments in the physical world, to e-commerce in the digital world. Tomorrow, with AI, it’s going to be agentic — agents will be doing commerce for us. But the common thread across all of this is still safety, security, trust, and also ease of use.Today’s consumer doesn’t want to trade off between convenience and security — they want both. So when we think about our solutions and services, that’s part of our design thinking. We must ensure they are easy, convenient, safe, secure, and trusted by everyone.” - Ling HaiEpisode Highlights:[00:00] Quote of the Day by Ling Hai[01:00] Introduction: Ling Hai[03:00] Overview of Mastercard and balancing global consistency with localization[06:00] MasterCard's vision: inclusive digital economy for everyone[09:13] Open loop transit leading digital payment adoption[11:14] Asia Pacific: most advanced multi-payment region globally[14:03] MasterCard is a global technology company focused on trust.[16:00] Stable coins create more use cases for MasterCard[20:38] Two universes: DeFi and traditional finance will coexist[21:07] Payment secret sauce: resolving disputes when things fail[24:00] Stable coins stronger for B2B, wholesale settlement use[25:38] Be at the table or you're on table[29:00] AI enables personalization beyond one-size-fits-all marketing[31:24] Agent commerce requires new rules and payment standards[32:23] Tokenization and authentication: no regret moves for future[34:16] MasterCard network supports real-time payments beyond cards[35:00] What does great look like:: Operating system of commerce and digital economy[36:00] ClosingProfile: Ling Hai, President of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, MastercardLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ling-hai-a7952ab8/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast:Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asiaAnalyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245

How to Scale Global Teams Without an Office through Esevel with Deng Yuying

Bernard Leong — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 03:27:55 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Yuying Deng, Co-founder and CEO of Esevel, shares her transformative journey from corporate lawyer to healthcare operator to tech entrepreneur with our guest host Yana Fry from Yana TV. Yuying discusses how the pandemic's sudden shift to remote work in April 2020 revealed critical gaps in IT infrastructure for distributed teams, inspiring her to launch Esevel—a platform now serving companies across 88 countries. Yuying challenges the traditional HQ-centric worldview, advocating that "HQ should be a mindset, not a location," and shares how Esevel deliberately builds leadership opportunities for talented professionals regardless of whether they're based in Manila, Singapore, or São Paulo. Last but not least, Yuying shares what great would look like for Esevel's future: becoming the indispensable tool companies think of first when scaling global teams, while proving that talent and performance matter more than location.

"Many companies that say they do distributed and remote work actually still have a very HQ-centric worldview. That means leadership is in HQ, strategy is formed in HQ, and high-impact jobs are in the HQ as well. So when they hire remote and distributed teams. For example, in the Philippines, Brazil, and India they use these more as back-office functions. So you have very talented people who join them there, thinking that they could rise in a global company. But very soon they find that they hit a glass ceiling and are no longer able to advance, and so they move on to another firm. I think that’s a massive waste of talent, especially if you’re talking about here in Asia. This is the world’s fastest-growing region. People are ambitious, people are bright, and they are able to take on leadership positions if they’re given the opportunity to. This is one thing that we have really tried to reverse at Esevel. You do not have to be at HQ in order to rise into a leadership position. As long as you perform your job and perform it well, we look at performance more than location. So I think that is one thing that has to shift: HQ shouldn’t be a location. HQ should actually be a mindset. And I think that’s something that a lot of remote companies or distributed work companies have correct when it comes to that." - Deng Yuying

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] Quote of the Day by Deng Yuying

[02:00] Introducing Yuying Deng, CEO of Esevel

[02:25] From lawyer to operator to founder

[03:32] MBA at INSEAD shaped entrepreneurial journey

[03:53] Built community care division for Orange Valley

[04:24] Family business dynamics and PE exit lessons

[05:44] Esevel: IT operations platform for distributed teams

[07:56] Company DNA shaped by pandemic remote work

[08:38] Importance of staying close to customer problems

[10:16] Managing operations across 88 countries globally

[12:39] Failure is a feature, not a bug

[14:33] Operational complexity and doing boring work well

[16:35] Future of hybrid and remote work

[19:48] HQ should be a mindset not location

[21:25] Characteristics needed for remote work success

[22:40] Growth opportunities regardless of employee location

[24:58] Founding a company is like raising child

[26:52] No perfect time for major life decisions

[29:31] Ethical principles learned from parents

[30:33] Vision for Esevel and family independence

[32:28] Partnership requires mutual support for success

[35:48] Rising through adversity with determination

[36:34] Legacy focused on happy, independent children

Profile: Yuying Deng, CEO of Esevel: https://esevel.com

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuyingdeng/

Guest Host: Yana Fry from Yana TV: https://www.youtube.com/@yanatvsg

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanafry/

Why Data Streaming Is the Secret Weapon for AI Success with Kamal Brar

Bernard Leong — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 02:17:00 GMT

"In the context of where Confluent can play a critical part, it's also the interoperable integration with all the respective AI ecosystems. If you think about what AI is doing, it's working across microservices, working across data lakehouses, databases - could be a different endpoint service. Bringing all that together in a secure and consistent manner, constantly serving that information, is where I think it plays the most pivotal role." - Kamal Brar

Fresh out of the studio, Kamal Brar, Senior Vice President of Worldwide ISV and Asia Pacific/Middle East at Confluent, joins us to explore how data streaming platforms are becoming the critical foundation for enterprise AI across the regions. He shares his career journey from Oracle to Confluent, reflecting on his passion for open source technologies and how the LAMP stack era shaped his understanding of real-time data challenges. Kamal explains Confluent's evolution from the category creator of Kafka to a comprehensive data streaming platform combining Kafka, Flink, and Iceberg, emphasizing how real-time data infrastructure enables businesses to harness both public AI models and proprietary enterprise data while maintaining governance and security. He highlights compelling customer stories from India's National Payments Corporation processing billions of UPI transactions daily to healthcare AI applications serving patient needs, showcasing how data streaming solves fragmentation challenges that plague 89% of enterprises attempting AI adoption. Addressing implementation hurdles, he stresses that data infrastructure is the most critical piece for AI success, advocating for standards-based interoperability through Kafka's protocol and Confluent's extensive connector ecosystem to unlock siloed legacy systems. Closing the conversation, Kamal shares his vision for Asia Pacific becoming Confluent's largest growth region, powered by massive-scale innovations in payments, mobile transformation, and AI on the edge for autonomous vehicles and next-generation interfaces.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Kamal Brar
[01:00] Kamal's Career journey from computing to open source
[04:00] Attraction to data streaming and Kafka ecosystem
[07:00] Confluent's mission: data streaming platform leadership
[10:00] Why data streaming is critical for AI
[13:00] Report findings: 89% eager to adopt DSP
[14:00] Data fragmentation remains biggest enterprise challenge
[17:00] Real-time visibility becomes competitive differentiator
[20:00] AI-enabled applications transforming enterprise stack
[24:00] India payments: Kafka powers UPI infrastructure
[27:00] Data governance and security in AI
[33:00] Data infrastructure: foundation for scalable AI
[35:00] Connectors enable seamless system interoperability
[38:00] Interoperability unlocks fragmented enterprise data
[39:00] Asia Pacific driving aggressive regional growth
[42:00] What does great look like for Confluent
[44:00] Closing

Profile: Kamal Brar, Senior Vice President WW ISV [Independent Software Vendor] & Asia Pacific/Middle East, Confluent https://www.confluent.io

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamalbrar

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast:

Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia

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Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245

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Why Startups in China Are Going Global with Jing Yang

Bernard Leong — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 01:36:00 GMT

“I think this is a sort of coming-of-age moment. When I say coming of age, I mean collectively for Chinese entrepreneurs. Many of these founders are my age, or even younger, and I’ve spoken with some of them. I can really relate to why they want to build businesses that target the global market instead of just China. In the past, you could build a company in China first and then think about expanding outward. That’s no longer possible. For any consumer-facing software company today, from day one you must decide: Do I build for China, or do I build for Global minus China? The examples of TikTok, Shein, and many others show that you cannot do both. It’s not possible to serve both markets at once.” - Jing Yang

Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, the Asia Bureau Chief from The Information, shares her insights on ByteDance's pivotal moment, China's venture capital challenges, and the emerging U.S.-China competition in AI and robotics. Starting with ByteDance's latest financials, she revealed how the company now exceeds Meta in revenue but still lags significantly in profit margins, with its domestic business—Douyin and Toutiao—continuing to drive the lion's share of profits while TikTok remains unprofitable. Jing Yang explains how founder Zhang Yiming has entered "founder mode," dramatically increasing CapEx spending on AI development while ByteDance mysteriously went quiet on the AI leaderboard despite earlier dominance. Moving to venture capital, she unpacks why HongShan Capital has only deployed a quarter of its $9 billion fund raised in 2022, citing the collapse of exit opportunities, new overseas listing regulations from Chinese regulators, and the disappearance of big-ticket growth deals. She then explores the new wave of Chinese AI startups targeting global markets from day one, explaining how censorship and geopolitics force founders to choose between building for China or building for the world—they cannot do both. Finally, Jing Yang breaks down China's non-obvious advantage in humanoid robotics: not manufacturing prowess, but access to advanced manufacturing test beds where robots can be deployed, iterated, and refined at scale—an advantage The U.S. simply cannot match beyond Tesla.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Jing Yang from The Information
[02:14] ByteDance revenue exceeds Meta, profit lags
[05:01] Zhang Yiming goes founder mode with AI
[08:24] TikTok's significance to ByteDance's future
[10:18] China signals willingness on TikTok deal
[13:02] Chinese tech giants pivots to semiconductors, hard tech
[14:27] ByteDance's quiet AI strategy and leadership
[19:11] Why HongShan, formerly Sequoia China deploys only quarter of $9B fund
[21:00] China VC market lacks big growth deals
[24:20] New overseas listing regulations hinder exits
[26:15] Chinese VCs struggle with US investments
[29:53] Chinese founders target global markets from day one
[32:20] What forces global versus China product split
[38:28] Chinese apps feel holistic but culturally distinct
[43:00] ChatGPT arrival sparked physical AI revolution
[47:23] Chinese AI companies prioritize commercial use cases over AGI
[50:13] China's manufacturing provides crucial test beds advantage
[53:42] Redefining what constitutes a Chinese startup
[54:55] AI race between Chinese in China vs US
[58:00] Closing

Profile: Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast:

Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia

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Agent Bricks and How Data-AI Integration Changes Everything with Craig Wiley

Bernard Leong — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 02:34:00 GMT

"85% of AI use cases are being evaluated by the engineer who built it saying, 'yep, seemed to work pretty well.' If you're gonna build a system that's going to be critical to the business, that's going to be important that it gets it right, then you can't do that without evaluations." - Craig Wiley

Fresh out of the studio, Craig Wiley, Senior Director of Product Management at Databricks who leads Mosaic AI, joins us to discuss the forefront of enterprise AI from model development to deployment at scale. Beginning with his career journey in ML operations, Craig explained how he recognized the critical connection between data and AI layers that could deliver order-of-magnitude acceleration in development cycles. Emphasizing the transition from classical ML operations to LLM operations, he showcased how Databricks' unified platform eliminates training-serving skew through data lineage capabilities and supports both fine-tuning and RAG approaches depending on industrial use case requirements. Highlighting compelling customer success stories including Suncorp's employee productivity platform and AstraZeneca's transformation of 400,000 clinical trial documents into queryable insights, Craig revealed a striking reality about enterprise AI evaluation - that 85% of AI use cases are being evaluated only by the engineers who built them, reinforcing that proper evaluation frameworks remain foundational for trustworthy AI implementation. He concluded by introducing Agent Bricks as Databricks' evaluation-centric approach to building production agents, emphasizing that model flexibility and rigorous testing are essential for enterprises moving from experimentation to production, while sharing his vision that the industry must evolve from the "year of agents" to the "year of evaluation and quality."

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Craig Wiley
[01:21] How Craig Wiley started his work in ML Ops that led him to Databricks
[02:43] Data and AI layer connection creates order-of-magnitude acceleration
[03:47] Mosaic AI acquisition expanded Gen AI solution capabilities
[04:38] Classical ML statistics versus Gen AI evaluation challenges
[05:48] Mosaic AI covers end-to-end from data ingestion
[07:12] Training-serving skew eliminated through unified platform lineage
[08:51] Fine tuning versus RAG depends on use case
[10:49] Industrial agents benefit from fine-tuned smaller models
[12:44] Common governance scheme covers tables through model access
[13:52] Agent Bricks prioritizes accuracy over simplicity alone
[15:44] Model flexibility crucial for speed and accuracy optimization
[16:54] AB testing different models shows immediate performance differences
[17:59] Suncorp and AstraZeneca demonstrate diverse AI applications
[19:37] Asia Pacific shows aggressive AI adoption strategies
[20:59] CFO approval requires proven agent effectiveness evaluation
[22:00] 85% of AI cases evaluated only by building engineer
[23:20] Model agnostic approach beats single-vendor AI strategies
[24:12] Industry terminology evolves rapidly from RAG to agents
[25:39] Customer creativity with governance capabilities inspires product development

Profile: Craig Wiley, Senior Director of Product Management at Databricks and Mosaic AI

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigwiley/

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.

Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia

Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl

Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245

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The Truth About Enterprise AI & Why Data Matters with Nick Eayrs and Simon Fassot

Bernard Leong — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 08:09:00 GMT

"I think the biggest trap to potentially fall into is, "Hey, it's moving so fast, so much is changing. Let's just wait it out." Completely the wrong approach. You just gotta get started." Nick Eayrs from Databricks

"As tech people within the shipping industry, how do we explain, how do we make it accessible to all our users? So that's where we came up with the idea of a data supermarket, with in mind really the target of enabling self-service for our business. So by giving the analogy of a supermarket, it was much easier at the beginning to explain our business." - Simon Fassot from Hafnia

Fresh out of the studio, Nick Eayrs, Vice President of Field Engineering for Asia Pacific and Japan at Databricks, and Simon Fassot, General Manager and Head of Global Data and Analytics at Hafnia, join us to explore how data intelligence is transforming enterprise AI across diverse industries in Asia. Nick explained the fundamental distinction between general intelligence and data intelligence - emphasizing how enterprises gain competitive advantage by training AI on their proprietary data rather than public knowledge. Nick showcased customer success stories including Standard Chartered Bank and TechComBank and shared his perspectives on how senior executives can take advantage of AI by moving fast rather than wait and see. Last but not least, Nick offered what great would look like for Databricks in Asia Pacific and Japan in serving their customers. Adding the lens of the customer, Simon shared Hafnia's transformation from legacy SQL Server systems to a unified Databricks architecture serving their global shipping operations and elaborated on how the company is breaking down silos with their data supermarket and "Marvis" AI copilot for maritime operations based on retrieval augmented generation. This is Part 1 from Databricks Data + AI Event Singapore.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] QOTD by Nick Eayrs and Simon Fassot
[00:49] Introduction: Nick Eayrs from Databricks
[03:32] Customer obsession means deeply understanding their business context
[05:22] Data intelligence versus artificial general intelligence explanation begins
[06:42] AI trained on your data creates competitive advantage
[08:17] Only 15% of companies have correct AI infrastructure ready
[11:17] Don't wait for AI perfection, just get started now
[12:30] Agent Bricks simplify AI development using natural language
[13:49] Standard Chartered Bank cybersecurity use case with SIEM
[16:22] TechCom Bank in Vietnam customer brain with 12,000 customer attributes
[18:32] Shared responsibility model for ethical AI deployment
[25:24] Asia Pacific psychology focuses on future, not past
[26:28] Most important question: How do you get started?
[30:18] What does great look like for Databricks?
[33:16] Introduction: Simon Fassot from Hafnia
[35:18] How Hafnia transformed to full cloud architecture centralizes data through Databricks
[36:28] Self-service access needed for 300 onshore, 4000 vessel employees
[37:00] Three user types: operations, business intelligence, domain experts and Use Cases for Hafnia
[41:32] Unity catalog controls data quality for AI cases
[42:21] Two-phase Gen AI: ingest unstructured, then consume data
[44:25] How to implement Generative AI: One bad AI answer loses all user trust
[45:31] How reports in Hafnia use RAG embedded in workflows
[46:47] Data supermarket analogy simplifies self-service for business
[48:39] Marvis AI personalizes Gen AI within company context
[49:46] Neo4j partnership adds graph capabilities to ecosystem
[53:33] DNA Port platform unifies scattered dashboards and applications
[54:22] Databricks enables focus on business value over operations

Profiles:

Nick Eayrs, Vice President of Field Engineering, Asia Pacific & Japan at Databricks

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-eayrs/

Simon Fassot, General Manager and Head of Global Data and Analytics at Hafnia

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-fassot-68b95135/

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.

Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia

Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl

Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245

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Why True Global Ventures secure the CMS Licence in Singapore & the future of AI & Crypto with Beatrice Lion

Bernard Leong — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 04:04:00 GMT

"We took a longer time, there was a bit of roundabout, but the fact that we actually made like two or three times on whatever investment amount we did in the beginning - that for me was a very pivotal moment. Just because we didn't give up. The line between success and failure is so thin. So the impact of being a VC space is that you really can influence the technology founders that you back." - Beatrice Lion

Fresh out of the studio, Beatrice Lion, the chief executive officer and global partner from True Global Ventures, shares the remarkable story of how she became one of the youngest fund managers and the backstory to secure Singapore's Capital Markets Service license from MAS equivalent to Sequoia & Andreessen Horowitz's RIA licence in the US. Beatrice begins with her unconventional career journey from university straight into venture capital in 2017 and details TGV's investment thesis of backing only tested serial entrepreneurs across AI and blockchain applications. Beatrice offers her perspectives on the convergence of AI and crypto, the evolution of stablecoins as crypto's killer app, corporate treasury strategies such as Michael Saylor's Strategy with Bitcoin and Ethereum Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs), and why TGV maintains their performance-focused philosophy of keeping fund sizes at $100-200 million rather than chasing larger management fees. Last but not least, Beatrice shares what great would look like for TGV in the future.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Beatrice Lyon
[01:00] Introduction: Beatrice Lyon, CEO of True Global Ventures
[04:27] Supporting portfolio companies through business development
[05:03] Successful turnaround story and investment recovery
[08:30] How she take the CEO role as operational glue among partners
[11:25] MAS approval process for Capital Markets Licence (CMS)
[13:00] TGV fund structure: four, five, six overview
[14:55] Investment thesis: AI and blockchain applications globally
[16:01] Focus on serial entrepreneurs, not first-timers
[17:39] CMS license removes 20% constraint limitations
[20:54] The rationale behind applying for broad licenses
[26:57] Secondary market opportunities and liquidation preferences
[30:18] Blockchain landscape evolving toward financial applications
[34:49] Private stock tokenization and where it is heading
[38:27] Stablecoin as killer app for crypto
[39:09] AI agents settling payments with stablecoins
[42:25] Different regulatory approaches across jurisdictions
[43:36] Corporate crypto treasury strategies beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum DATs and Solana
[48:35] 80-20 rule for portfolio company treasuries
[50:37] Four-year crypto cycles may be extending
[54:31] What does great look like for TGV
[59:09] Closing

Profile: Beatrice Lion, Chief Executive Officer and General Partner, True Global Ventures: https://www.tgv4plus.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatricelion/

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast:

Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia

Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl

Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245

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Southeast Asia 16 Years Later with Michael Smith Jr & Daniel Cerventus Lim

Bernard Leong — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 08:26:00 GMT

Reuniting after more than a decade since their days in This Week in Asia Podcast from 2009, Michael Smith Jr., co-host of The Generalist podcast, and Daniel Cerventus Lim, semi-retired entrepreneur and community builder in Malaysia, join us for a candid assessment of Southeast Asia's tech ecosystem evolution. In this raw conversation, Michael offers his unflinching perspective on what he calls the 'broken windows era' of Southeast Asian tech, arguing that recent alleged fraud cases like E-Fishery and Tanihub require serious consequences to restore investor confidence, while questioning whether the region was ever correctly modelled for Silicon Valley-style outcomes. Daniel shares his pivot from startup founder to search fund advocate, explaining his bullish view on acquiring profitable traditional businesses and reflects on whether the region's potential was genuinely unrealized or simply impossible to achieve. Together, they explore the shift from venture-backed unicorn dreams to bootstrap realities, debate work ethic of Southeast Asia founders in comparison with Chinese and Indian founders, and discuss why the future of Southeast Asian tech may lie in smaller, profitable exits rather than the massive IPOs once envisioned.

"I think wealth creation here is very SME-focused." - Daniel Cerventus Lim

"Basically whether, it's SME or startup, to me now it's just: can you build a profitable business?" - Bernard Leong

"I have this philosophy that I think people don't agree with me, but we're in a broken Windows era of Southeast Asia and the only way in my opinion, the windows get fixed is if some of these people are behind bars." - Michael Smith Jr.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Daniel Cerventus, Bernard Leong & Michael Smith JR
[00:59] Introduction: Daniel Cerventus and Michael Smith Jr. from the Generalists Podcast
[06:00] Multiple alleged frauds in Southeast Asia: E-Fishery, Tanihub
[09:57] Southeast Asia in "broken windows era"
[11:26] Only exits from seed to Series A
[11:47] B rounds virtually gone, A rounds endangered.
[14:00] 50-100 million exits still viable
[16:30] Malaysian crypto companies globally focused
[19:25] Country expansion model in ASEAN doesn't work
[23:02] Israel model: never think local market
[24:15] Razer story: HP Mafia network backing
[25:07] Supabase: not really Singapore capital, but globally successful
[30:18] Chinese founders arriving with speed
[31:19] Work ethic comparisons with India
[32:34] Search funds emerging in Singapore
[37:25] Mainstream media ignores bootstrap success
[39:50] Search fund model targeting aging operators
[41:21] SME vs startup distinction blurring
[46:20] Hedge funds questioning regional companies
[49:32] Unrealized vs impossible potential debate
[51:07] Bangladesh ecosystem showing promise
[53:20] Structural exit issues remain unsolved
[54:31] Reset creating better founder discipline
[55:40] Optimistic on Southeast Asia's startup ecosystem
[57:21] Closing

Profile:

Michael Smith Jr., Tech Evangelist from Oracle & Co-Host, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smittysgp/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGeneralistsPodcast

Daniel Cerventus Lim, semi-retired entrepreneur, Community Builder in Malaysia and TEDxKL founder. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cerventus/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/80164351656

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.

Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia

Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl

Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245

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Asian Economies & Why Geography and History Matter More Than Economics Models with Jamus Lim

Bernard Leong — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 22:36:00 GMT

"The way that institutions emerge and entrench themselves and become a part of the functioning of an economy and society is because they solve some problems. So they're usually a non-market solution toward solving some problem that the economy, that the market system couldn't necessarily solve. Of course the most prominent example of an institution that solves an. Market problem in the non-market way is a firm, as Ronald Coase, of course very early on, taught us that. When a firm realizes that in some cases when transactions costs are high, you want to internalize things within the firm. That the firm is itself an institution. But these other social political institutions, they also exist to resolve some problem. And once they resolve that problem and they're resolving it adequately, then it becomes really hard to bring about change. So the institution solves a problem. So to be clear, it is better than in the absence of the institution, but it also means that without somehow breaking this institution or having some crisis that leads you to substantially reform the institution, you are going to be stuck at a suboptimal equilibrium." - Jamus Lim, author of "Asian Economies: History, Institutions and Structures"

Fresh out of the studio, Associate Professor Jamus Lim from ESSEC Business School and author of "Asian Economies: History, Institutions and Structures" joined us in a comprehensive exploration of the economic foundations shaping Asia's remarkable rise. Jamus shared his story on how the Asian Financial Crisis sparked his passion for macroeconomics and development. He unpacked the critical yet often overlooked role of geography, history, and institutional frameworks in explaining Asia's immense economic diversity, arguing that abstract economic models fail to capture the real-world complexities driving regional development. Through deep dives into China's demographic transition and export-driven challenges, South Korea's state-led chaebol industrialization model, and Japan's historic shift from deflation to inflation, Jamus demonstrated how colonial legacies and historical persistence continue to shape modern economic structures across the continent. Throughout the conversation, he revealed why China's middle-income trap escape depends on building domestic consumption to absorb its massive manufacturing capacity, explained how institutional solutions that once solved problems can become growth constraints, and argued that understanding Asia's past is essential for navigating its economic future in an increasingly complex global landscape.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Jamus Lim
[02:27] Introduction: Jamus Lim, Associate Professor in ESSEC Business School and Author of Asian Economies
[04:38] Asian Financial Crisis sparks Jamus' macro economics interest
[07:38] Teaching in Asia reveals regional development contrasts
[09:10] Middle income trap challenges across Asian economies
[10:23] Defining Asia: beyond East Asia stereotypes
[15:10] How Geography and History are overlooked in economic discourse
[17:26] China's transformation: poverty to economic powerhouse
[19:32] Demographic transition challenges across East Asia
[22:21] China's manufacturing evolution and export strategy
[24:28] Lewis turning point: China's labor transformation
[26:11] Housing boom and excess supply challenges
[29:10] Hukou system creates unequal access issues
[33:30] China shock: WTO entry transforms global manufacturing
[38:27] South Korea's state-led industrialization model success
[39:10] Zaibatsu to Chaebol: the colonial influence on economic structures
[42:00] Heavy chemical industry: successful state intervention in South Korea
[44:17] Japan's deflation to inflation transition challenges
[46:32] Structural adjustments in Japanese labor markets
[48:03] Institutional foundations: solving problems creates persistence
[54:04] Academic success vs. real-world policy impact
[55:00] Closing

Profile: Jamus Lim, Author of Asian Economies, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamuslim/

Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.

Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia

Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl

Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245

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Transforming Asia's Financial Infrastructure: Stripe's AI and Stablecoin Strategy with Paul Harapin

Bernard Leong — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 03:23:00 GMT

"APAC represents 40% of global GDP. So you can see that there's huge opportunity in a very, very diverse region. The needs of Japan are different to the needs of China. India is exploding with SaaS, software, AI. Australia one of our larger markets, again, very different. And so Southeast Asia, the complexities of Asia make it a joy to work in." - Paul Harapin

Fresh out of the studio, Paul Harapin, Chief Revenue Officer for Asia Pacific and Japan at Stripe, joined us in a conversation discussing Stripe's explosive growth in the region that represents 40% of global GDP. Paul dived deep into how Stripe is revolutionizing commerce through AI and stablecoins, sharing fascinating customer stories in the Asia Pacific and Japan. He delved into Stripe's current innovations specifically on agentic commerce toolkits, virtual card issuing, and adaptive pricing solutions that are transforming how businesses scale across the dynamic Asia Pacific region. Last but not least, Paul shared the key trends in AI-powered payments and stablecoin adoption, defining what great would look like for Stripe's user-first approach to building the financial infrastructure of the internet economy in APAC.

Episode Highlights
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Paul Harapin
[02:30] Building tech companies, helping Silicon Valley expand Asia
[03:27] How Paul talked himself into Stripe role
[04:30] Key career lessons: people and passion matter most
[07:05] Stripe's mission to increase GDP of internet
[09:00] Asia represents 40% of global GDP opportunity
[12:42] AI transformation like discovering fire, very early cycle
[14:12] Agentic commerce toolkits downloaded thousands times weekly
[18:04] Virtual card issuing for secure AI transactions
[19:00] Stripe Link enables six second checkout process
[21:26] Adaptive pricing increases conversion by 18 percent
[24:23] Bridge acquisition brings stablecoin payment capabilities
[26:00] Stablecoin enables stability in volatile currency markets
[27:00] Japanese car exporter Zimbabwe cash bag example
[29:20] Digital currency adoption growing at consumer level
[31:00] Working closely with regulators across Asia Pacific
[33:40] Asia's fast digitizing economy leads global innovation
[34:05] India's UPI 10 billion transactions forecasted 100 billion
[36:30] How Stripe helps businesses in Asia Pacific to scale
[38:42] User-first founding principle drives everything at Stripe
[40:20] Closing

Profile: Paul Harapin, Chief Revenue Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan, Stripe. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulharapin/

Analyse Asia Main Site: https://analyse.asia

Analyse Asia Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kkRwzRZa4JCICr2vm0vGl

Analyse Asia Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/analyse-asia-with-bernard-leong/id914868245

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Creating Economic Opportunity in the era of AI: LinkedIn's Mission in Asia Pacific with Feon Ang

Bernard Leong — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 19:00:00 GMT

"AI is in the minds of a lot of people right now and naturally with such big technological shift, you find that there is a big skill gap. You know, there is companies demanding skills in this area, and yet naturally in the marketplace, they might have difficulty finding that skills that is required for companies. So, you know, job seekers need to be a lot more conscious in terms of how they are equipping themselves. One of the things is that LinkedIn courses are there [to help]. I always talk about the three affirmative actions that you can do. One is making sure that you are fluent in this area. I think what are the things that you can do to actually get your hands on all these tools so that you become fluent in just playing around with the tool and making sure that you feel comfortable. The second area that I advise people is to make sure that you feel that you have the agency to master your destiny. The third thing will be to take action. If you have learned all these skills, find a way to showcase it and find a way to actually talk about it so that you are, you can actually surface your capabilities in this space." - Feon Ang

Fresh out of the studio, Feon Ang, Managing Director of LinkedIn Asia Pacific, joins us to explore how the platform is transforming professional networking and career development across the region's 343 million members. She shares her career journey from publishing to tech leadership, reflecting on the evolution from typewritten CVs to AI-powered job searches today. Feon explains LinkedIn's unique approach combining scale, trust, and member-first philosophy, emphasizing how their AI tools enable professionals to find opportunities through natural language while companies streamline hiring processes. She highlights the platform's remarkable growth metrics—47 hires per minute and 36% video engagement growth—showcasing how organizations are re-engineering recruitment and learning through AI coaching and personalized pathways. Addressing the challenges of AI adoption and skills gaps, she emphasizes the importance of three key actions: fluency, agency, and action, while advocating for accessible AI integration into daily workflows. Closing the conversation, Feon shares her vision for creating even greater economic opportunity across Asia Pacific as professionals and businesses navigate the AI transformation together.

Profile: Feon Ang, Managing Director of LinkedIn Asia Pacific: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feonang/

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day: Feon Ang
[01:06] Feon's career journey from publishing to tech
[03:00] Three key lessons from Feon's career journey: members first, scale, trust
[00:05:18] LinkedIn's mission: creating economic opportunity globally
[00:06:28] Asia Pacific: 343 million members, fastest growing
[00:08:19] Business milestone: crossed 17 billion globally
[00:09:50] Highest engagement rate across social platforms
[00:11:00] Video content growing 36% year-on-year
[00:12:24] Real-time hiring: 47 hires per minute, 10,000 applications every minute
[00:14:00] AI job search using natural language
[00:15:42] LinkedIn hiring assistant streamlines recruitment
[00:17:18] AI coaching creates personalized learning pathways
[00:19:10] Skill gaps demand conscious professional development
[00:21:00] Advice for Professionals in the age of AI: Fluency, Agency, Action
[23:13] Community partnerships supporting workforce development
[25:12] How CEOs are using social media via LinkedIn
[27:02] What does great look like for LinkedIn in the Asia Pacific?
[28:00] Closing

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How Microsoft Research Balances Exploration and Impact Globally with Doug Burger

Bernard Leong — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 21:32:00 GMT

"If you're going to be running a very elite research institution, you have to have the best people. To have the best people, you have to trust them and empower them. You can't hire a world expert in some area and then tell them what to do. They know more than you do. They're smarter than you are in their area. So you've got to trust your people. One of our really foundational commitments to our people is: we trust you. We're going to work to empower you. Go do the thing that you need to do. If somebody in the labs wants to spend 5, 10, 15 years working on something they think is really important, they're empowered to do that." - Doug Burger

Fresh out of the studio, Doug Burger, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Research, joins us to explore Microsoft's bold expansion into Southeast Asia with the recent launch of the Microsoft Research Asia lab in Singapore. From there, Doug shares his accidental journey from academia to leading global research operations, reflecting on how Microsoft Research's open collaboration model empowers over thousands of researchers worldwide to tackle humanity's biggest challenges. Following on, he highlights the recent breakthroughs from Microsoft Research for example, the quantum computing breakthrough with topological qubits, the evolution from lines of code to natural language programming, and how AI is accelerating innovation across multiple scaling dimensions beyond traditional data limits. Addressing the intersection of three computing paradigms—logic, probability, and quantum—he emphasizes that geographic diversity in research labs enables Microsoft to build AI that works for everyone, not just one region. Closing the conversation, Doug shares his vision of what great looks like for Microsoft Research with researchers driven by purpose and passion to create breakthroughs that advance both science and society.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Doug Burger
[01:08] Doug Burger's journey from academia to Microsoft Research
[02:24] Career advice: Always seek challenges, move when feeling restless or comfortable
[03:07] Launch of Microsoft Research Asia in Singapore: Tapping local talent and culture for inclusive AI development
[04:13] Singapore lab focuses on foundational AI, embodied AI, and healthcare applications
[06:19] AI detecting seizures in children and assessing Parkinson's motor function
[08:24] Embedding Southeast Asian societal norms and values into Foundational AI research
[10:26] Microsoft Research's open collaboration model
[12:42] Generative AI's rapid pace accelerating technological innovation and research tools
[14:36] AI revolutionizing computer architecture by creating completely new interfaces
[16:24] Open versus closed source AI models debate and Microsoft's platform approach
[18:08] Reasoning models enabling formal verification and correctness guarantees in AI
[19:35] Multiple scaling dimensions in AI beyond traditional data scaling laws
[21:01] Project Catapult and Brainwave: Building configurable hardware acceleration platforms
[23:29] Microsoft's 17-year quantum computing journey with topological qubits breakthrough
[26:26] Balancing blue-sky foundational research with application-driven initiatives at scale
[29:16] Three computing paradigms: logic, probability (AI), and quantum superposition
[32:26] Microsoft Research's exploration-to-exploitation playbook for breakthrough discoveries
[35:26] Research leadership secret: Curiosity across fields enables unexpected connections
[37:11] Hidden Mathematical Structures Transformers Architecture in LLMs
[40:04] Microsoft Research's vision: Becoming Bell Labs for AI era
[42:22] Steering AI models for mental health and critical thinking conversations

Profile: Doug Burger, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcburger/

Microsoft Research Profile: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/dburger/

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The Truth About China's Generative AI Revolution Nobody Talks About with Grace Shao

Bernard Leong — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:00:00 GMT

"China's approach is very pragmatic. People have been saying DeepSeek did it out of necessity. There's obviously a GPU constraint and hardware constraint in China, something they're working around. In many ways, the engineering genius and engineering innovation is what set DeepSeek apart. It challenged a global narrative around needing more GPUs and more money to get better AI. It was about throwing capital at the problem. It was a different approach because the capital ecosystem in China itself is very different. People talk about proof of concept - you have to prove your concept first in China to get funding. For many startups, they weren't getting much funding before the DeepSeek moment. To your point, no one really knew it would have a strong ROI, so only the BATs that had money and understood the technology were backing it." - Grace Shao, Founder of AI Proem Newsletter

Fresh out of the studio, Grace Shao, founder of AI Proem Newsletter and former CNBC and CGTN journalist, joins us to explore the rise of generative AI in China and how it's reshaping the global technology narrative. She began the story of her career journey and started with the conversation reflecting on how the DeepSeek moment revitalized China's internet sector after years of regulatory challenges and geopolitical tensions. Grace unpacks the pragmatic Chinese approach to AI development, explaining how companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent are leveraging their unique ecosystems and data advantages while startups embrace open-weight models to prove innovation over imitation. She discusses why the "China versus US AI arms race" narrative misses the point, the strategic reasons behind companies relocating to avoid geopolitical sensitivities, and how distribution challenges are separating winners from losers in the consumer AI space. Addressing the broader implications, Grace explores the real opportunities in robotics, vertical AI applications, and why collaboration rather than competition should define the industry's future. Closing the conversation, she shares her vision for bridging cultural understanding between East and West and what success looks like for the next generation of AI development.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Grace Shao, Founder of AI Proem
[01:21] Introduction: Grace Shao from AI Proem
[04:29] China's tech moves incredibly fast.
[08:09] China's generative AI landscape: BATs, Startups & Research Labs
[09:23] Most AI startups have financial ties with Alibaba or Tencent
[10:02] Chinese AI approach more pragmatic: commercialize quickly versus philosophical AGI pursuit
[12:23] Alibaba's approach to LLMs with Qwen
[15:00] Tencent's WeChat integration with DeepSeek vs Tencent Yuanbao
[18:03] ByteDance pivots to multimodal LLM models
[21:31] DeepSeek moment revitalized China's internet sector after rough 2022-2024 period
[27:28] DeepSeek and Kimi embrace open-weight models for talent and adoption
[29:46] Open sourcing as strategic decision for China LLMs
[33:19] US capital pullout from China forced companies like Manus overseas to Singapore
[37:17] Robotics in China: Unitree Robotics, UBTech and Galbot
[42:05] Chinese startups focus on vertical integration rather than competing on LLMs
[43:51] Healthcare and agricultural AI applications extremely advanced in China
[44:13] This isn't an arms race; framing as competition misses the point
[45:49] China and US should collaborate on AI safety and regulation for future generations
[49:00] Closing

Profile: Grace Shao, Founder of AI Proem Newsletter: https://aiproem.substack.com/
Personal Site: https://www.proemcommunications.com/aboutgraceshao
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gmzshao/

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Enabling AI at Scale: Governance as Competitive Advantage with David Hardoon

Bernard Leong — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 06:16:00 GMT

"[Question: So what was the biggest misconception for most business leaders usually when it comes to operationalizing AI governance?] Based on my interactions and conversations, now suddenly they think they have to erect a whole set of new committees, that they have to have these new programs. You almost hear a sigh from the room. Like, oh, we have now this whole additional compliance cost because we have to do all these new things. The reason I see that as a bit of a misconception, because building on everything that was just said earlier, you already have compliance, you already have committees, you already have governance. It's an integration of that because otherwise guess what's gonna happen? We all know that this is the next thing around the corner that's gonna pop up, whatever it's gonna be called. Are you gonna have to set up a whole new committee just because of that? Then the next thing, another one." - David Hardoon

Fresh out of the studio, David Hardoon, Global Head of AI Enablement at Standard Chartered Bank, joins us in a conversation to explore how financial institutions can adopt AI responsibly at scale. He shares his unique journey from academia to government to global banking, reflecting on his fascination with human behavior that originally drew him to artificial intelligence. David explains how his time at Singapore's Monetary Authority shaped the groundbreaking FAIR principles, emphasizing how proper AI governance actually accelerates rather than inhibits innovation. He highlights real-world implementations from autonomous cash reconciliation agents to transaction monitoring systems, showcasing how banks are transforming operations while maintaining strict regulatory compliance. Addressing the biggest misconceptions about AI governance, he emphasizes the importance of integrating AI frameworks into existing structures rather than creating entirely new bureaucracies, while advocating for use-case-based approaches that build essential trust. Closing the conversation, David shares his philosophy that AI success ultimately depends on understanding human behavior and asks the fundamental question every organization should consider: "Why are we doing this?"

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by David Hardoon #QOTD - "AI governance isn't new bureaucracy."
[00:46] Introduction: David Hardoon from Standard Chartered Bank.
[02:02] How David's AI journey started with human behavior curiosity.
[07:26] Governance accelerates innovation, like traffic rules enable fast driving.
[10:31] FAIR principles in MAS Singapore born from lunches with compliance officers.
[14:23] Don't reinvent governance wheel for AI implementations.
[24:17] Banks already manage risk; apply same discipline to AI.
[28:40] AI adoption problem is trust, not technology.
[34:21] Autonomous AI agents handle cash reconciliation with bank IDs.
[36:00] AI reduces transaction monitoring false positives by 50%.
[39:54] AI requires full supply chain from infrastructure to translators.
[41:52] Organizations must reward intelligent failure in AI innovation.
[44:47] AI hallucination is a feature, not bug for innovation.
[47:35] Measure AI ROI differently for innovation versus implementation teams.
[56:27] Final wisdom: People always ask "why" about AI initiatives.

Profile: David Hardoon, Global Head of AI Enablement, Standard Chartered Bank Personal Site: https://davidroihardoon.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrh/

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The Future of AI Trust: Why Guardrails Actually Accelerate Innovation with Sabastian Niles

Bernard Leong — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 02:02:00 GMT

"You can try to develop self-awareness and take a beginner's mind in all things. This includes being open to feedback and truly listening, even when it might be hard to receive. I think that's been something I've really tried to practice. The other area is recognizing that just like a company or country, as humans we have many stakeholders. You may wear many hats in different ways. So as we think of the totality of your life over time, what's your portfolio of passions? How do you choose—as individuals, as society, as organizations, as humans and families with our loved ones and friends—to not just spend your time and resources, but really invest your time, resources, and spirit into areas, people, and contexts that bring you meaning and where you can build a legacy? So it's not so much advice, but more like a north star." - Sabastian V. Niles

Fresh out of the studio, Sabastian Niles, President and Chief Legal Officer at Salesforce Global, joins us to explore how trust and responsibility shape the future of enterprise AI. He shares his journey from being a high-tech corporate lawyer and trusted advisor to leading AI governance at a company whose number one value is trust, reflecting on the evolution from automation to agentic AI that can reason, plan, and execute tasks alongside humans. Sabastian explains how Agentforce 3.0 enables agent-to-agent interactions and human-AI collaboration through command centers and robust guardrails. He highlights how organizations are leveraging trusted AI for personalized customer experiences, while Salesforce's Office of Ethical and Humane Use operationalizes trust through transparency, explainability, and auditability. Addressing the black box problem in AI, he emphasizes that guardrails provide confidence to move faster rather than creating barriers. Closing the conversation, Sabastian shares his vision on what great looks like for trusted agentic AI at scale.

Episode Highlights
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Sabastian Niles: "Portfolio of passions - invest your spirit into areas that bring meaning"
[01:02] Introduction: Sabastian Niles, President and Chief Legal Officer of Salesforce Global
[02:29] Sabastian's Career Journey
[04:50] From Trusted Advisor to SalesForce whose number one value is trust
[08:09] Salesforce's 5 core values: Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, Sustainability
[10:25] Defining Agentic AI: humans with AI agents driving stakeholder success together
[13:13] Trust paradigm shift: trusted approaches become an accelerant, not obstacle
[17:33] Agent interactions: not just human-to-agent, but agent-to-agent-to-agent handoffs
[23:35] Enterprise AI requires transparency, explainability, and auditability
[28:00] Trust philosophy: "begins long before prompt, continues after output"
[34:06] Office of Ethical and Humane Use operationalizes trust values
[40:00] Future vision: AI helps us spend time on uniquely human work
[45:17] Governance philosophy: Guardrails provide confidence to move faster
[48:24] What does great look like for Salesorce for Trust & Responsibility in the Era of AI?
[50:16] Closing

Profile: Sabastian V. Niles, President & Chief Legal Officer, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabastian-v-niles-b0175b2/

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How Apple Accidentally Built China's Tech Superpower and Can't Escape with Patrick McGee

Bernard Leong — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 19:00:00 GMT

"I quote a study that looked at 84 countries in terms of internal migration and India was dead last. That's not a knock against the culture. It's just not part of the culture that young women in particular leave home at 17, go to the other side of the country and work in a factory. You don't have that. So what's the phrase: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Apple might have a plan, but like good luck upending 5,000 years of Indian culture to make it happen." - Patrick McGee, author of "Apple in China"

Fresh out of the studio, Patrick McGee, San Francisco correspondent for the Financial Times and author of "Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company" joined us in a conversation to unravel the extraordinary story of how the world's most valuable company became inextricably entangled with China. Patrick shared the backstory behind Apple's century-defining Faustian bargain and progressed through how he uncovered the untold story of Asia's contract manufacturing history through Apple's supply chain point of view. He unpacks the famous "Apple Squeeze" philosophy of paying suppliers minimally while providing invaluable training, and shares fascinating stories from characters like the ruthless negotiator Tony Blevins to the tragic figure of Jackie Haynes. Throughout the conversation, Patrick demonstrates how Apple inadvertently created China's contract manufacturing capabilities and explains why the company's current attempts to diversify to India face insurmountable cultural and political barriers. Last but not least, he argues that Apple's very success in China has become its greatest vulnerability, trapped in a relationship where going too fast risks Beijing's ire, while going too slow means remaining stuck in an increasingly untenable position.

Episode Highlights:
[00:03] Quote of the Day by Patrick McGee
[01:00] Introduction: Patrick McGee, author of "Apple in China"
[03:12] Lessons from Patrick's Career Journey
[05:13] March 15, 2013: Xi Jinping's political awakening - Apple's first "oh shit moment" in China, just 12 hours after his inauguration
[10:25] Apple's manufacturing DNA - why they control supply chains differently than other tech companies
[12:09] The secret pyramid: ID → PD → MD - how Apple's industrial design gets translated into manufacturing reality
[16:11] Terry Gou's legendary call: "I can fix this" - the moment Foxconn became Apple's key manufacturing partner [19:38] OEM vs ODM strategy: Why Terry Gou chose to never compete with clients, focusing on vertical integration instead
[25:00] Tony Blevins' ruthless negotiations: "We don't have time for you to read the contract. You just need to sign it now"
[26:45] The "Apple Squeeze" revealed: "We won't pay you much, but the experience will be invaluable"
[28:27] Staggering impact: Apple trained 28 million people - greater than California's labor force, 6x Singapore's population
[34:03] The Gang of Eight: Apple's first senior team living in China to navigate political pressures
[41:45] Chinese dominance: Huawei, Xiaomi, and others now control 55% of global smartphone market share
[48:08] Apple's double whammy: Supply Chain locked in China and TSMC
[52:37] Apple's impossible balancing act in India: "Go too fast, risk Beijing's ire. Go too slow, remain stuck"
[53:11] Jackie Haynes tragedy: Apple's failed attempt to improve worker conditions caught between operational demands and Xi Jinping's crackdown
[57:09] Closing

Profile: Patrick McGee, Author of "Apple in China": https://appleinchina.com and San Francisco correspondent for Financial Times LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prmcgee/

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Transforming Asia Pacific's Digital Future: IBM's Vision for Enterprise AI with Hans Dekkers

Bernard Leong — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 19:00:00 GMT

"At IBM, we really work on two emerging technologies: hybrid cloud and AI for enterprise. These two are deeply connected. Hybrid cloud for us means that regardless of where the data sits whether the compute is on-premise, off-premise, or across multiple clouds. We believe the client should have the control and flexibility to choose where to run and place their data. If you look at the facts, a very high percentage of client data is still on-premise. It hasn't moved to the cloud for obvious reasons. So, how can you scale AI if you don’t have proper access to that data? AI is all about the data. That’s why we believe in a strategy that redefines and rethinks everything. We call it the Great Technology Reset." - Hans Dekkers

Fresh out of the studio, Hans Dekkers, General Manager of IBM Asia Pacific, joins us to explore how enterprise AI is reshaping business across the region. He shares his journey with IBM after business school, reflecting on the evolution of personal computers to AI today. Hans explains IBM's unique approach combining hybrid cloud infrastructure with AI for Enterprise, emphasizing how their granite models and data fabric enable businesses and governments to maintain control over their data while scaling AI capabilities. He highlights customer stories from Indonesian telecoms company to internal IBM transformations, showcasing how companies are re-engineering everything from HR to supply chains using domain-specific AI models. Addressing the challenges of AI implementation, he emphasizes the importance of foundational infrastructure and governance, while advocating for smaller, cost-effective models over GPU-heavy approaches. Closing the conversation, Hans shares his vision for IBM's growing presence in Asia as the key to enterprise AI success.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Hans Dekkers
[01:00] Introduction: Hans Dekkers from IBM
[05:00] Key career lesson from Hans Dekker
[06:51] IBM focuses on two emerging technologies: hybrid cloud and AI for Enterprise, deeply connected
[09:27] "Your data needs to remain your data" - IBM's fundamental AI principle for enterprise clients
[10:00] IBM's approach: Small, nimble, cost-effective AI models that can be owned and governed by clients
[13:59] "The cost of AI is still too high. It's about a hundred times too high" - IBM CEO's perspective on AI costs
[14:44] Small domain-specific models example: Banking AI trained for financial analysis, not Russian poetry
[18:00] IBM's internal transformation: HR, supply chain, and consulting completely re-engineered with AI
[21:18] Major partnership announcement: Indonesian telecom embracing IBM's watsonx platform
[22:23] AI agents demo: Multiple agents (HR, finance, legal) debating and constructing narratives
[25:00] "Everyone talks about AI equals GPU" - Hans wishes clients understood that inferencing is more important
[27:00] IBM's Asia Pacific vision: Reestablishing growing presence and differentiated technology approach
[28:00] Closing

Profile: Hans Dekkers, General Manager IBM Asia Pacific and China: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hans-a-t-dekkers/

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From Startup Ecosystem Builder to Strategic Investor: E27 and Orvel Ventures with Mohan Belani

Bernard Leong — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 19:00:00 GMT

"If you take a step back and ask, how has the last 10-15 years panned out? The truth of the matter is that Southeast Asia has not done as well as it should have based on the reports and projections that existed earlier. There have been fundamental flaws from a culture standpoint with respect to how the ecosystem has been shaped. I think there has been too much of a mirror of what's happening in Silicon Valley and figuring out how to replicate those concepts in Southeast Asia, whereas there should have been a better, more localized, customized, regional model to suit the culture and concepts in this region. We've mirrored our fundraising, our entire ecosystem to be too much like Silicon Valley - blitzscaling style model, power law style investing which in hindsight, maybe were not the right approaches. There's also been an over-reliance on funding." - Mohan Belani, CEO & Co-founder of E27, Partner at Orvel Ventures

Fresh out of the studio, Mohan Belani, CEO and co-founder of E27 and partner at Orvel Ventures, joins us to explore his 15 years of journey shaping Southeast Asia's startup ecosystem. In the conversation, Mohan reflected on the evolution of Southeast Asia's ecosystem through different eras and offered his perspectives in how startups need to navigate the current funding winter in Southeast Asia. He also shared the spark that inspired him to set Orvel Ventures and how the investment thesis will fit better for the Southeast Asia region. Last but not least, he offered his vision what great would look like for Orvel and E27 in the next decade.

Episode Highlights:
[00:01:00] The Spark from Silicon Valley
[00:03:00] Foundational Lessons for Entrepreneurs
[00:07:00] The Origin of E27
[00:10:00] E27’s Evolution into a Regional Powerhouse
[00:13:00] Navigating the Phases of Southeast Asia’s Ecosystem
[00:17:00] Media as Ecosystem Infrastructure
[00:20:00] Building Regionally with Roadshows
[00:22:00] Hard Lessons from Regional Expansion
[00:23:00] Adapting to Emerging Tech Waves
[00:25:00] Misaligned Expectations & the Silicon Valley Mirror
[00:28:00] The Birth of Orvel Ventures
[00:33:00] The Orvel Ventures Investment Model
[00:36:00] Red Flags & Green Flags in Founders
[00:40:00] Rethinking Exit Pathways in SEA
[00:45:00] Promising Sectors in 2024
[00:48:00] Thoughts on Governance Failures
[00:52:00] The Need for Critique in SEA Media
[00:54:00] Vision for E27 and Oval Ventures
[00:57:00] Closing and Echelon 2025

Profile: Mohan Belani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohanbelani/

CEO and co-founder of E27: https://e27.co

Partner, Orvel Ventures: https://orvel.vc

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From Accidental Hotelier to Longevity Pioneer: An Entrepreneur's Journey with Allen Law

Bernard Leong — Sun, 18 May 2025 19:00:00 GMT

"I think the why is so important, but it's always not really being asked. Most people want to know, 'What's your growth look like?' or 'How is this offering different from another offering?' Those are the questions we get most of the time. But going back to the real why we actually do this in the first place is the most critical question if you ask me. For myself personally, it is all about having a positive impact in society. We have chosen to go down the route of wellness, fitness, and longevity to have that positive impact, which we believe is extremely important and a strong one whereby I'm personally putting a lot of energy, funds, and capital behind it to ensure we educate the community and society to establish and adopt healthy and active lifestyles that will only benefit the entire population." - Allen Law

Fresh out of the studio, Allen Law, co-founder of MOVE Repeat, chairman of REVL, and principal of Seveno Capital, joins us to explore the holistic approach to wellness, fitness, and longevity across his entrepreneurial ventures. In the conversation, Allen explained his journey from "accidental hotelier" to longevity entrepreneur, outlining the six pillars of longevity. He emphasized that the gap isn't in knowledge but in action, highlighting how his upcoming 38,000 square foot facility in Singapore brings medical, fitness, recovery, sleep, and nutrition services under one roof to help people change their lifestyles. Allen discussed how MOVE Repeat has acquired three brands operating in 50+ studios across five countries and shifted from traditional subscription models to pay-as-you-go to ensure consistent customer satisfaction. Last but not least, Allen describes what great would look like for his fitness, wellness and longevity businesses.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Allen Law
[01:00] Introduction: Allen Law and his career journey
[04:00] Career Lessons Shared: The importance of first principles and purpose-driven business beyond financial success
[05:45] The six pillars of longevity: sleep, exercise, nutrition, avoiding harmful substances, social connections, and stress management
[08:00] Move Repeat's expansion to three brands across five countries with over 50 fitness studios
[11:45] Change of Business Model from Subscription to Pay as you go in Fitness Clubs focused on customer satisfaction
[18:15] The holistic approach to wellness and why focusing on just one pillar isn't enough
[20:00] Allen's upcoming 38,000 square foot facility combining medical, fitness, recovery, and nutrition services
[26:00] Bridging the gap between wellness knowledge and action through lifestyle change support
[31:00] Using science and data tracking to show measurable improvements in health metrics
[32:00] Democratizing wellness to make longevity accessible for the 50% rather than the wealthy 5%
[35:00] Community building as the foundation for growth in wellness businesses
[38:00] Closing

Profile: Allen Law, Co-Founder, MOVE Repeat, Chairman, REVL Training, Principal, Seveno Capital, Founder, Park Hotel Group.

Allen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenlawphg/

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Building WhatsApp for 3 Billion Users with Alice Newton-Rex

Bernard Leong — Mon, 05 May 2025 21:50:00 GMT

"Now, some people are only ever going to want to use WhatsApp to message the people in their life, and they should be able to carry on doing that and have an incredibly simple experience in doing so. But we're increasingly seeing that users want to use WhatsApp for more than messaging close friends and family. It's why we're doing things like business messaging. It's why we built new features like channels and status and updates tab separate from your personal chats. We think that if we carry on getting the core of private messaging right, it also gives us the opportunity to build more of these features that users want." - Alice Newton-Rex

Fresh out of the studio, Alice Newton-Rex, Vice President and Head of Product at WhatsApp, joins us to explore how the messaging platform balances innovation with privacy for over 3 billion users worldwide. In the conversation, Alice explained WhatsApp's three guiding principles: simple, reliable, and private. She emphasized that the features they say "no" to are often more important than those they approve, highlighting how WhatsApp has evolved beyond personal messaging to include business services that serve over 200 million businesses globally and balancing innovation with trust on how Meta AI is integrated into the platform. Last but not least, Alice describes what great would look like for WhatsApp continuing to be the most private way for people to communicate while maintaining simplicity and reliability at global scale.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Alice Newton-Rex, VP & Head of Product, WhatsApp
[01:34] Alice's Career Journey from Classics to WhatsApp.
[04:32] WhatsApp's three core principles: simple, reliable, and private.
[06:43] Best product decisions: knowing when to say "no".
[09:43] Mobile-first strategy shapes WhatsApp's business model.
[11:21] Small businesses use WhatsApp extensively in emerging economies.
[13:58] WhatsApp Business ecosystem reaches 200 million users globally.
[16:02] End-to-end encryption forms foundation of WhatsApp's privacy commitment.
[18:38] Features keep core experience simple while adding optional functionalities.
[21:18] User trust prioritized over speed of iteration.
[24:32] Messaging will be how most people interact with AI.
[26:40] AI features: optional, visually distinct, with clear user control.
[32:53] Privacy enables authenticity in everyday communication.
[34:13] Future WhatsApp: keeping simple, reliable, private communication for billions.
[35:35] Closing.

Profile: Alice Newton-Rex, Vice President & Head of Product, WhatsApp

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-newton-rex-4713191a/

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How Databricks Revolutionize Intelligent Enterprise AI in ASEAN with Patrick Kelly

Bernard Leong — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 19:00:00 GMT

" We did a survey with The Economist globally which obviously included Europe and APAC as well. And we asked the question, 'Does my organization's current architecture supports the unique demands of AI workloads.' Basically 85% said, 'No. We don't have the architecture to support it.' Some partially does, but it needs lots of modifications. So we can still feel a lot of people are still in the early stages and that data point ties back to: 85% of GenAI [proof of concepts] has not gone into production. I think that another interesting point is, 'Does your architecture connect AI application? -your relevant business data.' which is probably nearly even more important for me. Again, it was still about 80%- 'We don't have that.' Because that business data is all over the place. Without the clean data, you cannot get good AI." - Patrick Kelly

Fresh out of the studio, Patrick Kelly, Senior Director for Digital Natives, Startups & Enterprise and Commercial Sales in Southeast Asia at Databricks, joins us to discuss how data intelligence is powering enterprise AI applications in ASEAN. Beginning with his career journey from network engineering to tech leadership across Asian markets, Patrick explained how Databricks pioneered the Lakehouse architecture and integrated generative AI into enterprise workloads. Emphasizing the critical role of data quality in AI success, he showcased compelling customer case studies from across ASEAN and revealed striking generative AI trends in Asia - notably that 85% of organizations lack proper architecture to support AI workloads, reinforcing that clean data remains foundational for effective AI implementation. Patrick concluded by sharing his vision of what success looks like for Databricks in Southeast Asia.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Quote of the Day #QOTD
[01:49] Introduction: Patrick Kelly from Databricks
[02:28] Career journey from network engineering to technology sales leadership
[06:43] Lessons from Patrick's career journey
[09:10] The Data & AI total market opportunity in Southeast Asia and How Databricks is poised to capture the market.
[10:08] How Databricks pioneered the Lakehouse concept, combining data lake and data warehouse capabilities.
[15:24] The One Thing that Patrick know about Databricks that very few do.
[17:52] Customer success stories from Grab, GetGo, GovTech to Siam Commercial Bank
[22:50] How Mosaic AI positioned Databricks to develop enterprise-quality AI solutions with customers.
[27:29] Key Trends in Asia Pacific on Generative AI.
[32:23] The Importance of Data Architecture for Enterprises adopting AI.
[35:13] Advice for Businesses on Implementation of AI
[37:25] What does great look like for Databricks?
[41:40] Closing remarks and invitation to the Data and AI Summit.

Profile: Patrick Kelly, Senior Director for Digital Natives, Startups & Enterprise and Commercial Sales in Southeast Asia at Databricks.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-kelly-aab6168/

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The Lazarus Group, The Bybit Hack and Sanctions: The New Battleground with Andrew Fierman

Bernard Leong — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:00:00 GMT

"The thing that's most fascinating, we talk a lot about how complex North Korea is here but when you compare it to some of the other illicit groups, particularly those that are sanctioned, say your terrorist organization that's soliciting donations on Telegram or some other social media outlet understanding what that difference in the level of complexity is, I think is really fascinating to actually know about. When we're talking about DPRK, we're talking about laundering of funds through tens of thousands. By the time we're done, it'll be hundreds of thousands of wallets. And then on the other end of it, We have a terrorist organization that was, sanctioned mid last year for facilitating on behalf of Hamas. After they got sanctioned and their addresses that they were using, got seized and disrupted. They got annoyed and they tried to bridge funds with their new Ethereum wallet after they received a few donations and they didn't even have the gas fees to facilitate it. And the transaction, when we're talking about the difference in the level of complexity here, it is really fascinating to know the nuance and it's not to say that, other nation states, like Russia or Iran don't have any level of complexity. They certainly do." - Andrew Fierman, Head of National Security Intelligence at Chainalysis Inc

Fresh out of the studio, Andrew Fierman, Head of National Security Intelligence at Chainalysis, provides an in-depth analysis of the recent $1.5 billion Bybit hack orchestrated by North Korea's Lazarus Group. Starting from his career journey from traditional banking to blockchain analytics, Andrew shares his expertise on how sanctioned entities operate in the cryptocurrency space and the sophisticated techniques employed by state-sponsored hackers. He explains how blockchain's transparency enables tracking of stolen funds. Andrew details how sanctioned states are increasingly turning to stablecoins and decentralized finance to evade traditional banking controls, while emphasizing the importance of KYC procedures and blockchain analytics in disrupting illicit activities. Last but not least, Andrew shares his perspectives on emerging threats in cryptocurrency security, including how AI-powered deepfakes and digital identity forgery are lowering barriers to sophisticated attacks.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Quote of the Day by Andrew Fierman #QOTD
[02:38] Introduction of Andrew Fierman, Head of National Security Intelligence at Chainalysis
[05:54] Differences between traditional financial monitoring and blockchain transparency
[08:22] Explanation of the Bybit hack and how the hack occurred through a third-party vendor
[12:06] Lazarus Group's operational methods and their technical advancement
[15:10] Evolving tactics in the laundering process
[16:18] The importance of patience in tracking and disrupting funds
[19:39] Role of blockchain analytics in identifying and mitigating risks
[19:47] Challenges in tracing through bridges and DeFi protocols
[22:17] Comparison of North Korea's sophistication versus other sanctioned groups
[24:51] How exchanges can bolster their defenses against attacks
[27:52] Discussion of the Chainalysis 2025 Crypto Crime Report
[31:24] Secondary sanctions and their impact on international crypto payments
[35:28] Regulatory challenges around decentralized finance platforms
[37:42] Dusting attacks and their implications for everyday users
[40:43] Emerging threats in the crypto space
[41:38] Lowering barriers to sophisticated attacks through AI and deepfakes
[44:11] What success means for the crypto industry in fending off sanctioned groups
[46:35] Closing

Profile: Andrew Fierman, Head of National Security Intelligence at Chainalysis Inc https://www.chainalysis.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-fierman-87511611/

Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report: https://go.chainalysis.com/2025-Crypto-Crime-Report.html

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Building Networks, Not Just Hiring: The Global Talent Strategy with Mark Reinecke

Bernard Leong — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 01:13:00 GMT

"When I discuss with senior leaders, interview them, or assess them for senior roles, they often come to me, and I ask them: 'What makes you unique? How do you see yourself?' Eighty percent of them tell me what they can't do. They talk about their development needs, and I say, 'Is that how you pitch yourself? Is that what you really bring to the table? You sit with a headhunter and tell me what you can’t do—why not tell me what you’re really good at?' Your exceptional value-add, your competitive advantage—that’s what makes an impact, not what you cannot do. Development needs require a mitigation strategy, yes, but I believe that focusing on your unique strengths will take you further in your career." - Mark Reinecke

Fresh out of the studio, Mark Reinecke, SVP of Top Executive Management and Talent Acquisition at Airbus, shares his approach to the full life cycle of global talent management from acquisition to development and retention. Starting from his career journey, Mark shared his experiences and mental models in recruiting, developing and retaining top talent while emphasized how the STAR program in Airbus can gather experts from areas outside of Airbus to provide different perspectives on how the aviation industry can learn from best practices in other industries given the emerging technologies. Last but not least, Mark shared his perspectives on what does great look like for global talent management.

Audio Episode Highlights
[00:46] Lead with your unique strengths, not weaknesses
[02:05] Introduction of Mark Reinecke, SVP at Airbus
[02:41] Mark's career journey from automotive to aerospace
[05:47] Key career lessons: daily learning and focusing on strengths
[07:09] Mark's role managing top 250 leaders at Airbus
[09:02] Approach to analysing global talent landscape
[10:39] Integrating outside talent into aviation industry
[12:54] The STAR Program: creating an ecosystem of external expertise
[17:51] Challenges of integrating external talent into aviation culture
[20:38] Airbus's tailor-made onboarding process with buddy system
[21:40] Two-way learning between Airbus and STAR Program members
[23:20] AI's future role in HR and talent management
[28:25] The underestimated power of genuine professional networks
[32:21] What excellence in global talent management looks like
[34:40] Closing

Profile: Mark Reinecke, Senior Vice President, Top Executive Management and Talent Acquisition and STAR Program Director, Airbus. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-reinecke-6253b015/

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Gambling Man: The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son with Lionel Barber

Bernard Leong — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 19:00:00 GMT

"They will judge Masa to have been an extraordinarily consequential investor and historic figure in world investing and tech investing because he has made not just spectacular bets—but he's made so many people rich. I mean, with other people's money. All these founders, he's given them money, he's been an enormous disruptor, and he's built global businesses. He's built a huge business in Japan on the mobile operator. So for all these reasons, I know he sometimes feels dissatisfied with his legacy, and he's now trying to build his greatest legacy in the march to artificial general intelligence. Maybe the legacy will finally be judged by whether this bet pays off. What will his role be in the AI revolution? I would say to him, 'You've done pretty well so far.' " - Lionel Barber, author of "Gambling Man"

Fresh out of the studio, Lionel Barber, former editor of the Financial Times and author of "Gambling Man" joined us in a conversation to unravel the enigmatic figure of Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank Group. We began with Lionel's career journey as the former editor of Financial Times and why inspired him to work on this book. We progressed how he put together a nuanced portrait of Masa as a resilient outsider whose Korean-Japanese heritage fueled his drive to succeed in Japan's stratified society and shared stories of Masa's evolution from software distributor to global tech investor with Vision Fund. Lionel explains how this "eternal optimist" has consistently ridden technological waves for four decades while making and losing billions. He unpacks Masa's unique investment philosophy of thinking big, his revolutionary $100 billion Vision Fund that disrupted venture capital norms, and his latest half-trillion-dollar bet on AI. Throughout the conversation, Lionel reveals the complexity behind the caricature, arguing that history will remember Masa as an extraordinarily consequential figure in global tech investing despite his mixed record of spectacular wins and losses.

Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Introduction to Lionel Barber and his book on Masayoshi Son
[01:34] Lionel's journalism career origins
[03:57] Key lessons from Lionel's career
[05:25] What makes Masayoshi Son unique
[06:33] The resilience behind Masa's character
[07:49] The "Gambling Man" and core themes
[10:38] Challenges in documenting Masa's story
[13:07] How Masa's Korean heritage shaped him
[15:49] Defining moments in Masa's business career
[18:33] Evolution from software distributor to global tech conglomerate
[22:21] Masa's dual roles: operator and investor
[24:21] Understanding Masa's investment philosophy
[31:30] How Masa changed tech investing
[34:30] The hardest question about Masa
[35:23] Masa's historical legacy
[39:10] Closing remarks and book recommendations

Profile: Lionel Barber, Author of "Gambling Man"

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lionel-barber-473826135/

X: https://x.com/lionelbarber?lang=en

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Gambling Man Profile Page: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Gambling-Man/Lionel-Barber/9781668070741

FT Profile: https://www.ft.com/lionel-barber

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Scam Inc: How a $500B Crime Industry is Impacting the World with Sue-Lin Wong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 19:00:00 GMT

"We're all vulnerable. And I hadn't thought about that previously. I thought, oh, it's only a small group of people who might fall for this. What I've learned is actually [that] these scammers are so sophisticated. They have so much money. Based on my reporting, this industry, you know, is maybe more lucrative than the illicit drug trade, and these criminal syndicates might be making over 500 billion US dollars a year. So that means they have access to the latest technology, whether it's voice cloning or face changing software. They can buy the latest in AI tools. they can stay several steps ahead of most law enforcement organizations in most places in the world, and, you know, re-invest in their businesses, because that's how they view what they're doing. They just see this as a business line, and they want to make a profit. That's why we called the podcast Scam Inc, because I think the way to understand what we're seeing is that this is an industry and everyone's driven by profits. So the fact that the criminals have so much money makes it really difficult for governments, police or international organizations or banks or crypto exchanges or social media companies to tackle this huge and growing problem." - Sue-Lin Wong

Fresh out of the studio, Sue-Lin Wong, Southeast Asia Correspondent for The Economist, joins us to uncover the dark world of online scams and how they’ve evolved into a $500 billion global crime industry. She shares her investigative journey behind Scam Inc., her latest podcast series, revealing how cybercriminal syndicates operate like multinational corporations—leveraging AI, crypto, and human trafficking to fuel their scams. Sue-Lin explains why Southeast Asia has become a hub for these illicit operations, the psychological manipulation that makes anyone vulnerable, and the deep-rooted connections between scamming, money laundering, and political corruption. We discuss the Kansas bank collapse, the rise of pig butchering scams, and how law enforcement struggles to keep up with decentralized criminal networks. Closing the conversation, Sue-Lin highlights what individuals, governments, and financial institutions must do to fight back against the next wave of AI-powered fraud.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[00:00:46] – Opening Quote by Wong Sue-Lin #QOTD
[00:02:12] – Bernard’s Introduction & Podcast Overview
[00:03:09] – Sue-Lin’s Journalism Journey: From Reuters to The Economist
[00:05:58] – The Birth of Scam Inc.: Investigating the Industry
[00:07:16] – The Changing Face of Crime: The ‘Gig Economy’ of Scamming
[00:10:13] – The Meaning of ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams & Their Chinese Origins
[00:14:34] – How COVID-19 Turned Scams Into a Global Epidemic
[00:16:33] – Inside Scam Compounds: The Story of Rita from the Philippines
[00:21:15] – The Alice Guo Scandal: Political Corruption & Scams in the Philippines
[00:25:33] – How Scammers Launder Billions & The Role of Crypto
[00:30:14] – Why Crypto Isn’t as Anonymous as Criminals Think
[00:35:46] – AI-Driven Scams: The Next Frontier of Cybercrime
[00:42:10] – Solutions: What Governments & Companies Must Do
[00:44:46] – How Individuals Can Protect Themselves
[00:50:46] – Final Thoughts & The Future of Scam Inc.

Profile: Sue-Lin Wong, Southeast Asia Correspondent, The Economist
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suelinwong/
, Host of "Scam Inc" podcast series by The Economist: https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc [Subscription Required]. Picture Credits in Marketing Image: Logo from The Economist Podcasts.

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The eFishery Scandal and its impact to Southeast Asia with Kristie Neo

Bernard Leong — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 20:00:00 GMT

"So that was back in 2021. And then after Revolution Precrafted, there was Zilingo in 2022, and then Tanihub and Investree - which were P2P lenders in 2023(24) - and then eFishery. So actually every single year we've been getting pretty big blow ups. But as I was looking at the cases for each of them, one thing I've noticed is the sophistication of the fraud is actually becoming more advanced." - Kristie Neo

Fresh out of the studio, Kristie Neo, an independent journalist covering tech and venture capital, joins us to dissect the rise of startup fraud in Southeast Asia and why it’s becoming more sophisticated. She shares her journey from broadcast journalism to investigative reporting, reflecting on the shift from high-growth hype to market corrections and corporate scandals. Kristie unpacks the eFishery scandal, explaining how founders manipulated financials and how investors got misled. She discusses why due diligence often fails, the role of unchecked valuations, and the impact of drying venture capital on the region’s startup ecosystem. Addressing investor confidence, Kristie explores what it will take to restore trust and accountability in Southeast Asia’s tech scene. Closing the conversation, she shares her vision for a more transparent startup ecosystem and what great looks like for the region’s next wave of entrepreneurs.

Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Quote of the Day by Kristie Neo
[01:07] The Rise and Fall of Southeast Asian Unicorns
[03:53] From Fundraising Frenzy to Market Correction
[09:22] Breaking Down the eFishery Scandal
[15:25] How Did eFishery Manipulate Its Financials?
[19:39] Why Investors Fell for the eFishery Story and Other Similar Ones
[22:51] The Evolution of Fraud: From Vanity Metrics to Revenue Manipulation
[27:59] Due Diligence & the Role of VCs in Startup Fraud
[31:45] How Will This Impact Future VC Investments in Southeast Asia?
[32:49] The Need for Legal Consequences for Founders Committing Fraud
[38:45] The Secondaries Market and the Liquidity Problem
[42:13] Southeast Asia’s Future: Can the Region Build Bold & Ambitious Businesses?
[46:23] Closing

Profile: Kristie Neo, Independent Journalist (former DealStreetAsia, CNBC, We Are Social & Channel News Asia) https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristieneo/ and her article: "Thank you eFishery, Southeast Asia is officially off the kool-aid" https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/thank-you-efishery-southeast-asia-officially-off-kool-aid-kristie-neo-h0z0c/

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How Agentforce is Transforming Businesses in ASEAN with Sujith Abraham

Bernard Leong — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 20:00:00 GMT

"What's the point if it's a fast platform, but I still have to go somewhere else? And the last thing is speed. Right now, especially in our region, it's a land grab. When we think about some of the fastest-growing economies in the world—Indonesia, for example, Vietnam, the Philippines—you have hundreds of millions of people here. What we see in every customer I speak to is interest in how they use our platform to move faster, to deploy AI. They don't want to have to build a foundation level of AI, integrating all those elements themselves. They want to deploy it faster. When you think about our history, we have 250 petabytes of data being accessed by 150,000 customers every single day. When you take that set, we had to get this right. We had to because we have thousands of engineers focused on building these platforms so our customers don't have to—so they can deploy innovation and create truly unique and differentiated customer journeys." - Sujith Abraham

Fresh out of the studio, Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ASEAN at Salesforce, joins us to explore how Agentforce 2.0 is transforming enterprise AI. He shares his journey from automotive engineering to tech leadership, reflecting on the rise of AI agents that move beyond chatbots to take real-world actions. Sujith explains how Agentforce 2.0 integrates across Salesforce products like Slack and Tableau, helping businesses automate sales, customer service, and marketing. He highlights how banks, airlines, and telcos in Southeast Asia are leveraging AI for growth, alongside Salesforce’s shift to a pay-as-you-go model for easier adoption. Addressing AI trust and governance, he underscores data privacy and enterprise-grade AI security. Closing the conversation, Sujith shares his vision for AI-driven customer engagement and what great looks like for Salesforce & Agentforce 2.0 in ASEAN.

Profile: Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ASEAN for Salesforce, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sujithabraham/

Audio Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Quote of the day by Sujith Abraham
[01:44] Introduction: Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ASEAN for Salesforce
[02:22] Sujith’s Career Journey
[03:51] Career Lessons from Sujith
[05:26] What is Salesforce & Its Mission?
[08:27] Definition of Generative AI & AI Agents in the context of enterprises
[11:22] Introduction to Agentforce 2.0
[15:37] AI Across Salesforce Products
[20:22] Enterprise AI Adoption & Challenges
[22:51] The Business Model of Agentforce
[24:07] Industry Use Cases in Southeast Asia
[25:47] AI Governance & Trust at Salesforce
[27:54] Choosing the Right Large Language Model (LLM)
[28:55] Advice for Business Leaders on AI Adoption
[30:60] The One Thing Sujith Knows About Salesforce & Agentforce in ASEAN That Very Few Do
[32:48] The One Question Sujith Wants More People to Ask: Why Salesforce?
[34:45] What Does Great Look Like for Salesforce?
[37:05] Closing

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Undivided Ventures: AI, Sustainability & Data Centre Technologies with Ariel Shtarkman

Bernard Leong — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 20:00:00 GMT

" Now, the beauty about the real estate industry, if you look outside and you look at the commercial buildings, you have a lot of data generated on a daily basis. The challenge is, what do you do with this data? How do you mine this data in a smart way to give you better investment decisions going forward [or] better decisions on how you run the building? Where are the opportunities to reduce your expenses? On the climate side, how do you reduce your operational carbon? How do you make those buildings better? I think that here, Gen AI, can help big time, because any solution that will mine this data smartly and will create a result, an output, that end users and owners can use to their advantage.” - Ariel Shtarkman

Fresh out of the studio, Ariel Shtarkman, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Undivided Ventures, joins us to share the mission and vision of Undivided Ventures and how the fund is driving innovation at the intersection of sustainability, PropTech, and construction technology. Beginning with her origin story, Ariel reflected on her journey from real estate private equity in New York to becoming a venture capitalist championing sustainable technologies in Asia. She elaborated on Undivided Ventures’ investment thesis, focusing on scaling sustainability-driven innovations in the built environment and shared key portfolio highlights, including successful investments like Structure Pal. Ariel also explored the transformative potential of generative AI, robotics, and data centers in addressing challenges in real estate and construction. Last but not least, she offered her insights on navigating fundraising in a challenging venture capital landscape and painted a compelling vision of what great looks like for Undivided Ventures.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Quote of the Day: Ariel Shtarkman on data and AI in real estate.
[01:40] Introduction: Ariel Shtarkman, Managing Partner at Undivided Ventures.
[04:23] How she co-founded Undivided Ventures with Alex.
[06:08] Lessons from her career journey.
[08:06] Overview of Undivided Ventures and its investment thesis.
[10:33] Recent highlights of the fund’s portfolio.
[12:46] Unique insights into Undivided Ventures’ investment approach.
[14:59] Lessons learned from fundraising in challenging times.
[17:28] Generative AI’s impact on PropTech and sustainability.
[21:00] Case study: Structure Pal’s innovative approach in PropTech.
[23:35] Traits of founders that attract investment.
[27:19] Red flags in startups and founders.
[29:24] Approach to valuation and avoiding overblown valuations.
[31:19] Insights on data centers and how to think about data center technologies globally.
[37:09] Robotics and their evolving role in construction.
[39:12] The one question that Ariel wishes people would ask her more about Undivided Ventures.
[41:18] What does great look like for Undivided Ventures over the next few years.
[42:32] Closing.

Profile: Ariel Shtarkman, co-founder and managing partner, Undivided Ventures: https://www.undivided.vc/about and LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariel-s-2850322/

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Virtuals Protocol and the intersection of Agentic AI & Web3 with Jansen Teng

Bernard Leong — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 04:59:00 GMT

"What does great look like? For us, it's being able to achieve this vision of a society of agents. So, if you can show clearly the economic value of a society when agents can influence other agents, agents can influence humans, and humans can influence agents, that would be something that I'll be very proud to say that we've accomplished. Because that's the beauty of really combining breakthroughs on the AI, on the autonomous agent front, and the value add of crypto. This is one of those very rare moments that crypto has that true potential value add, right? As a productivity lever and an economic lever in society." - Jansen Teng

Fresh out of the studio, Jansen Teng, co-founder and CEO of Virtuals Protocol joins us to share the mission and vision of Virtuals Protocol and how the protocol intersects generative AI and web3, unlocking the world of autonomous AI agents powered by tokenization to unlock new economic possibilities. Beginning from his origin story, he explained how the Virtuals team explored and eventually come to the realization how tokenized AI agents can power entertainment, gaming and trading with Luna, the AI avatar that grew through the help of AI agents and even inspiring works of real art. Last but not least, Jansen offered his perspectives on the trends of agentic AI and web3 and elucidate what great looks like for the Virtuals Protocol.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Quote of the Day by Jansen Teng, co-founder and CEO of Virtuals Protocol
[02:33] Introduction: Jansen Teng
[03:46] Jansen Teng shares his origin story in crypto, gaming, and AI
[06:27] Early experiments with AI agents and gaming in Roblox
[07:44] Realizing AI agents as revenue-generating assets
[09:15] Tokenization and Economic Innovation in Virtuals Protocol
[13:17] Navigating challenges during the bear market and pivoting to virtual Protocol
[17:32] Virtuals Protocol's Vision and Mission for creating and co-owning AI agents
[19:46] Observations of agents mimicking societal roles and functioning autonomously
[23:16] The story of Luna and her evolution as an AI influencer
[31:20] How autonomous agents sparked creativity in the crypto space
[40:19] Balancing innovation and scaling challenges for Virtuals Protocol
[43:53] The evolving vision of Virtuals Protocol and the society of agents
[47:21] Virtuals Protocol as the economic foundation for AI agents
[50:56] Challenges and trends in the AI agent ecosystem
[53:19] Exploring billion-dollar verticalized AI agents
[57:28] Closing

Profile: Jansen Teng, co-founder & CEO of Virtuals Protocol.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jansenteng
Twitter: https://x.com/ethermage

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Why Southeast Asia Matters with Gullnaz Baig

Bernard Leong — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 22:48:00 GMT

"People always ask us this question, what can I learn from that country? People ask us about this from the report especially when we're talking to policymakers, or what should I learn from Malaysia? What should I learn? The thing to learn is to not learn to replicate exactly. But the thing to learn is sort of what are the principles behind what works for them. What are your comparative advantages, Every country needs to be asking that for themselves. So for Vietnam, comparative advantages are things like proximity to China, and an ability at a geopolitical level to navigate between the U.S. and China. They do this pretty delicately, given their history with both countries. There's an acquiescence by the major powers also to not force Vietnam to take sides. And, you know, and so it's a delicate balancing game that ASEAN always plays ..." - Gullnaz Baig

Fresh out of the studio, Gullnaz Baig, executive director from the Angsana Council, shares her perspectives on the "Southeast Asia Outlook 2024-2034: Navigating the High Winds" report by Angsana Council, DBS and Bain & Co. In our conversation, Gullnaz emphasized Southeast Asia’s unique strengths, including its cultural diversity, openness to innovation, and ability to navigate geopolitical complexities between global powers like China and the U.S. She highlighted Southeast Asia’s resilience, citing its rising wealth, improving standards of living, and comparative advantages such as Vietnam’s strong STEM workforce and the Philippines’ English-speaking talent. Last but not least, she described the importance of leveraging regional collaboration and technology to foster sustainable growth and offered her thoughts on what great would look like for the region.

Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Quote of the Day by Gullnaz Baig
[01:28] Gullnaz Baig’s Career Journey and Key Milestones
[03:53] Introduction to the Angsana Council and Its Mission
[05:52] Career Lessons and Importance of Mentorship
[07:50] Southeast Asia's Economic Outlook for 2024-2034
[10:03] Collaboration Behind the Southeast Asia Outlook Report
[12:46] Economic Resilience of Southeast Asia Over the Past 30 Years
[16:58] Structural Challenges Across Southeast Asia
[20:29] Vietnam’s Growth Potential and Comparative Advantages
[25:17] Philippines’ Services Sector and Comparative Strengths
[26:14] Startups in Southeast Asia: Building and Scaling Across Borders
[29:51] Southeast Asia’s Receptiveness to New Technology
[31:50] China’s Influence and Opportunities in Southeast Asia
[34:42] Navigating Geopolitical Tensions Between China and the U.S.
[36:29] Leveraging China’s Strengths in Southeast Asia
[38:52] The question that Gullnaz would like people to ask her more: Who are Southeast Asians?
[45:19] What Does Great Look Like for Southeast Asia?
[47:03] Closing

Profile: Gullnaz Baig, Executive Director of Angsana Council
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gullnazbaig/
Angsana Council: https://angsanacouncil.org/member/gullnaz-baig/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G. Thomas Craig. Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.

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The Transition to Electric Buses: The KMB Experience & Philanthrophy with William Louey

Bernard Leong — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 20:00:00 GMT

“ Yeah. We plan to replace the fleet by 2040. We can't scrap all of them now because each bus lasts 18 years. So we have the depreciation for 18 years. They're all from the U.K. All the buses are from the U.K. All the double-deckers. That's the only country that makes double-decker buses, and it's the same as Singapore. All the double-deckers are from the U.K. Because of COVID, when we replace all these diesel buses with electricity, you need a lot more power and electricity to accommodate this. So the government has to work with us. But today, we can't really see that if we import all these 4,000 electric buses to Hong Kong, there will be enough charging stations. We'll have to build a new depot that accommodates electric buses. So in Yuen Long, we're building a seven-storey, new depot that can charge 1,000 buses every night. But after we build it, the government has to give us the confidence that they can give us the power to charge these buses. So there's no point building a new depot if there's not enough electricity to charge it. So we're delaying it now. But the idea is still the same. We will have to replace it with green energy because it's much better for the environment.” - William Louey

Fresh out of the studio, William Louey, 4th generation business leader of Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB), talks about his vision for transforming Hong Kong’s public transportation system through sustainability and innovation. He discusses KMB’s ambitious plan to electrify its bus fleet by 2040, highlighting the challenges of infrastructure, power supply, and government collaboration. He also shares his philanthropic efforts specifically on education and how they shaped the next generation of leaders to pay it forward. Last but not least, William shares what great would look like for KMB in a green and sustainable future.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[00:46] Quote of the Day (#QOTD) by William Louey
[02:07] Introduction to the Guest and KMB's Electrification Plan
[02:53] Influences from Family and Philanthropic Leadership
[04:44] The Beginnings of the Educational Foundation
[07:31] Shifting from Wealth Accumulation to Making an Impact
[18:11] Overview of KMB’s Role in Hong Kong’s Transportation Network
[21:35] Vision for Green Transit: KMB’s Electric Bus Roadmap
[23:15] Exploring Hybrid and Emerging Technologies
[25:31] Infrastructure and Power Challenges for Electrification
[28:46] Autonomous Vehicles and the Future of Public Transit
[34:16] The One Thing William Louey Knows that Very Few Do
[35:58] Balancing Technology and Employee Welfare
[37:26] What Does Great Look Like for KMB?
[40:19] Pet Buses and Women-Only Bus Routes in Hong Kong
[42:49] Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Profile: William Louey, Businessman and Philanthropist in Hong Kong. William Louey serves as a non-executive director of Transport International and founding member of JNW Properties. He established the William S. D. Louey Educational Foundation in memory of his grandfather. The William S.D. Louey Educational Foundation provides scholarships and bursaries to academically outstanding students from Hong Kong and Greater China for overseas studies.

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G. Thomas Craig

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The China Business Conundrum with Ken Wilcox

Bernard Leong — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"But what I didn't realize is that the main reason they wanted us in China was so that they could study our business model and figure out how to copy it over time. And that was something I wasn't expecting, but I should have. If I were less naive, And if I were better prepared, I would have realized that was the intention. So the original title, the working title I had for my book, which I had to change because the publisher didn't like it, my original title was 'One Bed, Two Dreams' (同床异梦). Because that's a phrase that most Chinese are familiar with." - Ken Wilcox

Fresh out of the studio, Ken Wilcox, former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank and author of "The China Business Conundrum", shares his experiences establishing Silicon Valley Bank’s joint venture in China, uncovering the challenges of navigating cultural differences, guanxi, and examine China’s playbook in bringing successful foreign ventures onshore. He reflects on lessons learned, from differing views on contracts and negotiation tactics to the complexities of building trust in a new business landscape and offers invaluable advice for Western companies eyeing the Chinese market. Last but not least, he concludes by sharing his hopes for the book’s impact, emphasizing the importance of understanding and collaboration between the East and West.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Ken Wilcox
[01:66] Ken Wilcox’s career journey and transition to China.
[06:35] Life and leadership lessons.
[09:47] The One Thing that Ken knows about Doing Business in China that very few do.
[12:40] Importance of Silicon Valley Bank in China.
[17:12] Cultural and regulatory challenges in China.
[26:10] Understanding guanxi in Chinese business.
[37:51] Adapting to China and reverse culture shock.
[40:14] The Chinese negotiating style centres on leverage and power.
[48:37] What happened to the joint venture post-SVB crisis?
[53:10] Contrasts in negotiation styles between China and the U.S.
[54:51] What does success mean for The China Business Conundrum?
[56:18] Recent book recommendations.
[57:52] Final reflections on time spent in China.

Profile: Ken Wilcox, Author of "The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice"

Main Site: https://kenwilcoxauthor.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenwilcoxsvb/

Substack: https://kenwilcoxauthor.substack.com/

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/China-Business-Conundrum-Win-Win-Companies/dp/1394294166/

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ExtraOrdinary: From Stay-at-Home Mom to Global Entrepreneur with Yvon Bock

Bernard Leong — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 22:11:00 GMT

"So, my definition of being fearless is not about no fear, but it's having that courage to face your fear, to conquer whatever adversities that are thrown your way. it is part of the entrepreneur journey. We are always faced with fear of failure. Self Doubt is how to pick up our courage and face them and use these challenges to become your catalyst for innovation, the catalyst for growth, the catalyst for your success." - Yvon Bock

Fresh out of the studio, Yvon Bock, Founder and CEO of Hegen, shares her inspiring journey from stay-at-home mom to world-class entrepreneur in her new book, "ExtraOrdinary". Yvon discusses how personal challenges as a breastfeeding mother fueled her vision to create Hegen’s groundbreaking baby bottle, overcoming five years of development and over 200 prototypes. She reflects on the bold decisions behind Hegen’s expansion into China, including leveraging live streaming to reach millions and highlights how storytelling and advocacy transformed her brand into a movement supporting modern moms. Last but not least, Yvon shares what great would look like for Hegen in the future: empowering 100 million mothers worldwide and establishing a presence in 35 jurisdictions.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:46] Quote of the Day by Yvon Bock #QOTD
[1:18] Introduction: Yvon Bock, Founder & CEO of Hegen
[3:12] From Stay-at-Home Mom to Entrepreneur
[3:48] The Origin of Hegen
[7:43] The Role of Family Business in Yvon's Journey
[15:28] Overcoming Prototypes and Doubts
[22:44] Expanding into the Chinese Market
[27:18] The Power of Live Streaming and Advocacy
[33:49] Key Lessons for Future Entrepreneurs
[35:54] Teaching Children to Embrace Failure
[38:05] Balancing Breastfeeding Advocacy and Bottles
[40:04] Building a Global Legacy for Hegen
[40:53] Closing

You can find Yvon Bock and her new book on her personal site: https://www.yvonbock.com/ and via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvonbock/

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Unlocking the Power of Generative AI in Dow Jones with Ingrid Verschuren

Bernard Leong — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"So, we are very conscious of the fact that we license the content from other publications. And as I mentioned previously, we do that through licensing agreements. We are transparent with the publishers about what happens with their content. We ensure that they are being fairly compensated for the content that we use. But, as a result, when we started talking about how we wanted to use Gen AI, we actually felt that we had an obligation to go back to publishers and ask for additional licensing rights. Part of that, I think, is driven by the fact that Dow Jones is a publisher. We are a publisher ourselves. We are very protective of our content. We want to make sure that we understand what's happening with our content: Where is it going? Who is using it? And we want to be fairly compensated for it. So, if that's one of our core principles, then we also want to make sure that we treat all the other publishers exactly the same. One of the challenges has been that we had to go back to all publishers and ask for additional Gen AI licensing rights. The positive of that is that the content now available through Gen AI is actually fully licensed content. All publishers have given us permission to use their content for this specific use case." - Ingrid Vershuren

Fresh out of the studio, Ingrid Verschuren, Executive Vice President of Data and AI and General Manager, EMEA, at Dow Jones, shares her journey from manually indexing news articles at Reuters to leading Factiva’s transition into the era of generative AI. She explains the mental models and frameworks behind how Dow Jones uses AI to empower businesses with reliable data and insights and discusses the recent partnership with Google’s Gemini model and explains how Dow Jones works with the other content publications, navigating the complexities of trust and business model innovation. Last but not least, Ingrid explains what great would look like for Factiva in the age of AI.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:46] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Ingrid Verschuren
[2:19] Introduction to Ingrid Verschuren and Factiva
[4:29] Career Lessons from Ingrid
[5:58] Overview of Factiva
[8:30] The Evolution of Factiva and AI
[10:41] Applications of Generative AI for Factiva
[13:37] Challenges and Opportunities with Generative AI
[15:27] Safeguarding Against Misinformation
[19:25] Partnership with Google and Gemini Model
[21:29] Transparency and Auditability
[24:24] Staying Agile with Generative AI
[26:32] The Future of AI in Business Intelligence
[27:48] The Role of Human Judgment in AI
[28:59] What Great Looks Like for Factiva in the Age of Generative AI
[29:43] Closing

You can find Ingrid Verschuren, Executive Vice President, Data and AI and General Manager, EMEA at Dow Jones: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingrid-verschuren-61a7684/

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From Research to Real-World Impact: AI in Action with Sun Sumei

Bernard Leong — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 01:27:00 GMT

"The efficiency on top of the efficacy because it is critical that we will achieve this balance of cost and performance. And in addition to that, I think one more aspect we are putting emphasis is actually how, in the new era of AI, all pervasive intelligence and pervasive connectivity, how do we bring human, AI, and machine into a cohesive coexistence and also cohesive collaboration so that we are able to have actually the AI machine support human, empower human, and at the same time. We look at actually the design of the workflows so that we are able to extract out the value, at the same time, also elevate the human to do more creative works. So this is one aspect. I think we have been hearing a lot, but how this will move forward is some efforts have started, and certainly we look forward to gathering more ecosystem partners to embark on this journey together." - Dr Sun Sumei, Executive Director, Institute of Infocomm Research, ASTAR

Fresh out of the studio, Dr. Sun Sumei, Executive Director of the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) at Singapore’s ASTAR shares her perspectives on AI’s fast-paced evolution and its broader impact on the future. With over a decade dedicated to AI research, Dr. Sumei reflects on I2R’s journey from big data analytics to the era of Generative AI, emphasizing large language models designed for Southeast Asia. Advocating for responsible AI, Dr. Sumei prioritizes societal benefit and sustainability over sheer technical ambition, urging a balanced, systematic approach to distinguish valuable applications from mere hype. Last but not least she shares her vision of AI as a force to enhance human creativity and address real-world challenges through sustainable innovation."

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:46] - Introduction to Sun Sumei and her role at ASTAR
[2:09] - Sun Sumei’s journey from China to Singapore
[2:50] - The mission of the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R)
[4:00] - Research at I2R blending innovation with commercial applications
[4:11] - Career lessons from Sun Sumei’s extensive experience in science and technology
[6:32] - The evolution of AI and its rapid advancements
[7:15] - Striking a balance between performance and cost in AI
[8:11] - Collaborating with Singapore Airlines on AI for fleet optimization
[9:55] - Focus on multimodal AI and large language model development
[11:26] - AI for manufacturing: The AIM initiative
[12:20] - MerLion: I2R multi-modal LLM in the works
[13:27] - The future of AI in scientific discovery and its potential for sustainability
[16:03] - The balance between necessary and unnecessary AI applications
[16:55] - Responsible AI: Navigating the curiosity phase
[19:10] - Achieving success in AI through efficiency and model optimization
[20:52] - What constitutes success in AI: Technical breakthroughs vs. societal impact
[22:48] - AI for good: Contributing to humanity and sustainability
[24:02] - The importance of a systematic approach to AI
[24:53] - Closing remarks and future expectations for AI

You can find Dr Sun Sumei here in ASTAR: https://www.a-star.edu.sg/i2r/about-i2r/i2r-management/sun-sumei and her LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sumei-sun-8590814/?originalSubdomain=sg

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The e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2024 Report with Sapna Chadha, Fock Wai Hoong & Florian Hoppe

Bernard Leong — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 03:00:00 GMT

"The key message of the report is that the fundamentals of this region are critical, they’re clear, and businesses are doing exactly, I think, what they need to do for us to move ahead." - Sapna Chadha

"Given that one of the other themes we’ve had this year is trust, having a strong regulatory foundation and good constructs around that for digital financial services is critical to unlocking the next wave of growth here." - Florian Hoppe

"All 10 ASEAN nations have announced their own national strategic AI initiatives or plans, and ASEAN itself has actually released a report and guide on AI governance and ethics. So, I think if you put all that together, it’s very natural that Southeast Asia is, quite frankly, well-positioned to capitalize on the AI trend." - Fock Wai Hoong

Fresh out of the studio in Google, Bernard Leong led a discussion on the 2024 Southeast Asia Digital Economy Report, joined by Sapna Chadha (Google), Florian Hope (Bain & Company), and Wai Hoong (Temasek). The panel delved into Southeast Asia's impressive digital growth, with the region’s economy reaching $263 billion in GMV and significant strides in profitability. The panellists examined the key themes which include Southeast Asia’s emergence as an AI hub, driven by $30 billion in AI investments, the rise of video commerce, and the region’s booming digital financial services specifically on embedded insurance. The conversation highlights challenges and opportunities in digital inclusion, AI infrastructure, and regional integration, providing a nuanced outlook on Southeast Asia’s potential. The episode concludes with each panellist sharing their vision for Southeast Asia’s digital future and success metrics for the next decade, emphasizing the region’s unique strengths and long-term global impact.

Audio Episode Highlights
[00:46] Introduction
[02:17] Key Report Insights
[04:09] How Sapna, Florian, and Wai Hoong provide perspectives to the key report takeaways
[07:00] Investor Perspective on Southeast Asia
[10:06] Exiting the Funding Winter
[12:44] AI’s Role in Accelerating Growth
[14:30] Impact of Video E-commerce
[16:23] Growth in Digital Financial Services
[18:03] Embedded Insurance in E-commerce
[24:12] AI Infrastructure Investment
[27:55] Southeast Asia’s Startup Ecosystem
[29:45] Generative AI Use Cases
[31:06] AI for Revenue and Cost Optimization
[34:16] New Internet Users and Digital Inclusion
[37:55] Regional Integration as a Success Metric
[39:01] Vision for Southeast Asia Digital Economy Success
[40:20] Closing Remarks

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Data Centres in the Era of AI with Jay Park

Bernard Leong — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 20:00:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Jay Park, Chief Development Officer of Digital Edge, explores the rapidly transforming landscape of data centres in the Asia-Pacific region. Kicking off with the story of Jay’s remarkable career in building cutting-edge data centres, we dive into the explosive growth fueled by AI and the innovative cooling and energy solutions Digital Edge is pioneering to address environmental challenges. Jay also examines the impact of advanced AI chips on next-generation data centre engineering and shares his vision of what great would look like to design efficient and sustainable infrastructure in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets.

"So if you look at this, according to this recent structural research report, the data centre industry will spend 100 billion dollars, and about 50 per cent of that growth will be happening in APAC. So, this is massive growth. If you look at the data centres, they have to be built where people are to better support them. But we have a new kid on the block. It's called AI servers, and it's something I have never experienced before in any industry, and this is massive. It'll do a lot of things, but it has to do data processing. So you cannot have all these data centres in, let's say, North America, have people in the APAC area grab that data, send it back to the U.S. or North America, do all the processing, and then send it out to APAC. I just don't see that happening. So, they're building the data centres closer to the users, where people are. And then you do all the processing there. The growth is going to be gigantic, and that's what we are seeing today."

You can find Jay Park on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jay-park-b5b579335/ and on Digital Edge: https://www.digitaledgedc.com/about

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] - Quote of the Day by Jay Park #QOTD
[01:07] - Jay Park’s Background
[02:38] - Becoming Chief Development Officer at Digital Edge
[03:22] - Data Center Evolution and Power Density Growth
[05:24] - Digital Edge’s Mission and Approach
[07:30] - Supply Chain Challenges and Skid-Mount Equipment
[09:25] - Scaling Data Centers for Increased Power Needs
[12:19] - Cooling Systems and AI Server Requirements
[15:39] - Modular Data Center Design: Pros and Cons
[18:57] - Balancing Efficiency, Scalability, and Cost
[22:08] - Challenges in Data Center Engineering in APAC
[27:25] - AI Chips and Their Impact on Data Centers
[31:29] - Principles for Designing Efficient Data Centers
[34:04] - Water Usage and Environmental Impact
[37:39] - Exciting Advancements in Data Center Technology
[42:54] - Advice on Innovation in Data Center Engineering
[43:36] - Digital Edge’s Vision for the Future
[44:42] - Personal Inspirations and Emerging Technologies
[46:26] - Closing

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Resetting Expectations on Southeast Asia with Arnaud Bonzom

Bernard Leong — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 02:48:00 GMT

"So that's why if you have 1 billion to invest, we're not expecting the same return as if you invest 10 million. At that time, when all this money flowed to Southeast Asia, people there thought, "Oh, we made it. Now the world is looking at us. We're finally a good ecosystem.' Everyone was ready to invest in us, but that was just the tide, right? And when the tide recedes, the first place the money will leave is Southeast Asia because it's not offering the best returns. So, the money is going out, and I don't think it's coming back anytime soon. People shouldn't expect investors to be as aggressive as they were. Lastly, great companies will always raise capital. The top ones will always find their way, so there's no issue for them. The challenge is for the ones just below them. It will be very difficult for those companies. Some will have to become much more capital-efficient, for sure."

Fresh out of the studio, Arnaud Bonzom, founder of Black Mangroves and angel investor, engages in a lively discussion with our host about the entrepreneurial and venture capital landscape in Southeast Asia for 2024. Arnaud shares his insights on the evolution of late-stage funding and the resetting of expectations in the region’s venture capital scene. He also offers valuable advice to founders on how to navigate the challenging fundraising climate and what success could look like for the region in the coming years.

You can find Arnaud Bonzom at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnaudbonzom/ and X (formerly known as Twitter): https://x.com/ArnaudBonzom?

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:44] Quote of the Day by Arnaud Bonzom #QOTD
[2:09] Arnaud’s Reflections on Southeast Asia Since 2018
[5:28] Southeast Asia’s Economic Challenges
[6:15] New Outlook for the Region’s Startup Ecosystem
[10:37] Lessons from India’s B2B Market
[14:31] How Venture Capital Works in Southeast Asia
[16:52] Over-Optimism in Southeast Asia’s VC Landscape
[24:27] Challenges in Attracting Foreign Investments
[27:38] The U.S. as the Biggest Accessible Market
[30:29] Market Segmentation in Asia Pacific
[35:44] IPO Slowdown and M&A Challenges
[37:59] Zombie Companies in Southeast Asia
[39:14] The One Thing Arnaud knows about the SEA ecosystem that very few do
[41:28] Explaining DPI (Distributions to Paid-In Capital)
[47:48] Timing in Venture Capital Investments
[51:48] Advice for Founders in 2023-2024
[53:33] Bottlenecks in Southeast Asia’s Startup Ecosystem
[56:40] What does great look like for the Southeast Asia ecosystem?
[58:45] Crypto Companies in Southeast Asia
[60:44] Final Thoughts and Future of Southeast Asia’s Startup Ecosystem
[61:10] Closing

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Learnovate, AI and EduTech with Joon Nak Choi

Bernard Leong — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 19:00:00 GMT

"The humans are going to be empowered to become superheroes like Tony Stark, and because you have your loyal A.I. assistant, Jarvis, doing all this stuff in the background, that's the example I always use when I give lectures on this topic. What ends up happening is that you need to make sure you can use A.I. correctly. If you offload too much, offload inappropriately, or become too dependent on AI for tasks where you shouldn't be dependent, then suddenly, you're no longer Tony Stark. You're one of those fat human descendants in Wall-E. The ones who can't even get back in their own chairs because they've forgotten how to walk, they've forgotten how to think, they're being fed a steady diet of soda pop from AI." - Joon Nak Choi

Fresh out of the studio, Bernard Leong sits down with Joon Nak Choi, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and founder of Learnovate, to dive deep into the future of education and AI. JC shares his career journey and the back story of why he started Learnovate focusing on AI-assisted grading and what it is meant to solve for the users. Last but not least, JC shares his perspectives on how the future of education will evolve with generative AI and explains what success will look like in the next few years.

Audio Episode Highlights
[0:46] Quote of the Day by Joon Nak Choi aka JC #QOTD
[1:53] Introduction to Joon Nak Choi, founder of Learnovate and Associate Professor, HKUST
[4:41] JC's Background and Career Path
[6:55] Key Lessons from JC's career experience
[9:32] Transformative Potential of Generative AI in Education
[16:17] AI's Role in Personalized Education
[18:42] Integrating AI into the Classroom
[20:31] The Importance of Feedback for Student Assignments and How AI transforms this
[26:47] Addressing Bias and Ethical Concerns in AI-driven Education Tools
[30:57] The Future of Work and AI
[34:45] The Need for Human Oversight in AI
[38:15] Insights from Student Engagement with AI-driven Education Tools
[43:25] Challenges in AI Essay Grading
[47:55] AI's Role in Enhancing Educational Outcomes
[52:01] Closing Thoughts and Inspirations

You can find Joon Nak Choi via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jnchoi123/ and HKUST: https://mgmt.hkust.edu.hk/faculty-and-staff/directory/jnchoi

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AI, Creativity and the Human Element with Tan Siok Siok

Bernard Leong — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"Well, I think AI makes us, makes me more human in terms of understanding that nirvana or the ultimate achievement is not to be perfect. The ultimate achievement is to be authentic, present, and yourself. I guess it exists in this human dimension. One of the things you realize is that when something is too perfect, whether it's your selfie or something you've written, people start to distrust it. Right now, if I generate or design something, or if I write something and it sounds too fluent and flawless—without accent, pauses, or mistakes—people might suspect that it's not Siok, but actually the digital twin of Siok. One question that people ask me and ask themselves is: how has AI made me more aware of what it means to be human?" - Tan Siok Siok

Fresh out of the studio, our host, Bernard Leong sat down with Tan Siok Siok, author of AI for Humanity, for an insightful discussion on the evolving role of AI in our lives. During the conversation, Siok Siok explored how AI makes us more human by emphasizing the importance of authenticity over perfection. They discussed the creative process, with Siok Siok viewing AI as a tool to enhance rather than replace human creativity. The interview also touched on the broader implications of AI, including job displacement and the geopolitical nuances of AI development. Tan Siok Siok shared her thoughts on the need for humans to guide and nurture AI responsibly, dismissing the notion of a doomsday scenario driven by AI. The conversation offered a nuanced perspective on how AI can be a partner in human progress, rather than a threat, encouraging listeners to engage actively with AI’s potential.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:45] Quote of the Day by Tan Siok Siok, co-author of "AI for Humanity"
[1:45] Introduction: Tan Siok Siok
[5:21] Siok Siok's Sharing of Life Lessons from the Past Decade
[7:06] AI and Creative Process
[9:51] Origins and Intentions behind the Book "AI for Humanity"
[13:34] Explaining AI to a Non-Technical Audience by our host Bernard
[15:01] AI's Role in Enhancing Human Abilities
[17:10] Different Definitions of AI and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)
[18:45] AI in the Creative Arts and Job Displacement
[24:17] Geopolitics and AI
[30:21] AI's Role in Upskilling and Global Market Implications
[32:01] Doomsday Scenarios and AI Responsibility
[37:31] AI as a Tool for Self-Improvement
[39:34] Final Reflections on AI's Impact on Humanity
[43:44] Closing

You can find Siok Siok's new book "AI For Humanity" co-authored with Andeed Ma and James Ong here: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Humanity-Building-Sustainable-Future/dp/1394180306 and follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sioksiok/

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Disrupting E-Commerce: How Shein and Temu are Challenging Amazon's Reign with Jing Yang

Bernard Leong — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"Temu was launched in the US, their first market in September 2022. That is when Shein just started to gain a lot of traction. There's a lot of attention being paid to Shein. In the beginning, many people thought that Temu was a copycat of Shein because they both sold goods from China using this direct-from-China shipping model. However, I think the competition has evolved quite differently now, and Temu has done business and operational innovation that has made others, including Shein, have to catch up." - Jing Yang

Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, the Asia Bureau Chief from The Information shares the ongoing e-commerce war between Amazon and the upstarts: Shein and Temu across the global landscape. Starting from the origins of Shein and Temu, she explained how both companies first expanded to the US enabled by Amazon. Jing Yang breaks down how Temu gains total control over its suppliers and sellers and subsequently threatens Amazon's e-commerce dominance in the US market. Last but not least, she examined the fallout from the potential US ban on Shein and Temu from US lawmakers and the possibility of Shein's IPO in the US.

Episode Highlights:
[0:46] QOTD
[1:27] Introduction: Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information
[2:34] The surprise of Open AI not allowing ChatGPT to be in Hong Kong and China.
[5:29] You need a China mobile number to access Chinese LLMs.
[6:48] Introduction to Shein and Temu, the global e-commerce upstarts originating from China.
[9:59] The elusive people behind Shein and Temu.
[13:29] Shein’s current performance against H&M, Zara, and Uniqlo.
[18:12] How Authentic Brands (owner of Forever 21) made a partnership & investment deal with Shein in the US.
[23:09] How Temu maintains control over the supply chain in China.
[31:23] Comparisons between Temu and Amazon from the seller to business models.
[34:51] How Amazon enabled Shein and Temu to expand into the US.
[35:38] Amazon’s realization of Temu’s threat and response.
[36:58] Amazon’s response to Shein and Temu’s threats in the US market.
[38:56] Temu is copying Amazon in the US with a local warehouse strategy and vice versa.
[42:08] How Amazon vs Temu & Shein shaped the global e-commerce landscape.
[43:54] How reliant is Amazon on Chinese sellers and suppliers globally?
[45:30] Why the US lawmakers are thinking about a ban on Temu.

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How Netflix bring Asian Content to the Global Audience with Minyoung Kim

Bernard Leong — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 19:00:00 GMT

“The most important lesson that I have learned is really Know your audience. You need to really understand your audience, and what they want because oftentimes the content executives make the mistake of programming for themselves rather than the audience. And I actually went through the exact same mistake when I first started, because I believed what I like is what audience like. So I think that's like the number one rule, really trying to understand the audience. That is number one. And as an individual, for me. I don't think it's only in Asia. I think globally building a relationship is really important. But trying to develop a relationship for the sake of a relationship never lands well. You can never, utilize the relationship. You build a relationship through great work and you build a relationship not only to get what you need but also to be able to say no.” - Minyoung Kim

Fresh out of the studio, Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s VP of Content for the Asia Pacific (excluding India), shared her perspectives on how Netflix work with content creators across the Asia Pacific region and brings them to a global audience. In the same conversation, Minyoung discussed the importance of cultural adaptation and localization and provided behind-the-scenes insights into how the Squid Game became a global phenomenon starting from their focus on the Korean audience. Minyoung also addressed challenges faced by Asian content creators, offered her advice for aspiring filmmakers who want to collaborate with Netflix, and shared her thoughts on what great would look like for Netflix in the Asia Pacific.

Episode Highlights:
[0:45] Quote of the Day by Minyoung Kim from Netflix #QOTD
[1:41] Introduction: Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s VP of Content, APAC excluding India
[5:34] Minyoung Kim’s lessons from her career journey.
[7:15] Overview of Netflix, its global vision and mission.
[10:28] The footprint of Netflix in the Asia Pacific.
[13:41] How Netflix brings Asian content from a local audience to a global one.
[15:02] The decision behind Squid Game and how it resonates with the Korean audience.
[16:59] The ingredients of a local show that might become a global success on Netflix.
[19:02] Challenges for Asian content creators.
[21:31] The importance of cultural adaptation and localization for the Asia Pacific.
[23:03] Netflix has conditioned the audience to watch the original version rather than dubbing.
[25:55] Green light rigour at Netflix.
[27:28] Future of Asian content and Netflix’s role in shaping the landscape.
[29:41] Advice to aspiring creators and filmmakers in Asia who want to collaborate with Netflix.
[31:18] Trends in the Asian content market.
[33:12] What does great look like for Netflix in the Asia Pacific region?
[34:24] Closing.

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Google & Sustainability in Europe with Adam Elman

Bernard Leong — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 03:01:00 GMT

"We have these very ambitious goals and we've spoken about a few, but there are many others in Europe. In particular, the E.U. and countries like the U.K. have very ambitious climate goals. For Google, we want to be part of the solution. So, good for me is, we make progress on our goals in our own operations, but we really want to help others. And we actually have this as a global goal rather than a regional goal, an ambition to help others save a "gigaton" worth of emissions every year from 2030 onwards. A "gigaton" is the emissions of Japan, just to put that in perspective. So, I want a big slug of that to come from the work we are doing in helping companies and other organizations and individuals within my region to help them make more sustainable choices." - Adam Elman

Fresh out of the studio, Adam Elman, Head of Sustainability for EMEA at Google, shares the key initiatives of the company in Europe. We begin with Adam discussing his career journey, explaining how he came to lead key sustainability initiatives at Google and the innovative measures taken to enhance energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. He highlights the Environmental Insights Explorer, the challenges of achieving 100% renewable energy, and the role of AI in sustainability. Adam offers valuable advice for companies starting their sustainability journeys and emphasizes the importance of engagement, transparency, and accountability. Last but not least, he describes what great would look like for Google in its sustainability efforts.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:45] Quote of the Day by Adam Elman #QOTD
[2:21] Introduction: Adam Elman, Head of Sustainability for Google: Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA).
[5:12] Lessons from Adam’s career journey
[6:32] Overview of Google’s sustainability initiatives globally
[8:13] Google’s sustainability initiatives in EMEA
[10:19] What constitutes carbon-free energy?
[11:41] How Google uses AI for energy efficiency in data centres.
[13:01] Other applications of Google AI in sustainability.
[15:15] The One Thing Adam Elman knows about sustainability that very few do.
[18:30] Environmental Insights Explorer by Google
[20:08] Google Maps and how it helps the city of Dublin to increase cycling by 20%.
[26:20] Advice to companies which are beginning on their sustainability journey.
[28:33] What does great look like for Google on sustainability?
[29:51] Closing

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Executive Coaching in the Asia Pacific with Parin Mehta

Bernard Leong — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"I don't like to work with someone unless they're intrinsically motivated to do it. And so what I mean by that is, I don't think this is a service that you should sell to people. They should demand it and then they're looking in the market for someone to work with them. So I don't like to go out there and sell it per se. And so I used to get some early inbound from boards or investors to say, "Hey, we've got this person. We think they're struggling or we think they've got a bit more potential, they need some help." And then when I spoke to that person, it was very evident that they were reluctantly doing this. So you've got a bit of a principal-agent problem there, right? Where the person you're working with is not incentivized or motivated to do the work. And so I typically now say "no" to those things. What I might do is maybe get an introduction from the board, but then I'll check with the person I'm working with. "Do you want this right now? Are you motivated to do the work?" Because as you said, it is a lot of work on the coachee as well, right - to do the reflection work and, take action. I'm trying to avoid that principal-agent problem. I want to make sure that the person I'm working with is deeply interested and invested in driving some change." - Parin Mehta

Fresh out of the studio, Parin Mehta, venture partner at Menyala and executive coach, shared his journey into executive coaching. He explained how his experiences inspired him to help leaders navigate their careers with intrinsic motivation and commitment, considering cultural nuances and the evolving business landscape. Parin discussed strategies for professional growth, the importance of peer mentorship, and his innovative approach to integrating AI into coaching. He also shared his vision of what success looks like for him as an executive coach in the Asia Pacific region.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:40] Quote of the Day by Parin Mehta. #QOTD
[1:36] Introduction: Parin Mehta.
[5:37] What Parin learned from working in a high-growth tech company: Google & Airbnb.
[6:49] Lessons learned from Parin Mehta on his career journey.
[8:35] The story of how Parin becomes an executive coach and certified as one.
[11:16] Why and How executives approach an executive coach.
[13:45] Parin Mehta’s philosophy in executive coaching.
[16:30] Bernard’s journey in working with Parin on his transition.
[18:45] Should we focus on short-term and long-term goals when we engage executive coaches?
[19:36] Challenges and specific cultural nuances faced by Executive Coaches in the Asia Pacific.
[23:29] Perspectives on Generative AI in executive coaching.
[24:04] How does the actual coaching session work?
[25:39] Seeking an accountability partner in executive coaching.
[27:42] The difference between mentoring and coaching.
[29:48] Sharing stories on executive coaching.
[35:04] Executive coaching for startup founders in the Southeast Asia ecosystem
[37:38] How executive coaches grow and develop professionally.
[40:54] The one thing Parin knows about executive coaching in the Asia Pacific that very few do.
[44:36] AI bot for executive coaching.
[47:31] The weekly prompts for coachparin.com
[50:36] What does great look like for Parin in executive coaching?
[51:24] Closing.

You can find Parin on his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parinjmehta/ and X (formerly known as Twitter): https://twitter.com/coachparin and more on him here: https://www.coachparin.com

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Product Management in a Scale-Up with Isaac Tay

Bernard Leong — Mon, 13 May 2024 22:14:00 GMT

"If I were to summarize it, your job as a product manager is to deliver the right product to the right users, to solve the right problems at the right time. Now, your role is very contextual because you will focus on different parts of that statement, depending on the founders, the stage of life of the company, which industry it is and everything else. There are some core functional skill sets that you can't run away from, and you must have them. But I don't think there is a cookie-cutter template on what you must do to succeed in product management." - Isaac Tay

Fresh out of the studio, Isaac Tay, VP of Product at Shopback shares his thoughts on how to be a product manager in a scale-up. Reflecting on his experiences as a co-founder in his former startup Honestbee, he offered his perspectives on the lessons he had learnt and what he could done differently. From there, he elucidates the concept of distance to understand how to align and work with teams across different cultures on building and developing products in different stages of maturity for a company. Isaac ties in his unique stint in stand-up comedy, revealing how it has influenced his professional life. Last but not least, Isaac shares what great would look like for product management in a scale-up.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:50] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Isaac Tay.
[1:21] Introduction: Isaac Tay, VP of Product at Shopback.
[7:40] Isaac's Adventure in Stand-Up Comedy and Travel.
[9:10] Lessons from Isaac Tay’s career journey.
[10:34] Founding, Evolution, and Collapse of Honestbee.
[15:26] What could you have done differently with Honestbee?
[18:15] Navigating the complexities of product management.
[25:06] Product Management in different stages of a company.
[30:23] Refining Product Strategy in a Fast-Paced Environment.
[33:06] Advice for Aspiring Product Managers.
[34:00] Essential Skills for Aspiring Product Managers.
[35:18] The Importance of Technical Skills in Product Management.
[38:33] The Role of Distance in Product Management.
[39:40] Understanding and Managing Different Types of Distance.
[44:37] The Challenge of Remote Work and Communication.
[48:06] Evolving Leadership Styles and Building Cohesive Teams.
[54:16] Balancing Professional Growth with Personal Interests.
[59:29] Insights on Great Product Management and Leadership.
[61:00] Closing.

You can find Isaac on his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaactimothyt/ and X (formerly known as Twitter): https://twitter.com/isaacttsg and more on him here: https://www.isaactay.com/about/

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Deploy and PropTech in 2024 with Jordan Kostelac

Bernard Leong — Wed, 01 May 2024 21:54:00 GMT

"I think the biggest learning that I had, and, by extension, JLL [Jones Lang LaSalle] in my last capacity was that it's not sufficient to take these companies and then just let them in the door. You can't hand one of your business clients the keys and expect them to drive. So, one of the first cohort companies in Urban Lab was a robotics company, and we created a revenue-sharing agreement with them any property that you get into through us, there's a revenue share. But the downstream incentives weren't sufficient enough. We didn't provide enough tools to people who were actually interacting with the properties to then want to actually be able to do it. Most of them didn't even know about it. That speaks to the size of an organization like that. when you sit up in an organization, you sometimes forget that you can't just speak something into existence. You need a ground game ..." - Jordan Kostelac

Fresh out of the studio, Jordan Kostelac, CEO and co-founder of Deploy, dives into the ever-evolving landscape of the real estate industry and the burgeoning proptech sector in 2024. Reflecting on his previous role as the Director of Technology at JLL Asia Pacific, Kostelac shares the key lessons learnt while leading various proptech initiatives and establishing the UrbanLab accelerator with Swire Properties and PingAn. He details his transition from JLL to founding Deploy, a startup that addresses the inefficiencies of deal sourcing and due diligence in the startup venture ecosystem starting from the PropTech sector. Last but not least, he shares what great would look like for Deploy moving forward.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:44] Quote of the Day by Jordan Kostelac #QOTD.
[1:41] Introduction: Jordan Kostelac, CEO of Deploy.
[5:03] Career Evolution from PropTech in JLL Asia Pacific to Deploy.
[8:43] Lessons from Jordan Kostelac’s career journey.
[11:22] Overview of the Real Estate Industry and Proptech in 2024.
[17:34] Role of Technology in Real Estate: From Projects in JLL to the Formation of Urban Lab.
[28:53] How startups need to navigate corporate partnerships.
[31:20] How to evaluate and invest in PropTech startups.
[33:54] Trends shaping the PropTech industry in the Asia Pacific.
[37:08] How Jordan started his new venture, Deploy based on his experiences in Urban Lab.
[40:17] How Bridgewater Associates’ Dots and other systems such as Kudos inspire Jordan to work out the mechanics for Deploy.
[45:27] Deploy’s value proposition and its current progress.
[51:53] What does great look like for Deploy?
[53:17] Closing Thoughts and Recommendations.

You can find Jordan on his LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkostelac/ and X (formerly known as Twitter): https://twitter.com/Scopelessness and more on Deploy here: https://deploycapital.online/

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Akamai Cloud Computing & The Age of Edge AI with Jay Jenkins

Bernard Leong — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"So already this year we've rolled out 10 of these regions. So two in APJ and Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. But 75 of these locations by the end of the year along with our core computing regions will give us 100 locations where customers can run these workloads, and we're not going to stop there. So we're going to have hundreds of these regions over the next few years, and we're going to focus on those locations where hyper-scalers don't have compute. Africa and South America, for example, have been extremely underserved when it comes to computing capabilities. There's a huge potential for those countries if we could get them the compute. And that's exactly what we intend to do. But, those are extreme regions. Even in places like the U.S., which are well served by the hyper-scalers, there's certainly the middle of the U.S. which is ignored. In Southeast Asia, if you're in Singapore or Jakarta, you're served by everybody. But if you're in Vietnam, how are you served? If you're in Thailand, how are you served? The internet is inherently unfair. We want to make it more fair for our customers and our customers' customers." - Jay Jenkins

Fresh off the studio, Jay Jenkins, CTO of Cloud Computing in Akamai, dives deep into the transformative potential of edge AI in a dynamic conversation on Akamai's latest technological advancements. Discussing the company's strategic edge computing platform, Gecko, Jenkins describes how it is redefining cloud computing paradigms by embedding capabilities directly into the edge network. He explores the broader implications of edge AI for real-time applications and generative AI technologies, highlighting Akamai's vision to support the burgeoning demands of data processing and AI inferencing at the network edge. With insights into early trials and future use cases, he shares how Akamai is set to revolutionize industries, from immersive retail to spatial computing and explores what great would look like for Akamai in cloud computing and AI at the edge.

Episode Highlights:
[0:40] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Jay Jenkins.
[1:45] Introduction: Jay Jenkins, CTO of Cloud Computing from Akamai.
[4:29] Lessons learnt from Jay’s career journey.
[6:31] Total Market Opportunity for AI at the Edge and Akamai’s value proposition.
[8:55] Introduction to Akamai and its global footprint.
[11:18] Jay’s role as global CTO in Cloud Computing and future vision.
[16:23] Generalized Edge Compute aka Gecko and why it differs from the hyper-scalers such as AWS.
[19:53] How Gecko enhances the user experience in terms of performance and latency.
[22:59] Challenges to integrate cloud native computing at a massive edge network.
[25:38] Lessons learned from Gecko’s early trials with enterprise customers of Akamai.
[28:01] Applications of Gecko beyond immersive retail.
[30:33] The One Thing that Jay knows about Gecko in generalized edge computing that very few do.
[33:07] Generative AI with Akamai Gecko’s platform.
[37:30] Inference at the edge with Large Language Models (LLMs).
[39:41] Role of Edge Computing for real-time AI processes.
[41:47] What does great look like for Akamai in the cloud computing space?
[43:53] Closing.

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Saison Capital and Real World Asset Monetization in Crypto with Qin En Looi

Bernard Leong — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"The one thing that has become quite clear in Asia, at least it's direct to retail - the government is not ready. The market is not ready. And there still needs to be a very high level of consumer protection. A lot more of a B2B-to-C approach. Where, let's say today's Web3 companies will need to partner up with existing licensed entities, whether they be licensed startups or even licensed institutions to provide their offerings to the retail. That's actually really good. Because it provides safeguards. We saw what happened last time when we didn't have those safeguards. So many retail investors lost money in FTX's spectacular blow-up, right? And that really hurt the space, that really hurt the trust, it really hurt the reputation of the space. So directionally it is inconvenient but necessary. For governments to I would say slow down or make access to retail a lot harder. Like in Singapore, we don't see any upcoming movements that crypto is going to be available to retail or easily available to retail anytime soon. We see the same in Hong Kong. The exception would of course be Dubai, but that's already more on the Middle East part, right? And then in the US, it's like a witch hunt. Basically, the long story short is it's still going to be very B2B2C driven, where the interface towards the masses, the retail, will still lie within licensed institutions." - Qin En Looi

Fresh out of the studio, Qin En Looi, partner of Saison Capital, dives deep into the current developments and the future of Crypto and Web3 investments. He began with an overview of Saison Capital and its investment thesis. He shares how Saison Capital invests in the fintech and crypto space, and the current emergence of real-world asset (RWA) monetization, specifically in the tokenizing of physical assets on the chain. Last but not least, he shares what great would look like for Saison Capital.

Episode Highlights:
[0:00] Quote of the Day by Qin En Loi. #QOTD
[1:20] Introduction: Qin En Looi from Saison Capital.
[4:09] From entrepreneur to VC.
[5:40] Lessons from Qin En’s career journey.
[7:15] Overview of Saison Capital as a corporate VC and investment thesis.
[11:10] Definition of Crypto, Web3 and Real World Assets (RWA) monetization.
[14:40] Typical day as a VC for Qin En Looi.
[17:53] Choice of Blockchains (L2, Alt-L1) for Development.
[22:02] Web 2.0 vs Web3.
[23:07] Case studies in Web3 and Crypto.
[26:54] How Web3 model can reduce operational costs in TradFi.
[31:27] Challenges of RWA in different crypto markets.
[35:26] Fractional Ownership and Illiquidity in RWA.
[36:02] Trends in Web3/Crypto and RWA.
[39:45] The one thing that Qin En Looi know about RWA and Web3.
[41:45] Role of Web3 in the Finance Industry.
[43:06] What does great look like for Saison Capital?
[43:45] Closing

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Digital Report 2024 and why Generative AI did not show up this time with Simon Kemp

Bernard Leong — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 23:12:00 GMT

"The key thing that I realize every time I look at the data is that the media is telling us a lot of nonsense. I think that the one thing I know is that the data tells a very different story to the media headlines. So I suppose my advice there is, never to accept clickbait at face value. If you're building a marketing plan, do your due diligence, and check the data because the data always surprises me. The one thing I know is that I'm always surprised. There's your key takeaway.” - Simon Kemp

Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp, co-founder and CEO of Kepios joined us for the 7th year to discuss the Digital Report 2024 and its pivotal insights. The dialogue kicked off with Simon pondering AI's potential impact on his job, then swiftly moved to the report's core findings. Simon also explored how digital marketing and content strategies are evolving due to generational differences, underscoring the necessity for content creators to adapt across diverse social media channels. Last but not least, Simon addressed the current lack of comprehensive data to include generative AI in this year's report. Last but not least, Simon shared his anticipation for what's on the horizon in the coming year.

Episode Highlights:
[0:55] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Simon Kemp.
[1:22] Introduction to Simon Kemp, co-founder and CEO of Kepios.
[2:59] Are we going to be replaced by AI?
[3:57] Key Takeaways for Digital 2024 report.
[5:14] TikTok is still growing quickly despite the headwinds.
[10:20] Mobile and social media are still growing especially in India.
[12:43] Trendlines for e-commerce and search engine use.
[15:22] How do you add generative AI to search engine use, for example, Perplexity AI?
[17:51] Do generational differences in online behaviour change how digital marketing and content strategies work?
[21:14] How do content creators adapt and decide which social media platforms to use?
[23:43] Why the horizontal approach of broadcasting across all social media does not work anymore?
[28:16] Success on any social media platform is based on chance and preparation.
[32:04] Implications of TikTok’s potential ban in the US and how users shift from one platform to another.
[35:25] From X (formerly known as Twitter) to Threads and TikTok to YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.
[36:39] Insights on WeChat, Discord, and Telegram.
[44:59] LinkedIn: a B2B social media platform for engagement but don’t discount YouTube.
[48:57] The One Thing that Simon Kemp knows about Digital Report 2024 that very few do?
[50:04] Why Generative AI usage is not in the Digital 2024 report.
[54:59] Is Generative AI a new paradigm or should it be incorporated into existing digital use cases?
[60:30] How Generative AI changes digital marketing, branding and advertising.
[64:17] What Simon wished to add in the Digital 2024 but could not.
[65:40] Closing.

You can find Simon Kemp at X (formerly known as Twitter): https://twitter.com/eskimon and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eskimon/ and the Digital Report 2024: https://wearesocial.com/sg/blog/2024/01/digital-2024-5-billion-social-media-users/

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Is TikTok going to be banned in the US? An Asian Perspective with Jing Yang

Bernard Leong — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"If we assume that happens, I'm sure TikTok, let alone ByteDance as a company as a whole, will survive - and maybe even continue to thrive after this. Because, let's put things into perspective, right? TikTok has more than 1 billion users globally and then the US represents just a little over a 10th of that, 170 million. So I'm not saying that it's not going to impact TikTok and ByteDance. But does it pose an existential threat? Probably not. I believe given we already talked about how ByteDance has been super profitable. I think that, even if they get banned in the US, this is by no means the end of TikTok or ByteDance." - Jing Yang

Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, the Asia Bureau Chief for The Information, provided an insightful analysis of the potential implications of the recent U.S. House of Representatives bill to force Bytedance to divest TikTok or face a ban in the US. Detailing a timeline of events, she illuminated how Bytedance and TikTok executives may have misinterpreted U.S. political signals. Despite Bytedance's profitability in China, she shed light on why TikTok is facing financial challenges and the complex dynamics between Bytedance and the investors of the company. Concluding her discussion, she offered her perspectives on the possible future of TikTok globally pending the outcome.

Episode Highlights:
[0:40] Quote of the Day by Jing Yang.
[1:27] Introduction: Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief of The Information.
[3:53] Lessons shared by Jing Yang from her career journey.
[5:19] Chronology of the different attempts by the US government to ban TikTok.
[7:40] What are the chances of TikTok being banned in the US?
[9:34] TikTok’s response to the US government after the announcement of the bill.
[11:15] Impact of TikTok's potential ban in the US on content creators & users in the market.
[12:52] The one thing that Jing Yang knows about the TikTok situation very few do.
[14:10] Why TikTok misjudged the political situation in the US.
[17:59] Project Texas and how it encumbered TikTok.
[22:17] TikTok’s engagement with USDS.
[25:14] Chew Shou Zi’s impact on negotiations with the US government after taking over as CEO of TikTok.
[27:45] Assessment of Bytedance and TikTok’s team in handling the US government.
[30:04] Why TikTok is in the red and losing money.
[32:55] Can TikTok still be profitable with a potential US ban?
[36:04] Investors of TikTok distancing themselves from the company.
[40:26] Impact of political affiliations and donations on TikTok.
[41:43] Future of TikTok
[42:43] Closing

You can find Jing Yang at X (formerly known as Twitter): https://x.com/jingyanghk and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jing-yang-33548123/ and her articles on The Information: https://www.theinformation.com/u/Jing%20Yang?rc=fk3gq1

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Don't Ignore Asia Tech with Catherine Shu

Bernard Leong — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"When I wrote about it, in addition to assuming that all Asia tech companies, particularly in China, were copycats of Western companies, I think there are also a lot of misperceptions about how easy it is to enter a market, especially when they're an Asian market, especially when there are incumbent players already. For example, Uber failed. Basically, they failed. That's a harsh word, but they failed in both China and Southeast Asia, where they were acquired by Didi in China and Grab in Southeast Asia. And then Facebook really fell flat on its face with a lot of markets with free basics, it undermined Net Neutrality and also assumed that consumers just because maybe they had to be price conscious, were willing to access only a handful of sites as opposed to having access to a free Internet. I think people also underestimate the influence that Asia has had in other parts of the world." - Catherine Shu

Fresh out of the studio, Catherine Shu reflects on her 12 years at TechCrunch, chronicling the evolution of Asian tech from China to India. She highlights the rise of Chinese apps such as WeChat and TikTok's global impact and the shifting international views on Chinese tech. She explores India's rising tech scene, South Korea's startup growth with the rise of Coupang and Southeast Asia's expanding tech influence, with a focus on Grab. Shu offers her advice for journalists covering Asia's dynamic tech landscape and articulating what great looks like for Asia Tech in the future.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:40] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Catherine Shu.
[1:38] Introduction: Catherine Shu, former senior reporter for TechCrunch.
[2:50] Her thoughts on the TechCrunch recent layoff.
[5:04] Catherine’s future plans.
[6:34] Catherine shares lessons from her career journey.
[8:07] Inspiration behind her last article on TechCrunch: Don’t Ignore Asia Tech.
[9:30] Western Perceptions Change on Asia Tech over the decade.
[11:02] Early misconceptions about Asia Tech in the West.
[12:44] Evolution of Asia Tech from Catherine’s perspective.
[15:14] Tech Coverage in Taiwan.
[17:17] The one thing about Asia tech Catherine knows but very few do.
[19:41] Why China succeeded with WeChat as the super app.
[23:26] The rise in TikTok globally for Chinese Tech.
[26:40] Perspectives on TikTok recent potential ban.
[27:26] What the West learned from the super app revolution in China.
[28:52] Why China was caught flatfooted with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in AI.
[30:14] The future of Chinese startups.
[34:01] How the Indian tech market evolved over the past decade.
[35:58] South Korean Startup Ecosystem.
[39:00] Is there really a Southeast Asia tech story?
[42:34] Advice for future correspondents covering Asia Tech.
[44:32] What does great look like for Asia Tech?
[46:30] Closing.

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Will the stocks from China recover & Asian Century Stocks with Michael Fritzell

Bernard Leong — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 20:00:00 GMT

“Let's remember if the leadership wants to do something, they have all the tools at their disposal and I don't think that they will want to underwrite massive unemployment. I think the Chinese leadership wants stability above all. So I will not rule out any kind of stimulus and perhaps it would look different than in the past. It will not go through the popular market, but it could well happen that you will see greater lending, perhaps in a select industries like autos or semiconductors, whatever it might be. But I've seen so many cycles at this point. I started investing in China in 2008. And 2007 was a boom, 2010, another boom, 2013 was a low in the Asian market. It felt very much like today. I would go to these conferences and meet local investors and they were just so despondent. I feel very much the same kind of sentiment today. People say there's nothing, they can't see anything positive and that's fine, but we can't predict the future.” - Michael Fritzell

Fresh out of the studio, Michael Fritzell, Founder of Asian Century Stocks, shared invaluable insights in Asia's financial markets and discussed the recent tumultuous situation in Chinese equities and what the potential government responses are possible. He provided a high-level overview of the Asian stock market, contrasting it with markets in the US and Europe and stressed the importance of understanding corporate governance and the role of short-sellers in exposing corporate frauds in Asian markets. He delved deep with his unique insights into forensic accounting challenges and the future potential of Asian stocks and the dynamic and intricate nature of these evolving markets.

Audio Episode Highlights:
[0:40] Quote of the Day: Michael Fritzell.
[1:56] Introduction: Michael Fritzell from Asian Century Stocks.
[4:59] Perspectives on Asia after living here for over a decade.
[6:28] Lessons from Michael’s career journey.
[8:15] What just happened with the Chinese equities tanking in the stock market?
[13:43] The response from the Chinese government to stabilize the stock market.
[17:14] Should we be optimistic about the Chinese publicly listed companies?
[19:40] An Introduction to the Asian Stock Markets.
[23:47] The motivation behind Asian Century Stocks.
[25:32] The intended audience for Asian Century Stocks.
[26:40] How do subscribers utilize Asian Century Stocks?
[28:52] What are the things to watch out for when buying Asian stocks.
[31:42] The one thing that Michael Fritzell knows about Asian stocks that very few do.
[33:24] Understanding Fraud in Asian Companies.
[37:05] Key indicators to watch out for in Asian Companies.
[40:58] The role of short-sellers on Asian stocks (including China).
[44:51] How do short-sellers short Asian stocks?
[46:28] What does great look like for Asian stocks in the next decade?
[48:57] Closing.

You can find Michael Fritzell's Asian Century Stocks: https://www.asiancenturystocks.com/ and on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-fritzell-1aab10/ and X: https://twitter.com/mikefritzell

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How Arta Finance Democratizes Wealth Management with Caesar Sengupta

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 21:15:00 GMT

"So in our view, great would be when everyone can find the best place to put their money to work. To whatever cause they want. It could be investing. It could be protecting their family. It could be long-term. It could be a nonprofit. It could be helping a local business. Today in the world, there is Google to find information, right? There's Amazon to find products. But what about financial opportunities? There is no one place to find financial opportunities. We wanna be able to create that for the world where anyone who's looking to put their money to work has a place to put their money to work. And anybody who's looking for help in building whatever business or, growing whatever they want to grow, can meet, these people who are looking to put their money to work." - Caesar Sengupta

Fresh out of the studio, Caesar Sengupta, the CEO and co-founder of Arta Finance, shares the story of how the startup democratizes family office wealth management to accredited professionals in the digital era. Caesar shares the company's vision and mission, highlighting their alignment with current financial trends and their disruptive approach to traditional family office models. Following the conversation, he explains how Arta Finance leverages technology to provide personalized financial solutions for high-net-worth individuals and families and discusses the company's global strategy and its approach to navigating diverse financial regulations across different countries. Last but not least, he shares his vision for Arta Finance's future success in the coming years.

Episode Highlights:
[0:52] Quote of the Day by Caesar Sengupta.
[1:38] Introduction: Caesar Sengupta.
[2:05] What was Caesar's inspiration to become a startup founder?
[3:10] Career lessons from Caesar Sengupta.
[4:10] Total Market Opportunity for the Wealth Management Business.
[8:07] Vision and Mission of Arta Finance.
[11:00] How do accredited investors engage Arta Finance?
[13:36] How can Generative AI enter into wealth management?
[16:27] How does Arta Finance approach wealth management differently from traditional private banks?
[20:55] The One Thing Caesar knows that very few people do on tech & wealth management.
[24:21] The investors behind Arta Finance.
[26:29] Challenges faced while building Arta Finance and how they overcame it.
[29:20] How does Arta Finance establish trust?
[31:41] How Arta Finance expands across the different regions.
[33:17] What does great look like for Arta Finance?
[34:27] Closing

BYD vs Tesla: The New EV Empire with Lei Xing

Bernard Leong — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 20:00:00 GMT

“One thing I can add is the awakening, the shaking up, the shaping up of the rest of the global auto industry from the Chinese is in full swing. The Chinese are coming. And if the Western automakers are prepared, they're going to have a much tougher moment than when they confronted the Japanese or the Koreans. The Japanese [and] Koreans, they're very successful. Let's say in the U.S., but this is a whole different issue - the geopolitical aspect. But you know, they're coming.” - Lei Xing

Fresh out of the studio, Lei Xing, founder of AutoXing & co-host of China EVs & More, shared his insights into the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) market and its implications for the global EV market. Lei discussed his career journey and the inspiration behind covering the China EVs market through his podcast. He broke down the competitive dynamics between Tesla and BYD based on their current strategies for global market expansion and technological challenges. He shared his perspectives on whether Chinese EV makers can rinse and repeat the solar panel strategy against the rest of the automotive companies in the world. Last but not least, he shared the groundbreaking innovations at CES 2024 and emphasized the challenges and opportunities ahead for Chinese manufacturers and their vision for long-term success in the EV industry globally.

Episode Highlights:
[0:50] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Lei Xing.
[1:21] Introduction: Lei Xing from China EVs & More.
[8:60] China EVs and more podcast and their coverage.
[10:17] Lessons learnt from Lei Xing’s career journey.
[11:40] Overview of the global EV landscape & China’s market share in EVs.
[15:27] The China smart EV makers after BYD.
[20:15] The competitive advantage of Chinese EV makers.
[23:26] How Tesla Invigorates the EV Competition in China.
[24:36] The one thing that Lei Xing knows about China EV makers that very few do.
[27:00] How Chinese EV makers are competing in the global market.
[30:57] Can Chinese EV makers rinse and repeat the solar panel strategy to win the EV market?
[32:50] How BYD emerged in the US since 2011.
[37:21] Tesla vs BYD in AI, autonomous driving and robotics.
[41:43] How Tesla is competing in China and other parts of the world.
[46:40] Breakthroughs in EVs and self-driving cars at CES 2024.
[51:14] The bet on hydrogen fuel cars by Japanese automotive makers.
[53:14] Outlook for Chinese EVs in the 5-10 years.
[56:33] Will China EVs go upstream to the hypercars against Ferrari?
[58:03] What does success mean for Chinese EV companies in the next 5-10 years?
[59:43] Closing.

AC Ventures & The Indonesia Venture Capital Report 2023 with Adrian Li

Bernard Leong — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"Indonesia is not of the scale of China and India. And some people argue that India and China are so vast that you can almost consider: North China, South China, East China and different parts of the world. But because Indonesia normally gets lumped into ASEAN, right? People think about, well, I don't want single country risk with a country of this size. And so that's where the differentiation came out. Nonetheless, this is our thesis. And we believe that the last 10 years have proven that thesis. So we continue to double down on that thesis. Again, we've invested in companies that are regional that come into Indonesia." - Adrian Li

Fresh out of the studio, Adrian Li, founder and managing partner of AC Ventures joined us in a conversation to delve into the dynamics of the venture capital scene in Indonesia. He commenced by tracing his entrepreneurial journey, which spanned from the United States to China, and ultimately to Southeast Asia, culminating in his transition to venture capitalist. From there, he shed light on the investment thesis of AC Ventures, their decade of investing that led to their recent successful raise of US$210m to their 5th fund. He provided an in-depth analysis of the entire venture capital landscape in Indonesia, discussing its evolution over time. To conclude, Adrian shared his vision for AC Ventures, focusing on their intensified commitment to nurturing startups in Indonesia and across the broader Southeast Asian region.

Episode Highlights:
[0:44] Quote of the Day from Adrian Li #QOTD
[1:16] Introduction: Adrian Li, Founder & Managing Partner, AC Ventures.
[2:27] How did Adrian start his career?
[4:36] Adrian’s first entrepreneurial pursuit till his move to China & then Southeast Asia.
[8:13] The origin story of AC Ventures.
[10:10] The three key things he looks for when evaluating investment opportunities.
[13:52] AC Ventures, their perspective on the Indonesian market and their investment thesis.
[17:35] Typical day for a VC like Adrian Li
[19:23] The red flags that Adrian Li watched out for in founders & startup teams.
[21:14] The startup class of 2021 vs the class of 2023.
[24:40] The Indonesia Venture Capital Report 2023 by AC Ventures and Bain & Co.
[25:22] How investors are adjusting their strategies to the Indonesian market.
[27:24] Investor preferences, unit economics and valuations on the Indonesian market.
[29:11] The challenges that the Indonesian startups face and how they are adapting to them.
[32:00] The verticals that are working in the Indonesian market.
[34:43] Indonesia's regulatory environment is supportive of startups.
[37:01] The exit landscape for startups in Indonesia.
[41:48] The Indonesia startup landscape after the ZIRP era.
[45:12] The one thing that Adrian Li knows that very few do about VC in Indonesia.
[47:38] In-country VCs vs regional VCs in Southeast Asia.
[49:43] How should investors perceive Indonesia as a single market like China & India?
[51:29] Can foreign entrepreneurs thrive in the Indonesia startup ecosystem?
[53:22] What does great look like for AC Ventures?
[54:24] Closing

Vertex Ventures & Venture Capital in Southeast Asia & India with Carmen Yuen

Bernard Leong — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 20:00:00 GMT

"The whole of Southeast Asia has to come up as a group. Hence, my secret about what I know about the VC industry that people don't know. The secret is that you've got to be very sane when you come to investing, right? So, if you invest so high, we can't get exits. When we can't get exits, we can't return money to LPs, and then the investors will say, ‘Oh, Southeast Asia cannot find exits one.’ It cannot be, right? So to me, we must be able to show exits. That's the proof of the pudding.” - Carmen Yuen

Fresh out of the studio, Carmen Yuen, general partner from Vertex Ventures SE Asia & India, joined us to discuss the current state of venture capital in Southeast Asia & India after the difficult fundraising climate in the past year. Carmen began the story of her career, moving from the government sector to venture capital. She shares the evolution of Vertex Ventures from their investment thesis to the portfolio of startups and evaluates the startup class of 2023 vs 2021. Last but not least, Carmen describes exits as the leading indicators for startup success and elucidates what great would look like for Vertex Ventures.

Episode Highlights:
[00:50] Quote of the Day #QOTD from Carmen Yuen.
[01:21] Introduction: Carmen Yuen, General Partner, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India.
[02:16] Carmen’s career story from the government sector to venture capital.
[05:03] Career lessons from Carmen Yuen.
[08:32] Introduction to Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India.
[12:41] Perspectives on Markets: Southeast Asia & India.
[14:50] Finding Local champions vs Regional players in Southeast Asia.
[16:12] The verticals that Carmen Yuen invests in Southeast Asia & India.
[18:48] Carmen’s typical day as a VC.
[20:22] Traits of Founders & Startup Teams that Carmen invests in.
[22:50] The red flags that deter Carmen from investing in startups.
[24:46] Solo Founders vs Startup Teams.
[26:55] Interesting companies under Vertex SE Asia portfolio.
[32:05] Advice to founders on market expansion in Southeast Asia.
[35:44] The startup class of 2023 vs the startup class of 2021.
[38:19] Outlook for 2024: Headwinds and Tailwinds.
[40:00] The one thing that Carmen Yuen knows as a VC that very few do.
[42:36] Advice to Startup Founders in a difficult fundraising climate.
[44:42] How do you explain the Southeast Asia to LPs?
[46:50] Exits are key to success in Southeast Asia: M&A and IPOs.
[47:36] What does great look like in Vertex Ventures SEA and India?
[48:11] Closing.

Yana TV and Change Makers in the Asia Pacific with Yana Fry

Bernard Leong — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 21:23:00 GMT

"There are so many voices here that people can create their own unique things. And yet there is still this culture, that's still lingering from the past, that somehow the answers are in the West. And trust me, they are not. So the West is also confused and looking for their way to figure out things. And so the main inspiration for Yana TV was to create this particular platform where we can showcase the voices of Asian movers and shakers, which means people who are doing interesting things, who are standing up, who want to speak up, challenging the status quo, and the norms. People who are regional, who are thought leaders, and I also feel it is time there has to be a bigger platform where we can all go and see who are the people who are doing amazing things here." - Yana Fry

Fresh out of the studio, Yana Fry, producer & host of Yana TV joined us in a conversation about the behind-the-scenes of her show and her perspectives on interviewing Asian change makers across the region. Our conversation kicked off with Yana's odyssey to Singapore and delving into what sparked the creation of Yana TV and its core themes. In the conversation, Yana shares the heartwarming tales featured on her show, ranging from a kidnapped diplomat to a heart-touching Singaporean Santa Claus and her perspectives as a content creator in the Asia Pacific. Last but not least, she shares what great would look like for Yana TV.

[00:48] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Yana Fry, Founder & Host, Yana TV.
[02:24] Introduction: Yana Fry, Founder & Host of Yana TV.
[04:28] Perspectives on living in Singapore.
[06:43] Yana shares lessons of her career journey.
[08:20] Inspiration behind Yana TV.
[10:28] Intended Audience behind Yana TV.
[11:50] The Great Resignation and its Impact on Executives re-thinking work-life balance.
[13:49] Main Themes and Key Takeaways from interviewing Asian change-makers in Yana TV.
[16:18] How a seven-time convicted criminal becomes a change-maker to help prison inmates re-integrate into Singapore society.
[17:43] The behind-the-scenes (BTS) behind Yana TV's production.
[21:01] Different Profiles of Change-Makers on Yana TV.
[25:14] How Asian change-makers differ from their Western counterparts.
[29:35] Challenges faced by Asian Change Makers.
[34:49] Tales of Asian Change Makers: A Diplomat.
[36:30] Tales of Asian Change Makers: Singapore Santa Claus that moved the production crew on Yana TV.
[41:23] How to tell stories in Asia with the digital format.
[44:32] The challenge of distribution for Asian podcasters.

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G. Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn).

Glints & Human Resources in the Age of AI with Oswald Yeo

Bernard Leong — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 20:00:00 GMT

“[Glints] We would like to still be around and building an enduring company. A big part of why many of us at Glints are building what we want is we hope that our children and grandchildren can be using Glints to grow their careers as well. So we want this to be an enduring company. Our mission is to help realize human potential. And we would like to be a company that's here to last. That's one. Two, concretely we see a lot of opportunities in the platform business and in our cross-border business. We want to double down in this market, getting to market leadership in the market we're playing in, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and also expanding out to new markets for cross-border recruiting, helping employers around the world tap into their 300 million labour force in Southeast Asia, helping them to hire the people here." - Oswald Yeo

Fresh out of the studio, Oswald Yeo, chief executive officer and co-founder of Glints joined us in a conversation to discuss how the startup has helped companies from all over the region to build out their talent hubs across Southeast Asia. We began the conversation with Oswald as he shared the journey of Glints and the importance of focus to find the product-market fit till scaling the company across the region. He shared his valuable insights on the application of generative AI in the human resources sector, particularly emphasizing its utility in cross-border recruitment and talent sourcing. Last but not least, he shared his vision on what great would look like for the startup in the future.

Episode Highlights:
[00:48] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Oswald Yeo, CEO & co-founder of Glints.
[02:22] Introduction: Oswald Yeo.
[03:09] Origin Story of Glints.
[05:54] Career Lessons from Oswald Yeo - Finding the Right People.
[08:15] Overview of Glints and its vision & mission today.
[11:31] The total market opportunity of HR in Southeast Asia which Glints is poised to capture.
[13:09] Borderless Mindset and its implications to cross-border talent acquisition.
[15:54] Critical Mass of a Talent Hub.
[16:33] Cross Border Hiring and its advantages.
[17:54] How Glints adapts its approach across different countries in Southeast Asia.
[20:50] Pivotal moments for Glints.
[25:21] How Glints found product-market fit in Southeast Asia.
[30:05] The one thing that Oswald knows that very few do.
[30:32] Glints’ current investors & how they help them to scale.
[32:34] Advice for Startup Founders to navigate the difficult fundraising climate.
[34:02] Generative AI’s role in talent acquisition and retention for HR.
[37:52] What does great look like for Glints?
[38:38] Closing.

The Power of Play and Future of Work with George Kesselman

Bernard Leong — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 22:00:00 GMT

"Money is a very interesting kind of numerical way of measuring when you're levelling up. So that's where the distinction needs to be very clear. The way that I've positioned it in the book and what the research tells us is that if we force the games on people, it's very bad. But if we look at the games that they naturally play in their free time when they were younger, it's a very good predictor in terms of the type of work that they naturally would gravitate to. So if somebody is amazing and loves playing hours and hours of strategy games, and if we put that person in front of the machine, turning out widgets is going to be a very bad mismatch, and then we need to pay them a lot of money and continue trying to squeeze them to improve that performance. But if somebody is motivated by strategy games, and we give them the kind of problems that are very similar to the type of things that they naturally gravitate to they will be motivated. So we're not creating a new game for them, but we're looking at parallels and helping them to find that intrinsic motivation. And that's something that I think becomes super, super powerful where they then create their own games based on the work that we want them to achieve." - George Kesselman

Fresh out of the studio, George Kesselman joined us to discuss his new book "The Power of Play". He shares the main themes and key takeaways on how games will drive the future of work. We began the conversation with George providing an overview of how work has evolved from a craftsman environment to the industrial age and explained why we need a re-thinking of work using game play. He dived deep into the different personas of gamers in work life and offered what success would mean for his book in redefining the workplace.

Episode Highlights:

[0:44] QOTD

[2:02] Introduction: George Kesselman

[3:31] Inspiration behind “The Power of Play” book

[4:47] How George convinced Wiley of the book deal

[5:41] The intended audience for “The Power of Play”

[6:38] Main Themes & Key Takeaways behind “The Power of Play”

[9:31] Remote Work vs Return to Office

[12:02] The legacy of work 1.0

[17:24] Work 3.0 world

[21:04] Introduction to Gamification and Game Design in Workplace

[26:58] Different Personas in Games and how they map into real-world work

[29:42] The different motivations that draw people to work

[34:22] How to apply game development principles and design to work

[38:22] Predictors of Success in Matching People to Work

[40:40] Gauging Performances of Workers in remote and distributed environments

[43:13] Things not in the book and is a sequel in the works?

[44:58] What does success mean for “The Power of Play” book?

[46:13] Closing

The State of China 2023 with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 22:00:00 GMT

"You will continue to see Western investment continuing to decline. The risk-reward calculations won't change in the next 12 months, as far as I can see. The Chinese economy is not about to take off. What you will see is the beginnings of some people who are willing to take the gamble. They are going to try different ways to exit. You're going to see more people experimenting with domestic IPOs, and onshore IPOs because you can get the money off. For example, if you're investing in LiDAR or approved industries, you can do a joint venture or a WOFE or anything. It'd be a joint venture to be able to try and do some kind of onshore listings. I think by chance will stay in this weird suspended state. I don't think we're going to get a resolution from them. The big question is - how much stimulus will the Chinese government throw at the economy and how far are they willing to go to goose the economy?" - Shai Oster

Fresh out of the studio, Shai Oster, independent consultant and former Asia Bureau Chief from The Information is back for the sixth time with the annual review of what is happening to the China tech ecosystem in 2023. The conversation started with Shai's predictions last year on what happened and what did not happen. From there, we discuss the major themes of the year: the decline and restructuring of venture capital in China, how the 2nd generation CEOs from Shein, Pinduoduo and Bytedance have successfully expanded globally as compared to their predecessors, the October surprise of Huawei's 7nm chip. Last but not least Shai offered his predictions in the road ahead for 2024.

Episode Highlights:

[0:48] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Shai Oster

[1:42] Introduction

[2:20] What has Shai been up to?

[3:18] Experience in Thailand is similar to being in China as compared to Hong Kong

[5:30] What did Shai get right or wrong in 2023

[6:00] Sequoia splits into 3: US & Europe, China and India & Southeast Asia

[12:41] Why Sequoia split out India & Southeast Asia to Peak XV

[15:08] State of Venture Capital in China, the 2023 Edition

[22:38] The restructuring of China’s tech ecosystem and where Alibaba Group is heading

[26:10] Why 2nd generation tech founders in Shein, Pinduoduo and ByteDance did a better job in expanding globally compared to BAT

[33:40] Will TikTok be banned in the US and will it go IPO as well?

[38:30] Investors in public China tech companies in the US have now read the regulatory risk section in their S1 filings.

[41:51] Huawei’s October surprise with their 7nm chip and the US sanctions might have accelerated the Chinese’s chip development and independence.

[45:52] Macroeconomics in China due to the declining real estate market in 2023.

[47:49] Why China is still booming despite the doom and gloom of less foreign-directed investments.

[49:55] Shai’s predictions on China for 2024

[53:46] Chinese entrepreneurs coming to Southeast Asia to start companies.

[55:49] Gaming in China and Tencent’s ability to respond to the Chinese government’s demands is still going on.

[59:10] Closing

The State of Generative AI and Crypto in 2023 with Kelly Choo

Bernard Leong — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 01:45:00 GMT

"Consumer demand will accelerate the need for security, privacy and regulation. Like zero-knowledge (ZK) where you can prove something is true without revealing all information. And of course, security infrastructure, which is very interesting and important at this current moment, even before the next bull market. For example, one of the companies we invested into Ledger, a digital asset hardware wallet. You basically have an app store interface where you can trade, you can stake. We see a lot of adoption of crypto in not just a retail space because of increased awareness, in the media, and new DeFi applications coming up, but also in the adoption of enterprise space. So a lot of these enterprises will be thinking to themselves, okay, in my treasury, not just do I need to hold USD and other currencies, maybe I need to also hold Bitcoins, or something else. DBS Bank, They're now holding some of this Sandbox Land, but where do they hold it? They can't hold it just in a wallet and then they throw it into some cabinet somewhere. They need to have the right, security hardware. So we believe this, will accelerate the adoption of applications like ledger, which is like a hardware wallet, for both retail and enterprise. So we believe that age-old saying of selling shovels during a gold rush is still very true." - Kelly Choo

Fresh out of the studio, Kelly Choo, founding partner from True Global Ventures discusses the state of generative AI and crypto in 2023 and what to look forward in 2024. Kelly started with his take on the recent departure of CZ from Binance and the ouster and return of Sam Altman in Open AI and how this impacts the AI and crypto landscape. From there, he broke down how they are looking at the next wave of generative AI companies specifically in the education, metaverse and legal space and crypto companies from ERC 6551 in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to zero-knowledge proofs. Last but not least, Kelly defines what success would mean for both AI and crypto in 2024.

Episode Highlights:

[0:50] Quote of the Day #QOTD from Kelly Choo

[1:43] What has Kelly Choo been up to?

[3:19] CZ, Binance, and the Rise of Singaporean CEOs

[4:32] SamAltman OpenAI and Microsoft

[7:30] OpenAI Developer Event

[10:05] The Current State of GenAI

[14:41] What Kind of Business Models are Going to be Proving Successful in the GenAI Space?

[16:48] True Global Ventures and AI Startups

[19:23] Review of 2023 Web3 Megatrends

[28:03] What is ERC6551? AKA Programmable NFT's

[30:44] Web3 Tech We Should be Paying Attention To

[32:36] Impact of AI and Web3 on Gamer User Experience

[35:02] The Saudi Government Gets into Crypto

[38:55] Is the Apple Vision Pro a Game Changer?

[39:31] AR and VR Market Predictions

[41:01] BTC ETF and their Impact

[44:26] Regulatory Changes

[45:39] What Does Great Look Like for Crypto and Web3 in 2024?

[46:38] Closing

Undivided VC & Investing in the Built Environment & Sustainability with Alexander Bent

Bernard Leong — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 20:00:00 GMT

We've got a 330 trillion dollar industry here, which arguably a lot of it, we talk about stranded assets, CRREM pathways to stranded assets, et cetera. I talked to a lot of funds. I've talked to a lot of developers. They're getting very worried about this. And it's not just about their existing portfolios. It's about how they are going to exit portfolios. Because many buyers now actually build in the cost of retrofitting a building to bring it up to sustainability when they're looking at acquiring an asset. So, that might bring the price down. So, for us, we look at everything you've just mentioned. We look at materials. We look at hardware. We look at software and anything that gets us to some of these impact targets we want to achieve in the built environment and also is something which is commercially viable and fixes some particular pain point within this ecosystem. - Alexander Bent"

Fresh out of the studio, Alexander Bent, founder & managing partner from Undivided Ventures, joined us in a conversation on why this is the time to invest in sustainability within the built environment. Alexander started with his background as a real estate developer and the inspiration behind starting his venture capital firm. He dived deep into his investment thesis and shared his perspectives on how transforming technologies from AI to materials engineering will transform the real estate industry. Last but not least, Alex shares what great would look like for Undivided Ventures.

Episode Highlights:
[0:50] Quote of the Day #QOTD by Alexander Bent.
[1:40] Welcome Message from the host.
[2:20] Introduction to Alexander Bent and his career journey.
[6:40] Perspectives on investing in climate adaptation rather than mitigation.
[7:30] Lessons from Alexander's career journey.
[9:40] The Vision and Mission of Undivided Ventures and why focus on built environment.
[11:50] The total market opportunity behind the real estate industry.
[13:20] The investment mandate for Undivided Ventures.
[14:20] Undivided VC is based in Hong Kong but invests globally.
[15:20] Typical day of a venture capitalist for Alexander.
[17:20] What are the traits of founders & startup teams that Alex index for?
[19:10] Business Models for Startups focusing on sustainability and built environment.
[21:20] What are the red flags in founders that you would watch out for?
[23:20] How Undivided VC helps their portfolio companies.
[25:30] Interesting companies under Undivided VC.
[28:10] The one thing that Alexander knows about investing in sustainability & built environment that very few do.
[28:35] Advice to startups focusing on positive impact in sustainability & built environment.
[31:50] #AI in sustainability & built environment.
[34:40] #internetofthings #iot in sustainability & built environment.
[36:20] #blockchain in sustainability & built environment.
[40:20] #materialscience & #materialsengineering in sustainability & built environment.
[42:50] Putting AI into materials science
[43:50] What does great look like for Undivided VC?
[48:00] Closing

Decoding the e-Conomy SEA 2023 Report with Sapna Chadha and Florian Hoppe

Bernard Leong — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 20:57:00 GMT

"I think in the past, we've looked more at inclusion and access, but actually we've made so much inroads over the past years. Now again, we're talking about participation because what we're seeing is that 30% of the highest spending customers who we call high-value users (HVUs) - they make up over 70% of the digital economies' transaction value. So 30% Are leading to 70% of the digital economy. We want to make sure that we don't leave users behind and we continue to drive growth and drive their participation. So we need to make sure that we are not ignoring this very important group that presents a 1.9x growth opportunity of that of high-value users. And for this reason, it's really important for us to talk about digital participation." - Sapna Chadha

Fresh out of the studio, Sapna Chadha, vice president of Google Southeast Asia, and Florian Hoppe, partner at Bain and Company shared the key takeaways from the Google e-Conomy SEA 2023 report. Sapna and Florian discussed how start-ups are navigating the current declines in venture capital funding and introduced how high-value users presented a new way of visualizing what goes behind the digital economy in Southeast Asia. Last but not least, they discuss what great looks like for businesses in Southeast Asia.

Episode Highlights:

[0:00] Quote of the Day #QOTD from Sapna Chadna

[2:00] Welcome Message from the host

[2:48] Introduction of Sapna Chadha, Vice President, Google Southeast Asia

[5:02] Key Takeaways of Google e-Conomy Southeast Asia Report 2023

[8:40] Southeast Asia's economic performance against global macroeconomic headwinds

[10:30] The one most interesting data point that Sapna and Florian found interesting about the report

[12:50] Does the global shift in venture capital align with Southeast Asia? [

14:00] Will high-quality start-ups still be able to raise capital in Southeast Asia?

[15:01] Are funding declines differentiated by funding stages or by countries?

[16:00] Can Southeast Asian VCs return capital to their LPs?

[17:10] Advice to Southeast Asia startups in surviving the current funding winter

[18:20] Do we see more startups focusing on monetization accelerating across the digital economy?

[21:43] What are the potential avenues of growth for fintech companies?

[24:15] Definition and Context behind High-Value Users (HVUs) in Southeast Asia

[26:56] Comparison between HVUs and non-HVUs across different Southeast Asia economies

[29:50] Are smartphones and digital infrastructure in tier 3 and 4 cities bringing non-HVUs online?

[33:23] Can Southeast Asia reach 1 trillion GMV in 2030?

[35:35] What would success look like for businesses in Southeast Asia for the next few years?

[39:37] Closing

Dow Jones & AI in Risk and Compliance with Joel Lange

Bernard Leong — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 03:00:00 GMT

"And so what we do at Dow Jones, very specifically, is look at - What are the regulators demanding? What do they want you to do? What are the specific data points that you require? And which workflows do you want to use them in? And, there are very different workflows, which within, for example, a financial institution. You have the onboarding of your new customers, and in those situations, you may have a little bit more time. Obviously, there's the service level in terms of opening a bank account is faster and faster. But you have a little bit more time in that regard. You want to look at potentially more data. Then once you are a customer of a bank, you're gonna be amongst millions of customers. How do banks can then adapt to check additional data points? And, today the customer may be clean and have no adverse media, may not be sanctions, but that could change." - Joel Lange

Fresh out of the studio, Joel Lange, executive vice president & general manager of risk and research from Dow Jones, discussed how the company is leveraging artificial intelligence and data analytics to help companies tackle risk and compliance and combat financial crimes and money laundering. Joel also explored generative AI's role in risk management and concluded by envisioning the future of Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and what great would look like in the Asia Pacific.

Episode Highlights:

[0:00] Quote of the Day #QOTD from Joel Lange

[0:50] Introduction to Joel Lange, EVP & GM, Risk & Research, Dow Jones

[1:28] Support for freeing Evan Gershkovich from Wall Street Journal on his 32nd birthday.

[2:20] How did Joel start his career and eventually end up in his role with Dow Jones

[3:58] Lessons learnt in Joel's career journey

[5:40] Introduction to Dow Jones and its global vision & mission

[8:20] Risk Management, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes 101

[10:08] Impact on businesses and other organizations if their risk is not well managed.

[12:00] How Dow Jones Risk & Compliance division helps businesses to navigate the challenges

[14:50] The challenge of cross borders makes managing risk and compliance difficult on a global level

[17:00] RiskCenter Advanced Screening and Monitoring (ASAM) solution based on AI and big data

[19:50] What makes ASAM different from other risk management solutions out there?

[21:00] How the AI solution tackles false positives and the tradeoffs made between the specificity and sensitivity of the data.

[24:30] How does the diversity of APAC both economically & politically impact the complex anti-money laundering processes?

[27:00] The mental model to balance between economic recovery & anti-corruption efforts

[29:05] Perspectives on Generative AI and how it impacts combating financial crime & AML

[32:05] Advice to C-suite executives and government officials on risk management with AI

[33:40] What does great look like for Dow Jones for market expansion and ASAM in the APAC region?

[35:30] Closing

The Art of Product Management with Tom Verrilli

Bernard Leong — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 17:00:00 GMT

“It is useful both to internal and external, but it's also a really great litmus test. If you sit down to write your public letter and you can't explain why you're doing something, if it doesn't fit in with your overarching strategy, it goes back to that first thing we said as PMs [product managers], which is sometimes you have to say no to it. You're like, I actually can't explain to anyone why we're spending time on this particular feature. It doesn't fit any of the four themes we said we're doing this year. Does that mean we have a fifth theme or does that mean we shouldn't be doing that? And that clarity and that kind of litmus test. Is really, really useful as a leader when few people say no to you.” - Tom Verrilli

Fresh out of the studio in SXSW Sydney, Tom Verrilli, former Chief Product Officer of Twitch joined us in a conversation to discuss the intricacies of product management. Tom shared his perspectives based on his experiences from navigating the delicate balance between feature addition and reduction in product roadmaps and managing normal and power users' expectations. With the recent advances in generative AI, Tom offered his insights on how this new wave will bring about changes in user behaviour and interfaces, and how it will bring about new thinking in product management. Last but not least, he laid out what great would look like for product managers in the next decade.

Author's note: We thanked SXSW Sydney and Sennheiser ANZ for the podcast stage and appreciated the opportunity to have our episode recorded live on 18 Oct 2023.

Stripe and the Innovation of Financial Infrastructure in the Asia Pacific with Mike Clayville

Bernard Leong — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 17:00:00 GMT

Stripe isn't just payments. We actually build economic infrastructure for the global economy. And so we've got a lot more technology beyond payments. Our Stripe Tour is a cool venue where we get a chance to bring customers, partners and thought leaders together and talk about the current state of technology and future technologies - in a local Asian context. So it's been a lot of fun. And by the way, we're really enthusiastic about Asia here at Stripe. Not only because 60 per cent of the world's population is in Asia, but also because the Asian markets are very tech-forward. And you can see that by just looking at global trends, sometimes Asian markets completely leapfrog the trends like what happened to mobile. And so you got this great market that's huge, that's really tech-forward. And there's so much innovation possible.” - Mike Clayville, chief revenue officer of Stripe

Fresh out of the studio, Mike Clayville, Chief Revenue Officer of Stripe, joined us in a conversation discussing Stripe's business in the Asia Pacific and shared invaluable insights into the evolution of financial infrastructure. Mike dived deep into how Stripe is adapting and expanding while at the same time with interesting customer stories in the Asia Pacific. He delved into Stripe's current innovations specifically on online payments & financial infrastructure within the dynamic Asia Pacific region. Last but not least, Mike shared the key trends in the financial infrastructure landscape and defined what great would look like for Stripe's future in APAC.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G.Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn).

The Global Crypto Adoption Index 2023 & Asia's Rising in Crypto with Kimberly Grauer

Bernard Leong — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:00:00 GMT

"The global adoption index is something that we put out once a year and it comes strictly within the research domain and it's our attempt to really elucidate just how much activity is happening around the world. Crypto is a global asset with activity in over 150 countries around the world, but people feel like it's a black box because they don't really understand who are these crypto users. Where are they? But in reality, we don't have answers to those questions because we don't have survey data around them. The government does not collect that data. So it feels like a black box, but it's kind of a created black box in its own right. And we're trying to show that that's not the case, that there's a lot of transparency here, and we can see where adoption is happening, and we can see which countries are the leaders in crypto adoption." - Kimberly Grauer

Fresh out of the studio, Kimberly Grauer, the director of research from Chainalysis provided an in-depth analysis of the Global Crypto Adoption Index 2023, highlighting Asia's burgeoning crypto and web3 activities. We discussed how Asia is currently leading the crypto activity from the Philippines to Pakistan, and highlighted what users are doing with their cryptocurrencies in their respective markets. We discuss the surprise in India's crypto and web3 activities despite strong anti-crypto regulation and how Asia's favourable regulation is bringing innovation from the US to the rest of the world. Last but not least, Kim described great would look like for the Global Crypto Adoption Index report in the next few years.

Snowflake & Trends on Data Cloud & AI in the Asia Pacific with Jon Robertson

Bernard Leong — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 02:04:00 GMT

"But today, the clouds are the new silos. They're like the silos in the data center, only they're public. But AWS is a bit of a data silo, as is Azure. We used to call it Hotel California - you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Right? A big part of what Snowflake does is tear down those silos to allow customers to have the data where they want it. Because if it's on Snowflake, it doesn't matter which physical infrastructure is behind it; and to share that data easily around the world, that's a major change in the whole kind of cloud-silo infrastructure problem that we're facing today.” - Jon Robertson

Fresh out of the studio, Jon Robertson, President of Asia Pacific and Japan for Snowflake discussed the company's global vision & mission and their current expansion into the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Jon discussed the customer stories and how Snowflake's cloud data platform facilitates diverse workloads, from artificial intelligence to cybersecurity. Continuing the conversation, he explored the evolving trends in the data and AI landscape, amplified by notable advances such as ChatGPT and where it is heading. Last but not least, he shared what great would look like for Snowflake in the Asia Pacific region for the next 3-5 years.

Lenovo Solutions and Services Group & the Future of IT Services & AI with Arthur Hu

Bernard Leong — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 20:00:00 GMT

"Now the fundamental motivation is customers don't just want to buy a server, right? They want to buy an outcome. They want something to happen. They want to get business value. So, the SSG [Services & Solutions Group] is Lenovo's pivot to meet our customers where they are, and also to lead our company into the future because as they have more sophisticated requirements, they need a simple way to manage and deploy all that I T across their organizations. When they want that holistic view, providing the services via something which is now SSG gives them that integrated offering. In a single contract, they can focus on using their technology in a smarter way. So that's where the SSG is within the context of Lenovo, and as the technology and delivery officer, I'm responsible for helping think about how new technology can make the experience better. It can make the outcomes better for our customers, as well as running the teams that are often because we have managed services that are delivering for customers 24 by 7. All year round. And so the global team of delivery network and experts is also what I run to help bring those outcomes to the customers today." - Arthur Hu

Fresh from the studio, Arthur Hu, SVP & Chief Information Officer at Lenovo, discussed the transformative role of the Solutions and Services Group (SSG) in the era of Generative AI. He shared his career journey and Lenovo's mission to assist customers end-to-end in their journey with the Lenovo Solutions & Services Group (SSG). Hu explored SSG's impact and Lenovo's sustainability initiatives in the Asia Pacific. He emphasized the promise of AI for businesses, including Lenovo's approach and shared a glimpse into the future of SSG's contributions to the tech landscape in the Asia Pacific and beyond.

Episode Highlights: [0:00] Sponsor Announcement: Esevel [0:50] Quote of the Day from Arthur Hu [2:00] Introduction to Arthur Hu, CIO, Lenovo. [4:46] Arthur Hu shares his lessons on his career journey [7:04] Arthur's thoughts on remote working and how Lenovo is re-imaging the workplace by designing thought interactions between employees [10:02] Introduction of Lenovo and its global vision and mission [12:07] Lenovo Solutions and Services Group (SSG) and its role in Lenovo's enterprise business [14:54] Arthur balancing between two roles in Lenovo: Global CIO and CDTO in SSG [18:10] How does Lenovo SSG approach problem-solving for customers? [22:49] Success customer stories of Lenovo SSG in Asia Pacific [25:19] What is the one thing Arthur knows about Lenovo SSG that very few do? [26:17] Lenovo's focus on ESG [33:37] Challenges & Prospects for Lenovo SSG in the Asia Pacific [37:31] The myth of the talent gap in the Asia Pacific [39:91] Advice for CIOs on digital transformation [43:00] Opportunities for AI in the Enterprise [47:56] Lenovo's Role on AI in the Enterprise [50:03] What does great look like for Lenovo SSG in the next decade? [51:13] Closing

Product Evangelism and Canva with Guy Kawasaki

Bernard Leong — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 20:00:00 GMT

"Evangelism comes from a Greek term, meaning bringing the good news. So fundamentally, what an evangelist does is bring the good news. And so with Macintosh, the good news was that this personal computer can increase your creativity and productivity. The good news with Canva was that this product, it can increase your ability to communicate by a democratizing design. That's the good news. My podcast can help you become a remarkable person because you listen to what other remarkable people have done and how they did it. That's the good news of my podcast. So what an evangelist does is bring the good news of his or her product. Now, this assumes that your product is good news. So if you don't have a product that is good news, it's very hard to use evangelism to make it successful." - Guy Kawasaki

Fresh from the studio, we had an enlightening conversation with Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist at Canva, who delved into the essence of product evangelism and revealed how the power of positive messaging propels Canva forward. Guy also dissected the transformative role of generative AI in democratizing design, explaining how it amplifies productivity and sparks greater creativity among users. To cap it off, he offered a glimpse into what great would look like for Canva's future trajectory.

The Future of Generative AI in Southeast Asia with Ong Peng Tsin

Bernard Leong — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 03:27:00 GMT

"It is not just cheaper, faster, better. I'm not gonna deny that. If we go forward a number of years, it's gonna cause what we've been calling economic singularity. The value of labor drops to zero and you got all kinds of problems from that. But in the immediate future, what's gonna be interesting is this is the first technology that enables us to automate relationships. Basically, the AI can interact with us the way we interact with us. This sounds very trivial, but if you look at tech and you look at what has enabled tech to scale up to an incredible size around the world is our ability to automate the transaction. It's just that thing, and the problem with that is you end up with conversations of six months, LTV - Lifetime Value. What sense is in that? You are talking about a human being and your lifetime values over six months. And it's for a simple reason. When you automate transactions, all you control is a transaction. So you take a human being and you transact, and you drain the relationship out of that relationship and you throw it away, and then get another one and keep going." - Ong Peng Tsin

Fresh out of the studio, Ong Peng Tsin, co-founder and general partner of Monk's Hill Ventures, delved deep into the realm of Generative AI in Southeast Asia. Reflecting on his journey as a venture capitalist, Peng Tsin shared insights into the evolution of his daily role after eight years of team building at Monk's Hill Ventures. He emphasized the unparalleled potential of generative AI, likening its transformative impact to the iPhone revolution, and addressing the booming generative AI market in Southeast Asia, catalyzed by technologies like Chat-GPT and how it presents significant opportunities in the region. Last but not least, he shared what a great AI startup would look like in the region.

How SXSW comes to Sydney with Colin Daniels

Bernard Leong — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 19:00:00 GMT

"We might not have old rundown houses or shacks that are converted into brand activations, but we have boats and we have parks, and we have so many different opportunities for organizations and brands to profile themselves during South By, in interestingly different ways. When you're putting together an event like South by Southwest, I go back to what I said before about understanding what it means to different people, what industry they're from, what does success look like for them and what are their goals for the event? Right from the beginning how I've approached this and how our team has approached this and TEG, who is producing the event in Australia; We are building the stage. It's up to our creative communities to perform we're providing the platform. We're bringing everyone to Sydney. You are only limited by your imagination of what you can do or achieve." - Colin Daniels

Fresh out of the studio, we had the pleasure of hosting Colin Daniels, the managing director of SXSW Sydney, who enthusiastically shed light on how the famous SXSW conference plans to make its debut in the Asia Pacific via Sydney. Unfolding the layers of planning and coordination involved, Colin gave us a sneak peek of what participants can look forward to - from film and music to arts, culture, technology, and innovation. Last but not least, Colin described what success would look like for the first-ever SXSW Sydney happening in October 2023.

The Southeast Asia Investment Landscape with Jeremy Au

Bernard Leong — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 20:00:00 GMT

"Southeast Asia is a very exciting market and I think lots of folks, and probably guests have talked about it, but let's just rattle off the list; obviously you have a rising middle class, you have that openness to trade, openness to immigration, and openness to keep growing from a policy perspective. Of course, there's the urbanization and the internet technology digitalization wave. So these are all the first three slides of every VC fund and LP deck, but also the first three slides of every market report. There are so many great ones out there. But I think when we double click a little bit further, what we're also thinking about is what are the industries that are ripe for change. You can call it disruption, you can call it digitalization, but I think that's the crux of it. When we look at venture capital, how do you build that a hundred million dollar revenue business within 10 years and create that 10x multiple? I think that's the home run that VC funds are geared towards. That's something that is currently still in motion. 10 years ago it didn't exist." - Jeremy Au

Fresh out of the studio, Jeremy Au, chief of staff & venture capitalist from Monk's Hill Ventures joined us in a conversation on how to navigate the challenging investment landscape in Southeast Asia. The conversation began with his career from an entrepreneur to now venture capitalist & podcaster. Jeremy drilled down specifically on the venture capital and angel investing scene and dived deep into the emerging trends shaping the different key markets from Indonesia to Vietnam, and elucidated startup expansion strategies driven by changes in technology, language and markets. Last but not least, he offered his take on what great would look like for a successful venture capitalist in Southeast Asia.

Lombard Odier & Key Trends in Family Offices across the Asia Pacific with Lee Wong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 23:54:00 GMT

"You talked about the market opportunity. When you look at the landscape of the billionaire population today, statistics show that you expect that population to grow by about 34% in the years to come. And from that population, at least a third is going to come from Asia Pacific, and in the next five years time, we expect Asia Pacific to be growing by about 40%. So the market is large in relation to the space of wealth to be managed. And we look at the growth of family office space in Singapore has been exponential. So between 2017 to 2019., according to the statistics, the family office space grew by five times. In 2020 at that time they were looking at around 400 family offices. By the end of 2022, it has grown to more than 800. So if you look at today, I think it is actually a very conservative estimate to say that the number of family offices in Singapore has crossed a thousand. you can easily expect it to be much more than that. So I think it's a very exciting area to be in." - Lee Wong from Lombard Odier

Fresh out of the studio, Lee Wong, head of family services from Lombard Odier and Co, joined us to discuss the firm's footprint in the Asia Pacific and the key trends in family offices across the Asia Pacific. We began with Lee Wong's background and how she entered into the private banking sector as a lawyer, specializing in the family offices industry. From there, she provided a comprehensive background on how family offices are built in the Asia Pacific, their purpose and structure with the right governance and framework to ensure their longevity. Last, but not least, Lee Wong shared the key trends in how the family offices market is growing in the Asia Pacific and what it means for the future due to the current geopolitical volatility

The New Gatekeepers & Evolution of AI & Web3 with Benedict Evans

Bernard Leong — Sun, 21 May 2023 20:00:00 GMT

"With both Web3 and VR, if you thought that was interesting a year ago, it's still interesting. Nothing's really changed. Like 98% of all the nonsense has gone away. But if it was early 2022 and you thought VR headsets are going to be a device that two or 3 billion people own, well nothing's changed in the last year to change that. If you think that we might build a billion-scale, consumer software, consumer internet service on a blockchain. Which is really what Web3 means. Yeah, ok. If you thought that a year ago, fine, but you should probably think that is still five years away, but it's just as interesting now as it was then. But it's five years away. Whereas this second wave of AI had been kind of bubbling away very quietly for five years. I mean, the first demo is using generative networks to make faces and things in 2014. And they look terrible. They don't look very interesting. And then suddenly in the last six months, as I've said, suddenly this has worked. Or something's working. And then the growth thing. Well, what is it that's working and what will it become?" - Benedict Evans

Fresh out of the studio, Benedict Evans, the independent analyst and venture partner from Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First, joined us to talk about his recent annual presentation on the technology business: The New Gatekeepers. Benedict shared his perspectives on the evolution of Web3 and AI given the major shift from the metaverse to generative AI. Last but not least, Benedict delves into the exciting possibilities and potential outcomes for the emerging wave of AI startups and explains what success would really mean for them.

Is Asia the real growth story for web3 and crypto in 2023? with Cosmo Jiang, Jin Kang & Junney Kang

Bernard Leong — Sun, 14 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT

"Here in the US and to your US listeners at least, I think what maybe is lost is that despite the US's very aggressive stance against crypto, the totally opposite attitude is being adopted by governments on the other side of the world. Jin talked a little bit about Japan. I would just highlight Hong Kong as a proxy to China, mainland China. It's very clear that China is opening up to crypto through Hong Kong. This is a total about-face from less than two years ago when China banned crypto trading and mining in 2021, and all of a sudden it's reopening to retail in Hong Kong in June, like coming up. I think China's reopening up to crypto is in response to a few factors, which gives me confidence that this isn't short-term or short-lived kind of thing. First, China is really increasing the priority of economic growth over social control in their economy. I mean, a totally different issue than Japan, which has been dealing with 0% growth for 20 years. But China going from six to five is really scary, or five to four is really scary for other people. And so, in particular, its tech giants have slowed a lot because of regulation in China and so they're trying to get that back right by looking at crypto. Second is that China's really trying to regain lost mindshare from the last few years in Asia, the centre of gravity for capital in Asia has very seriously shifted towards Singapore after the Hong Kong political issues, after China's extended covid lockdown." - Cosmo Jiang, Global Coin Research

Fresh out of the studio, Cosmo Jiang, Jin Kang & Junney Kang from Global Coin Research joined us in a roundtable to share the key takeaways from their market and investment report for Q1 2023. We looked at how the builders and venture capital in web3 and crypto are surviving through a tough bearish market despite the rebound of Bitcoin and Ethereum from the trading front. We continued the conversation to address whether Asia from China to India is now leading the resurgent activity for the web3 and crypto market with its crypto-friendly regulations and the potential to take away the lead from the US due to the recent aggressive anti-crypto regulation from the SEC in the US government.

AC Ventures & Investing into Indonesia with Helen Wong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 07 May 2023 20:00:00 GMT

"I would say first of all Indonesia is probably one of the remaining opportunities in a huge market, that's more or less homogeneous with a population of 270 million. You have to look at the G D P per capita is around 4,000 and then the GDP (gross domestic product) growth itself: it's about 5%. So I think you are hard-pressed to find any other country that matches these three very promising criteria. I would say that secondly, on the technology side, a high level of digitization has taken place and internet penetration has grown very quickly, especially during covid. So we are about 70% internet penetration and the whole digital infrastructure is ready for companies to take advantage of them, by that I mean things like payments and logistics. Then I would say that there are other factors that make this market attractive more for the venture capital ecosystem. One is talent. I think you'll find the most number of entrepreneurs in Indonesia in the Southeast Asia region. Number two is you can find follow on capital. for early-stage investors, that's really important, right? Thirdly maybe most importantly, you can find a local exit market. So the IDX is open for iPOs and we've had three IPOs in the last two years. so I think those are the most attractive factors when you think about Indonesia as an emerging market." - Helen Wong

Fresh out of the studio, Helen Wong, managing partner from AC Ventures joined us in a conversation about AC Ventures and the firm's investment thesis onto the largest economy in Southeast Asia: Indonesia. Helen began with her background story from how she started in Silicon Valley, then moved to China and witnessed the rise of the Chinese tech scene. Following on, she explained her mental model in how she evaluates and invests in founders from the Indonesian tech scene. Last but not least, she discuss what great would look like for AC Ventures in Southeast Asia.

The Evolution of Tech Giants in China with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 21:00:00 GMT

"But if you look at Generative AI, that is fundamentally a different way that technology came about and it required a lot of investment without knowing what was going to transpire. So I've talked to a couple of people who are affiliated with various top AI labs in China, and I asked them the same question 'Well, why didn't you guys not create this?' And the universal answer was... honestly OpenAI themselves probably had no idea what was going to happen." - Rui Ma

Fresh out of the studio, Rui Ma, China tech analyst and creator of Tech Buzz China, joined us to discuss how the China tech giants are evolving after the regulatory crackdown in the past three years. We start the conversation by examining why China missed the boat on ChatGPT with the tech giants now chasing after the same technology with their own variations. Next, we start to examine the key questions that everyone from the rest of the world wants to know about China tech from the possibility of a Tik Tok ban in the US to Tencent might follow suit from Alibaba in splitting their current conglomerate structure into different companies.

The Web3 Gaming Renaissance in the Asia Pacific with Serkan Toto

Bernard Leong — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 15:38:00 GMT

"Yes a lot of the blockchain companies don't know how to make games, and a lot of the game companies don't know how to incorporate blockchain into their games properly; there's really some truth to that. And there are some companies that put together both things like Animoca Brands for example, which started also as a gaming company and then morphed into a crypto gaming company. So they're trying to put these areas of ex expertise in together." - Serkan Toto

Fresh out of the studio, Serkan Toto, CEO & founder of Kantan Games joined us in a discussion to discuss web3 gaming after the three eras of gaming in the Asia Pacific: console, desktop and mobile. Serkan explained what makes web3 games different from the past and explained why the next breakout of web3 games would likely be from Asia. He also explored the debate that divided the traditional hardcore gaming and web3 gaming community and elaborated on the strengths and weaknesses of web3 gaming in the Asia Pacific. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on what a great web3 game would look like.

Building a Tech-Savvy Workforce and Amazon Web Services Training & Certification in Asia Pacific with Emmanuel Pillai

Bernard Leong — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 08:12:00 GMT

"So at the Asia Pacific level, this study looked at several countries. But you know, we looked at a country level because that's the information that our customers and partners are interested in - whether they're in the government sector or in the private sector. So the countries include Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and India. In the ASEAN space, the four countries I mentioned before - are Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. So in this case, the first takeaway was that, again, digital fluency yields massive economic benefits. For example, those with advanced digital skills raised the Asia Pacific GDP by an estimated 934 billion. So it's pretty close to a trillion." - Emmanuel Pillai from Amazon Web Services

Fresh out of the studio, Emmanuel Pillai, Head of Training and Certification from Amazon Web Services, ASEAN, joined us to share how companies can build a tech-savvy workforce from building their startups to digital transformation with enterprises. Emmanuel began with an overview of AWS training and certification in the Asia Pacific. Then he dived deep into the recent report on building a tech-savvy workforce with Gallup and explained how economies and companies benefitted economically with the implementation of training and certification initiatives targeting to uplift the digital workers with modern technologies from AI/ML to 5G. Last but not least, Emmanuel shared what great would look like for AWS training and certification in the Asia Pacific.

TKX Capital and Investing into Crypto in Asia with Chris Lee

Bernard Leong — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 02:32:00 GMT

"The first thing is that the crypto market is still quite small compared to the equity [market]. [The size of the crypto market to equity market is about] one to 120, less than 0.8%, not even 1%. So, some smaller projects are very manipulated. [It is a] tough market, and second thing is that a lot of people say the variation for crypto is Twitter driven. So when Elon Musk or CZ send out a Tweet, it can pump up the project by about 5% to 10%. Because each [crypto] project is like religion, people believe in you." - Chris Lee

Fresh out of the studio, Chris Lee, co-founder & partner of TKX Capital joined us in a conversation about TKX Capital and his perspectives on how to invest in crypto projects and protocols globally in an uncertain era. Chris began the conversation with his background as the former CFO for both cryptocurrency exchanges: OK Coin and Huobi, and what he learned from meeting Warren Buffett in person. Next, he deep-dived into the mission, vision and investment thesis of TKX Capital and shared his thoughts on the current crypto market. Last but not least, he offered his thoughts on what great looks like for TKX Capital.

USDC Depegging and what it means for Web3 and Crypto with Cosmo Jiang

Bernard Leong — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 09:23:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio and on the 2nd emergency podcast within the week, Cosmo Jiang from Nova River and host of the Global Coin Research Liquid podcast explained the implications of USDC depegging due to the bank run triggered by Silicon Valley Bank over the past weekend of 11 March. We dived deep into the implications of how it nearly destroyed the global web3 and crypto economy and what it means for the startups moving forward in an uncertain regulatory environment in the US. Last but not least, Cosmo shared his after-thoughts on the recent DCG settlement with Gemini and the other creditors on Genesis' bankruptcy.

Silicon Valley Bank's collapse & its impact on the Asia startup ecosystem with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 07:51:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio and this is an emergency podcast, Shai Oster from The Information discusses the fallout coming from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank over the past weekend, and what it means for the venture capitalists and startups in Asia Pacific. We dived into what happened to Silicon Valley Bank, the aftermath of the intervention of the regulators on 12 March 2023 and what would have happened to the startup ecosystem across China, India and Southeast Asia if the US regulators did not intervene.

Kleros 2.0 & Decentralized Arbitration in Web3 with Federico Ast

Bernard Leong — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 15:13:00 GMT

"What if you could just outsource your disputes to Kleros? Whenever users have a dispute on your platform, Kleros will select a jury to analyze the dispute. They're going to see the evidence, see the agreement between parties, and they're going to make a decision about who is right, and then Kleros informs you of the decision on your platform. And then this is enforced by the smart contract and the money. Let's say Alice wins. So she's reimbursed the money that she would pay Bob for this. So this is one example in the freelancer (space). But imagine all of these platforms that just connect to Kleros through some pipes and send disputes - and Kleros sends back decisions. So this is the vision of what Kleros is going to build. This is why we call it "Decentralized Court" for all of the Web3 ecosystems." - Federico Ast

Fresh out of the studio, Federico Ast, founder of Kleros returned to the podcast to share the story of Kleros over the past few years and where it is heading as a decentralized arbitration service in the web3 and crypto economy. He dived deep into the concept of proof of humanity and how it helps to resolve identity verification and explored the implications of how Kleros has transformed the legal landscape from a landmark case in Mexico resolved by the protocol to advising the United Nations. Last but not least, Federico shared the new use cases relating to tokenized physical assets with Kleros and shared what great looks like for Kleros in the future.

Digital Report 2023 on Myth of Social Media Dying, Streaming Wars & Generative AI with Simon Kemp

Bernard Leong — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 09:39:00 GMT

"The media have been feeding us this fake news story about the death of social media. There is absolutely nothing in the data - regardless of what data points I look at, there's nothing in the data that supports the idea that social media is dying. It's the complete opposite. Social media users are growing. The time that we spend using social media is increasing. There is no evidence of the death of social media. So that was a big surprise in there. When you start looking at things like streaming, there are obviously some really interesting conversations there about the overall time we spend streaming TV content versus how that splits across different companies. So Netflix versus Disney plus versus whatever else. Search behaviours. I'm sure we're gonna unpack that later on, but that is another one that is evolving quite rapidly. And how people find what they're looking for on the internet is evolving rapidly. That's got implications for everybody. It's not just a business conversation. That's anybody that is wanting to reach and influence audiences on the internet." - Simon Kemp

Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp returned for the 6th year to break down the key digital, mobile, and social media trends in the annual Digital Report 2023. Simon began with the first surprise that social media is not dying from Meta to Twitter, and debunked the myth propagated by social media on the war between Instagram vs Tik Tok. He highlighted the key trends on how the shift from pandemic to endemic will impact the streaming wars, and the fallout on cryptocurrencies and NFTs after the crypto crash in 2022. In the same conversation, Simon discussed how generative AI inspired by ChatGPT and Midjourney will upend digital advertising and marketing and what it means for brands moving forward. Last but not least, Simon offered what great would look like for the digital report in the next decade.

China & Taiwan Tech Giants in a Fragile Global Supply Chain with Tim Culpan

Bernard Leong — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:29:00 GMT

"You're right. Now the US is trying very hard to get TSMC to move to the US and they're throwing money out - TSMC is going to Arizona. The CHIPS Act has been passed. That'll throw a lot of money around, but that won't be enough. In the currently announced plans - just purely what's been announced so far - I ran the numbers and estimated that TSMC's global capacity, only less than 5% would be in the US based on the currently announced plans. Now, I expect those plans to expand and broaden. They seem to have enough land and the possibility of up to four factories instead of two. They could even go to six, who knows? But even if they were to expand to the maximum of what might be possible in Arizona, I think still we'd get maybe 7% of global capacity in the US may be up to 10%. And it won't be the leading edge. The leading edge will still be in Taiwan. And that's not just for protection reasons. I think a lot of people think that all the Taiwanese don't wanna have the best in America because they're trying to hold onto it for themselves - which is true - but it's also an issue of practicality." - Tim Culpan

Fresh out of the studio, Tim Culpan, the Bloomberg columnist, joined us to discuss how the tech giants from China (Huawei, YMTC) and Taiwan (Foxconn, TSMC) are navigating a fragile global supply chain. Starting our conversation, Tim examined how Foxconn and TSMC are making key moves to ensure the resiliency of the global supply chain from contract manufacturing to semiconductors. As we moved on, Tim provided a glimpse into how the Chinese tech giants, Huawei and SMIC are addressing the same challenges and examined the key strategy for China to develop its own semiconductors. Last but not least, Tim broke down the amount of money that Warren Buffett from Berkshire Hathaway had left on the table after retreating from his recent position in TSMC.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in the audio format by G.Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn).

Expanding Solana to the International Community & Web3 Investing with Akshay BD

Bernard Leong — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 13:28:00 GMT

"So one way to think about crypto is a group of people come together and they have a vision of the future, and they're betting on that fork of the future through collective capital. So some folks think it's going to be L2’s that are going to scale. Some people think it's Solana. Whatever it is, you get to bet on the version of the future that you want with your rest of your community. That's chaotic, it's a zoo of people collectively trying to decide what the future's going to look like. But the good news is at least if the past cycles are anything to go by, almost all reasonable forks of the future get funded, and then it actually goes extreme where. Where crypto dick butts are also getting funded and pictures of like the 18th dog token is getting funded. And so, if anything, those who have been in crypto long enough seem to have benefited; because I have certainly have not – I’m much newer to this industry. But they seemed to have benefited from holding tight on what they believe about the world to be true and sticking to that vision over a sufficiently long period of time - which in crypto is potentially, what, four years I guess. And that has been rewarded, because if they worked on something for four years, the tech is behind them, there's a community behind them that sort of becomes a meme. So, I don’t know how to value them. Maybe it's all relative but it's certainly not an exercise that I either have expertise in or even try to build one in." - Akshay BD

Fresh out of the studio, Akshay BD, Head of International Expansion and advisor to the Solana Foundation, joined us in a conversation to explain why the rumors of Solana's demise are greatly exaggerated and describe the vibrant developer ecosystems globally across the world. Starting from his origin story, Akshay discussed how Solana developer communities are continuing their building journey despite the recent crypto crash and articulated Solana's value proposition for interesting decentralized applications moving ahead. Last but not least, Akshay offered his perspectives in crypto and web3 key topics from tokenomics to valuation and shared what great would look like for Solana internationally.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G.Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn).

HERE Technologies and Digital Map-Making in the Asia Pacific with Jason Jameson

Bernard Leong — Sun, 12 Feb 2023 07:23:00 GMT

"Mapping the world is really an infinite exercise. We're on this journey to create this digital representation of the physical world - buildings, places, things, everything. This is going to be very critical. And that extra precision, that greater resolution as we support businesses to comply with all sorts of things - be it even new regulations ... And then of course, the other key trend is the ongoing rise of AI and automation. And as you have better insights and location, that will support better optimization of supply chains and those smart cities and all sort of stuff that will lean on location technology." - Jason Jameson

Fresh out of the studio, Jason Jameson, general manager, and senior vice president for Asia Pacific in HERE Technologies discussed the company's focus to broaden the location intelligence across the Asia Pacific and talked about the key trends in the digital map-making space. We start off with Jason's background from IBM to HERE Technologies and then dive deep into the current developments in the region. Last but not least, he shares where the digital map-making industry will be heading and how it will impact autonomous driving and smart cities in the future.

Qualtrics & Experience Management in the Asia Pacific with Brigid Archibald

Bernard Leong — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 02:43:00 GMT

"I think there are three main things. The first is the continuation of the strategic investments that we are making across the regions in the markets that we serve. The second one is an acceleration of our ecosystem, because our partners play such an important part in the success of our customers and also themselves and us as well, and the third one is really innovation. The constant innovation on our platform is critical and there is no sign of that slowing down as we look forward to 2023 and beyond." - Brigid Archibald

Fresh out of the studio, Brigid Archibald, managing director in Asia Pacific and Japan, Qualtrics, joined us in a discussion on the business footprint of the experience management company and the key trends in the region. We started with Brigid's background and her experience in B2B sales and then proceed into how Qualtrics is working with companies to improve their customer experience. Last but not least, she discuss the key trends in the experience management space & advised what the potential call to action are for executives.

True Global Ventures & Web3 Investment Outlook in 2023 with Kelly Choo

Bernard Leong — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 06:54:00 GMT

”I think great looks like a combination of a few things. We always talk about how a startup hits product market fit and then essentially gets a flywheel going in terms of value and everything. So I think 'great' at True Global Ventures from my point of view is us finding that company, that team of serial entrepreneurs and an idea that can essentially change the industry, convincing them that we as a fund can help them to grow exponentially, globally. And us actually helping them to not only close a round with us, but also to grow, and also to close the next round of funding and all subsequent rounds of funding till the ultimate exit. And having that kind of chemistry that maybe after many years later when they come back and look at us they say, 'Hey, thanks for the ride.' We really treasure what you do. And in my new startup, say for example (Because these are serial entrepreneurs that cannot usually sit still, right?) I would love for you True Global Ventures to be our investor again." - Kelly Choo

Fresh out of the studio, Kelly Choo, the founding partner from True Global Ventures shares the backstory of how the fund came together with its investment thesis on investing in repeat serial entrepreneurs. Kelly begins with the story of his career journey as both an entrepreneur and now as an investor, and how he works with his profile companies. Last but not least, he offers his perspectives on the investment outlook for web3 and crypto companies in 2023.

InsurTech in the Asia Pacific with George Kesselman

Bernard Leong — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 22:00:00 GMT

"So there's a tremendous amount of friction that exists there because I think we're still at the point where we're. We're using traditional insurance products that have been invented in the 1970s and trying to add this digital layer on top of it. So where InsureTech has struggled, I would say, is unless there is a significant amount of product innovation. It's very hard to really optimize the product. So, becoming a full stack was one of the hypotheses that the InsureTechs pursued, and we've seen those take off quite well in states in China, and now India is another market that's really progressing very well." - George Kesselman

Fresh of the studio, George Kesselman, the president & founder of Insurtech Asia Association, joined us to discuss the intersection of insurance and technology in the Asia Pacific. We began with George's work in the insurtech industry from a start-up co-founder to a corporate executive in a leading Chinese firm within the Asia Pacific region. Then he dived deeper into the challenges, key innovations such as China's famous waterdrop model, use cases and important trends in insurtech that are converging with web3 and crypto. Last but not least, George shared a glimpse into the future of insurtech for the next few years.

Full Video: https://youtu.be/k7cHayS0Ccw

Climate Alpha with Parag Khanna

Bernard Leong — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 02:50:00 GMT

"The vision is to future proof global real estate. Now why real estate? One thinks that it's just one industry, right? Well, it's 300 trillion dollars. There is no asset class, no industry that is remotely as valuable. Not all the treasury bonds in the world, not all the stock exchanges in the world, and not all the real GDP of the economies of the world add up to the value of global land and property assets: 300 trillion dollars. Now, what will any of it be worth tomorrow, one year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now in different places in the world? We used to have a pretty stable answer to these questions. The truth is the valuation model is broken because it's very antiquated, and not only is the appraisal or valuation model broken, it's even more broken because it never took climate change into consideration." - Parag Khanna

Fresh out of the studio, Parag Khanna, founder and CEO of Climate Alpha unveils the story of his new company which leverages artificial intelligence to decipher how real estate will transform amid climate adaptation. Parag offers his observations on the ongoing global issues from the potential resolution of the Ukraine-Russia war to the easing of tensions on the Taiwan straits. Last but not least, he comments on the recent COP27 conference and offers his view on what great looks like for Climate Alpha.

Genesis' potential insolvency & FTX collapse with Cosmo Jiang

Bernard Leong — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 02:31:00 GMT

"Yes FTX was a very large institutional player, Genesis whatever happens out there was a very large institutional player and so it'll take a lot of time for the fallout to fully play out. But just taking a step back and looking at the big picture, none of this has any impact on crypto's multi-year arc towards enabling innovation. Ethereum as a trustless, decentralized digital asset set on one layer is groundbreaking that nothing will change. Tokens as a form of capital creation is a paradigm shift for business formation. Nothing's gonna change that. And talented builders are still continuing to come into the system and soon their work and their labour will bear fruit." - Cosmo Jiang

Fresh out of the studio, Cosmo Jiang, founder of Nova River and host of Liquid - Web3 investing podcast with Global Coin Research, joined us to break down the consequences of FTX's collapse and how it triggered the crisis for Digital Currency Group (DCG) with the potential insolvency of Genesis and its crown jewel, Grayscale. Cosmo shared his perspectives on how the crypto and web3 space will evolve and the potential backlash coming from the regulatory authorities in different countries. Last but not least, he offered an optimistic outlook on how the narratives for crypto and web3 will look in the future.

The State of China in 2022 with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 00:24:00 GMT

"If you look at over 30 years, China equities have returned zero, basically gone up and gone back down to where it was 30 years ago. It was shocking. So the other thing that is hard to believe, I think we're entering a period of even greater uncertainty now than where we were six months to a year ago. Opening up is a huge gamble. the markets are rallying right now -- 'yay China is opening!' -- but at what cost?" - Shai Oster

Fresh out of the studio, Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information, returned for the 5th time in a row for his annual review of China for the year 2022. Shai started the grading of his predictions last year and dive deeper into Sequoia China's current status, and potential tech IPOs of Chinese companies: Bytedance, Ant Financial and Didi. He examined how Apple and Tesla will navigate China in the midst of tensions between China and the United States. Last but not least, he gave his predictions on China tech for the year 2023.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited only in audio format by G.Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn).

The 3AC Demise with Kyle Davies

Bernard Leong — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 04:12:00 GMT

"What we did instead is we did not. The market rallied. We were just clouded in our judgment and we were not scaling the firm the way we should have. So that was probably one big one. The other one was after the liquidation I should have just had blinders on to the media and focused on creditors only and probably just had a round table and said these are what I think the options are. What do you think the options are? And if that were the case I think we probably wouldn't be in bankruptcy. We would've found one of the solutions that I just mentioned." - Kyle Davies

Fresh out of the studio, Kyle Davies, co-founder of 3 Arrows Capital aka 3AC, joined us in a discussion to discuss their firm's demise in June 2022 and its aftermath after filing Chapter 15 bankruptcy. He explained why and how the firm's thesis on the crypto super cycle failed with the Luna-Terra collapse and offered his thoughts on the current meltdown of the crypto markets amid the ongoing meltdown. Last but not least, he offered his responses to several allegations and why he challenged the hosts of "On the Brink" podcast on a debate about BlockFi and his perspectives on the current state of crypto post-FTX-collapse.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited for both audio and video formats by G.Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn). For the first time, we have this episode recorded in video format.

Our host Bernard Leong's disclosure and excerpts on the opening for this podcast: "Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premiere podcast dedicated to dissecting the pulse of business, technology, and media in Asia. I am Bernard Leong and today’s conversation totally deviates from my usual format. ... Under normal circumstances, I would have them dig into their investment thesis, career highlights, and how they are helping the crypto ecosystem. But today we will (mostly) focus on the demise of 3AC from Kyle’s point of view. One quick disclaimer before we start: I am a web3 investor and retail crypto investor but I do not have any business dealings with Su or Kyle or 3AC. I have my own opinions on the recent crypto crash & the players involved but I won't be sharing my perspectives today. The aim is to let Kyle share his story from his perspective and let the audience decide for themselves. Of course, everything that we discuss here does not constitute investment advice but for informational purposes only, so do your own research (DYOR). ... "

Polygon with Sandeep Nailwal

Bernard Leong — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 03:43:00 GMT

"For me, it's only about daily active users. I feel in the next five years, especially for the whole ecosystem. I'm not talking about Polygon first - let's say for the whole blockchain ecosystem… In [the] next five years, if we don't reach somewhere between 50 to 100 million users, I think we would've failed very badly. So all apps. I'm talking about all apps in all ecosystems, layer one, layer two, all the apps - payments, Bitcoin, everything included. We should have 50 to 100 million daily active users. Obviously, for Polygon, we want to capture as much market share out of that: 50 to 100 million. If Polygon remains the number one adopted amongst those daily active users, it will be a great scenario for Polygon." - Sandeep Nailwal

Fresh out of the studio, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon joined us to discuss the origin story of the Polygon blockchain and its evolution as a layer-2 chain for builders out there. Sandeep started with his backstory and how it led to the creation of the polygon blockchain followed by the subsequent evolution into a layer-2 chain within the Ethereum ecosystem. He shared his perspectives on the key trends of web3 and offered advice to builders there on how they should navigate in the midst of the current crypto downturn. Last but not least, he shared what great would look like for Polygon in the next few years.

Roche Pharmaceuticals and Transforming Healthcare in Asia Pacific with Ahmed Elhusseiny

Bernard Leong — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 23:17:00 GMT

"Because of the pandemic, we all became patients. We all became aware of diagnostic tools [and] therapeutic interventions. The level of awareness that exists now around this specific topic is very high, but it also translates into us being more aware of why it's important to be preventative. The mask is preventative, exercise in the post-pandemic world is preventative for heart conditions, and there's a much larger appetite now to start looking at how we can work together in partnership to identify those things that allow us to intervene early in order to prevent or to slow down any types of conditions that could happen to individuals and shift the narrative around how we approach healthcare in Asia. This is absolutely necessary because of the challenges that we face and it will be totally enabled by data and technology. So the tools for that exist. The biggest question really is how we start to implement them." - Ahmed Elhusseiny

Fresh out of the studio, Ahmed Elhusseiny, the area head of the Asia Pacific in Roche Pharmaceuticals joined us in a discussion on how healthcare has been transformed in the Asia Pacific and what we have learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. We began Ahmed's career journey and continued with the story of Roche Pharmaceuticals in the Asia Pacific. Ahmed dived deep into the key trends of healthcare specifically personalized healthcare which is augmented by digital tools and data. Last but not least, Ahmed shares what great would look like for Roche Pharmaceuticals in the Asia Pacific.

ServiceNow & the Rise of Digital-native companies in the Asia Pacific with Mitch Young

Bernard Leong — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 04:48:00 GMT

"If you think about a modern digital business, what does that mean? Well, it translates to personalized, proactive service and support. At a minimum, it's also the ability to deliver and provide access to self-service. It's about eliminating all of the mundane and repetitive tasks that are required to drive great engagement and customer loyalty and where a process or a workflow is required to be executed. A digital business is about automating and optimizing that request across the enterprise delivered to the right person with the right skills, maybe the right spare parts, the right geographical location, the right availability to deliver on that customer or employee request." - Mitch Young

Fresh out of the studio, Mitch Young, president of Asia Pacific & Japan from ServiceNow, joined us in a conversation to discuss their business activity and focus and explore the rise of digital-native companies in the Asia Pacific. Mitch began with the story of ServiceNow and the interesting customer stories across the Asia Pacific. Then he dived deep into explaining how the modern digital business works and the playbook which executives can use to strategize from automation of workflows by digitization to augmenting artificial intelligence in their businesses for their next phases of digital transformation.

Autodesk in Asia Pacific & Growth by Choice with Haresh Khoobchandani

Bernard Leong — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 02:24:00 GMT

"Because you can learn the hard skills, but if you don't know what holds you back, you don't know who you are, you don't know what your triggers are, you don't know what motivates you, what upsets you. How do you bring the best version of yourself every single day to what you do and get better? ... We need to pay attention to that because the whole idea is you cannot anticipate change ahead of you, but you gotta learn how to ride the waves of change ahead of you more gracefully. So you don't want the waves to come slamming at you, but you need to turn around and ensure that when they come, you can manoeuvre, you can ride the waves to change." - Haresh Khoobchandani

Fresh out of the studio, Haresh Khoobchandani, vice president of Autodesk Asia Pacific joined us to discuss the business footprint of Autodesk in Asia Pacific and his new book "Growth by Choice". The conversation sets off with Haresh discussing his career trajectory and the inspiration behind writing his book "Growth by Choice" and providing strategies for those who are navigating their careers in the midst of a post-pandemic world. Last but not least, Haresh shared how Autodesk is helping businesses to transform in the Asia Pacific digitally.

Reality Platforms and Decentralized Mapping in the Metaverse with Alex Chung

Bernard Leong — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 01:39:00 GMT

"My version of success here is to build the most valuable data set in web3. Hopefully, if we do our jobs right, it'll probably be just one of the most valuable data sets in the world, period. When we look at Google Street View, this is an ecosystem, a platform, where there is probably so much low-hanging fruit - gems that can be extracted to build really great businesses, unlock new experiences, to advance the human condition. When it comes to computing, I fundamentally believe it has not been innovated even close to that first inning in terms of like, the baseball, I want to create that data set. I want to then generate the Metaverse maps of the world from it, and then I wanna be able to push them into different use cases that just make new things possible." - Alex Chung

Fresh out of the studio, Alex Chung, founder and CEO of Reality Platforms joined us in a conversation and share the backstory of his company and his perspectives on decentralized mapping in the metaverse. Alex dived deep into the weeds into how decentralized mapping works and the use cases that Reality Platforms are targeting on. Last but not least, he elucidates the key trends in the current dynamic web3 market and the mental models that builders need to have in order to navigate an uncertain and difficult market ahead.

Editor's note: This interview is done before the FTX implosion. The discussion does not take into account what has transpired in the past 2 weeks.

Analyse Asia & China with Carol Yin & Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 03:08:00 GMT

"So, because I think the way I've always been thinking about this podcast is (as) a brand, I think we talked about it just now, the quality of the guests we curate is now a challenge for everyone who wants to get onto the show as well. And I've been very methodical about the selection of guests. I would rather have no episodes, but the quality of the guests must be there. And I'm very mindful of that and the topics I want to go for (are) very deep." - Bernard Leong

Fresh out of the studio and we hit our 400th episode, both hosts of Analyse Asia: Carol Yin and Bernard Leong sat down to reflect on China and how the podcast has evolved over the past two years and reached this important milestone. We start with Carol's current work in China, the status of entrepreneurship there and what it is like living in China in the era of dynamic COVID-zero policy. Following on, Bernard and Carol discuss the state of Analyse Asia and outline the challenges ahead for the podcast specifically in the selection of guests, monetization model and whether we will hit the 500th episode.

ADDX & Private Markets in the Asia Pacific with Choo Oi-Yee

Bernard Leong — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 04:14:00 GMT

"And so we see the private market as a very interesting space because as I said, if everybody had 20% of their portfolio in private markets, we're moving from almost zero in a mass affluent hand to 20%. That's a lot of wealth, but that wealth requires a lot of thinking, a lot of platforms, a lot of technology innovation to solve. Because private markets are very complex. If you think about simple things like cryptocurrencies or stocks, the way that it trades, the post asset servicing is quite simple." - Choo Oi-Yee

Fresh out of the studio, Choo Oi-Yee, CEO of ADDX, joined us in a conversation to discuss the company's platform to serve the private markets and reviewed the state of private markets in the Asia Pacific. She began the conversation with the market opportunity of the private markets and how ADDX facilitates the interactions between the accredited investors and the entrepreneurs seeking funds through their products and services on the platform. Last but not least, she shared her perspectives on how companies can thrive in a challenging economic climate and the possibility of secondary exits through other instruments such as SPACs or acquisitions in the current market.

Chip War with Chris Miller

Bernard Leong — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 00:21:00 GMT

"It's impossible today for any country to do it all on their own. And even if you looked at the United States, which is still the biggest player in the supply chain by far, it's still the case that the US can't do it all on its own. As you mentioned, it imports lithography equipment from the Netherlands. It imports chemicals and materials from Japan. And then the most advanced fabrication of processor chips is in Taiwan. So, no country can do it alone. And really no country is even close." - Chris Miller

Fresh out of the studio, Chris Miller, associate professor of international history from Tufts University joined us in a conversation to discuss his new book "Chip War". Starting from the birth of Silicon Valley and the inability of the Soviet Union to develop its semiconductor ecosystem, Chris chronicled the story of semiconductors that brought forth the rise of Asia in the past few decades and how Japan, Korea and Taiwan built their expertise within the chip supply chain along with other key players. He brought us to the present state of affairs and explored whether China can develop their semiconductor industry by decoupling from the rest of the world and risk a conflict with the United States over Taiwan. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on the future of the semiconductor industry.

The e-Conomy SEA Report 2022 with Stephanie Davis and Florian Hoppe

Bernard Leong — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 01:39:00 GMT

"First forecasted back in 2016, we had anticipated the 200 billion by 2025. It also stands out to us that the digital economy grew 20% year on year. And the reason that stands out is that we expected things to slow down somewhat as we came out of the pandemic because we saw incredible acceleration over the last two to three years, and to see that people have returned to so-called normalcy, at least in terms of going out shopping, visiting, retail spaces. And in fact, that mobility has returned to pre-pandemic levels and often times exceeded it, but yet you still see the digital economy growing 20%. So those are real standouts for us." - Stephanie Davis

Fresh out of the studio, Stephanie Davis from Google and Florian Hoppe from Bain & Company joined us to break down the key findings from the e-Conomy SEA Report 2022. Stephanie and Florian shared their perspectives on the different digital trends in various sectors from e-commerce to web3 and what important trendlines they are looking forward to in the next 12 months.

The Future of Work with Charles Anderson

Bernard Leong — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:56:00 GMT

"So people don't mind going back to the office. But in Asia, the people who wanna go to the office the least are the people who are working in Northeast Asia. So in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, those are ones that have more of a tough environment to work in, more of a bullying culture, the strict 9-9-6 in China (which I know is going away) but people are still expected to work a lot. ... They don't have that type of a great work life balance, and they don't wanna go back in. So it's really a difficult thing. There's dozens of different types of dependencies you would need to look at. We need to start this process because this isn't gonna go away. We're gonna keep transitioning to it, so we might as well put in a better plan to make sure that our return-to-work and hybrid models are successful." - Charles Anderson

Fresh out of the studio, Charles Anderson, chief strategy officer of Eight Inc joined us to share his perspectives on the future of work. He shared how companies are struggling to cope with the post-pandemic era where they have to embrace hybrid and remote work and dive deep into the strategies for managing and retaining employees in this period of great resignation. Last but not least, he shared the critical trends in the technologies & social practices and what great looks such that it aligns with the future of work.

AppWorks Ventures & Deep Dive into Web3 with Jessica Liu

Bernard Leong — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 03:12:00 GMT

"I'm actually not a believer of the web 2.0 turning into web 3. So these days a lot of companies are basically turning non-profitable web 2.0 companies and adding token elements into that and turning it into a web 3 company - and think issuing a token can flip the whole picture differently. I'm not a believer in that, the reason is that the user is coming on board with a different purpose. These people from the web 2.0, they don't care about whether they have tokens, they don't care about whether they're owning the assets." - Jessica Liu

Fresh out of the studio, Jessica Liu, the partner from AppWorks Ventures joined us in a discussion to probe deep into what it is like to invest in the Web3 space. We began with her backstory of how she transitioned from fintech into crypto as a venture capitalist. From there, she offered her perspectives on how the web3 space is evolving and why the web2 paradigm cannot be translated into the new mission of web3 in onboarding the next billion. Last but not least, Jessica reviews the different mechanisms of funding in web3 and how DAOs will evolve in the next wave post the current crypto downturn.

TSMC & Global Chip Shortage with Jon Y

Bernard Leong — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 04:12:00 GMT

"I think one of the things that TSMC does is that they tend to hit their targets. When they say they're gonna build something, they're gonna do something, they do it. I think that when you contrast that with other companies in the industry like for example, a particular company in America that says and sets a certain deadline and misses it repeatedly, that affects your credibility. TSMC has always said that they're gonna hit a certain number. It's like a pretty good chance that they'll hit it." - Jon Y

Fresh out of the studio, Jon Y, the founder of Asianometry joined us to discuss TSMC and the global chip shortage happening across the world. Jon Y began the conversation with an overview of the semiconductors industry with the different key players in the space from SMIC in China to Samsung in Korea. Then he dived deep into TSMC and explained why it is hard to replicate the semiconductor foundry to other parts of the world and their competitive advantage in the market. Last but not least, he examined the end of Moore's law and the future of the semiconductor industry.

Surveillance State with Liza Lin

Bernard Leong — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 08:42:00 GMT

"China's vision is basically to use the big data that it's harvested to enable its government to be just more nimble and more reactive to the demands of its citizens. So China's idea is, you know, if we collect enough data, we can spot problems and nip them in the bud even before they occur. Or we can spot, for example, a national security threat and nip that in the bud even before a terrorist is able to do anything." - Liza Lin

Fresh out of the studio, Liza Lin, senior correspondent at the Wall Street Journal, discuss the key themes of her new book, Surveillance State, co-authored with Josh Chin. We began the conversation on the motivation and inspiration behind the book and dived deep into the key stories of how AI and digital tools are adopted to maintain social control in China. Last but not least, Liza shares how these technologies developed by China are now exported across the world, foreshadowing the war between different political ideologies.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Flashpoints & Supply Chain Challenges in Asia Pacific with James Crabtree

Bernard Leong — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 03:15:00 GMT

"More generally, this air of crisis is just going to force companies to look again at the wisdom of supply chains, which crisscross Asia in a way that didn't take account of geopolitical boundaries. You already see a move by many companies to try and create more robust and resilient supply chains to geopolitical shocks, and so that might mean companies like TSMC or Global Foundries building semiconductor plants in Arizona or in Singapore, it might mean companies that have previously sourced from China to create products that will ultimately be sold in the US will now source from Vietnam or from India instead." - James Crabtree

Fresh out of the studio, James Crabtree, executive director from International Institute of Strategic Studies Asia, joined us in a conversation on the current flashpoints in Asia Pacific from the China and Taiwan issue to India and what these tensions will mean for businesses and the global supply chain. James dived into the current dynamics of the region specifically the semiconductors shortage and provided potential scenarios in how the supply chain will be reconfigured or recalibrated due to the current world order. Last but not least, James examined if we are still going to see the Asian century in the midst of the current developments in the next few decades.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

QCP Capital & Crypto Derivatives Investing in the Asia Pacific with Darius Sit

Bernard Leong — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 00:21:54 GMT

"Strategy wise. This is the path that we went through. We started looking at options because we wanted to possibly buy options to hedge our balance sheet. But when we looked at it, we were like: this kind of volatility, very difficult to buy. If it's very difficult to buy means selling is good. So in this case, I think low control leverage volume selling tends to be a very good strategy because of the high carry." - Darius Sit

Fresh out of the studio, Darius Sit, founder of QCP Capital, joined us in a discussion on the crypto hedge fund and an overview of the crypto derivatives space in the Asia Pacific. Starting with his background in derivatives training, Darius shared how he entered into the crypto space and explained the key concepts behind crypto derivatives trading. He dived deep into the digital assets segment specifically in the DeFi space. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on how he approached venture investing into web3 & crypto startups.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Blockdaemon in Asia Pacific & Proof of Stake with Andrew Vranjes

Bernard Leong — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 03:45:22 GMT

"Without nodes, there's no blockchain. Without blockchain, there's no cryptocurrencies. Without cryptocurrencies, there's no web3. So nodes are the key core fundamental architecture and infrastructure for this ecosystem. Whether you are a persona just trading around the tokens, you need nodes to be performing. So that when you do a trade, read-write transactions happen, you verify how many tokens are in your wallet." -Andrew Vranjes

Fresh out of the studio, Andrew Vranjes, VP of sales & general manager of Blockdaemon Asia Pacific, joined us in a conversation to discuss the business footprint of the company and break down everything on proof of stake. Andrew started from his background and discuss how he invests into web3 companies as an angel. Next, he discuss the importance of nodes and how Blockdaemon is able to ensure an institutional grade infrastructure for blockchain protocols and provide staking for different stakeholders within the web3 ecosystem. Last but not least, he discuss his thoughts on the Ethereum merge and what it means for the greater ecosystem.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

SAP in the Asia Pacific, Sustainability & the Future of Work with Paul Marriott

Bernard Leong — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 00:31:04 GMT

"So these three things, continue the digital transformation, the business networks and the supply chain resilience, both of those underpinning solving for scope three [carbon emissions], circular process and a more sustainable future for Asia. The opportunity we have ahead of us, to solve for what I think, are really profound problems that the planet needs to obviously solve." - Paul Marriott

Fresh out of the studio, Paul Marriott, the President, SAP in the Asia Pacific and Japan, joined us to discuss the footprint of the business in the region, sustainability and the future of work. Paul explained how the SAP platform is incorporating sustainability, specifically in tackling scope three carbon emissions with the network applications. Last but not least, he offered fresh perspectives on the future of work and the key things to watch out for as we transition into a hybrid work environment.

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Can we invest into tech startups in China? with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 01:21:16 GMT

"China is doing exactly what you said, it is trying to basically have backups for choke point technologies, so that in the case of sanctions, it is not left not being able to do anything. Because that's a very real risk for China right now. Whether or not, it needs to have a complete supply chain. Well, it actually has a lot of the more lower value add components than in the really more advanced pieces. As you pointed out that it does not have a solution and it's actually pretty far behind, I think, anywhere from ten, or some people even think it's 20 years behind because there are so many pieces that go into these more sophisticated machines or processes." - Rui Ma

Fresh out of the studio, Rui Ma, creator & tech analyst from Techbuzz China joined us to discuss one of the most important questions at present: can we invest into tech startups in China? We dived deep into different aspects of the China tech ecosystem from the decrease in VC funding to the stringent regulation placed by the Chinese government to build a reasonable picture and answer the question at hand. Last but not least, we focused on China's recent "Little Giants Program" and examined its implications to the startup ecosystem in the future.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Monk’s Hill Ventures & Investing into an uncertain era in Southeast Asia with Lim Kuo-Yi

Bernard Leong — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 03:18:55 GMT

"Look, I think this is a long game. A lot of times you don't see the results until you're a few years out. At the same time, the fundraising game is a very short game, which means you want the short results very quickly. So the LP sees that you are ahead of the pack in fundamentally what is a very long game. So there's a huge disconnect there. and I think the pressure has always been there to show short term results in the long term game." - Lim Kuo-Yi

Fresh out of the studio, Lim Kuo-Yi, co-founder & managing partner of Monk's Hill Ventures, discuss the next evolution of the venture firm and dived into his perspectives on investing into an uncertain time across Southeast Asia. We dived deep into Kuo-Yi's background as a venture capitalist from public sector to the private sector and hear his mental model in how he indexes founders and startup teams and valuation of companies. Last but not least, Kuo-Yi reflects on how the startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia is changing after the key exits in the last decade.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

RIMM, ESG & Investment in Climate Adaptation with Ravi Chidambaram

Bernard Leong — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 06:51:29 GMT

"I think from an investor perspective, the biggest misconception would be to buy into a high score and think the company is truly sustainable because the reality with ESG is the data is self-reported. The data often is limited in terms of the range of disclosures. It's very selective. It's very manipulative because large companies with big CSR or sustainability departments, Can often manage the narrative around ESG better than smaller companies. There are a lot of geographic biases: developing countries tend to get poorer ratings and are usually penalized with a corruption or transparency type discount." - Ravi Chidambaram

Fresh out of the studio, Ravi Chidambaram, CEO and founder of RIMM, joined us in a conversation to discuss ESG and climate adaptation investing across Asia Pacific. Ravi explained the current paradigms in the ESG space and dived deep into different topics such as climate change, water scarcity and carbon credits and where technology is leading. Last but not least, he provided the value proposition behind RIMM and how it helps companies from different sectors to do ESG reporting and aggregates the data for analytics and machine learning.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

The State of Digital Across Asia Pacific in 2022 with Simon Kemp

Bernard Leong — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 04:11:24 GMT

"The reality is you've got the same person using multiple platforms. Now you can either then look at that and say, I can show the same ad to the same person, multiple times across different platforms. Or you can say to yourself, I now have the opportunity to reach the same person with different things in different context, at different moments of their lives on different platforms. Ideally you go with a second one, but admittedly, that's a lot more work." - Simon Kemp

Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp, CEO and founder of Kepios shared his perspectives on the Digital 2022 report and broke down the key takeaways from the report specific to Asia Pacific. Simon provided the context and explained how trust in news across different channels is measured and understood and at the same time, debunked the key assertion that Facebook is dying. He also dived deep on Tik Tok's global influence and discuss how the digital report will include web3 from now to the next decade.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

The BNB Chain & Investing in Web3 with Gwendolyn Regina

Bernard Leong — Sat, 13 Aug 2022 06:11:35 GMT

"I think imperative that as an ecosystem, blockchain Web3 ecosystem, we're all growing together. I would love to see , more bridges with BNB chain and other blockchains as an example, so that you have a much more seamless tech base. And then more importantly, when crypto mass adoption really takes off again, underlying tech people will not need to know what's underlying tech. For us, I think that's important if we can be part of the core infrastructure supporting this new web3 paradigm, that would be amazing for us. If we have more and more use cases and more depths and more web 2 organizations building on BNB chain, that will be really amazing."

Fresh out of the studio, Gwendolyn Regina, investment director at the BNB Chain, Binance joined us in a discussion on the BNB Chain and shared her perspectives on investing in Web3. We began with Gwen's backstory and how she end up in the crypto industry. Then she dived deep into the current evolution of the BNB chain and how they are bringing builders to the ecosystem. Last but not least, she offered her thoughts on how the industry is changing, the different modes of financing a web3 company in equity, tokens or both and what is required to onboard the next billion into the web3 world in the next three years.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Decentralized Finance: Past, Present & Future with Rawson Haverty

Bernard Leong — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 04:51:57 GMT

"Once you reach scalability in blockchain, it should be portable over to decentralized rails. Just like the vast majority of business models that could be built over the internet ,have transitioned to the internet because it's a more effective means of deployment. I think at scale, you'll see the vast majority of financial use cases, which is, a completely digital domain move over to these new rails. But some of the early applications that we've seen emerge are in the basic building blocks of financial services" - Rawson Harvety

Fresh out of the studio, Rawson Harvety, co-founder of Reflection Digital & co-host of Soulbound Asia podcast, joined us in a conversation on the past, present and future of decentralized finance (or DeFi). The conversation began with how DeFi has emerged unscathed after the crypto contagion unleashed by the UST-Terra-Luna collapse. Rawson dived deep into why there is a macro case for DeFi, the current evolution of DeFi protocols from Aave to Frax and what we should look out for as new DeFi innovations are hovering around the corner for the next crypto super cycle. Last but not least, he offered the mental models and challenges for regulators to think about in DeFi regulation.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

The Crypto Contagion with Cosmo Jiang

Bernard Leong — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 21:55:19 GMT

"The reason for that is that all the businesses in crypto are tied primarily to trading and speculation of crypto rather than any productive use cases. So there are some businesses that generate real cash flow, and those are the ones that I focus on at my hedge fund in my portfolio. But even those largely generate revenue from other crypto businesses. So until crypto has more ties to real world productive use cases and has more dollar generation tied to real world activity, it will continue to have this highly internally reflexive nature. As crypto trading goes up, there's more revenue in the system. As crypto trading goes down, there's less revenue in the system and that's not sustainable. It's very circular." - Cosmo Jiang

Fresh out of the studio, Cosmo Jiang from Nova River & host of the Global Coin Research Liquid podcast joined us to discuss the crypto contagion which originated from the recent collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin: Terra-Luna-UST. We dived deep how the ongoing contagion cascaded to the insolvency of Celsius and the shutdown of a prominent crypto hedge fund: Three Arrows Capital and explored what it means for the crypto market globally. Last but not least, we discuss the potential extinction events for cryptocurrencies and how investors can navigate this new bear market with new web3 entrepreneurs and investors in the next few years.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Fundnel, Valuation & Liquidity of Private Markets in Southeast Asia with Kelvin Lee

Bernard Leong — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 15:24:43 GMT

"The core purpose of exchanges must be to create jobs. If it's not creating jobs, if it is really just trading derivatives, where is the value creation? If it's not encouraging the next generation of investors, allowing them to put money behind companies that they relate to and are supporting because these companies are solving problems that will impact us in the next 10 & 20 years." - Kelvin Lee

Fresh out of the studio, Kelvin Lee, CEO and co-founder of Fundnel, joined us in a conversation to discuss how the company is helping to bring liquidity into the private markets and transforming the funding landscape across Southeast Asia. Kelvin shared his insights and the mental models behind valuations and liquidity events for the startups in the private markets. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on the recent economic downturn with the funding drying up for both startup and crypto markets and what it would mean in the near term.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Ion Mobility & the Electric Vehicles market in Southeast Asia with James Chan

Bernard Leong — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 13:05:49 GMT

"I always think about the pandemic - this Thanos -level finger snap, where everyone's brought back to square one. During this difficult past two years, all the norms are thrown out of the window. It makes for a very interesting period to fundraise, with not much to show for it. A lot of people have said that I'm crazy to make this leap, but I say it's the best possible time to be building because everyone's back to square one. At the end of the day, it's very important to pay due respect to luck and timing. Any entrepreneur tells you that luck is not a function of his or her outcome must be joking." - James Chan

Fresh out of the studio, James Chan, CEO and founder of Ion Mobility to discuss his company and his goal to bring about a sustainable and green future to Southeast Asia with the electric motorbike. James dived into his background as a former civil servant, an investor and now an entrepreneur. He explained the market opportunity for the EV market in the region and how Ion Mobility is building out not just the product with their first product: Ion Mobius, but the distribution and manufacturing supply chain to enter into the high growth markets in the region. Last but not least, James shares what great means for Ion Mobility in the future.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

The Zilingo Debacle with Ka Kay Lum

Bernard Leong — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 07:50:03 GMT

"To me. The role of a board should be a sounding board to founders. It's very hard for us to assume that founders know everything which is why the company's directors should be a voice of reason in everything that happened. The board isn't just made up by a single person, basically various people with different line of thoughts. So why has nobody bring this up at all? I have no idea. In fact, that is what every investor that I've spoken to for this story questioned this." - Ka Kay Lum

Fresh out of the studio, Lum Ka Kay, deputy editor of The Ken joined us in a conversation to discuss the recent debacle for the Southeast Asia company, Zilingo and the fallout between the board and the former CEO, Ankiti Bose. Ka Kay shared the chronology of events that led to the firing of the CEO and the public fallout and examined what the endgame would look like for Zilingo.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

The XA Network & Angel Investor Landscape with Alap Bharadwaj, Tony Zameczkowski & Belinda Ong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 29 May 2022 21:29:22 GMT

"From an evolution standpoint, I feel strongly about the fact that more participants, more diversity and more evolution is always a good thing. I am looking forward to like what comes next. Because if we are to be the most dynamic Internet ecosystem in the world, we need to now start to create opportunities for younger folks to participate in angel investing for certain communities that have historically been left out of angel investing and to bring them in as well. If we get there, I think we will be one of the healthiest ecosystems in the world." - Alap Bharadwaj

Fresh out of the studio, Belinda Ong, Alap Bharadwaj and Tony Zameczkoski joined us to discuss the XA network and their role in angel investor landscape for Southeast Asia, and how the angel investing scene has evolved over the decade. We dived deep into why angels are crucial to the ecosystem and help startups to reach escape velocity before the entry of venture capital. Last but not least, they share the process in how XA network onboards their members and assist their startups upon making the decision to invest in the companies.

Disclosure: BL is currently a member of the XA network and have invested in Championfy and CoderSchool via the network.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Chain Debrief, Enlightened Rats, Metajam & Crypto Crash with Jacky Yap

Bernard Leong — Thu, 19 May 2022 02:52:34 GMT

"We teach people about all things crypto, like we do a lot of stuff like how to do an uniswap, how to get your first NFT, which exchange is the cheapest for you? We're in a business of education and a resource and people do what they will with the information that we provide them. That's the inspiration behind changing people." - Jacky Yap

Fresh out of the studio, Jacky Yap, founder of Chain Debrief, joined us to discuss the inspiration, the mission and vision of the crypto media company. We dived into how Chain Debrief focus on crypto education moving towards a learn to earn model, their NFT products with the first collection of Enlightened Rats and the recent major NFT event in Singapore: Metajam. Last but not least, Jacky offered his perspectives on the crypto crash instigated by the UST/Luna/Terra collapse.

Disclosure: BL is currently an investor to Chain Debrief through a syndicate via Sharon Paul.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Two Corporate Cultures & Angel Investing in Southeast Asia with Yaw Yeo

Bernard Leong — Fri, 13 May 2022 05:52:22 GMT

"If you look at the tech universe revolves around the U S and China, I spent a lot time almost 10 years in the [Silicon] valley ecosystem. But I haven't really seen the China technology ecosystem. So I was really curious on how it works, how is it like, how is it different? There was like a great opportunity for me to learn and see how it worked from the inside." - Yaw Yeo

Fresh out of the studio, Yaw Yeo, an angel investor joined us to discuss his experiences on working in two high growth technology companies from the US and China covering the Asia Pacific region. He shared the similarities and differences between technology companies from the US and China and how they perceived the Southeast Asia market. Last but not least, Yaw shared his perspectives as an angel investor in Southeast Asia and reflected on the changing landscape of angel investing in the last decade.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Solana with Raj Gokal

Bernard Leong — Sun, 01 May 2022 00:53:14 GMT

"We have an intuition that at like a hundred million users with self custody signing their own transactions every day at those numbers, a hundred million and a billion, those are where there's going to be big unlocks and unexpected use cases that pop up in the way that people coordinate their resources together may make shared decisions together and align interest again, and participate in new forms of global capital markets together." - Raj Gokal

Fresh out of the studio, Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana joined us in a conversation to share the backstory behind how the blockchain emerged and is currently one of the leading blockchains in the market. Raj dived deep into the mechanisms behind the protocol and explained why the speed of transactions generated new decentralized applications on the blockchain. He also addressed on the outages and cybersecurity challenges for Solana, and offered his perspectives in what great looks like for Solana in the future.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Forge Ventures & Early Stage Investing in Southeast Asia with Tiang Lim Foo

Bernard Leong — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 11:34:11 GMT

"As a seed fund, we will always be small. ... and that's done with the intent of building towards product market fit. we talk a lot about product market fit in startup land. We don't really talk about it enough and in venture land, It's really hard to deploy a billion dollars in capital if you're focusing on seed. Intentionally is a feature. It's not a bug. And if we're doing our job right, we'll continue to raise the same fund size, relatively small speaking, and just be great at pattern recognition at seed pre product market fit and staying really focused that way to be the best in our niche is the way we think about it. " - Tiang Lim Foo

Fresh out of the studio, Tiang Lim Foo, co-founder and partner of Forge Ventures shares the story of how he started the seed stage venture firm and his perspectives on early stage investing in Southeast Asia. He dived into a deeper discussion of the rise of early stage investors within the key countries in the region and how the whole venture investing space is transforming with web2 and web3 in transition.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Don't Quit Your Day Job with Aliza Knox

Bernard Leong — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 22:00:32 GMT

"I have lots of different people that I go to and I think that board of directors is really important. It's not the only social capital, but that's social capital primarily outside of your work, out of your specific job, that's important for you to build over time so that you get outside perspectives. If nothing else, sometimes in your workplace, you get very locked into a certain way of thinking or a certain style. And it's important to get perspective from." - Aliza Knox

Fresh out of the studio, Aliza Knox joined us to discuss the inspiration and key themes behind her new book "Don't Quit Your Day Job". We began the conversation on Aliza's observations on how the technology business and startup ecosystem have shifted in the last decade within Asia Pacific, during her stints with Google, Twitter and Cloudflare. Last but not least, we discuss how her book can help people out there to think about career growth and progression in the midst of the pandemic and the Great resignation.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Iterative Capital & Building the Entrepreneurial Community in Southeast Asia with Brian Ma

Bernard Leong — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 03:18:30 GMT

"So literally we have this planned out, we have a ten-year plan and in ten-year plan, we want to be able to deploy about $2 billion in AUM. We think it's possible to fund a lot of companies in the early stages for all emerging markets. All those emerging markets have the same problem, which is there in this phase of rapid economic development, tons of founders wants to come out. So we want quite a lot of capital into seed stage companies." - Brian Ma

Fresh out of the studio, Brian Ma, partner at Iterative Capital and founder at Divvy Homes, joined us in a conversation on the current venture fund in Southeast Asia and shares his perspectives on how the fund is building their entrepreneurial community in Southeast Asia. We dived deep into the beginnings of Brian's career and how both his co-founder, Hsu Ken Ooi and he set up the venture firm and accelerator in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last but not least, Brian shared his perspectives on the Southeast Asia landscape and what great means for Iterative Capital moving forward.

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

GajiGesa and Fintech for the Unbanked across Southeast Asia with Vidit Agrawal

Bernard Leong — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 02:13:56 GMT

"First, I think happy employee and employer partners, for us, great customer experience is important. Secondly, technology driven products that improve the lives of the workers across the region. That's great tech. And happy and motivated gajiGesa team with a lot of career growth opportunities. That's a great team. So I've put great under these three buckets." - Vidit Agrawal

Fresh out of the studio, Vidit Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of GajiGesa discuss the backstory of the fintech company focusing on developing financial services for the unbanked across Southeast Asia, starting from Indonesia. The conversation with Vidit's background with high growth tech companies: Uber and Stripe and he shared his perspectives on he invests as an angel investor. Vidit dived deeper into the unbanked market and how GajiGesa aims to solve that challenge, and offered his mental model in how one should think about geographical expansion across Southeast Asia as an entrepreneur.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Insignia Ventures and the Southeast Asia Entrepreneurial Ecosystem with Tan Yinglan

Bernard Leong — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 01:33:54 GMT

"... One of our mantra is we don't build good companies. We build great companies. I think the beauty is that we have seen enough companies to realize what great looks like. For us, we have a high bar. So one of the metrics that we mention a lot is how many founders with the means to do so that we back will invest again in Insignia?" - Tan Yinglan

Fresh out of the studio, Tan Yinglan, founding managing partner from Insignia Ventures Partners joined us in a conversation to share the backstory, vision and mission of his venture firm and offered his insights on the Southeast Asia entrepreneurial ecosystem. He started with the inspiration behind the venture firm and discuss how he indexes founders and startup teams to fund. Last but not least, he discuss where venture capital is heading towards in Southeast Asia.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Great Protocol Politics with Parag Khanna

Bernard Leong — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 07:05:47 GMT

"But what I would want everyone to take away from this is that you have the geopolitics, the geoeconomics and the geo technology as a triangle, three corners of this triangle. A successful society, a power, a great power is going to be one that is fluent in all three of those languages that focuses on building capacity in all three of those areas and looking for the linkages and synergies between their technological innovation or economic power and their military power and state capacity." - Parag Khanna

Fresh out of the studio, Parag Khanna, CEO of Climate Alpha & celebrated author of "Move" joined us in a discussion to explain why the 21st century belongs to the Internet and not to any great power nations out there. We discussed his recent popular article "Great Protocol Politics" that he co-authored with Balajis Srinisavan and we dived deep into the weeds how technology such as web3 and cryptocurrencies will be important in reshaping society and monetary systems and what it means globally in the next decades to come.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Una Brands and the Ecommerce Aggregator Supply Chain in Asia Pacific with Kiren Tanna

Bernard Leong — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 07:45:34 GMT

"As well as in terms of profitability, we've been able to grow the brands as well as make them more profitable. So having a track record really matters because as part of our purchase consideration, we also share the upside with sellers. So with us, the investor, we are able to extract the maximum of sight from the brand and via the right stewards of the brand. That's something which we spend a lot of time building. Those capabilities and having that reputation, which then sets us apart and helps us win many deals in competitive situations." - Kiren Tanna

Fresh out of the studio, Kiren Tanna, chief executive officer and co-founder of Una Brands joined us in a conversation to discuss the e-commerce aggregator company and their business footprint across Asia Pacific. We started with Kiren's background working in ecommerce startups before Una Brands and then deep dived into how Una Brands have built their presence prominently & quickly within the last year. He also shared how the whole ecommerce aggregator supply chain works, from how they approached a seller for an acquisition, valuing the seller's ecommerce brand all the way to sale and then scaling the brand across the region. Last but not least, he shared what great will looks like for Una Brands in the years to come.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed & edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Community in a Box with March Birch

Bernard Leong — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 05:19:32 GMT

"The key theme is you can be incredibly successful with the community, but you have to be intentional. Oftentimes what happened in my experience of observing other communities is that people would get really excited at the beginning. They would do a whole lot of work. And then after hosting, maybe three events, the enthusiasm would die and they wouldn't do anything else. So it was actually easy for people to start. It's not very easy to grow and scale, and that's why I talk a lot about intentionality" - Mark Birch

Fresh out of the studio, Mark Birch, global startup advocate from Amazon Web Services (AWS) joined us in a conversation to discuss his new book "Community in a Box" and the key initiatives to engage startups and developer communities globally from New York to Asia Pacific through AWS. We start from Mark's background and discuss the inspiration, key themes and main takeaways on how to build event-driven professional communities. Last but not least, he discuss how to build the community flywheel and provided the aspiration to what a great community would look like in the future.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

South China Morning Post's Digital Transformation Journey with Gary Liu

Bernard Leong — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 09:30:22 GMT

"I believe that we have made great change. I think five years is going to be the same, I think in five years when we look back, even if it doesn't look that way, as we build piece by piece, we will be a technically advanced, user-first global news organization that is sustained by a diversified revenue model." - Gary Liu

Fresh out of the studio, Gary Liu, chief executive officer of South China Morning Post (SCMP) joined us in a conversation on the digital transformation journey and where it is heading in a web3 world. We began the conversation with Gary reiterating the important role that SCMP plays as a bridge between China and the rest of the world. From there, he shared the early days and reflected on the key lessons from the first phase of their digital transformation with a focused video strategy. Continuing on, Gary shared SCMP's move into the Web3 world with the ARTIFACTS NFT project and how it jumpstarts the next phase of the digital transformation. Last but not least, he shared what great looks like for SCMP in the next 3-5 years.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Global Coin Research & Web3 101 with Joyce Yang, Jin Kang & Daniel Kim

Bernard Leong — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 22:45:35 GMT

"I want GCR to build its brand verbally from the founders that we support. And we don't even ever have to promote ourselves at any point, it's that founders are able to recognize our value- add, or introduce us to projects and identify our unique position, that we can support them in ways that VCs or crypto investors cannot do. It's something that I think will really speak to the hard work that we do without ever having to promote ourselves." - Joyce Yang

Fresh out of the studio, Joyce Yang, Jin Kang and Daniel Kim from Global Coin Research discuss the Global Coin Research DAO and its investment focus in Web3. We start with the vision and mission of the GCR DAO and then move into an in-depth conversation on web3 discussing the varying valuations of web3 companies, the choice of blockchains by web3 startups and where this is all moving towards at this instant of time.

Author's Note: Bernard Leong is a supporter of the GCR DAO. BL might have taken positions in web3 DAOs and companies, hence this is not financial advice and if you want to invest, please do your own research.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Pace Enterprise & the Future of Finance in Asia Pacific with Turochas Fuad

Bernard Leong — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 08:40:15 GMT

"If the goal is to really democratize finance of businesses and consumers imagine that Mastercard and Visa has built an interchange network to facilitate payments across the globe. What if Pace can establish a similar global interchange network? For digital financing, covering a myriad of services to consumers, businesses, and even financial institutions, basically building the digital financing engine that lives on the cloud powered by blockchain on a web3 infrastructure and serving the needs of, you know, the future consumers, businesses, and even financial institutions down the road." - Turochas Fuad

Fresh out of the studio, Turochas "T" Fuad, CEO and co-founder of Pace Enterprise joined us in a conversation to discuss his latest venture, Pace Enterprise and dived deep into the weeds of the "Buy Now, Pay Later" (or BNPL) space. He shared his thoughts on why BNPL can lead to sustainable companies and not just being a feature of a fintech company. Last but not least, Turochas offered his perspectives on how the different accelerating trends: fintech, decentralized finance and web3 are converging towards a coherent future of finance.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

Rainforest & the rise of Ecommerce Aggregators in Asia Pacific with JJ Chai

Bernard Leong — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 06:27:15 GMT

But fundamentally the core of the business, at least the way we see it, is that, we need to be great operators of these brands as a start, in fact the best operators for these brands. For us here, it's about looking into ways to be differentiated around how to run those brands better than anyone else, and definitely better than the last owner. - JJ Chai

Fresh out of the studio, JJ Chai, CEO and co-founder of Rainforest, joined us in a discussion on his company, a leading eCommerce aggregator that focuses on brands and products for the modern mum and offered his perspectives on the rise of ecommerce aggregators in Asia Pacific region. We dived into how JJ shared the vision and mission of Rainforest and their customer focus for the ecommerce aggregator. From there, we broadened the conversation with JJ explaining how ecommerce aggregators work with platforms such as Amazon and their playbook in selecting the right brands to acquire, scale and distribute. Last but not least, JJ offered his perspectives on how the landscape of ecommerce aggregators will change in the next couple of years globally.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is mixed edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig (LinkedIn).

AppWorks & Investing in Web3 with Jamie Lin

Bernard Leong — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 09:29:14 GMT

"So as of today, I think the choice between DAO and equity is how bullish you are in the project. So if you're thinking that companies launching its first or second project, there's still a highly likelihood that it's not gonna be hugely successful and you want to bet on the entire life cycle of the company, then right now, maybe equity is still a better tool. If you're really bullish on the project, but you're not as bullish on the company that maybe the DAO is a better way to go." - Jamie Lin

Fresh out of the studio, Jamie Lin, chairman and partner of AppWorks, an accelerator and venture capital form shares the backstory of the company and how it started his investments across Taiwan and Southeast Asia and grew to its present state today. Jamie shares the investment thesis of the firm and the key traits of entrepreneurs and verticals which they can invest into. Last but not least, Jamie shares his perspectives in how venture capital will be transformed by web3 and offers his point of view on how AppWorks will position itself in this new era.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Meta & What the Metaverse Opportunity means for Asia Pacific with Dan Neary

Bernard Leong — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 03:42:28 GMT

"The important thing is, look, our mission hasn't changed. We're still focusing on helping people connect and finding communities and, and grow businesses. We've just very clearly put a stake in the ground around what we believe is the future. And more and more that's going to take place in the metaverse." - Dan Neary

Fresh out of the studio, Dan Neary, Vice President for Meta (formerly Facebook) APAC joined us for an interesting conversation on the company’s re-brand, vision for the metaverse and why this may the biggest opportunity for businesses in Asia Pacific. In the conversation, Dan describes how Meta is helping to build the metaverse & talks about how the current ecosystem of communities, creators, commerce will converge with the next computing platform and create a completely new generation of experiences. Last but not least, he also shares how Meta is working with small businesses to support their digital transformation journey and get them future-ready.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

The State of China in 2021 with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 01:09:23 GMT

"There's definitely decoupling happening in terms of tech. And I actually was really skeptical of the coupling until this year. And I'm like, wow, you're really going to be seeing it. But on the other hand, the financial services sector is opening up much more this year than before." - Shai Oster

Fresh out of the studio, Shai Oster, the Asia Bureau Chief for The Information returns for the sixth year to discuss the state of China in 2021. Shai reviewed his predictions in 2021 and offered his perspectives on what surprised him the most on China tech from the regulatory tsunami from the Chinese government to dwindling funding of the startup ecosystem. We discuss how the Chinese economy is undergoing major transformation and whether we have a China tech ecosystem in 2022. Last but not least, Shai Oster provided glimpse of what is to come for 2022.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Yield Guild Games & the Crypto Gaming Metaverse with Gabby Dizon

Bernard Leong — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 07:27:41 GMT

"You're actually helping people, escape, lockdown, escape, poverty, and most of all, you're providing equal economic access to crypto based economies anywhere in the world. So now you don't have to be super crypto or tech savvy. What you really need is an internet connection in a device, in a crypto wallet, and you can start earning money. And if you don't know how to do that, your community managers are there to help you how to do it." - Gabby Dizon

Fresh out of the studio, Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games (YGG) joined us in a conversation to share the origin story of YGG and how it builds the guilds with community managers and players to bring financial inclusion globally with play to earn crypto gaming. Gabby explained the role of YGG and how play to earn is transforming the gaming industry and what it means for the industry moving forward. Last but not least, Gabby offers his perspectives in the metaverse and what it means for the Web3 movement going forward.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Axie Infinity & the Play to Earn Metaverse with Aleksander Larsen

Bernard Leong — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 02:55:40 GMT

"And right now the internet is the metaverse to an extent. The only difference here is that it's not truly decentralized and you didn't have ownership on the internet before now you have ownership through the blockchain. So that means that the internet is now becoming more metaverse like, because people can own their own assets. They can interact with the blockchain through their web explorer for the front ends to where the metaverse are right now." - Aleksander Larsen

Fresh out of the studio, Aleksander Larsen, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sky Mavis, the studio behind the first successful blockchain game, Axie Infinity, joined us to discuss the origin story of the company and how it jumpstarted the NFT and play to earn games to life. Aleksander shared the early days of Axie Infinity and explained why they ended up building the Ronin side chain to launching the decentralized exchange, Katana. Last but not least, Aleksander offered his thoughts on how Axie Infinity will contribute to the metaverse conversation in the years ahead.

Evergrande's endgame with Ren Liqian

Bernard Leong — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 09:46:03 GMT

"I will say that in the end, the Evergrande situation will be similar, particularly to like HNA group. So I think right now they have not filed for an event bankruptcy cases. Yet their hope is still can can muddle through. But in the end, the likely end of Evergrande is going to turn out to be much more similar than people realize." - Ren Liqian

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Fresh out of the studio, Ren Liqian from Wisdom Asset Management, joined us to discuss the fallout from the likely default of Evergrande, a Chinese real estate conglomerate and what it means for the Chinese economy and the rest of the world. Liqian started the conversation with her background and her analysis of the Chinese market specifically in the real estate and technology sector. She debunked the misconceptions of Evergrande from Western media similar to the Lehman contagion during the 2008 financial crisis and explained the likely outcomes of Evergrande if it ever defaults. Last but not least, she shed light on how State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration, a Chinese government body that are working behind the scenes on the Evergrande situation similar to other conglomerates in trouble such as HNA and Huarong.

Editor's note: We recorded this conversation in early November, and hence it does not include the recent news on Evergrande's default.

Move with Parag Khanna

Bernard Leong — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 09:09:30 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Parag Khanna, founder and managing partner of Futuremap and celebrated author of various books, joined us to discuss his new book "Move" and explain why mobility is destiny. Parag started from the future in 2050 and worked backwards to explore the various scenarios in how mobility of talent will be in the midst of geopolitical tensions and climate change. Last but not least, Parag translated what it means for Asia Pacific moving forward based on its current trajectory and global technology shifts.

"So I look at every single one of those categories of mobility, of migration and everything to electric VTOL aircraft and the impact that will have on the future of urban design. That is part of the individual experience of mobility in the future as is of course climate migration, fleeing countries, where there is simply not a drop of water left. All of those are drivers of our future mobility, depending on who you are and where you are." - Parag Khanna

Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Why Cloud Computing & SAAS are different in China with Lillian Li

Bernard Leong — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 01:54:55 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Lillian Li, founder of the Chinese Characteristics newsletter joined us in a conversation to explain why cloud computing and software as a service (SAAS) are different in China as compared to the rest of the world. Lillian began her origin story in why she started the newsletter and approach the Chinese market. Then we dived deep into the weeds of the Chinese enterprise market and explore why the Chinese tech companies found it difficult to build enterprise software and drive adoption in global expansion specifically in the Asian markets. Last but not least, Lillian explores how the Chinese cloud computing sector and SAAS model will evolve in the future to adapt to the changing world out there.

"In China, when you talk to someone about SASS. They typically link it with a type of software architecture rather than the payment recurrent payment theme. So that's one thing. And cloud computing is more understood as cloud adoption rather than using a last platform." - Lillian Li

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Xfers and the launch of StraitsX XSGD with Liu Tianwei

Bernard Leong — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 10:47:24 GMT

"So I think from a market perspective, Southeast Asia is still in its early stages. We probably do not have that much of that to have so many stable coins. End of the day circulation and liquidity is everything. So the one that is pretty much have the most adoption and since the circulating and support will be the one that most, probably 90% of everything will happen at." - Liu Tianwei

Fresh out of the studio, Liu Tianwei, CEO and co-founder of Xfers, sit down for a discussion on the origin story of Xfers and shares the backstory in how the company has managed to launch their StraitsX exchange with the first stable coin XSGD in Southeast Asia. Tianwei dived deep into the weeds in how the team put together the white paper from concept to launch with key applications in DeFi and worked with the regulators and partners to launch the stable coin into action. Last but not least, he shared his perspectives on the ongoing convergence between cryptocurrency and fintech.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Daraz & the growth in South Asia with Bjarke Mikkelsen

Bernard Leong — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 22:21:15 GMT

"The way we've designed our strategy in the way of the businesses that we need to create sustainable value, and we need to do something good for the communities and the markets that we operate in. That is the best way to create shareholder value." - Bjarke Mikkelsen

Fresh out of the studio, Bjarke Mikkelsen, CEO and founder of Daraz, joined us to discuss the origins of the e-commerce marketplace and the key trends on technology and business across South Asia in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bjarke shed light on the backstory on how Daraz was eventually acquired and fully owned by Alibaba Group. Last but not least, he shared his perspectives on the business trends in South Asia and explained how the businesses in region is poised to grow along with Daraz.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Animoca Brands and the Open Metaverse with Yat Siu

Bernard Leong — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 22:42:44 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands joined us in a conversation about the story of the company and offered his perspectives on true digital ownership, blockchain gaming, NFTs and the open metaverse. Yat Siu started the conversation with his backstory and how he eventually spun off the company Animoca Brands from the parent company to focus on blockchain gaming. Last but not least, he share his thoughts on the open metaverse and what it means for true digital ownership and play to earn in the crypto gaming space.

"The open Metaverse, from our perspective, is the real Metaverse, because you can then have ownership. Once you have ownership, you care to keep it because it's precious and meaningful to you, but if you don't own anything, then you actually don't care to protect it because you're just simply a guest. And I think this is part of why we are so excited about non fungible tokens as digital property rights." - Yat Siu

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Geoffrey Thomas Craig.

Additional note: Yat Siu's profile photo is credited to Kevin Abosch.

Evolution of Media Coverage in Asia with Terence Lee and Jon Russell

Bernard Leong — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 13:44:53 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Terence Lee and Jon Russell, two editors from well-known technology news outlets, joined us in a roundtable to discuss the evolution of media coverage in Asia in the past decade and offered their perspectives on what the future of media coverage would look like in the next decade. We discuss how different newsrooms deal with scoops and tip offs from sources, handle the right to reply with companies who are affected by the breaking news and the challenge of covering companies in Asia.

"Usually the rule of thumb is that: we are very careful with anonymous sources. The bar that we set is that if the source has direct knowledge of what's happening, that is usually credible. If you see a message from the CEO, if it's something like hearsay, or this person give us something from that person, we have a lot more to be careful and broadly speaking, that's how it works." - Terence Lee

"So there's a very fine balance between doing things properly and mostly trying to make sure that you've got this lead in the right." - Jon Russell

Disclaimer before discussion: BL has ownership of Tech In Asia indirectly and Jon and Terence do not represent the opinions and views of the media outlets which they work for as we reflected on how media coverage has been evolving in Asia.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Thomas Craig.

Wise and Fintech in Asia Pacific with Venkatesh Saha

Bernard Leong — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 00:50:59 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Venkatesh Saha, CEO Wise (or Transferwise) Asia joined us to discuss the geographical footprint and key business activities in Asia Pacific. We started with Venkatesh sharing his background story on how he came to join Wise. From then on, he dived deeper into the key business of Wise within the region and shared his perspectives on the current fintech trends in Asia.

So it's not just existing users who went deeper and got more comfortable and tried more products, but it's brought many new people who would have been forced to think about digital ways of living their lives. So I think that's the first thing that acceleration. The second thing, which has been a happy coincidence, is that a few years ago, government started taking fintech more seriously. - Venkatesh Saha

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian and the episode is edited by Thomas Craig.

Connecting the Next 2.5 Billion with Scott Beaumont

Bernard Leong — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 11:49:41 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Scott Beaumont, President Asia Pacific from Google joined us for an interesting conversation on why, what and how it takes to connect the next 2.5 billion people online in Asia. He discuss how COVID-19 has accelerated the digital adoption in Asia Pacific and broke down the key opportunities on how entrepreneurs can innovate and build their start-ups on the dynamics in the region. Last but not least, Scott offers his perspectives on the emerging technology trends and where they are heading from AI to quantum computing.

If we're going to create equitable progress throughout Asia, then we need to make sure that everybody's got access to that technology. The demographics in Asia are astonishing. Since COVID began, so 2019, in the last two years, we've seen about 217 million people come online for the first time, so a whole new Indonesia which is really quite remarkable. What we want to do is make sure that they've got access to that technology, that they know how to use it, and that the products and services that they can leverage are meaningful to them. - Scott Beaumont

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin). Sound credits for the intro and end music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian

The Southeast Asia Exit Landscape with Michael Lints

Bernard Leong — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 04:18:53 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Michael Lints from Golden Gate Ventures discuss the Southeast Asia exit landscape for startups and what it means for investors all over the world. We discuss Michael's career and investment thesis as to what strengths and red flags he search in founders and start-ups. We dived deep into the exit landscape and explain how SPACs, direct listings and M&As will impact the startup ecosystem across Southeast Asia.

At every single investor meeting, literally every single LP meeting. I got the same question. What is the exit landscape look like in Southeast Asia? The issue was that most exits were relatively small to other markets. The largest exits were at like around $200 million dollars. If you compare that to India or China, that's just a very small number. Every single LP was concerned that it's an emerging market. There's lots of happening under early stage, but at some point when we need liquidity as LPs and then where would that come from? - Michael Lints

China Internet Report 2021 with John Artman

Bernard Leong — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 10:37:29 GMT

In episode 347, John Artman, technology editor from South China Morning Post (SCMP) discuss the dawn of a new era for China technology from the annual SCMP China Internet Report 2021. We dived deep into three key topics: the tightening regulation and new legislation introduced by the Chinese government on anti-trust, data protection and usage and how it differs from GDPR by the European Union; the aggressive geographic expansion of Chinese tech into Southeast Asia and the exploitation of private domain traffic on e-commerce in China.

"Historically, the Chinese government make these really big moves, and they make an example of one or two companies and then they move on. Then maybe in a couple of years, they'll come back and they'll make examples again. When we're looking at some of these unfair practices, on the one hand, we do have some very visible and very public moves against the technology industry. But I think that, over time, it'll be interesting to see, how compliant some of these platforms are." - John Artman

In conjunction with this episode, SCMP is providing a 30% off to the Analyse Asia audience for the CIR Pro report with the promo code: ANALYSEASIACIR. It won't apply until you go to the checkout page. This will be valid for 2 months till 30 Nov 2021. Here is the link where you can purchase the report with the promo code embedded.

Technology Past, Present & Future with Benedict Evans

Bernard Leong — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 22:53:52 GMT

In episode 346, Benedict Evans shares his perspectives on the history and trends of technology. Benedict explores the different narratives spanning across the mobile wars between Apple & Google, generational shifts in digital transformation of enterprises, the challenges of app stores and digital advertising & privacy. Last but not least, he asks the key questions on what's next for technology.

There's some industries where 10 years time is the next product cycle. There's some industries where, you know what your rent's going to be in 10 years time. There's other technology: 10 years is right on the edge of science fiction. You really don't know what you know, anything beyond 10 years, you really don't know what's going to happen, except there'll be more stuff. - Benedict Evans

What just happened to the Tech Giants in China? with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:15:51 GMT

In episode 345, Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from the Information joined our returning host, Bernard Leong to answer the most important question in Asia, "What just happened to the Chinese tech giants?" We dived deep on why they are facing a regulatory crackdown and its downstream impact not just to Chinese tech CEOs stepping down from their jobs but also to the successful US companies from Apple to Tesla that are based in China.

"What Alibaba and Tencent have done is created national banking infrastructure. In China, national infrastructure is a national security. It's like highways, it's like power. And if huge amounts of your economy are being transacted behind closed doors effectively, through a private enterprise, that's not okay for the Chinese government." - Shai Oster, The Information

The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin). Sound credits for the intro music: "Run it" by DJ Snake, Rick Ross and Rich Brian

Tencent & China's Gaming Crackdown with Josh Ye

Bernard Leong — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 23:14:51 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Josh Ye, tech reporter from South China Morning Post (SCMP) joined us to discuss the evolution of Tencent, the tech giant in China specifically with respect to the recent gaming crackdown by the Chinese government. Josh discussed the impact of the regulations to the entire gaming industry and how Tencent will focus their efforts towards overseas expansion. Last but not least, he presented the future of the gaming industry in China.

Uber in Asia Pacific & The Future of Mobility with Pradeep Parameswaran

Bernard Leong — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 13:44:45 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Pradeep Parameswaran, President - Mobility from Uber APAC joined us in a conversation on Uber's continued focus on mobility in Asia Pacific and the future of mobility. We begin the conversation with Pradeep sharing his background and the key lessons learnt from his career journey. Following that, he dived deep into Uber's footprint in Asia Pacific excluding Southeast Asia and China and focus on the challenges and opportunities in expanding Uber's mission into new and uncharted areas. Last but not least, he also offered his thoughts on the future of mobility specifically on autonomous and electric vehicles and the likely impact to transportation in the near future for Asia Pacific.

The Grab SPAC with Jon Russell & Nadine Freischlad

Bernard Leong — Sun, 16 May 2021 03:02:44 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Jon Russell & Nadine Fresischlad from The Ken joined us to discuss the 40 billion Grab SPAC (and largest in the world till date) and its impact to the entire Southeast startup ecosystem. Kicking off the conversation, Jon and Nadine analysed why Grab decided to take the SPAC route, summarize the key takeaways from the current businesses to where future growth engines will come from. They discuss what it means for Uber, the investors, the employees, the startup and venture capital ecosystems across Southeast Asia. Last but not least, they examine what it means for their rivals competing in the Indonesia market: Goto and Sea Group.

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin) and originally created by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack.

The Two Sessions in China 2021 with Zhou Xin

Bernard Leong — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 13:34:34 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, in episode 341, Zhou Xin, political economy editor from South China Morning Post, joined us in a conversation to discuss the Two Sessions in China for the year 2021, and what it means for the rest of the world. Zhou Xin dived deep into the key agenda for the Two Sessions for 2021 and how the Chinese government will focus on in the next 5 years from technology development to boosting the small and medium businesses segment in China. We discuss the implications on how the Chinese economy impacts the rest of the world for the year ahead.

Special offer for our readers: SCMP has kindly offered a one-month free discount for 1-year subscription plan to all listeners of Analyse Asia podcast. Go to https://sc.mp/Analyse-Asia and enter the promo code: ANALYSEASIA, T&Cs details available at sc.mp/promo-code.

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The potential Gojek-Tokopedia merger with Rama Mamuaya

Bernard Leong — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 02:03:00 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, in episode 340, Rama Mamuaya from DailySocial in Indonesia joined us to discuss a potential merger between Gojek, Indonesia's largest ride-hailing app and Tokopedia, the largest ecommerce site in Indonesia, and what it would mean for the most important market in Southeast Asia as well as their key rivals: Grab and SEA Group with Shopee. Rama introduced the backstory of Tokopedia, and discuss the dynamics on how Tokopedia and Gojek would merge under a SPAC backed by Peter Thiel and Richard Li. He provided the key reasons to why Grab and Gojek will not merge and offered his perspectives on how this will mean for the future of Indonesia startup scene.

China AI Deep Dive: Computer Vision Report 2020 with John Artman

Bernard Leong — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 15:42:16 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, in episode 339, John Artman, the technology editor of South China Morning Post (SCMP) joins us on a conversation with China AI Deep Dive: Computer Vision Report 2020 published by SCMP research. We began the conversation with John’s reflections on the year of 2020 during the pandemic and then dived deep into the report, where John provide a comprehensive overview of the computer vision market in China with the four dragons: SenseTime, Megvii, CloudWalk and Yitu and what the tech giants in China are focusing on in the same sector. John also discuss the implications of the US-China tensions as to how it impact the CV market and offered his thoughts on where the key players will focus on, given the impending regulatory measures introduced by the Chinese government on data privacy and anti-trust.

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Reflections and Predictions on China and SoftBank in 2020 with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 23:55:37 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, in episode 338, Shai Oster, the Asia Bureau chief for The Information is back on his annual review with us again to discuss the state of China technology giants and SoftBank in the time of COVID-19 pandemic and predict what is to come in 2021. Starting the conversation, Shai reviewed the predictions he made in 2019 and explored the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on how they played out in 2020. From there, Shai reflected on the year that dominated the headlines in 2020: the diffusion of the China-US tensions to other regions: India and Australia against China tech giants, Tik Tok's problems in the US, Ant's botched IPO and SoftBank's attempt to go private. Last but not least, Shai offered his predictions for 2021 and what is to come for the Chinese technology giants and SoftBank for the year ahead.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

- Shai Oster (@beijingscribe, LinkedIn, TheInformation Profile), Asia Bureau Chief in The Information
  - So since your last appearance on the show, what have you been up to?
- 2019 Predictions:
  - China & US: Trump’s impeachment
  - China economy: growth
  - Tiktok will retreat from US, scale back & renew focus china, maybe India, Southeast Asia and Africa: accurate
  - Huawei
  - The shift of Chinese money to other markets
- 2020 Events that shook China and SoftBank: The China-US tensions have exacerbated and percolated to other regions now (and that includes Australia and India) to Chinese companies: 1/ India banning 47 apps including Wechat, Tik Tok and many apps from China and 2/ Australia and US banned Wechat.
  - Let’s go to India first, given that the major unicorns are invested by Chinese tech giants, for example, PayTM by Alibaba, and the rise of local giants such as Reliance Jio backed by a strong US consortium: Facebook, Google, Silver Lake Partners, KKR, how do you see the challenges moving ahead for Xiaomi, which is dominant in India as well?
  - How do you think the Biden administration will handle the current tensions with China?
  - In the year ahead, do you think China will come down hard on US companies that are heavily invested here, like Apple or Starbucks Coffee?
  - Currently, the Chinese government has directed the local companies to be self-reliant, and specifically in the semiconductor industry, does that mean that we will see the decoupling of the supply chain accelerate much quicker?
  - Given that Tencent owns a few major gaming companies, for example, Epic, and with the recent lawsuit between Apple and Epic, do you see a possibility that the US government will pressure Tencent to divest their holdings in the US?
- Tik Tok’s problems in the US and elsewhere: First, Kevin Mayer, the former CEO of DisneyPlus was poached and then became the CEO of Tik Tok US and Group COO, and subsequently resigned in July 2020, given the Trump’s administration insistence that the company has to be sold. Finally, after talks with rumors that Microsoft might acquire the entity completely, the eventual decision is that Oracle becomes the beneficiary of being an investor (along with Walmart) for Tik Tok US to ensure that data resides in the US.
  - What are your thoughts on Tik Tok’s current situation in the US?
  - Can ByteDance grow further given that there is so much pushback from other markets?
  - Where do you see ByteDance’s growth markets are? Will be they turn inwards towards domestically or expand to other markets where the push back is lesser, for example, Southeast Asia?
- The Botched IPO of Ant Financial and what’s going to be next?
  - The Chinese government has ended Ant Financial’s IPO with direct interference from President Xi as reported by various outlets. What are the causes in your opinion as to why the IPO ended up not happening?
  - What are the implications for Alibaba Group as a whole with Ant Financial not able to IPO?
  - What must Ant Financial do in order to convince the authorities to allow them to IPO?
  - The billion-dollar question: Will Ant Financial eventually IPO?
  - A lot of people did not realize that the Ant Financial IPO has left a lot of money on the table in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, do you think that the companies which are going to IPO in HKSE will benefit from this event?
  - Does this offer a lesson to how Chinese tech companies should conduct themselves? Which companies do you think might run into trouble with the state?
- COVID-19 Pandemic:
  - Which tech companies in China are the major beneficiaries of the COVID-19 pandemic?
  - China has managed the COVID-19 pandemic much better than the US. What are the implications to the Chinese economy from now with the various successful vaccines, for example, Pfizer vaccine being approved?
- SoftBank in 2020 and its current strategy to go private
  - After the Wework debacle, SoftBank has gone on a few different directions: 1/ Selling their Alibaba stake, 2/ Sell ARM to NVDIA and Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, 3/ Ran a stock market gambit with futures in tech, 4/ DoorDash’s IPO giving them 10B gain that will write off Wework’s investment, and 5/ quietly buying back shares to go private?
  - How do you assess SoftBank’s performance in 2020 and do you think that with DoorDash’s success, will SoftBank Vision Fund 2 happen?
  - Has SoftBank’s enormous influence on the tech industry waned after WeWork’s debacle? Where do you think that they will spend the remainder of the $100B Vision Fund on?
  - Do you think that SoftBank will go private according to Tim Culpan’s analysis on Masa’s strategy? Do you think that SoftBank will manoeuvre and make a comeback after being private?
- 2020 is now closing to the end, what are your predictions for 2021 so that we can have a future conversation a year from now?
Closing
- Any recommendations?
  - Shai's recommendations: Rui Ma and Ying Ying Lu, Techbuzz China podcast and subscribe to The Information with the key breaking news it broke in 2020.
- How does our audience find you?

Editor's note: Our team in Analyse Asia thanked our audience for your support and wished everyone a Happy New Year 2021. The episode is recorded in the last week of 2020.

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analyseasia · Reflections and Predictions on China and SoftBank in 2020 with Shai Oster

The Ant Group's Botched IPO with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 08:34:10 GMT

In episode 337, Rui Ma from TechBuzz China podcast joined us in a conversation to break down what just happened to Ant Group's IPO and why it was halted at the eleven hour by the Chinese government. At the start of the conversation, Rui Ma shared the back story and explained how Ant Financial have built their business from the escrow and payments app to now a vast financial business with lending and investment services included. Last but not least, Rui Ma dived deep into the regulatory landscape and offered the different scenarios to when Ant Group might be able to IPO in the future.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Rui Ma, Creator & Host of Tech Buzz China podcast by Pandaily produced by SupChina (LinkedIn, @ruima)
- Since our last conversation in April 2020, what have you been up to?
Ant Group and why China slams the brakes on their IPO
- Before we start talking about the IPO, let’s understand the company a little bit more. Can you talk about how Ant Group was initially started as Alipay by Jack Ma and then became Ant Financial? I believe there was a huge controversy about the founding of Alipay as well right?
- What is the current ownership of Ant Group like and who are the key stakeholders?
- Can you talk about the many branches of business that they offer and how these businesses are structured? For example, the lending & investment business?
- Alipay is just one of the different products which sits within Ant Group. There are other products, for example, Zhima Credit, Huabei, Jiebei, MYBank, Ant Insurance, etc. Can you talk about how these products are organized by the different businesses within Ant Financial?
- Ant Financial changed their name to Ant Group in June 2020 wanting to stress that they’re not just a finance company but a tech company. Why do you think they wanted to shift away from this kind of branding and do you believe in this rhetoric?
- How has Ant Financial worked within the regulatory landscape in the financial services sector in China?
- But as we all know, one day after the US Elections on Nov 4, the Chinese government halted the IPO. What happened and what is the current status of Ant IPO?
- If the Ant IPO did take place, what would have been the prospects of growth for the company?
- What are the implications of Ant Financial’s botched IPO towards the Alibaba Group?
- Do you think that they will be going public in the next half a year or beyond?
Closing
- Can you recommend something that has inspired you recently?
  - Rui Ma's recommendation: Esther Perels, Where Should We Begin podcast
  - Where can my audience find you?

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · The Ant Group's Botched IPO with Rui Ma

The SCMP China Fintech Report 2020 with Eugene Tang

Bernard Leong — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 22:07:02 GMT

In episode 336, Eugene Tang, business editor from the South China Morning Post (SCMP) joined us to discuss the China Fintech Report 2020 where he dissect the latest important trends in the fintech market. Eugene started the conversation with a story of his career and interesting learnings in his journey. From there, he dived into the key themes of the China Fintech Report 2020, from explaining how the fintech space in China are currently dominated by the tech giants in China, the impact of AI in the industry and most important, what the new digital cryptocurrency launched by China would mean for its domestic economy and the rest of the world.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Eugene Tang (LinkedIn), Business Editor, South China Morning Post (or SCMP in short)
- What is your current role and responsibilities as the business editor for South China Morning Post?
- How did you get started in your career?
- In your career journey, what are the key learnings you can share with our audience?
China Fintech Report 2020 by SCMP (Promo Code for 20% off: ANALYSEASIA)
- What are the key themes for the China Fintech Report 2020?
- What is the intended audience for the report?
- Let’s start with the key observations, in the report, the tech giants in China for example, Alibaba Group, Tencent and Baidu and JD and Ping An are currently leading in the fintech race. Can you explain how these companies have built their digital only banks and help to broaden economic development with micro loans to customers and extending credit to SMEs?
- What are the underlying technologies in China Fintech that have helped to propel their advances in the past few years, for example in the payments space?
- How do you see artificial intelligence (AI) influence fintech growth? Can you provide any examples that are stated in the report (for example MYBank and Daokou Fintech)?
- Global expansion for Chinese fintechs has been ongoing in the recent years. Can you expand on how fintech in China can help different parts of the world, specifically in broadening financial inclusion?
- Can you discuss the state of blockchain technology in China and the vision for China to establish the first central bank issued digital currency?
- What are the implications for the Chinese economy as of when and if the digital currency is launched?
- What are the regulatory shifts for Chinese fintechs?
- What are the new rules in play that will change the landscape in the next year?
- Recently, the Ant IPO has been delayed because of the clash with the financial regulatory body in China. Can you offer your perspectives on the issue?
- What will be the key challenges for Chinese Fintech in the year ahead?
Closing
- Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything which have inspired you recently?
  - Eugene's recommendation: Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets by US Congress
- How can your audience find you?

Editor's Note: SCMP has kindly offered a 20% discount for the China Fintech Report 2020 to all listeners of Analyse Asia podcast and please click on this link and enter the promo code: ANALYSEASIA

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · The SCMP China Fintech Report 2020 with Eugene Tang

The Google e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2020 Report with Stephanie Davis

Bernard Leong — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 08:55:17 GMT

In episode 335, Stephanie Davis, Vice President of Google Southeast Asia, joined us in a discussion on the latest e-Conomy Southeast Asia (SEA) report and dissect the latest digital trends and discuss how the different industries are moving under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stephanie started on the key themes, takeaways and intended audience for the report and broke down the key verticals which have benefitted during the COVID-19 pandemic and which industries have faced the strongest headwinds, for example travel. Last but not least, Stephanie offered an optimistic outlook to what 2021 will look life given the uncertainty ahead.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Stephanie Davis, Vice President, Google Southeast Asia (LinkedIn)
- What is your current role and responsibility in Google?
- How did you start your career and end up in Singapore?
- In your career journey, what are the key learnings you can share with our audience here?
e-Conomy Southeast Asia (SEA) 2020 by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company
- This is the 5th year of the e-Conomy report, and it is assembled by Google, Temasek (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and a key investor to many startup unicorns from China to Silicon Valley) and Bain & Co (one of the well-known consulting firms). To start the conversation, what are the key themes from the e-Conomy 2020 report this year?
- Who are the intended audience of the 2020 report?
- Southeast Asia has often been touted as the next geographical region after China and India. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated the headlines of every nation in the world, and has acted as a catalyst to digital growth & transformation. How has COVID-19 pushed the population of Southeast Asia to come online or accelerated this process, and where is this new growth coming from?
- What are the three key verticals which have benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic?
- Given that most of the world is still caught in a lockdown, you’re probably WFH as well, what is both the quantity and quality for digital engagement of users in the Southeast Asia region?
- Has the economic growth in Southeast Asia slowed down? Which countries within Southeast Asia have shown growth and which ones have slowed down?
- Can you talk about how ecommerce has thrived this year and what kind of headwinds do you see in the coming year?
- As more people go digital in the years to come, we see that fintech, entertainment and gaming will continue to grow, where do you see the behaviour and activity of different stakeholders such as consumers, businesses, and regulators within this ecosystem?
- One of the sectors that is gravely affected this year is, of course, the travel industry. Where do you see the signs of recovery?
- The Chinese word for crisis consists of 2 characters that mean danger and opportunity, and as Einstein has once said, “In the midst of every opportunity, lies great opportunity.” So what are the two verticals that have emerged this year?
- Temasek is a co-publisher of the report, they’re Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and a key investor of many startups from China to Silicon Valley, so how do you see the startup space evolving with regards to deal activity, diversification of portfolios by investors from private equity to venture capital?
- What is the outlook for businesses in the year ahead? Should we be optimistic given that the pandemic has both accelerated digital transformation but also shut down many businesses at the same time?
Closing
- Do you have any recommendations (for example, books, podcasts, videos or articles) which you can recommend to our audience?
  - Stephanie's recommendations: Podcasts 1/ Mental Health, Disability and the Invisible 9%, 2/ How Authority and Decision Making differs across Cultures, 3/ Transgender Inclusion; Books: How to be an anti-racist by Ibram X. Kendi
- How do my audience find you?

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · The Google e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2020 Report with Stephanie Davis

Attention Factory: The Story of Tik Tok & China’s ByteDance with Matthew Brennan

Bernard Leong — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 23:24:38 GMT

In episode 334, Matthew Brennan returned to discuss his new book "Attention Factory: The Story of Tik Tok & China's ByteDance". Matthew began with the inspiration and the key themes behind the first English book specifically focused on ByteDance, observing the rise of the company. He discuss the backstory of Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance and how he learned from his past experiences to build Toutiao first before embarking on Douyin that eventually led to Tik Tok. Last but not least, Matthew debunked the common misconceptions on Tik Tok and ByteDance, explained how their business models work and offered a glimpse to the challenges ahead for the company in the near future.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel and author of “ (chinachannel.co, @mbrennanchina , Linkedin, Wechat:Yowdy-CQ)
- As the highest recurring guest on the podcast, it’s great to welcome you back. First question: what have you been up to since our last conversation?
“Attention Factory - The Story of Tik Tok and China’s ByteDance” by Matthew Brennan
- What is the inspiration behind writing this book?
- What are the key themes for this book?
- Who are the major audiences that you want to target in this book?
- Tik Tok and ByteDance are often characterized by Western commentators and media as a threat to Facebook, Twitter and even to the US government itself. What are the key misconceptions about Tik Tok and ByteDance?
- Probably this is the first book which dives in depth into the background of Zhang Yiming, the founder of Bytedance, and the surprise is that he used to work for China’s twitter clone, Fanfou (started by Wang Xing, now founder and CEO of Meituan-Dianping) and was shut down by the authorities. Can you elaborate more on his background and his stint as a CEO with another startup called 99Fang before coming to ByteDance? What has 99Fang taught Zhang Yiming in the process?
- After he resigned from 99Fang, he started ByteDance and it was not with Tik Tok that he started his foray. He did Toutiao, can you talk about the design concepts and what Toutiao taught the ByteDance team?
- One can think of the success of Tik Tok in three stages: Douyin in China, acquisition of Musical.ly and then expanding globally across the decade of 2010 to 2020. Let’s start with Douyin first, how did the app cross the chasm to drive users?
- Tencent has tried to challenge Douyin on the homeground with Weishi, what did they get wrong and why have they failed to challenge Tik Tok?
- What are the key business models for Tik Tok and Douyin from ByteDance? How does the app bring revenues to the company? How are the apps localized or globalized to ensure a better user experience?
- There are different ways to look at Tik Tok. One interesting insight was from Eugene Wei’s recent article “Tik Tok and the Sorting Hat”, where Tik Tok does not need the social graph but rather rely on the recommendation engine algorithm to push the interests of the user, which makes Tik Tok a more direct competitor to Youtube. What are your thoughts on how one should think of Tik Tok as a mobile app or social network or video network?
- Probably, we should talk about what happened to Tik Tok in the US this year. They have hired Kevin Mayer, former head of Disney+ and then Donald Trump threatened to shut them down, and first there was supposed to be an acquisition from Microsoft, but ended up with Oracle and Walmart clinching a partnership deal. Can you share your thoughts on what happened and where this is likely to go before & after the US elections?
- What are the key challenges you see for ByteDance in the coming year?
Closing
- Do you have any recommendations that have recently inspired you?
- Where can our audience find you and your new book “Attention Factory”?

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · Attention Factory: The Story of Tik Tok & China’s ByteDance with Matthew Brennan

Tech Giants, Secondary Exits & Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia with Nadine Freischlad

Bernard Leong — Sun, 27 Sep 2020 06:39:36 GMT

In Episode 333, Nadine Freischlad, writer from The Ken, joined us in a conversation on the influence of both US and Chinese tech giants in the third most important market in Asia Pacific: Indonesia, the secondary exits spanned by venture capitalists and founders in Southeast Asia and the story of Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia. We began the story with Nadine's journey from startups to The Ken, and why Indonesia is an interesting and hot market after India and China. We discuss the influence of tech giants from US and China in Indonesia and how Google has fired the first salvo with bringing their cloud platform in Jakarta. Following on, Nadine explained why venture capitalists in Southeast Asia are exiting in secondary markets. Last but not least, she discuss why Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia will not follow in the footsteps of Luckin Coffee.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Nadine Freischlad, Writer, The Ken (@nfreischlad, LinkedIn, The Ken Profile, newsletter)
- - How did you start your career?
  - What brought you to Asia and eventually to write for The Ken?
  - Why are you in Indonesia and why is Indonesia the most interesting market in Southeast Asia?

Influence of US & China Tech Giants in Indonesia

- - Reference: “Google’s Kormo, AI Hurdles & Indonesia’s job recruitment nightmare”, “Google fires first volley in Indonesia’s cloud wars” and “Facebook, Paypal’s payments play a super app-ortunity for Gojek”
  - Can you describe how the US tech giants, for example, Google, Facebook and Paypal, have built their influence in Indonesia?
  - Google has recently launched a job recruitment site called Kormo in Indonesia, can you explain why that came about and what Google wants to achieve out of Kormo?
  - In terms of cloud infrastructure, Google is the first to enter the market before Amazon and Microsoft, does it hurt local hosting providers?
  - Facebook and Paypal have invested in Gojek (along with Google and Tencent), how does that supercharge Gojek’s ambitions to be a super app in their war against Grab?
  - While the US tech giants have invested into Indonesia’s top unicorns, what are the Chinese tech giants doing in Indonesia?
  - Given the recent pushback from India and US on Tik Tok, will the Indonesian government follow suit with the influence of chinese apps in Indonesia?

Secondary market for Southeast Asia startups

- - Reference: Southeast Asia’s startups surf a secondary wave
  - Given the number of exits from startups are few and far between in Southeast Asia, how are investors justifying their returns to the LPs (limited partners)?
  - We do not see a lot of IPOs in Southeast Asia. Can you talk about how VCs managed to generate liquidity by secondary shares sales and elaborate how the secondary share sales work?
  - Are there platforms where the secondary shares sales can be transacted between investors, employees and founders of the startup?
  - Are there sources of friction generated between founders of startups & their investors (VCs, PE firms) on the secondary sales shares given that it will disrupt the capitalization table (or cap table in short) of the company?
  - Do you see secondary shares sales as an important mechanism for VCs and PE firms to generate liquidity? Is this similar to how Silicon Valley VCs and angel investors sold their shares to SoftBank two years back?

Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia

- Reference: “Kopi Kenangan wants to walk in Luckin’s path, not in its shoes”
- Can you briefly describe the company Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia?
- Indonesia is a coffee country most well known for the javanese coffee beans, how is the coffee culture in Indonesia and how does it help Kopi Kenangan to reach its customers?
- How has Kopi Kenangan as a business scaled up in the recent year for example, their number of retail outlets and customer reach? Are they having any issues of massive burn?
- Can you explain the unit economics of Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia and contrast this with Luckin Coffee in China? (Refer to Part 2 of The Anonymous Report on Luckin Coffee’s flawed unit economics)
- In your perspective, what makes Kopi Kenangan able to move away from the shadow of Luckin Coffee given the latter’s recent scandal?
Closing
- Can you recommend your book, podcast and something which has recently inspired your life?
- How can my audience find you?

Editor's Note: Our apologies as there were some issues during the recording on Nadine's end. Hence you will hear a little background noise towards near the end during the Kopi Kenangan part of the conversation. We will hope to improve our recording with our guests in the future

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · Tech Giants, Secondary Exits & Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia with Nadine Freischlad

Beyond the Smartphone & COVID-19's Forced Experiments with Benedict Evans

Bernard Leong — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 08:51:20 GMT

In episode 332, continuing our last conversation with Benedict Evans, we discuss the major topics that are dominating the global technology landscape. First, Benedict dissect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and explain how the forced experiments will shift the immediate future where we work and interact with each other. Moving forward, he discuss what lies beyond the smartphone, specifically touching on VR and AR and analyzed why other technologies such as AI and blockchain are lurking in the background. Finally, he offers his perspectives on our expectations on technology with the dawn of 5G.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Benedict Evans (@benedictevans , LinkedIn, Personal Site, Essays, Newsletter), Venture Partner of Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First & Independent Analyst
COVID 19's Forced Experiments
- Reference: COVID and forced experiments, Presentations: Tech and the New Normal & Tech in 2020: Standing on the shoulders of giants and What comes after Zoom?.
- The COVID 19 have accelerated digital transformation in the past three months more than the last 5 years for certain industries. What are the forced experiments which COVID-19 can help us to understand the evolution of technology, for example, Zoom for video conferencing and what it has and has not solved for us?
Beyond the Smartphone
- Reference: Should you care about the 5G?
- Where is the smartphone in the S-curve: the beginning, the middle or the late stage?
- If we slice and dice the other platforms in the horizon: IoT (or ambient computing), VR or AR, they don’t seem to show the scale that smartphones can extend in terms of their adjacencies. What are the signs that you will identify to show that the smartphone platform is in the decline?
- What do you think that the contribution of 5G is to the entire telecommunications industry?
Closing
- Do you have anything from book, article, movie or podcast to recommend to our audience that have inspired you recently?
  - Benedict's recommendation: History of Germany economy in the 1930s-1940s.
- How can our audience find you?

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · Beyond the Smartphone & COVID-19's Forced Experiments with Benedict Evans

Technology Regulation, App Store & Global Decoupling with Benedict Evans

Bernard Leong — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 02:13:43 GMT

In episode 331, Benedict Evans, the independent analyst and venture partner from Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First, joined us in the first of the two episodes to discuss the major topics that are dominating the global technology landscape. We began the conversation with his recent stint with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in Silicon Valley and the key takeaways during his stay there. Then we dived deep into the key topics which dominate the global technology landscape: tech regulation of the major Internet giants, the app store conversation featuring Fornite vs Apple and the decoupling of the global supply chain with China and India.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Benedict Evans (@benedictevans , LinkedIn, Personal Site, Essays, Newsletter), Venture Partner of Mosaic Ventures & Entrepreneur First & Independent Analyst
- When we had the first conversation with you, you were a partner in the renowned Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, the first question for us, what are the key takeaways thinking about technology from the lens of a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley?
- Since you have moved back to the United Kingdom, what have you been up to?
Tech Regulation and App Stores
- Reference: Regulating Technology , Would breaking up big tech work? What would? and App Stores, Trust & Anti Trust
- Let’s start with the recent movement in the US by the Congress to call for the break up of the four major tech companies: Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple and potentially restricting their M&A activity. We have the leaders of these four tech companies brought before the Congressional hearings.
- From looking at the hearings, what does the regulators get right and wrong about big technology companies and insist that the only way is to ‘break them up’?
- Can we learn from history on how we should think about breaking up big technology companies? For example drawing on what they did to Standard Oil during the gilded age in the 1900s in the U.S.?
The decoupling of global supply chains
- Currently, China’s market is 3x times larger than the US. The Indian market is teaming up with US companies to move their supply chain out from China to India, for example, Apple. Will the Chinese and Indian Internet outsize the US market so that it is no longer the axis of innovation and technology growth in the next few decades?
- Do you think that the future of the Internet is going to be “balkanized”: China, India, Europe, US and the rest of the world?
- Will the decoupling of supply chains between China and the US change the way the technology sector will evolve in the next few decades?

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · Technology Regulation, App Store & Global Decoupling with Benedict Evans

China Internet Report 2020 with Gareth Nicholson

Bernard Leong — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 00:57:35 GMT

In episode 330, Gareth Nicholson, deputy technology editor on the technology desk from South China Morning Post (SCMP), joined us to discuss the China Internet Report 2020 and its impact to the rest of the world. We discuss the key major trends: the impact of COVID-19 on China tech and how it transform food delivery, the accelerated self-reliance of Chinese companies due to the US and China tensions, the year of 5G for mass adoption in the Chinese domestic market, live streaming and ecommerce, and finally, why the Chinese companies are now moving their US listings back to China. Last but not least, Gareth shared the key trends that he will watch out for in 2021.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Gareth Nicholson, deputy Technology Editor on the Technology desk, South China Morning Post.
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to?
China Internet Report 2020 by South China Morning Post
- Now let’s talk about the report. It’s SCMP’s 3rd annual report, what are some of the key sections and themes that the China Internet report has always focused on?
- As we understand that SCMP has been delivering the China Internet Report every year since 2016, what are the key themes which the report have discussed every year till now?
- I love how the report starts off with ‘China in a glance’ which provides readers with a general background of the Chinese internet space. The graphic comparisons for the China vs US internet landscapes are helpful. For example, I didn’t know that China has about 3 times the number of internet users at 904M in comparison to US’s almost 300 million (298M). Can you provide us a snapshot on how the Chinese Internet is now compared with respect to the US?
- Who are now the key players within the Chinese tech ecosystem, as we notice that Baidu has dropped down to number 11?
- Trend #1: Impact of COVID-19 to China Tech Sector
  - What is the impact of COVID-19 on China’s tech sector?
  - How did the Ministry of Industry & Information Technology in China respond to COVID-19 pandemic? with plans along the 5 themes: building a strong infrastructure network, applying digital technology in all sectors, enhancing data security, strengthening tech innovation and optimizing broader industry development?
- Trend #2: China Accelerated Self-Reliance on Tech
  - With the ongoing tension escalating between the US and China, how is China doing on the path of becoming technologically self-reliant?
  - What are some of China’s major challenges?
  - What is the impact of this move to self-reliance for Huawei and other Chinese companies?
  - Where are the competencies that Chinese tech firms will need to develop to bridge the gap between them and the US?
- Trend #3: The year of mass adoption for 5G
  - Is this the year for mass adoption for 5G?
  - What will be the impact of 5G for Chinese tech in the next two to three years?
- Trend #4: Live Streaming's 3rd Phase in China
  - What are the 3 phases of livestream in China and what’s after the 3rd phase?
- Trend #5: China companies listing back at home (Hong Kong and Shanghai)
  - We are seeing a lot of Chinese companies looking to list in HK or Shanghai. Do you see this a part of the great trend due to the tensions between the US and China?
  - At the same time, we see accounting scandals for example, Luckin Coffee and TAL education and this leads to more scrutiny to Chinese companies, do you think that more and more chinese companies will delist from the US and move back to China?
- What topics are covered in the pro-report as compared from the free report?
- Closing
  - How do our audience find you?

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · China Internet Report 2020 with Gareth Nicholson

Gojek vs Grab in Southeast Asia 2020 Edition with Jon Russell

Bernard Leong — Sun, 12 Jul 2020 01:08:47 GMT

In episode 329, Jon Russell, editor of The Ken Southeast Asia, joined us in a conversation to discuss the continuing epic rivalry between Gojek and Grab in the era of COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from the perspective of Gojek, we discuss the impact and changes made after the founder's departure and how they are re-organizing to tackle Grab's onslaught in Indonesia and expanding out to other parts of Southeast Asia from Indonesia. With new investments from US tech giants, Facebook and Paypal, we discuss how Gojek is shaping itself to be a worthy rival against Grab backed by SoftBank and Alibaba in Southeast Asia. Last but not least, Jon discuss why the media streaming giants of Southeast Asia, HOOQ & iFlix failed to take on Netflix and the key takeaways for unicorn start-ups in the era of COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion:

Jon Russell (@jonrussell, LinkedIn, Newsletter, Personal Site, The Ken Profile)
- Since we have last spoken, you have moved out of TechCrunch and now joined The Ken. Can you talk about The Ken and what is your new role there?
Grab vs Gojek in 2020
- Let’s start from Gojek, a lot of things have happened. Their founder and former CEO, Nadiem Makarim has left the company and become a Minister of Education & Culture under President Jokowi’s cabinet in Indonesia. What’s the impact on Gojek after his departure? (Ref: Up for Grab? Gojek after Nadiem Makarim)
- They have started the expansion to Southeast Asia last year but it has not grown very well. (Ref: Gojek’s stunted SE Asia expansion story), can you talk about their challenges in expanding out of Indonesia while dealing with Grab who is competing in their backyard?
- That being said, they have been doing well on the fundraising front: Gojek has been invested by Facebook and Paypal (Source: CNBC).
- What are the implications to Gojek as Google, Paypal and Facebook are lining up against Grab? (Ref: Facebook, PayPal’s payments play a super app-ortunity for Gojek)
- The US tech giants are in Indonesia just as the Chinese tech giants, for example, Meituan-Dianping which is a super app entering the market. What can Gojek and Grab learn from Meituan-Dianping? (Ref: The Gojek-Grab SE Asia super app battle with a Meituan twist)
- What is the impact of COVID-19 on Grab and Gojek?
- Both Gojek and Grab have done layoffs in the past month. How do you look at the approaches from both companies? (Grab CEO’s memo, Gojek’s layoffs)
- SoftBank has been taking a hit from Wework and Oyo. What is the downstream impact to Grab based on the current troubles in the Vision Fund?
- Is the race to dominate Southeast Asia going down to whether Grab or Gojek wins Indonesia and not the other countries (Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia, Singapore)?
- What will the key battleground for Grab and Gojek in the coming 2021?
Impact of COVID-19 to Southeast Asia
- You have written a lot of media streaming companies similar to Netflix, for example HOOQ from Singapore and iFlix from Malaysia. The COVID-19 pandemic have led to HOOQ being shut down and iFlix being acquired from Tencent. What are the key learnings from HOOQ’s downfall and iFlix’s acquisition?
- What are the key takeaways from the COVID pandemic for Southeast Asia? (Ref: 7 takeaways from Covid-time digital winners and losers in Southeast Asia)
Closing
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life?
  - Jon's recommendation: Sarah Frier, "No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram"
- How do my audience find you?

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · Gojek vs Grab in Southeast Asia 2020 Edition with Jon Russell

Pinduoduo on Social Ecommerce & Agriculture with Xinyi Lim

Bernard Leong — Sun, 28 Jun 2020 06:12:57 GMT

In episode 328, Lim Xinyi, senior director for corporate development from Pinduoduo, joined us to discuss the social ecommerce company and its impact on agriculture. Starting from the conversation, Xinyi shared her background and how she came to discover and eventually join Pinduoduo. She discuss Pinduoduo's current mission and vision and how the company pioneered social ecommerce in China. Last but not least she shared Pinduoduo's contributions to the agriculture sector in China and how they are helping farmers to get their agricultural produce to the consumers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Lim Xinyi (LinkedIn), Senior Director, Corporate Development at Pinduoduo (@PinduoduoInc, LinkedIn, Medium)
- How did you start your career?
- In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons you can share with our audience.
Pinduoduo’s Social E-Commerce Model and its impact in agriculture
- Can you briefly introduce us to your company Pinduoduo in China and its mission and vision?
- How do you explain Pinduoduo as a social e-commerce company to the audience out there?
- Before Pinduoduo came into the scene in 2015, the ecommerce industry led by Alibaba and Jingdong (JD) generated a combined revenue of $433B gross merchandise value (GMV), and within 5 years, it skyrocketed from a startup to 57B company with buying base of 585M generating $144B of GMV (reference from Pinduoduo & the rise of Social E-Commerce by YCombinator) and by 2020, it’s the 2nd largest ecommerce platform in China behind Alibaba. Can you talk about how Pinduoduo pioneered the concept of social shopping in China?
- What are the features of social shopping that have been introduced by Pinduoduo? (For example, 1/ creating community via team purchase, 2/ Daily Check ins, 3/ Price Chop, 4/ Card program, 5/ mini games and 6/ personalized recommendations referenced in the YC article)
- What are the misconceptions from the Western world which Pinduoduo has been mis-understood as a company?
- How does Pinduoduo contribute to the agriculture sector in China? (See reference by Parmesh Shah from World Bank)
- Why is Pinduoduo well-suited to help farmers and digitize agriculture?
- What are the benefits for the farmers in China?
- How does Duo Duo Farms help to alleviate poverty and create a sustainable future via the team purchase feature in Pinduoduo?
- Can you elaborate about the Duo Duo Farm project in Yunnan and what are the key learnings there?
- Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, what have been Pinduoduo’s response to the situation and what you have done to help the farmers to tide over this tough period?
- What are the key trends you see in the future of social commerce and does this extend beyond agriculture for Pinduoduo?
Closing
- Can you recommend anything (a book, movie or article) which has inspired you recently?
  - Xinyi's recommendations: understanding the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
- How do our audience find you?

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · Pinduoduo on Social Ecommerce & Agriculture with Xinyi Lim

Samsung Rising Part Two with Geoffrey Cain

Bernard Leong — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 14:15:46 GMT

In episode 327, Geoffrey Cain, author of "Samsung Rising" joins us in a two parts conversation on his journey across Asia as a journalist and author and discuss the backstory of his new book behind the Samsung Group and how it rise to be the most powerful Chaebol (large family-owned business conglomerate) in Korea. In the second part of the conversation, Geoffrey discuss Samsung's complicated relationship with Apple as both a supplier and competitor and how their arrogance and hierarchical culture led to the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. He reveals why he did not include the story of Lee Boo-jin, the daughter of Lee Kun Hee who is often tapped as a potential successor to the Samsung Group and why it is unlikely that there will be a female leader to helm the Samsung Group. Last but not least, Geoffrey offered his perspectives on how Samsung is responsible for exporting culture out of Korea to the rest of the world, particularly the movie Parasite and his thoughts on whether there is a future for another Samsung-like Group emerging in another market out there.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Geoffrey Cain, author of “Samsung Rising”, and also regular commentator on The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Time & The New Republic and former correspondent in The Economist (Website, @geoffrey_cain, LinkedIn)
Samsung Rising (Random House, Amazon, Apple Books) [0:30]
- What are your perspectives on Samsung’s dual relationship with Apple, as a supplier of solid state drives and OLED screens for the iPhone while competing with their flagship phones, the Galaxy series phones? [0:34]
- Samsung Galaxy note 7 fiasco is well covered in the press. In your view in covering that story, what lessons have Samsung learned from that disaster that almost ended their smartphone dominance? [3:56]
- What are the fundamental flaws that are in Samsung that are not functioning in today's world? [8:06]
- The battles within the Lee family for the succession to Samsung's empire. [11:28]
- Comments on Lee Boo-jin, the sister of Jay Lee as a potential successor to the Samsung Group, and why it is not included in the book "Samsung Rising"
- Samsung's family connection with the Oscar best movie in 2020 "Parasite" [22:24]
- Do you think that the success that Samsung has attained after 80 years of work can be replicated in other countries today? [27:40]
Closing
- Do you have any recommendation of a book, movie, podcast or anything which have inspired you recently? [32:25]
  - Geoffrey's recommendations: Joe Studwell "How Asia Works", James Fallows "China Airborne".
- Where do our audience find you? [33:45]

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · Samsung Rising Part Two with Geoffrey Cain

Samsung Rising Part One with Geoffrey Cain

Bernard Leong — Sat, 06 Jun 2020 04:14:02 GMT

In episode 326, Geoffrey Cain, author of "Samsung Rising" joins us in a two parts conversation on his journey across Asia as a journalist and author and discuss the backstory of his new book behind the Samsung Group and how it rise to be the most powerful Chaebol (large family-owned business conglomerate) in Korea. In the first part of the conversation, Geoffrey discuss the inspiration and the main themes behind "Samsung Rising", and shares the origin story of Samsung and how they went from an agriculture business to a global technology giant today along with Apple and Huawei by a family owned enterprise spanning three generations.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Geoffrey Cain, author of “Samsung Rising”, and also regular commentator on The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Time & The New Republic and former correspondent in The Economist (Website, @geoffrey_cain, LinkedIn) [0:26]
- How did you start your career? [0:55]
- What have you learned from covering North & South Korea, China and Cambodia in your career journey? [8:35]
- In your career journey, what are the key lessons you can share with the younger audience? [10:55]
- Comments on how the history of Samsung aligns with the story of South Korea's rise as one of the top economies in Asia.
Samsung Rising (Random House, Amazon, Apple Books) [15:45]
- What is the inspiration behind writing the book “Samsung Rising”? [16:20]
- Who are the intended audience of the book? [20:32]
- If you will to summarize the key takeaways of the book, what would they be so that you can spark their interest to learn more? [22:22]
- Can you talk about the origins of Samsung and what type of businesses that the family behind the company have grown from a small trading company to modern technology giant today? [25:05]
- What does Chaebol means in South Korea? [33:05]
- The family behind Samsung have gone through three generations: the founder Lee Byung-chul (or B.C Lee in short), Lee Kun-hee and recently to Jay Lee. Can you talk about how each leader has been different and what their contributions to Samsung have been? [36:50]
- Can Jay Lee step up for Samsung as his father and grandfather have in the past? [49:04]
- Jay Lee's investments in Silicon Valley and how he is thinking about Samsung's future given that the environment is currently becoming more complex with US protectionism. [52:00]

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · Samsung Rising Part One with Geoffrey Cain

Why Facebook invest in Reliance Jio Platforms with Tim Culpan

Bernard Leong — Sat, 16 May 2020 09:54:32 GMT

In episode 325, Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us to dissect the most important deal that rocked the Asian business and technology landscape with Facebook investing 5.7B into Reliance Jio. We began the conversation with Tim to set the context behind the deal and what both Facebook & Reliance Jio Platforms stand to gain from this partnership and their ambitions to win the market with a super app concept that is now popular in China & Southeast Asia. Tim also examined the implications to what it means for the Chinese technology giants from Alibaba to Xiaomi in India and the US technology giants such as Google and Amazon. Last but not least, Tim discuss the recent debacles which SoftBank faced with their investments and whether there is a silver lining for the Vision Fund.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Tim Culpan (@tculpan, Linkedin, Bloomberg), Columnist at Bloomberg [0:29]
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [1:23]
Facebook investment in Reliance Jio and its impact on India [2:39]
- Ref: Facebook and Ambani Can Be Happy Together by Tim Culpan and Why Facebook is betting big in India by Ravi Agrawal (Source: Foreign Policy)
- To start, Facebook has invested $5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms, a three-and-a-half-year-old subsidiary of the nation’s most valued firm, Reliance Industries, and the biggest telecom operator in the country with more than 370 million subscribers and valued Jio at a pre-money valuation of $65.95 billion, makes Facebook the largest minority shareholder in the Indian telecom network.
- To help our audience to start the conversation, what does the telco Reliance Jio do and why they are influential in the India telco market? (Note: Mukesh Ambani is the richest tycoon in India - see AA episode 264 with James Crabtree who profiled him and his family in the book “The Billionaire Raj”)
- What is Jio Platforms and Mukesh Ambani, the person behind Jio Platforms and his ownership of Reliance Industries, the largest Indian conglomerate. [4:38]
- Why did Facebook invest in Jio? [6:58]
- How will Facebook extend its influence of its platform (and we include Whatsapp and Instagram) across India through this investment in Reliance Jio? [8:33]
- How would this partnership between Facebook and Reliance Jio Platforms help the small and medium businesses and jumpstart their Jio Mart initiative? [10:51]
- Does Jio Mart will built or be built into the super app under Whatsapp based on this alliance? [13:25]
- What does this alliance between Facebook and Reliance mean for the China tech giants (Bytedance, Alibaba via Paytm, Xiaomi and Tencent) in Indian market? [15:00]
- Will Google and Amazon consider the same path now that Facebook did the investment? [18:10]
- What does Reliance Jio gain from the alliance with Facebook in India? [19:51]
- How will ecommerce or the mobile landscape change in India with this alliance? [21:25]
- What does this mean for China and US tech giants entering into India which is becoming more protectionist in the past two years? [22:44]
Will SoftBank’s Vision Fund fail in the end? [25:31]
- Ref: Masayoshi Son's Impatience Just Cost $17 Billion, Bankers Keep Vision Fund Going With Rubber Bands and Being a Sore Loser Doesn't Make WeWork’s Neumann Wrong
- Why did the Vision Fund experience a set of continued problems from its investees such as Wework and Oyo? [25:54]
- What can we learn from SoftBank’s other failed investments for example, Zume, the pizza startup in the Bay Area? (QOTD: “A visionary founder with a fire hose of money can’t solve every problem.” by Sarah McBride in the article) [28:42]
- What has happened to companies which have gone public such as Slack and Uber? [31:06]
- Are there any silver linings for the Vision Fund, for example, Grab, Didi or Bytedance? [32:43]
- Does the Vision Fund have a future? [35:50]
Closing [37:01]
- Any book or stuff to recommend? [37:19]
  - Tim's recommendations: dance music in the 1980s, 1990s & 2000s and Youtube
- Where can our audience find you? [38:01]

Podcast Information:

The Anonymous Report that brought down Luckin Coffee with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 15:36:41 GMT

In episode 324, Rui Ma, co-host of Tech Buzz China podcast and a trusted voice on China Tech joined us on a conversation to dive deeper on the anonymous report that unveiled Luckin Coffee's recent debacle. We start with a quick history of Luckin Coffee with Rui Ma breaking down the backstory on how Luckin Coffee's alleged fraud came to light and the impact after the fallout. Rui Ma dived deeper beyond the original story with an analysis of the anonymous report entitled "Luckin Coffee: Fraud + Fundamentally Broken Business". Last but not least, she discussed the implications of Luckin Coffee's debacle and how investigative reporting and corporate activism will impact the public listings of Chinese companies in the US.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Rui Ma, Creator & Host of Tech Buzz China podcast by Pandaily produced by SupChina (LinkedIn, @ruima) [0:26]
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [0:30]
Luckin Coffee Debacle [1:36]
- Disclaimer: The information provided here by our host and guest are not here to encourage buying or selling any equities mentioned here and investing is strictly our audience’s own responsibility. So, please do your homework.
- Origins of Luckin Coffee has been covered by Matthew Brennan in Episode 279 and it was starting to challenge Starbucks Cafe in China two years back.
- Highly recommended: Rui Ma and Ying Ying Lu in Techbuzz China Episode 65 (Extra Buzz Special): Luckin’s luck ran out
- To help our audience, Luckin Coffee (瑞幸咖啡) started off with the on demand delivery model and did not have physical stores similar to Starbucks. Then it started scaling up by burning investment cash and building physical stores. The investors came from a variety of sources (according to CB Insights): venture capital (JOY Capital), asset management fund (BlackRock), private equity (Centurium Capital), China International Capital Corporation or CICC (investment bank) and GIC (the sovereign wealth fund in Singapore).
- Let’s start from today and work backwards to what happened that led to alleged fraud of Luckin Coffee being announced by the company.
  - How was alleged fraud for Luckin Coffee come to public attention? (Source: Luckin Coffee’s filing of 6K) [3:04]
  - What was the alleged fraud about and how much has been uncovered? [4:23]
  - Who are the people behind the alleged fraud? [5:27]
  - What is the impact given the announcement of the alleged fraud by Luckin Coffee, from stock crashing to customers rushing to claim their coffee? (Source: SCMP) [7:08]
  - Luckin Coffee has been a strange story in China. What is the business model that led to them going public? [9:11]
- The Anonymous Report titled “Luckin Coffee: Fraud + Fundamentally Broken Business” [11:40]
  - Citing the Extra Buzz Newsletter #7: “The report was very extensive 89 pages, utilized 92 full time, 1418 part time staff on the ground who recorded 11,000 hours of video, which is almost 3 years worth of store days covering 620 stores in 38 different cities.”
  - Basically, it is this report that fanned the flames for Luckin Coffee in their present state. However, there’s a lot of confusion of who did the report, for example, 燃财经 Rancaijing and Muddy Waters leeched off from the report (and somehow Western Media mistakenly attributed to them). So, the first question, what are the key facts behind the report? [12:24]
  - The report have two interesting parts titled “The Fraud” and “The Fundamentally Broken Business Model”. Let start from the first part “The Fraud”, what are the key smoking gun evidence and red flags cited that led to the alleged fraud claim in the report?
  - What are the business model flaws cited in the report that claims that Luckin Coffee has the fundamentally business model? [15:16]
  - Let’s zero in to one key red flag from the “Fraud” section: “Number of items per store per day inflated by 69% in 2019 3Q and 88% in 2019 4Q, supported by 11,260 hours of store traffic video”, can you explain how the report presents its investigation and use the numbers to get to the conclusion? [18:44]
  - The anonymous report took a very strong look at the unit economics of Luckin Coffee (Business Flaw #3) at page 78: what are the key arguments from the report that establish that Luckin Coffee is not able to be profitable? [20:40]
  - With such a construction of an elaborate report and this entire episode can be turned into a “Billions” TV series episode (by Showtime), the $1m dollar question: who is behind the report and what is their motivation behind it? [24:06]
- Aftermath
  - Who benefits from the entire Luckin Coffee’s debacle? [25:44]
    - The hedge funds
    - Starbucks in China, given that 30% of their revenues came from China before Luckin’s entrance to challenge them.
  - One interesting consequence of this Luckin Coffee episode, is the quality of investigative reporting for corporate fraud in China. The anonymous report took a lot of effort in constructing the actual picture by people going undercover to find out the actual numbers. We notice that this is getting better whenever each scandal pops up in the market. Does that mean that we will see more of these exposes? [27:16]
  - What are your first thoughts when the report was first released into the public? [30:00]
  - Do you think that how Chinese companies should do to dispel myths or being challenged about their businesses? [31:48]
  - What do you think that the US investor learn from this episode? [33:30]
  - Do you think that the English and US media have reported the Luckin Coffee narrative properly? [35:47]
- Closing [37:52]
  - Rui Ma's recommendation: Dan Grover "How Chinese Apps Handled COVID-19"
  - Carol's video on how millennials cope with COVID-19 with the apps on their smart phone.

Podcast Information:

analyseasia · The Anonymous Report that brought down Luckin Coffee with Rui Ma

SparkLabs Connex with Charles Reed Anderson

Bernard Leong — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 01:04:52 GMT

In episode 323, Charles Reed Anderson, our long time guest of the show and host of TechBurst Asia joins us to discuss his latest venture, SparkLabs Connex, a new accelerator program for smart city technologies under the SparkLabs Group. Before diving deep into the new venture, Charles discuss the challenges of smart city rankings and how they did not reflect the reality of what is happening on the ground. Then he began to discuss the rationale of SparkLabs Connex and why it is time to start an accelerator program specifically on smart city technologies. Last but not least, he break down how the global program works, offered his perspectives on what types of entrepreneurs he would seek to fund and address how SparkLabs Connex will operate in a COVID-19 world.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Charles Anderson (@CRASingapore, LinkedIn), founder of Charles Reed Anderson and Associates, host of TechBurst Asia (iTunes, Spotify, @techburstasia) and now general partner for SparkLabs Connex. [0:24]
- What have you been up to since we last spoke? [1:10]
- You have recently written an article about smart city rankings and why the rankings do not reflect reality. Can you talk about why this is the case? [1:40]
SparkLabs Connex [5:45]
- Can you briefly introduce your new venture SparkLabs Connex from the SparkLabs Group? (Source: TechCrunch) [6:00]
- There are already a lot of incubators and accelerators across different geographies, but very few have succeeded. Why do you think that this is the time to start another one? [7:57]
- What are the industry verticals or technologies that SparkLabs Connex is looking into? (5G, IoT, Smart Cities)? [9:15]
- How does the model work for SparkLabs Connex and how does it work with the ecosystem, for example, partners? [10:50]
- Why are the vendors willing to work with you as many accelerators have been building partnerships across industries? [13:44]
- How does SparkLabs Connex work for entrepreneurs? [15:05]
- What are the traits of startup founders that you will seek to invest in? [17:05]
- What are the types of technologies which you will specifically look into as you invest in the space? [22:00]
- Omate: elderly care watch from Shenzhen and expand in France [22:40]
- Can you share the stories of early applicants into the program? [24:40]
- Can you share the geographical profiles of startups in SparkLabs Connex and whether there are preferences over some geographies? [25:40]
- Are there any additional things which you want the applicants to know? [27:40]
- Given the recent coronavirus outbreak, do you think that it will slow down the growth of IoT and 5G in the market? [28:25]
- How about technologies in IoT and 5G which might have come up during the COVID-19 outbreak? [29:55]
- Press releases:
  - SparkLabs Group launches Connex, an accelerator program for smart city technology (TechCrunch)
  - SparkLabs Connex, a New IoT, Smart City & PropTech Accelerator, Unites the Supply & Demand sides of the Technology Ecosystem to Accelerate Access to Innovation (Business Insider)
Closing [32:30]
- Charles recommendations: Parag Khanna's "The Future is Asian"
- Where can we find him?

Podcast Information:

BiliBili in China with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 07:21:26 GMT

In episode 322, Rui Ma from Techbuzz China joined us to discuss Bilibili in China and discuss how the video site has grown from a niche community of anime lovers to its now proclaimed "Youtube of China". Starting from the origin story, Rui Ma traced the backstory in how Bilibili came to be and how the site has diversified their monetisation revenues from esports, ecommerce to advertising. Last but not least, she discuss how Bilibili balances its current growth strategy against the patience of the community behind after going public.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Rui Ma, Founder of Euzen Labs and Host of TechBuzz podcast by Pandaily produced by SupChina & Extra Buzz Newsletter (LinkedIn, @ruima) [0:28]
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [0:31]
Bilibili in China [1:19]
- Can you talk about the origin story of Bilibili and how it has become a platform for fans who are experts in certain niches such as anime in China? [1:40]
- Who are the founders of Bilibili? [5:08]
- What are the monetization models for Bilibili? [7:55]
- How much that Bilibili has ventured into e-sports after acquisition of an e-sports team? [10:24]
- What are the major similarities & differences between Bilibili and Youtube?[12:50]
- User experience on Bilibili - bullet comments [15:44]
- Most popular phrases that come from bullet comments in 2019 - AWSL [17:30]
- Can you describe how users actually register and get themselves memberships on the Bilibili? How is this different from public social networks out there such as Facebook, Wechat? [18:45]
- What are the interesting partnerships that Bilibili has done so far for example, New Year Gala with Xinhua Agency and ecommerce with Taobao (Alibaba)? [21:02]
- Do you think that the Bilibili model can be exported to the US, India or Southeast Asia? Are there already examples of similar models out there? [22:55]
- The balance between growth and user community interests in Bilibili [26:30]
- Other references: Check out Techbuzz China's Episode 57: Bilibili - The YouTube of China?
Closing [28:30]
- Anything if you want to recommend that inspire you recently? [28:35]
  - David Epstein "Range"
- How do my audience find you? [29:01]

Podcast Information:

China AI Report 2020 by SCMP with Gareth Nicholson & Sarah Dai

Bernard Leong — Sun, 15 Mar 2020 02:13:38 GMT

In episode 321, Gareth Nicholson and Sarah Dai from South China Morning Post discuss the recently launched China AI Report 2020. In the interview, Gareth and Sarah share the key themes and intended audience for the report and offered their perspectives to how artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved in China. We examine the key drivers behind the growth of AI in China and how China is solving the talent pipeline given it's an evolving technology and what we should expect in the next few years.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Gareth Nicholson, (LinkedIn) senior news editor on the Technology desk and Sarah Dai (@sarah_dai, Linkedin), senior reporter from South China Morning Post (SCMP)
- Can you talk about your roles in SCMP and what do you do?
China AI Report 2020 by South China Morning Post
- What are the key themes for the report?
- Who is the intended audience for the report?
- What key drivers are behind the growth of AI in China?
- If we look at the Chinese market on AI, how do we size the market?
- Are there any cultural differences between US and China in their attitudes towards AI? Do they push how the AI technology has evolved in China?
- What are the key verticals where AI are dominating in China?
- Which are the AI startup unicorns in China which we need to watch?
- How does China solve the talent pipeline for AI given that it is an evolving technology?
- Unlike the US, China has the hardware advantage that accelerates AI computations. How do they augment the AI market and how are they viewed by investors?
- What are your perspectives on the different verticals of AI in China?
  - Autonomous Driving
  - Finance
  - Healthcare
  - Retail
  - Smart Cities
  - Smart Homes
  - Manufacturing
- Where do you think that the Chinese AI industry will evolve towards in the future?
Closing
- Where can our audience find the China AI Report 2020 by South China Morning Post? (Do note that there is a 20% off till the end of the month if you click on this link)
- Where can our audience find you?

Podcast Information:

The COVID-19 Coronavirus and its impact from China to Asia Pacific Part 2 with Carol Yin

Bernard Leong — Sat, 07 Mar 2020 08:58:40 GMT

In this episode, Carol Yin and guest host Deng Yuying, CEO of Esevel continues their conversation on the COVID-19 coronavirus and examines its impact from China to Asia Pacific. They discuss the latest updates on how the coronavirus has now spread to Korea, Japan, Italy, Iran and US, while examining how different industries from tourism, airlines ,ecommerce, pharmaceutical and health supplies are affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Last but not least, they analyzed the short, middle and long term impact of the virus and break down the different scenarios on where this may lead in the upcoming months in 2020.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Carol Yin (@carolyujiayin, LinkedIn), Host of Analyse Asia and guest host Deng Yuying, CEO of Esevel (@yuyingdeng, LinkedIn) [0:55]
The Wuhan Coronavirus and its impact to Asia Pacific Part 2 [1:00]
- What has been the recent updates in China with respect to the COVID-19 virus? [1:07]
- Since our last conversation, what has happened with the Coronavirus globally? (US, Italy, Korea and Japan) [2:35]
- Which countries have closed their borders to China now in both flights and immigration? [3:25]
Business Impact of COVID-19 in China and Asia Pacific
- How about the foreign multinationals such as Tesla, Foxconn and Apple where they are highly dependent on the Chinese supply chain? (Reference: Apple) [5:00]
- Can you talk about the countries in Asia Pacific which are affected? [7:21]
  - Japan: Schools are closed and the likelihood of cancellation of the Tokyo 2020 olympics
  - Korea: How Korea has suddenly reported a surge in cases
  - Southeast Asia: Indonesia and Thailand [11:02]
- Let’s examine the short, middle and long term impact for industries in detail [12:35]
  - Tourism [12:55]
  - Airline Industries: There is a possibility of airlines going bankrupt as Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines have announced paycuts for their staff. [15:30]
- What are the industries benefited from the coronavirus? [16:30]
  - Technology industry: Gaming industry (Tencent), Ecommerce (Alibaba), Zoom - remote working [16:50]
  - Pharmaceuticals and medical supplies (shortage of masks and sanitizers) [18:50]
- What should we expect in the next couple of weeks and months? [19:30]
  - McKinsey Report: COVID-19 - Implications for Business Report on 27 Feb 2020

Podcast Information:

The COVID-19 Coronavirus and its impact from China to Asia Pacific with Carol Yin

Bernard Leong — Sun, 23 Feb 2020 00:21:52 GMT

After a long hiatus, in Episode 319, our host Carol Yin takes the seat to discuss the recent COVID-19 coronavirus and examine the impact of the pandemic to the rest of Asia Pacific and globally in two part series. In the first part of the series, together with the guest host, Yuying Deng, Carol related her experience living through the challenging times in China before and after the COVID-19 virus broke out. We discuss the origins of the virus, the measures in how the Chinese government are dealing with the outbreak, the outpour of grief from the Chinese over Dr Li Wenliang's death and broke down the major misconceptions perpetuated by media outlets.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Carol Yin (@carolyujiayin, LinkedIn), Host of Analyse Asia and guest host Deng Yuying, CEO of Altizen (@yuyingdeng, LinkedIn)
The COVID-19 Coronavirus (WHO site) and its impact to Asia Pacific (Reference: Nikkei Asia Review)
- A view of how the pandemic with the COVID-19 virus started before and after the outbreak made public and during Chinese New Year from Carol's perspective [0:52]
- To start, let’s take a chronological approach to the whole incident, how did the coronavirus originated in Wuhan and started spreading across Asia Pacific and other parts of the world? [8:49]
- Wuhan is a major transportation hub and the city is of the size of Pittsburgh in the US. Did the Chinese New Year holidays catalyse the spread of the virus due to the large scale movement of people within China? [12:58]
- How about the virus? Where did it originate? How does it compare to the SARS situation in 2003 or similar outbreaks? [14:54]
- What are the symptoms for someone who contract the coronavirus and how do we know if we suffer from flu or the coronoavirus? [17:15]
- What has the Chinese government done so far in China? [19:10]
- How are the small and medium businesses in China coping with the outbreak? [26:21]
- What is the situation within Wuhan itself and the rest of China? [27:15]
- What are the misconceptions that the rest of the world have with regards to the coronavirus? [30:46]
- What is it like now living in Shanghai and dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak? [33:00]
- When are things likely to go normal in China such that the Chinese government will stop the pause button currently with their response to the situation? [36:03]
- Dr Li Wenliang's death and why the Chinese were outraged by his death. (Source: Financial Times) [37:00]
- As of today (and recording is accurate as of 9 Feb 2020), how many cases are confirmed in China and the rest of the world? [40:40]
- The impact of COVID-19 on groceries deliveries [45:25]
- Misinformation in the Internet across the world with tech platforms struggling to deal with them (Wechat, Twitter) [46:40]
  - Wechat fact checking platform against Twitter's no fact checking.

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin) and originally created by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack.

The State of China & SoftBank in 2019 with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 08:53:43 GMT

Shai Oster, the Asia Bureau Chief from The Information reviews the year of 2019 on how the technology giants in China and SoftBank have fared and offers his annual predictions to what will be happening in 2020. Shai reviewed his 2018 predictions and ranked how each of them have gone for 2019. In addition, he offered his perspectives on how Huawei and ByteDance will face constant challenges in their overseas expansion and whether SoftBank will raise their 2nd fund and the downstream impact from their debacle with Wework trickling down to Oyo, Didi and Grab in 2020. Last but not least, Shai throws forward what he thinks will happen in 2020.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Shai Oster (@beijingscribe, LinkedIn, TheInformation Profile), Asia Bureau Chief in The Information
So since your last appearance on the show, what have you been up to?
2018 predictions
- Didi to IPO in end 2019.
- ByteDance will continue to grow and fight Facebook in Southeast Asia, but will not IPO.
- Ant Financial’s path to IPO is not clear.
- What will happen to Xiaomi with their overseas expansion?
- First-quarter of scary growth in China and followed by the wave of government stimulus in China.
State of China and SoftBank for 2019
What are the few events which you feel that 2019 has shifted the trajectory for SoftBank and Chinese tech giants?
Event 1: The US and China Relationship: There is obviously a lot of tension between the two countries, and a display of that tension can be seen in what has happened to Huawei in the last year. There was the trade ban that is forcing US companies like Google & Qualcomm to stop providing to Huawei & also the FCC ban that stops the use of government fund to purchase equipment from Huawei. It seems like Huawei is always in the news these days, from their product launches, to their lawsuits, and also the recent employee detainment allegations.
- How has Huawei been doing and coping with all the challenges they’re facing in the U.S.?
- Do you think that the Huawei CEO has been responding well to the critics?
- What is the future of 5G for Huawei across the world?
Event 2: The SoftBank debacle with Wework and Vision Fund 2
- We all know that WeWork is not what used to be, so has Vision Fund 1 reached the peak with Wework’s collapse?
- How has that changed the way how the public markets have perceived the startup unicorns given that Uber have not performed well for their IPO and Wework failed to even go public?
- Will Oyo in India be the next on a similar trajectory with Wework?
- Will SoftBank be able to raise the 2nd Vision Fund in 2020?
- Are the other unicorns backed by SoftBank in danger, for example, Bytedance and Grab?
Event 3: The public markets for Chinese Tech Startups
- Alibaba has just popped in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, after Xiaomi and Meituan-Dianping, do you think that HKSE will be the Chinese tech startups’ port of call for IPO?
- With the chaos in Hong Kong and investors moving their assets from Hong Kong to Singapore, do you foresee that the HKSE will lose its pole position as a financial hub and what it means for chinese tech giants planning to go IPO?
- Other long term implications & effects to businesses & tech companies?
Event 4: Bytedance
- Will Bytedance end up in the same predicament similar to Huawei?
- Bytedance is also getting pushback in India, does that mean that the overseas growth potential for this company will end?
Event 5: Overseas expansion for Chinese Tech Titans
- Will the Chinese Tech Titans focus on Southeast Asia, India and the rest of the world instead of continuing its trajectory to put a foothold in the US?
- Can they compete with Google, Amazon and Facebook in these nascent markets?
What will be your predictions for 2020 and what are the key things you will be watching out for?
- China & US relationship in 2020
- China economy
- Tiktok will retreat from US, scale back & renew their focus on China, India, Southeast Asia & Africa
- Huawei
- Shift of Money out of China and US into Southeast Asia and India from VCs and PE funds.
Closing
- How do my audience find you?
- Check out the Information's new app: "Tech Top 10"

Podcast Information:

Shift to the East with Simon Kemp

Bernard Leong — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 14:31:06 GMT

Simon Kemp, founder and CEO of Kepios joined us to discuss the recent Digital 2019 Q4 Global StatShot Report and share the major observations in how Asia Pacific has shifted social media from the west to the east. Starting from the report, Simon shares the key major observations including Asia's rising, Tik Tok vs Facebook and how 5G will shape mobile and social media in 2020. Last but not least, Simon offers his predictions on the digital world as he looks forward to 2020.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Simon Kemp (@eskimon, LinkedIn), Founder & CEO of Kepios
- We met during the live show in Singapore and many thanks for coming on as one of our three mysterious guests on the show. Since our last conversation, what have you been up to?
Shift to the East: We Are Social Q4 Report and Q4 2019 StatShot Report.
- Reference: The DataReportal library of free reports
- What are the key major trends that you have observed globally and then specifically to the Asia Pacific?
- In this Q4 report, you talk about Asia’s rising, can you break down what the key observations are?
- How has been the growth in social media like in Asia Pacific: is it growing, stagnating or declining?
- Based on the recent backlashes on Facebook, does the data show that the social media site has been on a decline? And are other platforms owned by Facebook such as Whatsup & Instagram been affected?
- What about Tik Tok? How has their growth in Asia Pacific like?
- Do you think that Tik Tok will face significant headwinds in the US similar to Huawei?
- Specifically, the top apps in the Asia Pacific are no longer just confined to China but also in Japan and Korea as well, is it a foreshadowing of a longer trend?
- What are some new social media sites/apps/networks that you are monitoring that no one else is looking at in the region?
- How is 5G transforming China & Asia Pacific in this quarter?
- What should we be looking forward to in 2020?
Closing
- Do you have recent recommendations of books or anything else to share?
  - Simon's recommendations: Danny Denhard’s newsletter,
- How can my audience find you?

Podcast Information:

Tech Titans of China with Rebecca Fannin

Bernard Leong — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 14:44:46 GMT

Rebecca Fannin, author of "Tech Titans of China" and founder of Silicon Dragon Ventures joined us for a conversation to discuss her new book and offered her perspectives on how China will reshape the world with their breed of tech giants: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and many more. Rebecca began with the story of her career and how she came to cover Chinese technology companies from its earliest days. She discussed the major themes of her new book, and how the current trade tensions will shape China's path in the technology space and why we need to start thinking of China as originators of technology rather than the misconceptions that they are copycats.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Rebecca Fannin (@rfannin, LinkedIn), Author of “Tech Titans of China” and Founder of Silicon Dragon Ventures [0:16]
- As a young person who also works for a media company, I must ask, how did you start your career? [0:32]
- What advice would you give to young people looking to be a tech reporter or a media entrepreneur? [3:55]
- You have started covering China tech much earlier than most people with your first book “Silicon Dragon”, what are the major key misconceptions you have observed in how other parts of the world cover China? [5:30]
- As you have interacted with many key entrepreneurs such as Robin Li and Jack Ma, who is the most interesting entrepreneur in China who you have interviewed so far? [7:13]
Tech Titans of China: “How China’s Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, & Going Global” [10:30]
- What are the main themes of the book and who are the intended audience? [10:40]
- We have known the Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent or BAT in short that are core key companies in China similar to Amazon, Google and Facebook in the US. How are they different? [13:20]
- From copiers to now originators, what are the key turning points for China to become a technology power in the world? [15:45]
- Is the government and their regulations the key reason why the tech giants in the US do not manage to penetrate into China? What are the other key reasons as to why the US tech companies have so many problems entering China? [17:50]
- If China has not banned Google, Facebook or Twitter, would these companies have succeeded? [20:10]
- We are increasingly seeing the decoupling of China and the US technology sector given the current US-China trade war. Do you think that the global supply chain which powers tech companies from both countries will break apart with what happened to ZTE and Huawei? [22:17]
- How does China have evolved in these three key areas [22:19]:
  - Ecommerce [22:22]
  - AI [25:18]
  - Drones and robots given that they have the most established and well developed manufacturing ecosystem in Shenzhen while US manufacturing has declined over the past three decades [27:58]
- Where do you see the future of Chinese tech for China and will it start spilling to the rest of the world given its nascent influence in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa? [29:17]
- Which tech giants in China are currently interesting from your perspective? [31:20]
Closing [33:42]
- How can my audience find you? [33:52]

Podcast Information:

Should we replace Baidu with Bytedance in BAT China? with James Hull

Bernard Leong — Sun, 27 Oct 2019 20:50:25 GMT

James Hull from Hullx and co-host of China Tech Investor podcast joined us in a discussion on whether we should replace Baidu with Bytedance in the BAT China. Starting with the question, James dived deep into the business structures of Baidu and Bytedance and examined whether Baidu has lost their edge as one of the three tech giants of China. In the same conversation, James offered his perspectives on how Bytedance will replace Baidu in the future.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

James Hull (@jameshullx, LinkedIn), Co-host of China Tech Investor podcast and Founder of Hullx [0:21]
- Since you have last appeared on the podcast, what have you been up to? [0:50]
Should we replace Baidu with Bytedance in the BAT? [0:56]
- BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) & TMD (Toutiao, Meituan-dianping, Didi)
- Let’s start with Baidu. How has Baidu performed as a public company for the past decade? [2:08]
- What are the key businesses of Baidu? (iQiyi is spun off as a separate company)? [3:27]
- Baidu's advances in AI [4:56] and in the intelligent audio input interface and speaker sector. [5:42]
- Is Baidu dependent on the advertising business similar to Google in the US? [6:51]
- Comparison between Baidu and Bytedance in terms of user information feeds [9:30]
- Bytedance's advantage with user feeds and recommendations through Douyin and Toutiao [11:51]
- Bytedance has been growing exponentially with a 75B valuation from their recent round with SoftBank, now the most valuable startup in the world followed by Didi. How are they performing as a business? [15:09]
- What are the key revenue drivers for Bytedance?
- How are they compared to Alibaba and Tencent? [18:08]
- What are Baidu’s competitive advantages that you think may allow them to stay competitive within the BAT? [24:30]
- How Baidu's search engine competes against Google and the rest of Chinese search engines. [28:24]
- Should we just replace Baidu with Bytedance in the BAT? [31:09]
- Interesting Chinese answer on the question for this podcast (in Chinese) in Zhihu (similar to Reddit and Quora in the US) which Carol has referenced and mentioned in the discussion.
Closing [37:24]
- Recommendation for a book, movie, podcast, or any consumable content?[37:24]
  - James' recommendation: "I love capitalism" by Ken Langone , "The Great Rebalancing" by Michael Pettis
  - Carol's recommendation: Louis Cha's or Jin Yong's martial arts novels
- How does our audience find you?

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack.

The Small Handbook to Asia Cryptocurrency with Joyce Yang

Bernard Leong — Sun, 13 Oct 2019 08:48:12 GMT

Joyce Yang, founder of Global Coin Research, joined us in a conversation about the Asian cryptocurrency market in Asia with our new host, Carol Yin. Joyce and Carol discussed the recent publication by Global Coin Research (GCR) "The Small Handbook to Asia Cryptocurrency: On local ecosystems, trends & regulations" and identified the key important trends and currents in the Asian market, specifically China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Singapore.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Joyce Yang (@JoyceInNYC , LinkedIn), Founder of Global Coin Research [0:40]
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [1:03]
The Small Handbook to Asia Cryptocurrency: On local ecosystems, trends & regulations published by Global Coin Research (GCR) [4:56]
- Joyce discuss the GCR's new advisory & venture fund.
- How did you and your team in GCR put the handbook together? [5:08]
- Who are the intended audience? [8:14]
- What are the main themes of the handbook? [10:26]
- Are there any common threads on cryptocurrency within Asia? For example, it seems that a lot of Asian countries have banned ICOs. Prolonged bear market, IEO. [11:22]
China [13:25]
- China is probably the most important market for cryptocurrency whether it’s bitcoin and blockchain and have banned ICOs since 2017 and at the same time, reducing bitcoin mining towards zero, what are the key trends in 2019 which you believe that are most important? [13:46]
- One interesting part on China is that you have broken down the major financial institutions in the Chinese government that everyone dabbling in bitcoin and blockchain must know, which are they and why they are important to the whole ecosystem? [16:01]
- Are there any major differences between Hong Kong and China when it comes to cryptocurrency? [17:41]
- Is Hong Kong following China with respect to regulation in blockchain and bitcoin given that it has also banned ICOs now? [19:41]
Japan and Korea [20:34]
- How has the Japanese cryptocurrency market changed after the major theft of bitcoins from Mount Gox in 2014? [20:49]
- Can you briefly talk about the Japanese blockchain startup ecosystem and also the Japanese enterprises in blockchain? [22:55]
- Who are the key players from the startup spaces and major enterprises involved in cryptocurrency within Korea? [24:44]
- Korea is known for the kimchi premium: can you explain what that means in the context of cryptocurrency? [26:32]
Singapore and Indonesia [28:27]
- Indonesia is the largest market in Southeast Asia, can you talk about how the government is viewing cryptocurrency (bitcoin + blockchain)? [28:29]
- Who are the key players from the startup spaces and major enterprises involved in cryptocurrency within Indonesia? [29:58]
- How is Singapore looking at regulation in the cryptocurrency market? [31:05]
- We notice a lot of major cryptocurrency players (Binance) are based in Singapore, what are its competitive strengths and weaknesses? [32:54]
Other interesting Asian markets: Thailand and Vietnam. [35:02]
Closing [36:14]
- How do my audience find you? [36:28]
  - The Global Coin Podcast

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted and produced by Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack.

Vertex Holdings and Venture Capital in Southeast Asia with Chua Kee Lock

Bernard Leong — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 07:13:32 GMT

Fresh out of the studio, Chua Kee Lock, CEO of Vertex Holdings and managing partner of Vertex Ventures, Southeast Asia & India joined us in a conversation together with guest host Charles Reed Anderson of TechBurst Asia podcast about the venture capital firm and its footprint across Southeast Asia globally. We start with Kee Lock's story and how he eventually become a venture capitalist. Following on, Kee Lock discuss Vertex Holdings and Vertex Ventures and how the fund assembles and helps their portfolio of high growth startups such as Grab in the region. Last but not least, Kee Lock discuss the evolution of venture capital in Southeast Asia and India and where it is leading.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Chua Kee Lock, CEO of Vertex Holdings & Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India ( LinkedIn) [0:25]
- How did you start your career? [0:36]
- In your career journey, what are the words of wisdom you can share with my audience based on your time in Silicon Valley? [2:18]
- Kee Lock's thoughts on why people are central to building successful technology companies. [3:30]
Vertex Holdings and Vertex Ventures [5:00]
- Can you give a brief introduction to Vertex Holdings and its relationship with Temasek Holdings? [5:10]
- What’s a typical day for you like as a VC? [11:07]
- Can you describe the different funds under Vertex Holdings and their current purposes? Does the different funds reflect the different stages of investment? [12:45]
- What are the traits of founders and startups which the investment team in Vertex seek? [14:00]
- What are the interesting companies within the Vertex portfolio? [16:40]
  - Grab
  - Licious
  - Validus
  - Instarem
- How does the Vertex network help the portfolio companies or companies who might be interested to seek funding? [21:30]
- Vertex has made very interesting investments globally, for example, Grab, Spacemob (acquired by Wework), Mobike (acquired by Meituan Dianping) and many others, how do you work with the founders and what help do most high growth companies need most in the early stage?
Trends in venture capital across India and Southeast Asia [24:40]
- What are your thoughts on the investment opportunity in India and Southeast Asia? [25:00]
- Southeast Asia is not a homogeneous market with different countries at different stages of economic development, how does Vertex see their investments when they do their regional expansion? Do you see India with the same challenge? [26:25]
- Kee Lock's comments on shortage of tech talent and skills in Asia and how entrepreneurs are solving them. [28:30]
- Kee Lock's thoughts on returning technology talent to Asia from Silicon Valley and its impact to startup ecosystems in Asia Pacific for the next few years. [30:50]
- Does the lack of exits in India and Southeast Asia deter the market opportunity for venture capital to thrive? [31:35]
- With more global funds entering the region, do you see the potential of an overheated market with valuations going up? [33:00]
- Where do you see the evolution of venture capital in the next few years? [35:30]
Closing [37:40]
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [37:45]
  - Kee Lock's recommendations: Ray Dalio's "Principles" and Simon Sinek's "Start from Why"
- How do my audience find you? [39:00]

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by guest host Charles Reed Anderson (@CRASingapore, LinkedIn) from Techburst Asia Podcast and produced by Carol Yin and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is fully produced by Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin).

Editor's note: We thank Charles for helping us to guest host this episode before Carol starts her new role as the producer and host of Analyse Asia after the live show.

Wavemaker VC and PropertyGuru Group with Steve Melhuish

Bernard Leong — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 07:03:49 GMT

Steve Melhuish, co-founder of PropertyGuru and partner from Wavemaker VC, shares the lessons of his journey from an entrepreneur with PropertyGuru to now a partner in a venture capital firm. Steve started with the backstory behind on how he founded PropertyGuru and shared the lessons in scaling up the company across Southeast Asia and explained the thinking process and execution behind his transition out of the CEO role in the company. Subsequently, Steve discuss his current gig with Wavemaker VC, and the key traits in companies and founders which he invests on and his current thoughts on the proptech space.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Steve Melhuish, co-founder of PropertyGuru and partner in Wavemaker VC (LinkedIn) [0:12]
- How did you start your career? [0:30]
- In your career journey, what are the most interesting lessons that you can share with my audience? [5:07]
PropertyGuru [10:17]
- Can you talk about the backstory when you founded PropertyGuru? [10:42]
- From the creation of the company till you moving over to be a venture capitalist, what are the most interesting milestones that PropertyGuru? [14:07]
- What is the rationale for you to step down as CEO and what's the thinking and execution phase to bring in a professional CEO and make that transition happen? [22:52]
- How are you involved with PropertyGuru now? [29:00]
Wavemaker VC [30:00]
- Can you introduce Wavemaker, the venture capital firm in Southeast Asia to my audience? [30:05]
- What’s your current role and coverage as a venture partner in Wavemaker VC? [32:31]
- What is a typical day for you as a venture capitalist? [35:05]
- What are the attributes in founders from startups that you look for before investing in them? [36:05]
- Which are the interesting verticals that you are now looking into startups for investment? [39:15]
- Can you talk about your perspectives on the current wave of startups in proptech, and what are the key opportunities there for startups to solve? [41:10]
- How would you advise a startup to expand into Southeast Asia? [44:49]
Closing [46:30]
- Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? [46:39]
  - Steve's recommendation: "Blue Planet 2" documentary by David Attenborough and the movie "Vice", books such as "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh, "Start from Why" by Simon Sinek, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins, "Mastering the Rockefeller Habits" by Verne Harnish.

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) until 30 June 2019 and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong. This episode is recorded and produced in June 2019.

Leadership and Regional Expansion of DocDoc with Grace Park

Bernard Leong — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 02:49:55 GMT

Grace Park, co-founder & president of DocDoc joined us in a conversation about leadership and regional expansion of DocDoc in Asia. Grace started the conversation, narrating her background as a military officer with the US army and how she moved subsequently from a military career into a business executive in notable healthcare companies. Grace shared the backstory behind the founding of DocDoc as a leading patient intelligence company from her perspective and offered her perspectives in how she utilized her experience to expand DocDoc regionally across Asia. Last but not least, Grace offered her thoughts on leadership and the importance of how to lead teams to success in different settings.

Editor's note: This interview was conducted in June 2019, and recently DocDoc has raised their series B funding of US$13M.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Grace Park (Facebook, LinkedIn), co-founder & President of DocDoc [0:19]
- How did you start your career? [1:12]
- Before Docdoc, you have been taken senior executive roles in medical and healthcare sector with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Medtronic, can you talk about what you have done in these companies and how that experience shapes the way in how you operate in Asia Pacific markets? [4:15]
- In your career journey, what are the interesting life lessons you can share with my audience? [6:34]
DocDoc & Perspectives on Regional Expansion of Digital Healthcare in Asia Pacific [8:08]
- I am curious to know the backstory of Docdoc from your perspective given Cole has offered the same story in an earlier episode. Can you articulate the founding story from your perspective and how did that translate to founding of Docdoc? [8:24]
- Let's help our audience to refresh their understanding of the company DocDoc, can you describe the company and its vision and mission? [12:44]
- What is your current role and coverage as the President of DocDoc? [15:34]
- What keeps you awake at night or gets you excited every morning about DocDoc’s mission? [16:35]
- Given DocDoc focus on to be the leader in patient intelligence, how do you build the trust and bringing the doctors in DocDoc’s network? From your engagement with the doctors, what are the doctors’ major pain points as providers of medical care in the entire healthcare supply chain?[17:56]
- You have led in expanding DocDoc’s business across Asia Pacific, can you talk about how you think strategically on the go to market and build the right teams to expand into countries such as Korea and Hong Kong? [21:56]
- What are the most interesting lessons you have learned in working in a startup environment with DocDoc? What will you have done differently? [23:15]
Leadership [25:37]
- I understand that you are a great student on leadership. What are the books in leadership which have inspired you and further your thinking on the subject? [26:09]
  - Viktor Frankl's "Man Search for Meaning"
  - Warren G Bennis "On Becoming a Leader"
  - Ron Heifetz "Leadership without Easy Answers"
- You have an interesting career before Harvard Business School in the US military, and you were based in Korea as an officer, how did the experience shape you as a leader in the military and subsequently in the corporate world? [28:50]
- In your opinion, what are the most important traits for a leader? [32:40]
- Do you think that a team learn more by going thru a crisis than going thru the regular motion of the day? [33:40]
- Do you see a difference between a manager and a leader? [35:13]
- Can you talk about your style of leadership and how did it come about? [36:18]
Closing [38:22]
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [38:35]
  - Grace's recommendations: Eric Topol, "Deep Medicine" and two articles: (a) Tampa Bay Times, "Heartbroken" and NY Times "Listen to What Doctors in 'times of crisis' said behind doors"
- How can my audience find you? [41:13]

Podcast Information:

Venture Capital in Southeast Asia with Justin Hall

Bernard Leong — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 08:09:19 GMT

In episode 310, Justin Hall, partner from Golden Gate Ventures joined us in a conversation to discuss the state of venture capital in Southeast Asia. Justin shared his career journey in how he progressed from an associate to a partner within one of the well-known venture capital firms in Southeast Asia and explained what he has learned over the years from working with startup founders and companies. From there, Justin extended the conversation to offer his perspectives to how the infrastructure has evolved and the importance of exits for startups in Southeast Asia.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Justin Hall, partner in Golden Gate Ventures (@JVinnyHall, LinkedIn) [0:15]
- How did you start your career? [0:46]
- Does the Kauffman program help you in advancing your venture capital career? [2:30]
- Prominent alumni in Kauffman Fellowship within Southeast Asia [3:15]
- In your career journey, what are the interesting life lessons you can share with my audience? [4:02]
Golden Gate Ventures and Venture Capital in Southeast Asia (or ASEAN) [6:12]
- Can you introduce Golden Gate Ventures to the audience (and yes, just a refresher as I have interviewed Jeff and Vinnie) years back? [6:34]
- How has the fund evolved since you have started as an associate and eventually now as a partner? Can you talk about some of the successful startups within Golden Gate Ventures portfolio? [8:01]
- What is your current role in Golden Gate Ventures? [11:09]
- How do you think about making decisions on whether to invest in startups within the investment committee? [12:35]
- What is a typical day for you as a venture capitalist? [14:23]
- What are the industry verticals which you are most excited about in the venture capital space lately? [16:10]
- Where are the opportunities that you have identified in the logistics space given that last mile delivery is commoditized? [19:09]
- How about any other interesting verticals other than logistics? [21:27]
- What do you look for in a startup team when you invest in them? [23:17]
- We are now at the tail end of the first institutional funding cycle for Southeast Asia but most VC funds in the region have raised at least 2nd and 3rd rounds of funding, how has the VC scene changed since you first started? [26:15]
- How do you see the signaling risk for startups within the venture capital circle in Southeast Asia? [29:09]
- How does the infrastructure within the Southeast Asia market has changed from your opinion? Does it enable more or less startup activity? Let's exclude Singapore given that it is well developed as a city state. [30:20]
- Recently, in the past two years, there has been a strong interest from tech giants in China and US on Southeast Asia, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the ecosystem from the perspective of startups and venture capital? [33:40]
- How does a startup founder look at Southeast Asia market? If you are asked to advise a founder in Singapore or in Jakarta to expand into another market, what will be the first advice you give them? [36:18]
- One major criticism, pointed out by many is the lack of startup exits in the startup ecosystem. How do you define startup exits and what does success in startup exits would mean for Southeast Asia, and if you have any examples, please share them? [39:38]
Closing [43:04]
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [43:25]
  - Justin's recommendation: "Trillion Dollar Coach" by Eric Schmidt et al.
- How can my audience find you? [44:54]

Podcast Information:

Digital Transformation and Real Estate with Wilma Gerber

Bernard Leong — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 14:37:54 GMT

In episode 309, Wilma Gerber, the chief operating officer for project and development services in JLL Asia Pacific, joined us for a conversation on digital transformation in the real estate industry. Starting from her work in building technology before the iPhone turned the smartphone mainstream to building the 4G network in India which becomes Reliance Jio, she offered the important lessons that explained the intersection of business and technology. Moving forward, she offered her perspectives on the why and how for a successful digital transformation and how it can be applied into a traditional industry for real estate.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Wilma Gerber (LinkedIn), Chief Operating Officer, Project & Development Services Asia Pacific at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) [0:18]
- How did you start your career? [0:40]
- Given that you have worked on technology ideas before these ideas become fashionable, for example, the instant mobile messaging app leads to whatsapp, the mobile music player becomes the iPod and the mobile app store before Apple App Store and Google Play, what are the major lessons that you have drawn from these experiences? [3:04]
- So you spent your early a career in South Africa and Europe. What brought you to Asia? [4:35]
- What is like working with Reliance to build out the 4G network for India that jumpstarted the smartphone market for the next 100-200M users? [6:01]
- After you have worked in technology companies for more than 20 years, for example, building the network in India that is now the 4G network for Reliance Jio, why have you transitioned into real estate? [7:41]
- Given that new upstarts such as Wework has entered into the real estate and the complexity of the real estate supply chain, why would it be different this round for you in executing a digital transformation in a traditional industry such as real estate? [9:34]
Digital Transformation in Real Estate [10:20]
- Can you briefly introduce JLL to my audience and describe your current role and coverage with JLL? [10:43]
- How do you define digital transformation and what exactly it entails? [11:21]
- How has your perception of DX changed since you moved from the vendor to client side? [12:12]
- How do you define the typical objectives/goals for digital transformation? [13:32]
- Who should be involved in the digital transformation within the company? [15:00]
- Do you think that digital transformation is a program or a new way of thinking for a company or business? [16:02]
- In a digital transformation given that it involves people and culture, what is more important, the transition or education for the organization?
- When you start off on a digital transformation initiative, what are the initial steps? [17:46]
- You have been working on digital transformation initiatives for over 15 years - can you provide an example of a successful digital transformation initiative from the wider market that you find compelling? Wilma discuss the case of DBS bank as a successful example of digital transformation. [18:50]
- What sets this example apart from the typical digital transformation initiatives? [21:07]
- What are the major challenges for digital transformation? [22:00]
  - Organisational
  - Cultural
  - Financial
  - Strategic
  - Technological
- In your perspective, how do you think about aligning the different stakeholders in digital transformation? [23:46]
- What do you mean by leader-led change? [24:38]
- The importance of culture in digital transformation. [25:35]
- So now that you’ve been in Real Estate for about 3 years, what are you seeing as some of the industry specific challenges holding back digital transformation? [26:31]
- If you had to give one piece of advice for someone who is about to undertake a digital transformation initiative from the leadership position, what would it be? [29:00]
- References: McKinsey article - Why Digital Strategies fail?
Closing [29:29]
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [29:35]
  - Wilma's recommendation: Adam Grant's podcast "Work Life", the Freaknomics podcast and Malcolm Gladwell's "Revisionist History" podcast.
- How do my audience find you? [30:16]

Podcast Information:

Smart Cities Success with Charles Reed Anderson

Bernard Leong — Sun, 14 Jul 2019 05:06:33 GMT

In episode 308, Charles Reed Anderson joined us to discuss the recent report "Smart Cities Success: Connecting People, Proptech and Real Estate" which he collaborated with JLL. Charles discuss the major findings in the report and examine the role that governments are playing in shaping the concept of smart cities. Continuing the conversation, Charles shares the opportunities and challenges for different countries in Asia Pacific from China to India and offers his perspectives to where we are heading on smart cities globally.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Charles Anderson (@CRASingapore, LinkedIn), founder of Charles Reed Anderson and Associates. [0:17]
- What have you been up to since we last spoke? [0:29]
Smart Cities Success: Connecting People, Proptech and Real Estate report by Charles Reed Anderson & Associates and JLL (full download of the report here) [0:37]
- What are the main themes of the report and its intended audience? [1:23]
- Can you discuss the findings of the report in brief? [3:23]
- Why are cities at the center of this conversation from the perspective of challenges? [6:39]
- How do you define ‘smart city’ in the report? [7:45]
- What is the role played by real estate space in smart cities? [9:00]
- Can the vision of smart cities eventually be realized? [12:25]
- In the report, you have looked at the opportunities and challenges for different countries such as Australia, China, India, Japan and Singapore, what are the interesting points on the cities within these set of countries on delivering smart cities? [16:03]
- Which smart cities will be interesting to you at this moment? [19:50]
- Where do we go next for smart cities? [21:20]
Closing [23:22]
- Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? [23:39]
  - Charles' recommendation: Reading the transcripts of interviews he did with different people in how they looked at the smart cities.
- How do my audience find you? [24:22]

Podcast Information:

South China Morning Post and Perspectives on Media with Gary Liu

Bernard Leong — Sat, 29 Jun 2019 06:24:16 GMT

In Episode 307, Gary Liu, the chief executive officer of South China Morning Post (SCMP), joined us to discuss the vision and mission of the media outlet and offer his perspectives on media across Asia Pacific. We started with Gary sharing his career story and how he came to lead SCMP. He discuss the core audience of the media outlet and the new content and innovations that is driving the transformation of SCMP. Last but not least, Gary offered his perspectives on the current trends driving media in the digital age.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Gary Liu, CEO of South China Morning Post [0:17]
- How did you start your career? [0:38]
- Can you talk about the backstory in how you come to join SCMP as the CEO? [1:06]
- In your career journey, what has been the most interesting lessons you can share with my audience? [2:16]
South China Morning Post [4:01]
- The South China Morning Post aka SCMP is a Hong Kong English language newspaper founded in 1903 and is now owned by the Alibaba Group. In preparing for this interview, I did not realize that both Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp and a well-known Singaporean real estate tycoon, Robert Kuok were past owners of the SCMP as well.
- Starting with an introduction, can you summarize what the South China Morning Post (SCMP) do and talk about its current mission and vision? [4:36]
- Who are the core audience of SCMP? [7:10]
- Since Alibaba’s acquisition and your hiring, what are the changes that you have brought to the post? [8:10]
- What are the interesting innovations and products that are now pioneered from SCMP that will be interesting to take the paper forward into the digital age? [9:34]
- What is your thinking process in making a decision if business and editorial groups are at loggerheads and could not come to an agreement? [13:56]
- How do you define if SCMP is successful in a few years time? [15:34]
Perspectives in Media [17:33]
- As digital disruption has entered into traditional newspaper and media outlets, what are the challenges and where are the opportunities do you see that a traditional outlet can move forward? [17:42]
- Media outlets, for example, the Guardian & New York Times have shifted their audience from a local or regional to a global one. Do you see regional media outlets such as Nikkei and SCMP going in the same way in thinking about your audience and putting your knowledge about the region as a competitive advantage? [20:38]
- In your view, what are the most interesting business models and innovation in media that keeps you excited about the space? [21:59]
- Given that traditional news outlets can be viewed as institutions of trust, are there opportunities in the curation of media rather than discovery of media? [24:32]
- Where do you think that Asia journalism and news will go towards with the rise of China? [25:50]
Closing [27:42]
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [27:50]
  - Gary's recommendation: "Team of Teams" by Chris Fussell, David Silverman, & Stanley A. McChrystal and Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
- How do my audience find you? [29:11]

Podcast Information:

The Tech Cold War with Tim Culpan

Bernard Leong — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 08:33:58 GMT

In Episode 306, Tim Culpan, columnist from Bloomberg, joined us in a conversation to discuss the tech cold war. Starting from the definition when the event started with US ban on Huawei, Tim explained how the global technology supply chain will be affected in the process from Foxconn, TSMC to Apple. Tim also offered his perspectives on the recent change in leadership within Foxconn, Alibaba's listing in Hong Kong as a hedge and the impact fo the tech cold war on SoftBank's Vision Fund.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Tim Culpan (@tculpan, Linkedin, Bloomberg), Columnist at Bloomberg [0:17]
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [0:31]
The Tech Cold War [0:58]
- You have recently written that May 19 is an important date for the turn of China and US relationship starting with Huawei placed on the ban, why do you characterize it as the tech cold war? [1:03]
- Is it way past the Thucydides Trap now for US and China? [3:14]
- With the US and China trade war breaking the global supply chain, particularly its implications to Huawei, Apple, TSMC, Foxconn and many others involved? [3:34]
- Is Alibaba’s upcoming listing in Hong Kong Stock Exchange a way to have a hedge against themselves in the US market? [6:32]
- Let’s start with Foxconn, can you describe the interesting happenings in the Foxconn leadership because of Terry Gou’s decision to run for the Taiwan Presidency and what does it mean for the company? [9:27]
- Given your understanding of Terry Gou and if he wins, what will he be like as the Taiwan president? [11:25]
- Does everyone shares Masa’s vision with Vision Fund? [13:50]
- What does the tech cold war means for SoftBank given that the fund invests in both US and China? [15:51]
- Are we in a peak SoftBank? [17:29]
- What are your thoughts with Masa’s recent floating of an idea to float the Vision Fund public? [18:42]
- What will we be expecting in the next couple of months or what should we look out for with the tech cold war coming? [19:45]
Closing [22:00]
- Can you recommend a book, movie, podcast or anything else that has recently impact your personal or work life? [22:08]
  - Tim's recommendation: The 996 Podcast by GGV Capital & The Extramilest podcast.
- Where can my audience find you? [23:06]

Podcast Information:

The Laws of Human Nature with Robert Greene

Bernard Leong — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 14:39:28 GMT

In episode 305, Robert Greene, author of the famous "48 Laws of Power", joined us in a conversation to discuss his latest book "The Laws of Human Nature". We dived deep in Robert's background and how he was inspired to write the "48 Laws of Power" and subsequently his other books that led eventually to "The Laws of Human Nature". We discuss how business leaders can learn to lead in difficult times and how to navigate the current climate of populism by understanding the laws of human nature.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Robert Greene (@RobertGreene, LinkedIn), author of “The Laws of Human Nature”, “48 Laws of Power”, “33 Strategies of War”, “The Art of Seduction”, “Mastery” and “The 50th Law” with 50 cent aka Curtis Jackson. [0:19]
- How did you start your career? [1:03]
- What is the inspiration behind your first book “48 Laws of Power” and what is the lesson that you want the reader to understand from the book? [3:23]
- Are you surprised by the book’s popularity with the business community when it was first launched? [7:58]
- I often enjoyed the style of how you have presented your books with the principle followed by a story that illustrate the principle, does that mean to you that stories are the best ways to explain difficult concepts such as power, leadership and mastery to your readers? [9:41]
- Does the choice of historical examples help to have the reader to take detached view on the concepts? [12:21]
- What are the interesting life lessons you can share with my audience? [14:07]
The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene [15:44]
- How did you decide to write the book “The Laws of Human Nature”? [16:27]
- What are the major themes behind this book? [17:56]
- Are the laws of human nature immutable given that our history keeps showing that we often repeat making the same mistakes over and over again the same in essence but different in context? [21:10]
- Do you see that technology is an amplifier to the laws of human nature rather than an enabler that allows us to break out of them? [24:49]
- What are the three laws in the book that you believe are important to those who are in business? [26:58]
- It seems that the geopolitical landscape in the world is starting to shift significantly where most people are becoming more nationalistic and starting to prefer populism over facts, and wealth gaps disparity are getting bigger in the present, how does your book help us to understand the current world as it is now? [33:22]
- Do you think that there will be any more additional laws of human nature which you will insert into the book in the future? [36:36]
Closing [39:29]
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [39:52]
  - Robert's recommendation: Alain De Botton's "The School of Life" podcast
- How can my audience find you? [41:02]

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong.

Xiaopeng Motors and the state of EVs in China with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Sun, 23 Jun 2019 08:41:14 GMT

In episode 304, Rui Ma, co-founder of Transformative Technology Academy and co-host of the Techbuzz China podcast joined us in a conversation to discuss Xiaopeng Motors and extending the conversation to analyse the state of electric cars (EVs) market in China. We dived deep to the origins of Xiaopeng Motors with its legendary founder, He Xiaopeng, and how it amassed a huge and massive funding from Alibaba Group and other investors. From there, we bring in the other key players: Nio, WM Motors and Byton into the fray and how Tesla and the traditional automotive companies such as SAIC are approaching the Chinese market.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Rui Ma, Founder of Transformative Technology Academy and Host of TechBuzz podcast by Pandaily produced by SupChina (LinkedIn, @ruima) [0:19]
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [0:34]
- Can you talk about the influencer marketing in China on a recent Techbuzz China podcast? [1:24]
- Rui Ma's thoughts on the e-cigrattes market in China [2:55]
Xiaopeng Motors and State of EVs in China [3:34]
- Reference: TechBuzz China Episode 22 - NIO
- Introduction: Xiaopeng Motors is an electric car company who has recently raised US$587M (~ 4B RMB) in China backed by Alibaba Group and many other prominent investors? [4:09]
- [Ref: Chinese electric car start-up Xpeng raises US$587 million as it gears up to take on Tesla, SCMP and TechBuzz China episode on NIO]
- What is the mission and vision of Xiaopeng Motors? [5:43]
- Can you talk about He Xiaopeng, the CEO and Chairman of the company and former co-founder / CTO for UCWeb, China's largest web browser acquired by Alibaba Group over US$4.3B? What is his background before he started Xiaopeng Motors? [7:35]
- Does Xiaopeng Motors build their own cars? Where and how do they produce their electric cars? [8:55]
- Recently, they have unveiled their latest car, G3 in CES and the car is priced at US$47K compared to Tesla Model 3 priced at US$30K, can you talk about the different car models which they have done so far or will be doing? [12:58]
- Can you talk about William Li Bin, NIO’s celebrity founder and how has he managed to create a car company out of powerpoints? What is the rivalry between the EV car companies founders and other tech founders? [15:18]
- Let’s expand the scope of the EV market in China out, and other than Xiaopeng & NIO, there are also other companies such as WM (or Weima) Motor and Byton, how are these EV cars company differ in how they approach the market? [19:00]
- Has the Chinese government like the US government during the Obama era been supportive of EVs, and have they offered similar type of incentives for the Chinese consumer? [22:52]
- What is their business model for Xiaopeng Motors? Is it similar to Tesla or NIO? [26:07]
- How are EVs viewed and perceived in China? Will the chinese consumer purchase an electric car? [27:40]
- It’s interesting that Alibaba backed Xiaopeng and Tencent backed NIO and is the EV market another extension or proxy war between the Chinese tech giants and what are their intentions behind the market? [29:20]
- It seems that the car market is focused on EVs and not autonomous vehicles. Is that a tacit acknowledgement that self driving technologies are not ready for the Chinese market? [31:10]
- How about the traditional car companies in China who have partnered with VW Group, GM Motors such as SAIC, or non-traditional car companies such as BYD which started off as a battery company and now a car company or new EV companies from the US such as Tesla? How do these players fit into this new EV market within China? [32:43]
Closing [34:47]
- Can you recommend a book, podcast or anything else that has impact to your work and personal life recently? [34:55]
  - Sam Harris' book Waking up, Waking Up app and Making Sense podcast.
- How do my audience find you? [35:38]

Podcast Information:

The US Ban on Huawei and Peak Smartphone with Bryan Ma

Bernard Leong — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 04:58:26 GMT

In Episode 303, Bryan Ma, vice president from IDC joined us to discuss the US ban on Huawei and its implications to the smartphone market across the world. We dived deep to how Huawei will be crippled by being on the US entity list and whether Samsung will make a comeback due to this surprise turn of events. Next, we discuss the major smartphone and PC trends across Asia Pacific, the recent foldables fiasco by Samsung and what the next innovation for smartphones might be on the horizon.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Bryan Ma (@bryanbma , LinkedIn), Vice President IDC [0:18]
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [0:28]
The US ban of Huawei and its impact [1:30]
- Can you offer an introduction to the recent US action on Huawei? [1:39]
- Upon Huawei on the United States’ blacklist, the action has forced Google cutting the android support for future devices and ARM not going to supply future chipsets, what are your perspectives on Huawei for both the smartphone and carrier networks business? (Ref: Reuters on companies list) [2:57]
- Where do Huawei go from here given that they have no problems surviving in their local market but globally they will have challenges moving ahead? [8:37]
- Bryan's comments that the US is targeting Huawei on their carrier networks rather than smartphone market. [12:11]
- If this has not happened, will Huawei become the number one global smartphone player? [13:24]
- We know that Huawei also build laptops. Have they been successful with those, and how will they be affected by trade tensions too? [14:27]
- Who are going to benefit from Huawei’s current troubles in the smartphone market? Will Samsung get a comeback? [16:16]
- Given that Xiaomi is a public company and their structures are pretty transparent, will the other Chinese smartphone makers be affected? [18:46]
- Effect on Apple in China. [21:25]
Peak Smartphone? Major trends in smartphones and PCs [22:23]
- Based on our last conversation, let’s start with smartphones, what are the current brands that are leading globally? [23:14]
- From most reports, India is the only major growth engine of smartphones last year, bringing 100M mobile users online. Will that growth continues in the next two to three years from now? [24:04]
- Are we in the period of peak smartphone? Will smartphones like PCs be commoditized? Will innovations on the smartphone be incremental or are there any tech which we are not aware of on the horizon that will shift the smartphone to the next level? [25:19]
- Where do the wearables or other technology such as the watch, glass, VR or AR augment the smartphone ecosystem? [26:47]
- Are the Chinese brands such as Huawei, Oppo & Vivo and Xiaomi leading the way as compare to what Samsung has done in the past few years?
- How about Apple? Will their recent sudden decline in China lead iPhone towards a major downturn for them? Given Apple’s turn towards services, what are your thoughts on Apple’s prospects with the smartphone? [28:20]
- Can you talk about the recent Samsung foldable phone fiasco?
- Are foldables really something that users are asking for, and how quickly do you think it will take off? [29:27]
- What about foldable laptops like the one that Lenovo showed off recently? And dual-screen laptops like the new HP Omen X 2S or the ones that ASUS and Intel showed off at COMPUTEX? [34:27]
- What are your thoughts on the shift with the iPad in the recent WWDC 2019? [39:02]
Closing [40:12]
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [40:21]
  - Bryan’s recommendation: Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus, “Old Town Road” song.
- How do my audience find you? [42:31]

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is both hosted and edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong.

The Landing Pad with Austrade & Perspectives on Southeast Asia with Taliessin Reaburn

Bernard Leong — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 09:11:16 GMT

In episode 302, Taliessin Raeburn, the trade commissioner to Singapore with Australia Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) discuss the landing pad program in Singapore and shared his perspectives on business entry into the highly diverse Southeast Asia market. We began with an introduction to Austrade and the landing pad programs across the world and specifically zoom into the recent interesting initiatives achieved by the Landing Pad in Singapore. We discuss how Austrade helps Australian companies and startups to expand and identify the challenges faced by companies in Southeast Asia.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Taliessin Reaburn (LinkedIn) Trade Commissioner to Singapore with Austrade (Australia Trade and Investment Commission) [0:22]
- How did you start your career? [0:52]
- What are the most interesting life lessons which you can share with my audience? [2:34]
Austrade’s the Landing Pad Program in Singapore and Perspectives on Southeast Asia [3:20]
- As a start, can you describe the mission and vision for the Austrade (Australia Trade and Investment Commission) and how it operates as a government agency? [3:37]
- What is your current role and coverage as the trade commissioner to Singapore with Austrade? [4:47]
- How does Austrade help businesses in Australia come to Asia? [6:13]
- I understand that Austrade has a program called the Landing Pad, vision to create a platform for local enterprises to collaborate with Australian startups and help them find success in the region, Can you describe the landing pad in a global scale and then specifically down in Singapore on the mandate of the landing pad? [8:18]
- What does success means for the Landing Pad all over the world or specifically for Singapore? [12:08]
- Since the launch of the landing pad in Singapore, what are the number of startups that have come here and what industry verticals they are typically in? Can you share 2 or 3 startups within the landing pad in Singapore? [14:18]
- The landing pad program has also aligned with Singapore’s push in cybersecurity as part of their smart nation program, how do they work? [16:31]
- How do you look at the Southeast Asia or ASEAN as a whole? How do you differentiate the markets for example, developed, emerging and frontier? [17:51]
- From a government agency’s perspective, how do you work with your startups to set them up for market entry into the region? What do you look out for from your perspective and from the company’s perspective? [20:39]
- What are the key challenges for startups typically going into Southeast Asia? [22:48]
Closing [24:41]
- Can you recommend a book or anything else from movie to podcast that has recently impacted my life? [24:48]
  - Taliessin’s recommendation: the movie “Avengers: Endgame” and a novel entitled “Walkaway” by Cory Doctorow.
- How do my audience find you? [25:33]

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is both hosted and edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong.

Tencent Q1 2019 Earnings and Wechat 7.0 with Matthew Brennan

Bernard Leong — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 07:27:00 GMT

In episode 301, Matthew Brennan from China Channel joined us in a conversation to discuss Tencent's Q1 2019 earnings and how the latest version of Wechat app is now evolving with the consumers and enterprise. We discuss the recent Q1 earnings of Tencent and how the company is moving ahead with the obstacle of getting games approved in China. Then we dive deep into Wechat 7.0, the super app's latest iteration, the new features and why the Wechat enterprise is not given a serious look from observers outside China.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk podcast (chinachannel.co, @mbrennanchina , Linkedin, Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) [0:23]
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [0:35]
- You have just been to a Tencent conference (Thursday May 23) in Kunming, what are the interesting things that have popped up there? [1:07]
- Who is the intended audience for this conference which you are attending? [2:50]
- Just a quick one: What are your thoughts on Google and ARM cutting access to Huawei? What is the long term implications given that Huawei is now banned in the US? [5:58]
- How long does it take for Huawei to start having problems in China with the current ban? Matthew also examined the impact on Huawei in Europe. [8:33]
Tencent Q1 2019 Earnings and Wechat 7.0 Release [10:44]
- Tencent has recently released their Q1 earnings for 2019, what are the key highlights for the company? [11:15]
- Moving forward, it’s a weak quarter, how will Tencent move forward in the next few quarters, particularly on issues relating to gaming where they are at the mercy of the regulators in getting approvals? [12:58]
- There has been an re-organization in Tencent, what are the key personnel changes? [14:55]
- During this year’s conference, Allen Zhang, the person in charge of Wechat gave a 4 hour keynote, and you did an excellent summary of the event, what are the key messages that he has delivered? [16:40]
- What is Wechat 7.0 and what are the biggest changes for the app as compared to the past versions? [19:36]
- Does the philosophy of Wechat app has an impact to how it has evolved differently from the other social media apps in China? [23:17]
- Do Wechat starts incorporating AI and other infrastructure upgrades for this 7.0 version? [25:12]
- How is Wechat 7.0 responding to their potential competition in different types of usage whether it’s ByteDance or Alibaba? [27:46]
- Why is the Wechat app for enterprise not get talked about in the Western media given the deployment of the app has been quite impressive? [29:45]
- Does Wechat 7.0 foreshadow a shift in business models for the messaging app? [34:28]
- Is the narrative of Wechat killers over-hyped in the market? [36:35]
- Matthew's thoughtful comments on the possibility of Tencent being caught in the US and China trade war [39:00]
Closing[41:49]
- Can you recommend a book or movie or podcast or anything which recently made an impact to your work and personal life? [41:50]
  - Matt's recommendation: Crazy Capital, a chinese podcast by 2 Chinese VCs.
  - BL's recommendation: Xu Dong's "Empire of Silver" (Chinese book)
- How can my audience find you? [44:10]

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is both hosted and edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong.

Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 31 May 2019 23:39:08 GMT

In our episode 300, our host Bernard Leong will be interviewed on everything under the sun on Analyse Asia. With the interview conducted by Carol Yin, co-producer of the podcast, Bernard started with a couple of major announcements for Analyse Asia. Next, Bernard answered many interesting questions posed from the audience of the show such as: (i) the evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Southeast Asia, (ii) who will win the race between Grab and Gojek, (iii) fun and interesting facts about the podcast from how Bernard selects his guest to getting a prominent guest on the show via a business deal. Last but not least, we discuss where the Analyse Asia podcast is going and an upcoming premium content project.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Welcome Carol Yin, the co-producer of the show as the host of Episode 300. [0:37]
Major Announcements on Analyse Asia podcast [1:29]
- We will make a significant change in the title of the podcast from “Analyse Asia with BL” to “Analyse Asia”. We are also dropping the episode number from our title starting from this episode. The title change will take some time as we need to make changes on different sites.
- Our current host, Bernard Leong will be taking at least 3-6 months break but you will still see every episode from now to the break ends. The reason is that he is currently in personal transition and his family expecting third kid to the family in August 2019. If there are some major news happening from July to Sep 2019, Carol will be stepping in to host on Bernard's behalf.
- Our premium content project relating to Tencent and we are likely to do a Kickstarter program. BL and Carol will co-produce the show and the voices for the show will be announced later.
- 1st Live Show - Wework Singapore on 5 Sep 2019 and need help for Hong Kong live show: We will be charging for the live show and we hope that you can help to bring down some of the costs.
AMA with Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, LinkedIn, personal site) [6:12]
- (Colin Charles): You’re relatively well travelled. How do your travels shape your lens when it comes to analysing Asia? I will presume travel gives you an edge, but what top 3 things have you noted from travels that permeate from or diffuse to Asia? [6:49]
- (Uri Wolfovitz) What are the three likely outcomes of the US-China trade war ? Please indicate the winner and loser together with the timeline. [12:30]
- (JJ Chai): How would one assign weights to the factors that result in startups' success levels? What share is business model vs sector vs founder(s) vs luck (including externalities)? [16:29]
- (JJ Chai): What patterns do you see in successful founders in terms of personality traits? [19:34]
- (Hian Goh): Who’s going to win, Grab or Gojek? [20:21]
- (Arnaud Bonzom) How was the startup ecosystem in Singapore and Southeast Asian when you were involved at SGentrepreneurs.com? (Period is between 2005-2013) [23:03]
- (Lisa Enckell) Please share a story on how the tech scene had changed in this part of the world since you launched the first episode. (Period is between 2014-2019) [24:57]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): Why did you decide 5 years ago to launch a podcast? [28:33]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): What’s your secret sauce for shipping one episode each week? [30:10]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): How do you build your deal flow of guests? [31:37]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): How do you reach out to them? How do you identify the best channel, time, blurb to convince them to join? [32:00]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): How do you select them (heuristics and due diligence)? [34:34]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): How do you decide if you should invite one more time a guest? [35:51]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): Who are the 5 people you wish to have one day on your show? [36:50]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): Where do you see Analyse Asia in 5 years except releasing the 600th episode? [38:00]
- (Arnaud Bonzom) Would you like to make your podcast a full-time business? [39:00]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): 3 fun facts about Analyse Asia? [39:27]
- (Arnaud Bonzom): What are the 3 podcasts on startups you love listening? [42:00]
  - BL's recommendation: Acquired Podcast, Startup by Gimlet and Recode Decode, and Carol's recommendation: How I build this?
- (Wynthia Goh) Through 5 years of interviewing the insiders, disrupters, innovators, founders and investors, what has changed over the years and what has stayed the same? [42:38]
- (Wynthia Goh) Which guests left the strongest impression (for better or worse) and why? [43:48]
- (Wynthia Goh) If you are to summarize what you have learned from all the people you have interviewed, what would it be? [45:00]

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, "The Beginning" from Red Cliff Soundtrack and this episode is both hosted and edited by Carol Yin, and co-produced by Carol Yin and Bernard Leong.

Episode 299: Can we invest into technology companies from China? with James Hull

Bernard Leong — Thu, 23 May 2019 08:48:38 GMT

James Hull, co-host of China Tech Investor podcast and founder of Hullx, joined us to discuss whether we can invest into technology companies from China. We start our conversation with James' background and how he came to China and work in the realm of investments with different funds and capital groups. James explained how he assembled together a portfolio of technology companies and discuss the major misconceptions about investing into Chinese companies. Last but not least, we dig deeper into the Chinese technology companies in the ecommerce category, Luckin Coffee's IPO and Tencent's future prospects in gaming.

Editor’s disclaimer: Our discussion pre-dates the ban of Huawei by the US. Further more, our discussion does not constitute as investor advice, and we urge the audience to do their own homework to invest in any companies and be responsible for their own investments.

Episode 298: Employee to Entrepreneur with Steve Glaveski

Bernard Leong — Thu, 16 May 2019 08:26:00 GMT

Steve Glaveski, host of Future Squared podcast and founder of Collective campus, returns to our podcast to discuss his latest book "Employee to Entrepreneur: How to earn your freedom and do work that matters" and offered his thoughts to how the podcasting movement in Asia Pacific is evolving. We dived deep into why and how Steve wrote the book and his thoughts on how one should build the entrepreneurial mindset in his or her career.

Podcast Information:

Episode 297: Gojek vs Grab - Dawn of the Super App with Jon Russell

Bernard Leong — Fri, 10 May 2019 07:49:17 GMT

Jon Russell, reporter from TechCrunch, joined us in a conversation about the continuing war between Gojek and Grab with the dawn of the super app. We started our conversation on Honestbee's recent predicament, the growth in series B-D funding for startups across Southeast Asia and Eduardo Saverin's B-Capital recent raising of 406M for their fund. Then we dived deep into Grab vs Gojek and their narrative from fundraising valuation to the paradigm of super app, and discuss whether each of them can pull it off with their different strategies from Grab's financial services to Gojek's multiple acquisitions in the market. Last but not least, we discuss Uber's recent IPO S1-filing and their implications to Didi, Grab and Ola and what it means for the Asian ecosystem for the long term.

Podcast Information:

Episode 296: Disrupting Japan with Tim Romero

Bernard Leong — Sat, 04 May 2019 09:36:07 GMT

Tim Romero, chief technology officer for TEPCO Ventures and host of "Disrupting Japan" podcast, joined us in a discussion on the entrepreneurial technology ecosystem of Japan. We started with Tim's background and how he built his podcast to discuss startups & innovation in Japan. Subsequently, Tim dived deeper into the current evolution of the Japanese startup ecosystem, highlighting the key verticals from space, robotics and consumer Internet, the cultural changes that have taken place in the past few years and discuss how the small and medium businesses will be the most interesting companies to look out for Japan's next breakout phase in technology and entrepreneurship.

Episode 295: Docdoc & Digital Healthcare in Asia with Cole Sirucek

Bernard Leong — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 08:15:56 GMT

Cole Sirucek, CEO and co-founder of Docdoc, joined us to discuss the evolution of his digital health startup leading in patient intelligence and shared his perspectives on digital healthcare across Asia. We started from Cole's early career highlights particularly his time with Temasek and subsequently, the backstory to how Grace Park, his wife and he both started Docdoc and how the company transformed both the healthcare and insurance space. Last but not least, Cole discuss the major trends in digital healthcare space and the challenges in building a startup in that space across Asia.

Episode 294: Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation across Asia Pacific with Joyce Yang

Bernard Leong — Sat, 20 Apr 2019 08:40:06 GMT

Joyce Yang, founder of Global Coin Research is back on the podcast to share an overview of the regulatory landscape for blockchain technology and cryptocurrency across Asia Pacific with China included. She discuss the major misconceptions on the regulation of cryptocurrency and blockchain by governments across Asia Pacific and how startups and major corporations need to do in order to navigate the ever changing industry with blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Episode 293: Insights into Huawei's recent troubles with Zen Soo

Bernard Leong — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 07:49:14 GMT

Zen Soo, technology reporter from South China Morning Post (SCMP) and host of Inside China Tech, joins us for a conversation on Huawei's recent troubles. We begin with Zen's introduction of her coverage with SCMP, and the interesting story of her podcast. Then Zen dived deep into Huawei's recent troubles which include the arrest of their CFO, Meng Wanzhou in Canada, and the fallout between China and US on 5G with Huawei in the centre, and its implications to the other Chinese technology companies expanding abroad.

Episode 292: RHL Ventures & Venture Capital in Southeast Asia with Rachel Lau

Bernard Leong — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 08:38:39 GMT

Rachel Lau, managing partner of RHL Ventures joined us in a conversation to discuss their newly formed venture capital firm and discuss her perspectives on venture capital trends in Southeast Asia. Rachel began the conversation with her background and how RHL Ventures is formed under a group of well-established family businesses behind them, their investment thesis and the verticals which they are currently focused on. She also offered her perspectives on how one need to think of Southeast Asia as a region of investment and the major technology trends in the region.

Episode 291: Vayner Media and Marketing in Asia Pacific with Jeff Nicholson

Bernard Leong — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 02:10:15 GMT

Jeff Nicholson, chief media officer of Vayner Media joined us in a conversation on the expansion of their business footprint in Asia Pacific and discuss the major trends in marketing and advertising across Asia Pacific, splitting between China and the rest of Asia. Jeff discuss the customer centric focus of Vayner Media and how they are working with international brands in Asia Pacific and regional brands on digital marketing. We discuss the effects of the new tri-factor of Google, Facebook and Amazon in advertising and aggregation, and the rise of Tik Tok in international markets.

Episode 290: Splice Beta and Media in Southeast Asia with Alan Soon

Bernard Leong — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 15:14:22 GMT

Alan Soon, co-founder and CEO of Splice Media joined us in a conversation about Splice Media and their latest conference, Splice Beta, and offered his perspectives on how the media businesses are now in the transformation mode across Southeast Asia. We discuss the interesting media companies and the non-traditional business models in the media business. Alan also shared his thoughts on how the duopoly of Google and Facebook affects the advertising supply chain of media properties and the challenges of journalism in the region.

Episode 289: Global Digital Report 2019 with Simon Kemp

Bernard Leong — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 10:06:29 GMT

Simon Kemp, founder and CEO of Kepios joined us in a conversation on the global digital report 2019 and what it has installed for Asia Pacific in 2019. We start with the global trends of the report and zoomed it down to Asia Pacific, with the surprise that growth is still accelerating in the region particularly with India, the rise of Tik Tok by ByteDance and the hard truth that Facebook is not declining. We discuss whether there are new entrants in social media for Asia Pacific and the attitude towards privacy in the region as well.

Episode 288: Asia Tech Podcast & Podcasting in Asia Pacific with Graham Brown

Bernard Leong — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 08:34:51 GMT

Graham Brown, founder of Asia Tech Podcast and Pitchdeck Asia TV joined us in a conversation about his current focus in the podcasting and video media business and his thoughts on the recent major announcements that shook the podcasting world and its impact to Asia Pacific. We first dived into his background and how he has decided to go into the podcasting business. We discuss the Asia Tech Podcast and its intended audience, and how he focused on the storytelling aspect of his media business. Last but not least, Graham discuss the general market trends for podcasting in Asia Pacific, and where it will be heading in the next 3-5 years.

Episode 287: Binance with Joyce Yang

Bernard Leong — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 14:59:56 GMT

Joyce Yang from Global Coin Research joined us in a discussion to review Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange globally, its rapid rise and current lead in the industry. We began the chronological history of the company and how the founders Zhao Changpeng and He Yi built up the cryptocurrency exchange from 2017 to now the leading player with 40% of the market share globally. We discuss their current business footprint, their current projects from the stable coin project to the recent announcement of the Binance chain.

Episode 286: The US and China Relationship with James Chau

Bernard Leong — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 07:51:20 GMT

James Chau, news anchor and editor at China-US Focus and World Health Organization Goodwill Ambassador, joined us to discuss the current China and US relationship. We began with his background as a news anchor with Hong Kong TVB, BBC and CGTN (former CCTV news) and discuss his insights from his recent conversation with former US President Jimmy Carter. We dived deeper into the China and US relationship starting from 1979 and discuss how the escalating trade skirmishes between both countries might push them towards a trade war. Last but not least, we hear his perspectives on the recent detention of Huawei's CFO and the potential implications to world politics upon the calibration of US and China relationship based on the current trade talks.

Episode 285: The Trade Desk and Digital Advertising in Asia Pacific with Matt Harty

Bernard Leong — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 01:38:15 GMT

Matt Harty, senior vice president of Asia Pacific for The Trade Desk, joined us to discuss the footprint of the programmatic advertising company and the major trends on digital advertising across Asia Pacific. From the start, Matt introduces the concept of programmatic advertising and explains how The Trade Desk works with their customers and expands their business offerings across Asia Pacific. We dived deeper in the importance of brand safety in programmatic advertising, the key trends in digital advertising in Asia Pacific and whether humans or AI should decide what we want to advertise in the future.

Episode 284: Western Union in Asia Pacific & Trends in Fintech with Molly Shea

Bernard Leong — Sat, 09 Feb 2019 07:18:28 GMT

Molly Shea, general manager of Asia Pacific from Western Union joined us to discuss the business and distribution footprint of the company across Asia Pacific. We begin the conversation with Molly's career story, and subsequently leading into the discussion on Western Union's focus on digital services and geographic expansion in Asia Pacific. Last but not least, Molly shared her perspectives and thoughts on the current trends in the fintech space, for example, the current super apps trends from China to Asia and how Western Union are experimenting with blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies.

Episode 283: The ByteDance Group with Matthew Brennan

Bernard Leong — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 10:00:39 GMT

Matthew Brennan, co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk, closes the Bytedance trilogy of Toutiao and Douyin with the Bytedance Group. We discuss the mission and vision of the Bytedance Group, an artificial intelligence technology company and where they are after raising US$3B from SoftBank recently. We discuss the product portfolio of Bytedance beyond Toutiao and Douyin, their business model of advertising which drives high profitability and why they are poised to take on Facebook in a global scale.

Episode 282: Numbers & Narratives China Edition with John Artman

Bernard Leong — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 09:48:16 GMT

John Artman, editor in chief from Technode of host of China Tech Talk, joined us in a conversation to discuss three different and interesting stories from China entrepreneurial space and align them in the underlying theme of explaining what numbers and narratives can mean in China. We began with the bike rental startups collapse, followed by the Mafengwo scandal and finally the recent leaked financials from Luckin Coffee into the open. Through the lenses of these three stories, we discuss how we need to understand and adjust our expectations to the future of China's economic growth.

Episode 281: The Future is Asia with Parag Khanna

Bernard Leong — Tue, 15 Jan 2019 07:12:18 GMT

Parag Khanna, futurist, TED speaker and founder of Futuremap, joined us to discuss his book "The Future is Asian". We kick off the conversation on the main themes of the book, and taking the Asian perspective on how we should look at world history. We discuss the geopolitical landscape of Asia, and why China's Belt and Road Initiative will not led to a bi-polar world but will shift the rest of Asia towards independence and have the ability to assert their identity in the next century. Last but not least, Parag shared his advice for those out there who might want to come to Asia and why the future is truly Asian.

Episode 280: Proptech in Asia Pacific with Charles Reed Anderson

Bernard Leong — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 07:52:06 GMT

Charles Reed Anderson, founder of Charles Reed Anderson and associates joined us to discuss the state of proptech in Asia Pacific. Charles break down the real estate supply chain and discuss the key trends which are disrupting the real estate industry. We discuss how user experience and business model disruption are driving the current innovations in proptech such as Wework and how the traditional real estate players such as CBRE and Jones LaSalle are tackling these challenges ahead. Last but not least, Charles explained why the Asian counterparts in multi-national real estate companies are driving more innovation in proptech as compared to their US and European counterparts.

Episode 279: Luckin Coffee vs Starbucks in China with Matthew Brennan

Bernard Leong — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 09:31:46 GMT

Matthew Brennan from China Channel joins us to discuss the coffee wars in China between the upstart, Luckin Coffee and Starbucks Cafe. We discuss the origins of the company and the strong management team led by Jenny Qian which brought the startup to its current stage. We discuss how Chinese consumers are now using Luckin Coffee and why they are different and poised to give Starbucks a ride of their lives in China. Last but not least, we discuss the coffee wars in China as part of the proxy war between Alibaba and Tencent and why it will likely to catapult Luckin Coffee outside China for regional expansion.

Episode 278: State of China and SoftBank in 2018 with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 03:36:56 GMT

Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information, joins us to conclude the state of China and SoftBank in 2018 and offer his predictions in 2019. We discussed the five major events: one, ByteDance's success with Douyin (or Tik Tok) globally and the upcoming war with Facebook; two, the SoftBank Vision Fund and its impact to startups and venture capital globally; three, pending trade war between US and China with a short discussion on Google's Project Dragonfly; four, the large merger and acquisitions in China and last but not least, the bearish market happening now for China technology giants. We end with Shai's five predictions on China next year and what it will mean for the rest of the world.

Episode 277: State of Southeast Asia in 2018 with Arnaud Bonzom

Bernard Leong — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 00:09:34 GMT

Arnaud Bonzom, co-founder of Map of the Money joined us to review the state of Southeast Asia in 2018. We started with the conversation on the movers and shakers in the ecosystem with Grab's acquisition of Uber Southeast Asia and its quest to be the super app with Go-Jek standing in her way. We discussed how the startup ecosystems in Southeast Asia have evolved, with the venture capital firms raising their 2nd or 3rd rounds and family funds who are set to join in the fray. We discuss how the market in Southeast Asia is shifting in each country and the upcoming unicorns to watch in 2019.

Episode 276: How to understand China Technology Companies as an investor with Elliott Zaagman

Bernard Leong — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 05:06:23 GMT

Elliott Zaagman, co-host of China Tech Investor podcast, joined us to discuss how to understand Chinese technology companies as an investor. We discussed the theme and intended audience for his current podcast, and dived deep into how we can value the technology giants in China from Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent to the recent upstarts such as Pinduoduo and Xiaomi. Elliott laid out the deep misconceptions on Chinese technology companies and provided a different perspective to how they are vertically integrated companies with different products and services contrast to their western counterparts.

Episode 275: The Information with Jessica Lessin

Bernard Leong — Sun, 09 Dec 2018 08:19:55 GMT

Jessica Lessin, CEO and founder of The Information joined us in a conversation to discuss the news media site and its current focus in Asia. Jessica began the conversation on why she was inspired to set up The Information, and offer the vision and mission of her company. Continuing the conversation, she shared her perspectives on growing a media business, the cultural differences and innovation between US and Asia technology companies and why a good product is not enough for a company to be great. Last but not least, she discuss where The Information will go and relay her thoughts on the future of media companies.

Episode 274: How to do an ICO and Kleros with Federico Ast

Bernard Leong — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 14:31:44 GMT

Federico Ast, co-founder and CEO of Kleros joined us in a conversation on how to do an ICO, and the story behind his blockchain project, Kleros. He shared the backstory in how he put together a global team to build a blockchain dispute resolution layer, the decision process in doing an ICO and at the same time, explain how to engage a cryptocurrency exchange to list the token for his project. Last but not least, Federico shared his impressions on his recent trip in Asia and offered his perspectives to whether Asia is leading the blockchain space globally.

Episode 273: Luxasia Group in Asia with Dr Wolfgang Baier

Bernard Leong — Sat, 17 Nov 2018 00:10:15 GMT

Dr Wolfgang Baier, group CEO of Luxasia Group joined us in a conversation to discuss the corporate transformation of the company and its current business footprint across Asia Pacific. Wolfgang shared his background as a consultant in McKinsey from Europe till his former role as Singpost CEO and narrate the backstory how he brought Alibaba Group to invest into Singpost. He also discuss the current trends of ecommerce, logistics and retail across Asia and shared how young millennials are valuable and can help in any company transformation.

Episode 272: Why Chinese Tech Companies are going IPO this year with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Sat, 10 Nov 2018 23:13:25 GMT

Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief from The Information joins us in a conversation on why Chinese technology companies are frantically going IPO this year and what it means for the Chinese market and the rest of the world. We begin our conversation with the upcoming subscriber event from the Information in Asia on Nov 12, the recent news on the prominent Google mafia in China and the state of Chinese electric cars market. Shai shared his thoughts on why Chinese technology companies are now rushing to take themselves public and how the recent trade war coupled with the recent dumping of technology stocks may change their calculus in the short term.

Episode 271: Digital Trends across Southeast Asia and SEA Group with Santitarn Sathirathai

Bernard Leong — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 22:49:14 GMT

Santitarn Sathirathai, group chief economist of the SEA group joined us in a conversation to discuss the key digital trends that drive the growth of Southeast Asia. We began the conversation with the SEA Group and their current mission, vision and coverage across the region, and discuss their key products: Garena, Shopee and Airpay. Continuing our conversation, Santitarn offered his perspectives on the major digital trends specifically on ecommerce in Southeast Asia and the development of super app, and how the current escalating trade tensions between China and US will influence where the major economies within Southeast Asia will be heading in the future.

Episode 270: Rise of IoT in China and 5G across Asia with Charles Anderson

Bernard Leong — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 09:44:28 GMT

Charles Reed Anderson, founder of Charles Reed Anderson and Associates joined us to discuss the surprises that emerge from the IoT industry in Asia Pacific. We discussed why China has emerged the surprise winner of leading the IoT deployment race and whether it will lead the rest of the world in IoT technologies. In the same conversation, we dived into the current status of 5G across Asia Pacific, specifically in Japan with what Rakuten and Softbank are thinking about MVNO, and last but not least, we also discussed how the new SIMs technology are going to disrupt the telcos in the near future.

Episode 269: Hubspot in Asia and Scaling Companies with J D Sherman

Bernard Leong — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 10:08:57 GMT

J D Sherman from Hubspot joined us in a conversation to discuss Hubspot in Asia and his perspectives on how to scale companies across the world. We started the conversation with JD sharing his background and introduce the backstory, vision and mission behind Hubspot, a developer & marketer of software products for inbound marketing and sales. JD discussed the products, services and geographical footprint of Hubspot in Asia and how they are localising their products for the local market. Last but not least, he shared the lessons of how to scale companies globally.

Episode 268: The Future of Mobility in Asia and Nissan with Vincent Wijnen

Bernard Leong — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 05:28:50 GMT

Vincent Wijnen, senior vice president from Nissan in Asia & Oceania joined us in a conversation to discuss the future of mobility in Asia. We began our conversation on the concept of autonomous vehicles and how it will transform the concept of mobility in Asia. We discussed the major themes around autonomous vehicles specifically in the areas of energy, communications and cybersecurity. Vincent also discussed how the regulatory bodies in Asia are thinking about self-driving cars and whether we will be living in a future where we are driving or be driven.

Episode 267: Go-Jek in Indonesia with Rama Mamuaya

Bernard Leong — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 14:48:01 GMT

Rama Mamuaya, founder and CEO of DailySocial joined us to discuss one of the most important startup unicorns in Indonesia, Go-Jek. We discussed the backstory behind G0-Jek which evolved from a ride-hailing to now a super app that bridge payments, ride hailing and other services in Indonesia, and why it's giving Grab a run for their money. We examined Go-Jek's regional expansion strategy and how it is becoming a proxy battle between Alibaba Group and Tencent in Southeast Asia.

Episode 266: Jack Ma and Leadership Transition in Alibaba Group with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 10:08:56 GMT

Rui Ma, founder of Transformative Technology Academy and co-host of TechBuzz China podcast joined us to discuss Jack Ma's recent announcement to step down as the chairman of Alibaba Group, the leadership transition within Alibaba Group and where they will be heading next. We discussed Jack Ma's influence within the Alibaba Group and how his tenure with the company has led to Alibaba becoming one of the technology giants not just in China, but the rest of the world. We continued our conversation to the future with Daniel Zhang, the successor to Jack Ma's chairmanship within Alibaba and where the group is heading with Ant Financial, Cainiao and international expansion in the midst of a leadership transition and what it means for their rivals: Tencent and Baidu.

Episode 265: Entrepreneur First with Alex Crompton

Bernard Leong — Sat, 22 Sep 2018 19:50:23 GMT

Alex Crompton from Entrepreneur First (EF) joined us to discuss the progress of their startup incubator in Singapore and Hong Kong and how they are helping entrepreneurs to build their startup companies by employing a talent first approach. We dived deep into the vision, mission and backstory behind EF and how it operates across the region, and discussed interesting topics from how EF facilitates the interaction between entrepreneurs and steer them towards building companies, and whether the trend of too much incubators create an elitist atmosphere for startup founders out there.

Episode 264: The Billionaire Raj with James Crabtree

Bernard Leong — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 01:41:30 GMT

James Crabtree, associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yee School of Public Policy joined us in a conversation to discuss his new book "The Billionaire Raj: A Journey through India's New Gilded Age" and what it means for where India will move in the next decade. We discussed the major themes of the book and the intrinsic links between the political and business ecosystem across the country. As we progressed our conversation from the interesting Ambani family and Reliance Group, we shift our conversation to the current technology ecosystem in India where it is an open economy that are at the crossroads with US & China technology giants. Last but not least, James offered his perspectives to where India is heading for the future.

Episode 263: Antler with Magnus Grimeland

Bernard Leong — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:28:37 GMT

Magnus Grimeland, founder and CEO of Antler, joined us in a conversation to discuss the new startup incubator focusing on helping founders in building and scaling their own businesses. Magnus shared his early career story in special forces with the military and how his experience to deal with extreme situations of life and death becomes vital with his stints as an entrepreneur in Zalora and Global Fashion Group. We also discussed Antler, the mission and vision and what it means to succeed and differentiate themselves as a startup generator globally.

Episode 262: Douyin in China with Matthew Brennan

Bernard Leong — Sat, 25 Aug 2018 09:52:47 GMT

Matthew Brennan from China Channel and co-host of China Tech Talk joined us to discuss the mobile app Douyin aka Tik Tok (for the rest of the world) by Bytedance and why they are poised to be one of the new leading social media platform not just for China but for the rest of the world. We discussed the mechanics in how Douyin work for content creators and consumers and the monetisation model for the app, and how Douyin are now navigating the regulatory environment in China with their user generated content. Last but not least, we also discussed their ongoing feud with Tencent.

Episode 261: Foxconn and TSMC in 2018 with Tim Culpan

Bernard Leong — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 14:57:33 GMT

Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us in a conversation on the two technology giants from Taiwan: Foxconn and TSMC and how they have evolved for the past three years since 2015. First, Tim started the discussion with Foxconn and the major milestones in the past three years from the acquisition of Sharp to the recent listing of FIH Mobile and Foxconn's efforts on automation and robotics in manufacturing. Next, Tim discussed the recent leadership transition in TSMC and where they are heading in the next few years.

Episode 260: Pinduoduo & their upcoming IPO in China with Matthew Brennan

Bernard Leong — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 05:16:30 GMT

Matthew Brennan, co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk, joined us to discuss Pinduoduo, the three year old social ecommerce company backed by Tencent slated for an IPO this year. We discussed the origins of Pinduoduo and why they labelled themselves as the amalgamation of Costco and Disney, their products and services on the mobile app and the business model that powered their rise. We also discussed the backers of the company together with the upcoming IPO of Pinduoduo in NASDAQ.

Episode 259: Xiaomi IPO with Tim Culpan

Bernard Leong — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 22:40:38 GMT

Tim Culpan, columnist at Bloomberg joined us to discuss the recent Xiaomi IPO and what it means for Chinese technology companies going public. Tim offered his analyses on Xiaomi and break down their media narrative versus what they are really are and where their core businesses and revenue models are structured. Last but not least, Tim discussed how the Chinese companies such as Xiaomi, Baidu and Alibaba might move with the Chinese government's scheme of Chinese depositary receipts (CDRs).

Episode 258: Meituan Dianping with Liza Lin

Bernard Leong — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 07:04:13 GMT

Liza Lin from Wall Street Journal joined us to discuss one of the upstart Internet giants from China: Meituan Dianping with their upcoming IPO and described her recent interview with their charismatic founder, Wang Xing and where the company is heading. We discussed the backstory of the company, Meituan till its merger with Dianping, their focus as the "Amazon of Services" in China, their recent foray into ride-hailing taking on Didi and their shifting alliances from Alibaba to Tencent.

Episode 257: The ZTE debacle with Rui Ma

Bernard Leong — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 02:11:56 GMT

Rui Ma, founder of Transformative Technology Academy and host of TechBuzz China podcast joined us in a discussion on the recent crisis of the Chinese technology company, ZTE and its implications on the ongoing trade war between US and China. We discussed the major lessons learnt by the Chinese companies from the ZTE fallout in a time where Chinese technology companies are now in the midst of challenging Silicon Valley for dominance in technology and regional expansion across Asia Pacific.

Episode 256: WeWork in Southeast Asia with Turochas Fuad

Bernard Leong — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 07:03:47 GMT

Turochas "T" Fuad, managing director of WeWork, Southeast Asia joined us for a conversation on his journey as a serial entrepreneur and his current role to expand WeWork across Southeast Asia. We started from his early career with Yahoo! and Skype and subsequently with the acquisition of Spacemob to WeWork. We discussed WeWork, their products and services offered to different customers from startups to multi-national corporations and their geographical expansion across Southeast Asia. Last but not least, he also shared his thoughts on how the co-working spaces are evolving across Southeast Asia.

Episode 255: Advertising and Video Landscape in Asia Pacific with Greg Armshaw

Bernard Leong — Sun, 08 Jul 2018 15:25:40 GMT

Greg Armshaw, head of sales from Brightcove Asia joined us to discuss the advertising and video landscape across Asia Pacific. We discussed his current work and role in Brightcove within the region and his thoughts on how the digital in Asia Pacific is shifting against US and Europe. Last but not least, he discussed his thoughts on how Facebook and Tencent will contest Southeast Asia and how the outcome will be decided.

Episode 254: Google I/O and Apple WWDC 2018 with Ben Bajarin

Bernard Leong — Sun, 01 Jul 2018 14:30:53 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies joined us in a conversation to discuss what happened in the recent Google I/O and Apple WWDC 2018 and its implications on the development of artificial intelligence, voice assistants and the separation of state between tablets and personal computers. We also discussed the recent happenings in Intel and his brief thoughts on the semiconductor industry in Asia.

Episode 253: Why Blockchain is hot again in China with John Artman

Bernard Leong — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 09:30:30 GMT

John Artman, editor in chief from Technode and host of China Tech Talk joined us to discuss why blockchain is now hot again in China despite the ban on ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges. We discussed the Chinese government's recent enthusiasm in promoting development of blockchain technologies, and the major applications that will emerge. Last but not least, we discuss how China's development in blockchain might spur Chinese technology companies to go global.

Episode 252: Why the Broadcom and Qualcomm deal fell apart with Chirayu Wadke

Bernard Leong — Sat, 26 May 2018 16:18:32 GMT

Chirayu Wadke, partner from Seedplus joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the most important trends in smartphone, internet of things (IoT) and mobility landscape and why the recent Broadcom acquisition of Qualcomm failed. In the second part, we discussed why the recent Broadcom and Qualcomm deal fell apart and its implications to Asia Pacific companies making acquisitions in the US market.

Episode 251: Smartphone, IoT & Mobility Landscape with Chirayu Wadke

Bernard Leong — Mon, 21 May 2018 03:33:33 GMT

Chirayu Wadke, partner from Seedplus joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the most important trends in smartphone, internet of things (IoT) and mobility landscape and why the recent Broadcom acquisition of Qualcomm failed. In the first part, we discussed his current role and coverage as a venture capitalist with Seedplus and his central investment thesis and branched into a deeper conversation on smartphone, IoT and mobility (autonomous vehicles) landscape and how it shifts the calculus of putting investments into those emerging technologies.

Episode 250: China Tech Giants' Acquisitions & Its Impact to Asia with Jon Russell

Bernard Leong — Sun, 13 May 2018 15:34:26 GMT

Jon Russell, from TechCrunch joined us in a two episode arc to discuss the major acquisitions that are shaking the Asia landscape from Southeast Asia to China. In the second part of our conversation, we discussed the recent major acquisitions by China technology giants in China. From the acquisition of Mobike by Meituan-Dianping to Ele.me by Alibaba Group, we evaluate their impact to Southeast Asia and India and examine why Amazon is not likely to buy Flipkart in India.

Episode 249: Grab acquires Uber Southeast Asia with Jon Russell

Bernard Leong — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 16:39:48 GMT

Jon Russell, from TechCrunch joined us in a two episode arc to discuss the major acquisitions that are shaking the Asia landscape from Southeast Asia to China. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed the recent acquisition of Uber Southeast Asia by Grab and its impact to the different stakeholders from investors, employees, consumers and governments. We also explore how their competitors Go-Jek and Ola are affected within the Asian landscape.

Episode 248: The State of Low Power Wide Area Networks in Asia 2018 with Charles Anderson

Bernard Leong — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 16:42:29 GMT

Charles Anderson from Charles Reed Anderson and Associates, joined us in a two part conversation discussing the global state of IoT and the evolution of low power wide area networks (LPWANs) in Asia. In the second part, we discusse the state of low power wide area networks and the path for the three major vendors: NB-IoT, LoRA and SigFox across Asia Pacific and how the different telco players are leveraging them to enable IoT for different use cases.

Episode 247: Why IoT initiatives fail with Charles Anderson

Bernard Leong — Sun, 15 Apr 2018 14:11:34 GMT

Charles Anderson from Charles Reed Anderson and Associates, joined us in a two part conversation discussing the global state of IoT and the evolution of low power wide area networks (LPWANs) in Asia. In the first part, we discussed why most IoT initiatives fail and how many companies can avert the points of failure in their digital transformation programs. Last but not least, Charles discussed the interesting case of Taipei's smart city initiative and what they have gotten right in their implementation with a private-public partnership.

Episode 246: A Conversation on Technology with Andreas Ehn

Bernard Leong — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 16:20:26 GMT

Andreas Ehn, current partner of Approach and former CTO of Spotify, joined us in a conversation on technology and where we are heading in four major areas: artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and cryptocurrency, autonomous vehicles and virtual & augmented reality.

Episode 245: Intelligent Island with Ramakrishna Purushotaman

Bernard Leong — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 02:09:21 GMT

Ramakrishna Purushotaman, deputy CEO of CIO Academy Asia joined us in a conversation to discuss his new book "Intelligent Island" which he co-authored with Grace Chng, that chronicled the history of information technology development & how it spurred the economy of Singapore from early government efforts. We discussed the major themes, the lessons learnt and what the future of technology industry lies ahead for Singapore will be in the next decade to come.

Episode 244: What Mike Moritz got wrong about China Startup Ecosystem with Benjamin Joffe

Bernard Leong — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 02:49:27 GMT

Benjamin Joffe, partner of HAX from SOS Ventures joined us in a conversation about the evolution of their hardware startup accelerator and discuss what Mike Moritz from Sequoia Capital got wrong and right about China's technology startup ecosystem. We discussed the intention of Moritz's article to Silicon Valley and how the Chinese startups will pose a challenge to them globally.

Episode 243: From Huawei's US entry to Wechat's Future with Juro Osawa

Bernard Leong — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 15:12:48 GMT

Juro Osawa, reporter at The Information joined us in a conversation to discuss the recent challenges faced by China's technology giants, Huawei and Tencent. We discussed why Huawei's deal with AT&T in the US had fallen apart and its implications to other foreign companies trying to enter the US market. At the same time, we discussed the recent turmoil within Tencent on the future of Wechat.

Episode 242: Cisco and Software & Network Transformation in Asia Pacific with Brink Sanders

Bernard Leong — Sun, 18 Mar 2018 14:29:05 GMT

Brink Sanders joined us in an interesting conversation on the footprint of Cisco across Asia Pacific and his perspectives on software & network transformation across Pacific. We discussed Cisco's coverage across Asia Pacific with their products and services and how they are helping to transform the landscape of Asia with their network technologies. Brink also shared his thoughts on the challenges of companies in Asia undergoing digital transformation and discussed the upcoming technologies from AI, blockchain to even quantum networks that will transform the networking industry for tomorrow.

Episode 241: Tryb and Fintech in Asia Pacific with Markus Gnirck & Lien Choong Luen

Bernard Leong — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:40:14 GMT

Markus Gnirck, CEO and co-founder and Lien Choong Luen, COO of Tryb joined us in a conversation to discuss the backstory and evolution of their company, and their recent round of US$30M from Makara Capital. They also discussed their perspectives on the major trends on fintech in Asia Pacific, specifically on how the Chinese technology giants and local banks are approaching financial inclusion and the challenges on regulation and navigation in the fintech space by corporations & startups.

Episode 240: Fintech in Asia Pacific 2018 with Zennon Kapron

Bernard Leong — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 15:52:29 GMT

Zennon Kapron, founder of Kapron Asia and China Fintech joined us to conclude the two part conversation on Fintech in Asia Pacific. In this episode, Zennon continued the conversation on fintech outside of China, starting from the recent aggressive expansion of Tencent & Ant Financial in Southeast Asia, the evolution of digital payments in an open market with the other major players such as Visa, Mastercard & Paypal and the current boom and bust of ICOs in the cryptocurrency and blockchain markets in Asia.

Episode 239: The Regulation Shift on Fintech in China with Zennon Kapron

Bernard Leong — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 04:09:13 GMT

Zennon Kapron, founder & director of Kapron Asia and China Fintech, joined us in a conversation in how the Chinese government's new regulations are shaping the fintech space in China. We discussed the impact of Wang'lian on digital payments, the reduction of peer to peer landing companies and the ban on ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges to the dynamic fintech space in China. Last but not least, we look at how the fintech industry in 2018 within China will be shaped by emergence of new verticals such as AI or new regulation that continues to shape the fintech space in China.

Episode 238: Xero & SaaS in Asia with Alex Campbell

Bernard Leong — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 08:32:23 GMT

Alex Campbell, managing director of Xero, joined us in a conversation to discuss the web based accounting software service company in Asia and the state of software as a service (SaaS) in Asia. We discussed the origin of Xero and its current footprint across Asia, the products and services behind the company and how the company is scaling across different geographies. Last and not least, Alex shared his thoughts on the SaaS industry in Asia.

Episode 237: MyDoc & Digital Healthcare in Asia with Snehal Patel

Bernard Leong — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 01:55:40 GMT

Snehal Patel, CEO and co-founder of MyDoc joined us in a conversation to discuss the story of his healthcare company and the state of digital healthcare companies in Asia. We discussed the vision and mission of his company MyDoc, and how it has shifted from its initial model to the current state. Last but not least, we discussed the state of digital healthcare companies and how they are navigating the boundaries from regulatory bodies across Asia.

Episode 236: Ride Hailing Wars 2.0 in China with Eva Xiao

Bernard Leong — Sat, 17 Feb 2018 17:38:15 GMT

Eva Xiao, China reporter from Tech In Asia joined us in a two part conversation on the most important events that is rocking the China technology landscape. In the second part of our conversation, Eva discussed the return of China's ride hailing wars and why Didi's dominance in the ride hailing space is now being challenged not just by the bike sharing startups such as Ofo and Mobike but surprisingly from a fellow second generation technology giant, Meituan-Dianping.

Episode 235: The Wechat World Conference 2018 with Eva Xiao

Bernard Leong — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 14:15:37 GMT

Eva Xiao, China reporter from Tech In Asia joined us in a two part conversation on the most important events that is rocking the China technology landscape. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed the recent WeChat World Conference 2018 and its impact to the ecosystem. We covered the key announcements made during the conversation, the important messaging from Allen Zhang, the WeChat founder, and how mini-programs and mini-games will change the dynamics of the WeChat ecosystem from online to offline in China.

Episode 234: Digital in 2018 Part 2 on Connecting the Next Billion with Simon Kemp

Bernard Leong — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 15:35:35 GMT

Simon Kemp, founder and CEO of Kepios and global consultant from We are Social, joined us in a conversation to discuss the latest global digital report in 2018. In the second part of our conversation, we discussed how the next billion will be connected and what it means for innovation for voice and video messaging and the profile of the Instagram user. Last but not least, we examined whether Facebook is really declining across the world and whether we are seeing any interesting trends from the ecommerce data.

Episode 233: Digital in 2018 Part 1 on Messaging Apps with Simon Kemp

Bernard Leong — Sat, 03 Feb 2018 07:13:37 GMT

Simon Kemp, founder and CEO of Kepios and global consultant from We are Social, joined us in a conversation to discuss the latest global digital report in 2018. In the first part of our conversation, he discussed the key numbers, trends and new data that is added to this most important annual digital report across the world, and dissected the interesting world map of the messaging apps and its implications for Facebook, Whatsapp, Wechat, LINE, Telegram and many others across Asia Pacific.

Episode 232: Uber China Mafia with Chenyu Zheng

Bernard Leong — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 14:24:51 GMT

Chenyu Zheng, former product marketing manager from Uber and now author, joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the unique digital experience in China and the Uber China mafia and their impact to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in China after merger with Didi. In the second part, we discussed the impact of Uber in China, after its merger with Didi, and how it has created a generation of entrepreneurial talent that are shaking the transportation landscape with Ofo and Mobike.

Episode 231: What makes Digital Experience in China unique? with Chenyu Zheng

Bernard Leong — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 05:55:12 GMT

Chenyu Zheng, former product marketing manager from Uber and now author, joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the unique digital experience in China and the Uber China mafia & their impact to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in China after merger with Didi. In the first part, she discussed her major observations on the web and mobile apps in China and why they have evolved in a different way from their US counterparts. Last but not least, she also shared what she has learned from Allen Zhang, the founder of Wechat in product management.

Episode 230: Appier & AI with Chih-Han Yu

Bernard Leong — Sat, 13 Jan 2018 05:26:43 GMT

Chih-Han Yu, the co-founder and CEO of Appier joined us in a conversation to discuss the journey, team and products behind his company, Appier that focused on artificial intelligence with leading investors from Sequoia Capital to SoftBank Group. We discussed his perspectives on AI and its impact to society and where the field is moving in the next one year.

Episode 229: AI in Asia Pacific with Ayesha Khanna

Bernard Leong — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 03:34:43 GMT

Ayesha Khanna, CEO of ADDO AI joined us in a conversation on the subject of artificial intelligence aka AI. We discussed the key technologies, major applications in fintech and manufacturing and at the same, discussed the major trends on AI dominating Asia Pacific. Last but not least, Ayesha discussed the implications of AI, particularly in how they will reshape traditional industries and the displacement of knowledge workers' jobs by AI.

Episode 228: State of Southeast Asia 2017 Part 2 with Arnaud Bonzom

Bernard Leong — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 04:58:03 GMT

Arnaud Bonzom from 500 Startups joined us in a conversation to conclude our conversation on the state of Southeast Asia in 2017 and what is likely to come in 2018. We discussed the entry of Alibaba and Tencent in Southeast Asia and India which set up the war for ecommerce, logistics, social and cloud computing with Amazon, Facebook and Google, and the strange situation of disruptors and incumbents teaming up in consolidation or strategic partnerships across Southeast Asia. Last but not least, we discussed what 2018 will be for Southeast Asia particularly in the payment wars between major players and startups across the region.

Episode 227: State of Southeast Asia 2017 Part 1 with Arnaud Bonzom

Bernard Leong — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 02:55:07 GMT

Arnaud Bonzom from 500 Startups joined us in a conversation to review the state of Southeast Asia in a two part conversation before the closing of 2017. In this episode, we discussed the three major events that rocked Southeast Asia starting with SoftBank and Didi's investment into Grab with US$2 billion, followed by the two IPOs from Sea (formerly Garena) and Razer, followed by how the startups and venture capital firms are starting their series B journey, and the change of fundraising landscape with initial coin offerings (ICOs) dominating the region.

Episode 226: State of North East Asia 2017 with Shai Oster

Bernard Leong — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 07:03:56 GMT

Shai Oster, Asia Bureau Chief at The Information, joined us in a conversation to review the state of North East Asia in 2017. We discussed the five major events: SoftBank's Vision Fund, the expansion of Alibaba and Tencent into Southeast Asia and India while battling Google & Amazon in these open markets, China's imposing tougher regulations on both local & foreign tech companies, the ties between US & China tech companies, and the rise of Toutiao, Meituan-Dianping and Didi, with an additional conversation on Xiaomi's upcoming IPO in 2018.

Episode 225: Tencent's Gaming Empire & Honor of Kings with Matthew Brennan

Bernard Leong — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 07:31:11 GMT

Matthew Brennan, co-founder of China Channel and host of China Tech Talk joined us in a conversation to discuss Tencent's gaming empire worldwide and their third killer app after QQ & Wechat: Honor of Kings. We discussed the recent major happenings from Tencent in their purchase of stock from Snap in the US and bypassing Facebook's market capitalisation temporarily, and how they assembled their gaming portfolio and assets, particularly Honor of Kings, in a strategy as the top gaming company now in the world and mitigate against the concerns of the Chinese government in mobile gaming addiction.

Episode 225: Tencent’s Gaming Empire & Honor of Kings with Matthew Brennan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 224: Nokia Networks, Smart Cities and IoT with Danial Mausoof - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 04:44:49 GMT

Danial Mausoof from Nokia joined us in a conversation to discuss the company’s current focus in carrier networks, the upcoming 5G networks and Internet of things (IoT) initiatives across Asia. He discussed how Asia businesses and governments are currently figuring out the strategy behind their IoT & smart cities initiatives, where the key applications currently

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Episode 223: Tata Communications & Perspectives on IoT & Mobility with Anthony Bartolo - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 14:51:51 GMT

Anthony Bartolo from Tata Communications joined us in a conversation on mobility and Internet of Things (IoT) and their impact on the enterprise level across Asia Pacific. Anthony begin the conversation on his work with Tata Communications and how carrier networks and IoT are changing the landscape in asset management and other applications such as

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Episode 222: The SoftBank Vision Fund with Tim Culpan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 08:07:40 GMT

Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us in a two part conversation on the high impact news from Asia’s movers and shakers. In the second part of our conversation, Tim covered Japan’s SoftBank US$100B Vision Fund and discussed the mission, vision and structure behind this massive fund that is poised to overshadow all the venture capital

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Episode 221: The Toshiba Chip Unit Deal with Tim Culpan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 06:31:17 GMT

Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us in a two part conversation on the high impact news from Asia’s movers and shakers. In the first part of our conversation, he covered the backstory, drama and conclusion to the Toshiba’s chip unit deal and examine why Apple is involved with at least two of the major bidders.

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Episode 220: Digital in Asia Pacific 2017 Part 2 with Simon Kemp - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 01:06:53 GMT

Simon Kemp, founder & CEO of Kepios and global consultant from We Are Social, joined us in a two part discussion on the state of digital in Asia Pacific. In the second part of our conversation, we discussed the emerging social media trends that spanned across China, Japan & Korea and rest of Asia Pacific.

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Episode 219: Digital in Asia Pacific 2017 Part 1 with Simon Kemp - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 25 Nov 2017 02:28:30 GMT

Simon Kemp, founder & CEO of Kepios and global consultant from We Are Social, joined us in a two part discussion on the state of digital in Asia Pacific. In the first part of our conversation, Simon discussed the major trends that have emerged in his report distilling from global to Asia and why voice

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Episode 218: Sustainable Development in Asia Pacific with Xu Haoliang - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 14:11:27 GMT

Xu Haoliang, Assistant Secretary General for the United Nations and Director, Regional Bureau for Asia & the Pacific joined us in a conversation to discuss sustainable development in the Responsible Business Forum 2017. We discussed how the UNDP are working with different stakeholders from businesses, NGOs and UN agencies on the sustainable goals and how

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Episode 217: Brinc, Hardware & IoT in Asia with Bay McLaughlin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 10:31:47 GMT

Bay McLaughlin, COO and co-founder of Brinc joined us in a conversation to discuss the evolution of his company, Brinc and where it is now heading across Asia from China to southeast Asia and other parts of the world. In our conversation, we dived deep into major trends and challenging issues on hardware and Internet

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Episode 216: Indian Titans Leadership Crisis with Andy Mukherjee - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 08:01:53 GMT

Andy Mukherjee from Bloomberg Gadfly joined us in a conversation discuss the recent Indian titans leadership crises from the Tata Group & Infosys. We discussed the business structure, key people, background and recent corporate governance troubles behind the Tata Group & Infosys and discuss whether these issues will percolate to the rest of the other

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Episode 215: Stripe in Asia and the Startup Stack with Piruze Sabuncu - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 04:00:00 GMT

Piruze Sabuncu from Stripe joined in a conversation to discuss the company’s footprint across Asia and how they are helping the startups from Asia to scale to the rest of the world. We discussed their recent one year anniversary celebrations where they unveiled the startup stack and the key tools which most startups are using

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Episode 214: #AskGaryVee & Vayner Media in Asia with Gary Vaynerchuk - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 04:00:00 GMT

Gary Vaynerchuk is here to discuss his companies: Vayner X and Vayner Media and his insightful perspectives on entrepreneurship and family business. We dived deep into his understanding of social media from US to Asia and how it has evolved, his life principles in bridging strategy & execution with a customer centric driven approach. Last

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Episode 213: China’s Belt and Road Initiative with Robert Koepp - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 04:00:00 GMT

Robert Koepp from the Economist corporate network joined us in a conversation to discuss the government of China’s Belt and Road initiative. We discussed the impact of the Belt and Road initiative to the Asian economies and the geopolitical, trade and financial risks that potentially impact China’s most important infrastructure project across Asia and Europe.

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Episode 212: Why China bans exchanges & ICOs with Neil Woodfine

Bernard Leong — Sat, 21 Oct 2017 04:00:00 GMT

Neil Woodfine, growth manager from Wyre & organizer of Beijing bitcoin meetup joined us in an interesting conversation on bitcoin, blockchain & cryptocurrencies where we examined some of the popular misconceptions of the industry. We discussed why the government of China has decided to ban cryptocurrency exchanges and ICOs and where it will go from there.

Episode 211: Red Hat in Asia & Open Innovation Labs with Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen

Bernard Leong — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 04:00:00 GMT

Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, senior vice president & general manager from Redhat, Asia Pacific joined us to discuss the company’s footprint across Asia and their recent launch of their new Open Innovation Labs in Singapore. We discuss how Asian companies are in different phases of their digital transformation from culture to innovation and adjusting against digital disruption.

Episode 210: Lean In Singapore & Women Leadership in Asia with Helen Duce & Uma Balasingam

Bernard Leong — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 04:00:00 GMT

Helen Duce and Uma Thana Balasingam from Lean In Singapore joined us to discuss the movement that helps to progress the challenges of women leadership in the workplace. We discussed how Lean In Singapore provide help and coverage to women in their career progression and also its interaction with the other chapters across Asia. In the same conversation, Helen and Uma highlighted the unconscious biases and challenges which women faced in their career.

Episode 209: The Thailand Startup Ecosystem with Michael Waitze - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 14:31:57 GMT

Michael Waitze, founding partner of Metaliq & host of Asia Tech Podcast joined us in a conversation to discuss the Thailand startup ecosystem. We discussed the interesting startups, incubators, accelerators and investors in Thailand and explore how the nascent ecosystem is evolving in the past few years. Last but not least, we discussed how the

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Episode 208: Microsoft Enterprise in Asia Pacific with Ricky Kapur - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 10:41:29 GMT

Ricky Kapur, the general manager from the Enterprise Group in Microsoft, Asia Pacific joined us to discuss the footprint of the Microsoft Enterprise in Asia Pacific. Ricky discussed how Microsoft is working with companies in Asia, leveraging on their technologies in cloud computing, AI and Internet of Things to tackle digital transformation & disruption. Here

The post Episode 208: Microsoft Enterprise in Asia Pacific with Ricky Kapur appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 207: The Shenzhen Startup Ecosystem with Jan Smejkal - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:40:48 GMT

Jan Smejkal, China & Asia Pacific community director of Startup Grind joined us to discuss the Shenzhen startup ecosystem in China. He provided an comprehensive overview of the interesting startups, incubators, accelerators and venture capital firms within Shenzhen and most importantly, how the major players such as Huawei and Tencent are currently interacting with them.

The post Episode 207: The Shenzhen Startup Ecosystem with Jan Smejkal appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 206: Carousell & Scaling in Asia with Marcus Tan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 09:22:30 GMT

Marcus Tan, co-founder and president of Carousell joined us in a conversation on his company which he co-founded and where it is heading after their series B round with leading investors such as Rakuten Ventures & Sequoia Capital. We discussed the humble beginnings of Carousell as a mobile marketplace and how the company has scaled

The post Episode 206: Carousell & Scaling in Asia with Marcus Tan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 205: Qtum Foundation from China to Global with Patrick Dai - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 11:43:18 GMT

Patrick Dai, co-founder & chairman of Qtum foundation joined us in a conversation to discuss the backstory behind Qtum Foundation. We discussed the mission and vision of Qtum as a open source blockchain project emerging from China and now armed with a global team that is spread across the world. We discussed the technologies and

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Episode 204: Myth Busters, the China Edition with John Artman - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 13:00:34 GMT

John Artman, editor in chief for Technode and host of China Tech Talk podcast joined us to debunk the narratives on China that has been propagated from different parts of the world. We began with his story and how he came to China. In our discussion, we dissect the different myths about the Chinese government,

The post Episode 204: Myth Busters, the China Edition with John Artman appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 203: Weibo is not Twitter of China with Matthew Brennan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 06:23:02 GMT

Matthew Brennan from China Channel & host of China Tech Talk podcast joined us on a discussion on Sina Weibo and why it is not the “Twitter” of China. We discussed the origins, the products, revenue & business models in Weibo, and how it was spun off from its parent company, Sina. Matthew also explained

The post Episode 203: Weibo is not Twitter of China with Matthew Brennan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 202: Japan Startup Ecosystem in 2017 with James Riney - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 09:34:53 GMT

James Riney from 500 Startups, Japan joined us in a conversation to discuss the evolution of Japan startup ecosystem. We discussed where the 500 Startups Japan fund is now, some interesting tidbits on what is happening with the ecosystem there, and his perspectives on payment startups versus banks & whether ICOs will displace venture capitalists.

The post Episode 202: Japan Startup Ecosystem in 2017 with James Riney appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 201: Cherubic Ventures & Taiwan Startup Ecosystem with Tina Cheng - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 08:35:08 GMT

Tina Cheng from Cherubic Ventures joined us in a conversation about the firm’s investments across the region from Greater China to US. We discussed the mission, vision and management team behind Cherubic Ventures and discuss how they looked at founders & startups as an early stage investor. Last but not least, she also shared her

The post Episode 201: Cherubic Ventures & Taiwan Startup Ecosystem with Tina Cheng appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 200: Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 06:30:33 GMT

Our host, Bernard Leong is on the hot seat for this special 200th episode to be interviewed by Charles Reed Anderson. Bernard discussed his day job, his time in Singularity University at Silicon Valley last year and work achievements to date. In the same conversation, he offered his perspectives in how the major ecommerce battles

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Special Episode: BAT in Southeast Asia with Bernard Leong on China Tech Talk - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 06:53:34 GMT

Before the special episode 200, we have a special episode from China Tech Talk hosted by John Artman from Technode & Matthew Brennan from China Channel where our host Bernard Leong was recently chatting about the entrance of Baidu, Alibaba & Tencent in Southeast Asia. In the conversation, we discussed the chronology to how the

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Episode 199: Vectr Ventures in Hong Kong with Alan Chan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 08:04:31 GMT

Alan Chan joined us in a conversation to discuss his firm, Vectr Ventures in Hong Kong and offer his perspectives on the Hong Kong startup ecosystem. He shared his investment thesis & his insights in how he work with the startups as an investor. Last but not least, we discuss his interest and work in

The post Episode 199: Vectr Ventures in Hong Kong with Alan Chan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 198: Samsung Electronics in 2017 with Jan Dawson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 08:27:16 GMT

Jan Dawson from Jackdaw Research, host of Beyond Devices and Tech Narratives podcast joined us in a two part conversation discussing the tech narratives of the technology giants in Asia & the Korean chaebol: the Samsung Group. In the second of the two part conversation, we discussed the Samsung Group, and how the business is

The post Episode 198: Samsung Electronics in 2017 with Jan Dawson appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 197: Tech Narratives with BAT & Softbank in Asia with Jan Dawson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 08:56:47 GMT

Jan Dawson from Jackdaw Research & host of Beyond Devices and Tech Narratives podcast joined us in a two part conversation discussing the tech narratives of the technology giants in Asia & the Korean chaebol: the Samsung Group. In the first of the two part conversation, he discussed the motivation behind creating the Tech Narratives

The post Episode 197: Tech Narratives with BAT & Softbank in Asia with Jan Dawson appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 196: Apple WWDC 2017 and its impact on Asia with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 29 Jul 2017 08:10:48 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies & Techpinions joined us in a two part conversation on post Google I/O & Apple WWDC 2017 and its impact to Asia. In the second part of our conversation, we discussed the major announcements from Apple WWDC 2017 and how their focus on Homepod, AR Kit and hardware will influence

The post Episode 196: Apple WWDC 2017 and its impact on Asia with Ben Bajarin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 195: Google I/O and its impact to Asia with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 02:56:46 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies & Techpinions joined us in a two part conversation on post Google I/O & Apple WWDC 2017 and its impact to Asia. In the first part, we discussed the major announcements arising from Google I/O 2017 with the focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented / virtual reality (AR/VR), the

The post Episode 195: Google I/O and its impact to Asia with Ben Bajarin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 194: Bitcoin and Blockchain in China with John Riggins - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 16:10:18 GMT

John Riggins from BTC Media joined us in a conversation on the latest happenings of bitcoin and blockchain in China. We discussed the chronology in how bitcoin became mainstream in the Chinese technology ecosystem. John also shared the major players in China who are leveraging on bitcoin mining and exchanges, the applications of blockchain technology

The post Episode 194: Bitcoin and Blockchain in China with John Riggins appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 193: Reliance Jio in India with Navkendar Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 03:39:48 GMT

Navkendar Singh from IDC India joined us on a discussion about the up and rising telco, Reliance Jio in India. We discussed the mission, vision, business structure of the company and its relation to the Reliance Group conglomerate in India, and how they have managed to grow their network within a short span of time

The post Episode 193: Reliance Jio in India with Navkendar Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 192: Asian Airlines in Crisis & Rise of China Aviation with Paul Papadimitriou - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 10:03:15 GMT

Paul Papadimitriou, host of Layovers podcast & founder of Intelligencr, joined us in a conversation to discuss the crisis of Asian airlines and the rise of China aviation. We discussed why the top Asian airlines such as Cathay Pacific & Singapore Airlines are facing challenges with their models disrupted by new upstart airlines, and the

The post Episode 192: Asian Airlines in Crisis & Rise of China Aviation with Paul Papadimitriou appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 191: The Taiwan Startup Stadium & Ecosystem with Holly Harrington - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 06:31:40 GMT

Holly Harrington, general manager from Taiwan Startup Stadium joined us on a conversation about the Taiwan startup stadium & ecosystem. We discussed the mission and role of Taiwan Startup Stadium with entrepreneurial ecosystem in Taiwan, the up and coming startups & the nascent investor ecosystem in Taiwan. Last but not least, she discussed the interesting

The post Episode 191: The Taiwan Startup Stadium & Ecosystem with Holly Harrington appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 190: Nintendo & Smartphone Gaming in Japan 2017 with Serkan Toto - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 08:14:09 GMT

Serkan Toto, CEO of Kantan Games Japan, joined us in a conversation to discuss Nintendo’s progress and the smartphone gaming space within Japan in 2017. We began with a conversation on Nintendo’s recent forays with mobile gaming, the surprise success of the Nintendo Switch console and how Niantic’s Pokemon game has spurred their growth in

The post Episode 190: Nintendo & Smartphone Gaming in Japan 2017 with Serkan Toto appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 189: Corporate Innovation in Asia Pacific with Steve Glaveski - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 22:43:29 GMT

Steve Glaveski, founder of Collective Campus & host of the FutureSquared podcast joined us in a conversation to discuss corporate innovation in Asia Pacific. We discussed the concept of corporate innovation and how companies from Asia Pacific are thinking about disruption as a whole. Last but not least, we discussed the backstory behind Steve’s award

The post Episode 189: Corporate Innovation in Asia Pacific with Steve Glaveski appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 188: The Hong Kong Startup Ecosystem with Jay Kim - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 05:55:28 GMT

Jay Kim, host of the Jay Kim show & author of “Hack Your Fitness”, joined us to discuss the chronology of the rise of the Hong Kong startup ecosystem. He discussed the chronology of the Hong Kong startup ecosystem and how it has transformed into a vibrant scene with a few enthusiasts and the entry

The post Episode 188: The Hong Kong Startup Ecosystem with Jay Kim appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 187: Toutiao with Matthew Brennan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 05:48:37 GMT

Matthew Brennan from China Channel joined us in a fascinating conversation on Toutiao, one of the new emerging mobile apps focused on AI and their applications in news and information. We discussed the chronology, product & services and business models behind Toutiao’s rise among the 2nd wave of technology giants (Toutiao, Meituan-Dianping & Didi) in

The post Episode 187: Toutiao with Matthew Brennan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 186: BAT from China to Silicon Valley with Liza Lin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 05:46:21 GMT

Liza Lin, technology reporter from Wall Street Journal joined us in a conversation on the three important technology giants of China: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, aka the BAT and their influence from China to Silicon Valley. We discussed their ongoing battles in the lifestyle, deals and online to offline spaces and their upcoming battlegrounds from

The post Episode 186: BAT from China to Silicon Valley with Liza Lin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 185: SeedPlus & Venture Capital with Michael Smith & Tiang Lim Foo - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 05:29:31 GMT

Michael Smith Jr and Tiang Lim Foo, partners from Seedplus joined us in a conversation to discuss their recent closing of US$20M for their fund and where they are heading next. We also chatted about their daily lives as venture capitalists, how they worked with startups across Southeast Asia & India from market expansion to

The post Episode 185: SeedPlus & Venture Capital with Michael Smith & Tiang Lim Foo appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 184: Competing Against Luck with Karen Dillon - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 05:15:13 GMT

Karen Dillon, one of the authors from the book “Competing against Luck” joined us in a conversation to discuss the “jobs to be done” framework and why it is important about customer choice and innovation in disruption theory. She also discussed how organizations can be jobs focused and how companies should be listening to their

The post Episode 184: Competing Against Luck with Karen Dillon appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 183: The Apple Supply Chain in Asia with Tim Culpan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 05:04:23 GMT

Tim Culpan from Bloomberg Gadfly joined us in an interesting discussion to shed a light on Apple’s supply chain in Asia. We discussed Apple’s recent Q2 2017 earnings and its impact to Asia, the tight schedule in how Apple and their suppliers such as Foxconn, TSMC and Samsung operate before the major launch of their

The post Episode 183: The Apple Supply Chain in Asia with Tim Culpan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 182: Salesforce and Innovation in Asia Pacific with Rob Wickham - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:40:33 GMT

Rob Wickham, Regional Vice President, Innovation and Digital Transformation, from Salesforce joined us to discuss the footprint of the company and their recent published report on innovation in Asia Pacific. We discussed the major priorities and challenges in how Asian companies are contemplating in digital transformation and the forces that are holding back innovation. Here

The post Episode 182: Salesforce and Innovation in Asia Pacific with Rob Wickham appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 181: Ant Financial with Zennon Kapron - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:38:06 GMT

Zennon Kapron from China Fintech & Kapron Asia joined us in a conversation to discuss the Ant Financial, one of China’s largest finance companies. We discussed their vision, mission, leadership & financial services after their spinoff from Alibaba Group. We dissect their global expansion strategy particularly with their recent attempt to acquire Moneygram and investments into

The post Episode 181: Ant Financial with Zennon Kapron appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 180: The Upstarts with Brad Stone - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:18:36 GMT

Brad Stone, senior executive editor of Bloomberg LP and author of his new book, “The Upstarts”, joined us for a discussion on the back story of Uber and Airbnb and their evolution in the sharing economy. Brad shared his impressions of Cheng Wei, founder of Didi Chuxing in China and offered his perspectives on Airbnb’s

The post Episode 180: The Upstarts with Brad Stone appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 179: The Pulse of Livestreaming in China with Rhea Liu - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:13:52 GMT

Rhea Liu from China Tech Insights, Tencent joined us in a conversation on the pulse of live-streaming in China. We discussed the business structure & supply chain of livestreaming companies within China, the chronology on how the whole business have evolved from the desktop to mobile and what is likely to happen in 2017. Here are

The post Episode 179: The Pulse of Livestreaming in China with Rhea Liu appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 178: The Evolution of Wechat Ecosystem with Matthew Brennan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:09:15 GMT

Matthew Brennan from China Channel joined us in a conversation on the evolution of the Wechat ecosystem. In the second part of our conversation, we discussed their international strategy, the competition for the attention of wechat users by brands and businesses, the progress of the mini-programs and what to expect this year in their product

The post Episode 178: The Evolution of Wechat Ecosystem with Matthew Brennan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 177: The Wechat Ecosystem – Growth, Ads & Payments with Matthew Brennan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:06:42 GMT

Matthew Brennan from China Channel joined us in a two part conversation on the evolution of the Wechat ecosystem. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed the potential slowdown of Wechat users growth, their main revenue drivers, advertising and payment products with advertising and payments with a huge growth in their market share

The post Episode 177: The Wechat Ecosystem – Growth, Ads & Payments with Matthew Brennan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 176: Smartphones and Demonetisation in India with Navkendar Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 05:52:14 GMT

Navkendar Singh from IDC joined us for an interesting discussion on the coverage of smartphones brands and the impact of the demonetisation event in India. We covered the profile of the typical India smartphone user and their usage patterns. We discussed Apple, the Asian OEM brands from China to Korea and local Indian brands and how

The post Episode 176: Smartphones and Demonetisation in India with Navkendar Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 175: The Tipping Point for IoT in Asia with Charles Anderson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 02:44:06 GMT

Charles Reed Anderson from Charles Reed Anderson & Associates joined us for a conversation to discuss the tipping point on Internet of Things (IoT) that is converging in Asia. We discussed how Asian governments are currently changing their smart cities strategies and look at the convergence between business enterprises and vendors within the IoT ecosystem.

The post Episode 175: The Tipping Point for IoT in Asia with Charles Anderson appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 174: GE Digital in ASEAN with Wouter Van Wersch & Alvin Ng - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 02:40:18 GMT

Wouter Van Wersch & Alvin Ng from General Electric, ASEAN joined in a conversation to discuss the footprint and coverage of GE across Southeast Asia. We discuss how General Electric have been working to help traditional industries in digital transformation across ASEAN. We focused on their case studies and impact on agriculture, healthcare and aviation

The post Episode 174: GE Digital in ASEAN with Wouter Van Wersch & Alvin Ng appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 173: Perx & the future of SaaS in Asia with Anna Gong - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 02:32:45 GMT

Anna Gong, CEO of Perx Technologies joined us in a conversation on how she has transform the mobile rewards company from a consumer to an enterprise mobile loyalty platform embedded with AI and where it is heading. She discussed the coverage of Perx across Southeast Asia & how they are serving the different customers and stakeholders.

The post Episode 173: Perx & the future of SaaS in Asia with Anna Gong appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 172: 4PL Logistics & Entrepreneur Mentoring with Paul Bradley - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 02:27:58 GMT

Paul William Bradley, chairman and founder of the Caprica International joined us in a conversation to discuss business leadership, working with Asian family businesses, the future of logistics and supply chain in Asia and his role to guide and mentor entrepreneurs. In the final part of our conversation, Paul shared his thoughts on the fourth

The post Episode 172: 4PL Logistics & Entrepreneur Mentoring with Paul Bradley appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 171: Business Leadership & Asian Family Businesses with Paul Bradley - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 07:20:41 GMT

Paul William Bradley, chairman and founder of the Caprica International joined us in a conversation to discuss business leadership, working with Asian family businesses, the future of logistics and supply chain in Asia and his role to guide and mentor entrepreneurs. In the first of a two part conversation, Paul shared his story on how

The post Episode 171: Business Leadership & Asian Family Businesses with Paul Bradley appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 170: Bicycle Sharing in China with Eva Xiao - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 08:04:25 GMT

Eva Xiao from Tech in Asia joined us in a conversation about the exciting phenomenon of bicycle sharing startups happening now in China. Eva provided a comprehensive overview of the bike-sharing space and explained why it has suddenly heated up. We also discussed the major players Mobike & Ofo on their customer acquisition, business models

The post Episode 170: Bicycle Sharing in China with Eva Xiao appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 169: Digital Data and Trends in Asia Pacific with Simon Kemp - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 05:38:31 GMT

Simon Kemp, the founder of Kepios and global consultant from We are Social joined us to discuss the recent published report “Digital Data and Trends in Asia Pacific”. He discussed the objectives, methodologies and intended audience of the report and specifically examined the most important and interesting trends on web, mobile and social media across Asia

The post Episode 169: Digital Data and Trends in Asia Pacific with Simon Kemp appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 168: Tesla and the Jesus Car with Horace Dediu - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 07:42:01 GMT

Horace Dediu from Asymco & Clayton Christensen Institute is back with the second Asymco trilogy on our podcast to discuss the major topics that dominate the world of business and technology: modular revolution, startup strategy, Apple & cars. In the final part of the second trilogy, Horace discussed whether traditional companies such as Toyota and

The post Episode 168: Tesla and the Jesus Car with Horace Dediu appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 167: The Apple Anomaly & Narrative with Horace Dediu - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 08:27:15 GMT

Horace Dediu from Asymco & Clayton Christensen Institute is back with the second Asymco trilogy on our podcast to discuss the major topics that dominate the world of business and technology: modular revolution, startup strategy, Apple & cars. In the second part of the second trilogy, Horace discussed the company Apple as an anomaly to the theory

The post Episode 167: The Apple Anomaly & Narrative with Horace Dediu appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 166: Modular Revolution and Startup Strategy with Horace Dediu - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 25 Feb 2017 08:27:01 GMT

Horace Dediu from Asymco & Clayton Christensen Institute is back with the second Asymco trilogy on our podcast to discuss the major topics that dominate the world of business and technology: modular revolution, startup strategy, Apple & cars. In the first part of the second trilogy, Horace discussed his latest work on modular revolution &

The post Episode 166: Modular Revolution and Startup Strategy with Horace Dediu appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 165: Trends & Predictions for China Tech Industry 2017 Part 2 with Rhea Liu - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 03:41:26 GMT

Rhea Liu from China Tech Insights, Tencent joined in a 2 part conversation on their recent published report “Trends and Predictions for China tech industry in 2017”. In the second part, we discussed how the Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent axis are going global, and the venture capital investment appetite and climate in China with where the major trends

The post Episode 165: Trends & Predictions for China Tech Industry 2017 Part 2 with Rhea Liu appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 164: Trends & Predictions for China Tech Industry 2017 Part 1 with Rhea Liu - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 14:41:46 GMT

Rhea Liu from China Tech Insights, Tencent joined in a 2 part conversation on their recent published report “Trends and Predictions for China tech industry in 2017”. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed the objectives, methodologies and key results from the report, and deep dived into different themes such as the complete

The post Episode 164: Trends & Predictions for China Tech Industry 2017 Part 1 with Rhea Liu appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 163: Artificial Intelligence with Carolina Milanesi - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 10:29:28 GMT

Carolina Milanesi from Creative Strategies & Techpinions joined us for a two parter discussion from Huawei to artificial intelligence & Internet of things. In the second part, we discussed artificial intelligence, Internet of things and how the major companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google & Baidu are approaching the technology through their own core competencies

The post Episode 163: Artificial Intelligence with Carolina Milanesi appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 162: Huawei in 2016 with Carolina Milanesi - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 01:54:46 GMT

Carolina Milanesi from Creative Strategies & Techpinions joined us for a two parter discussion from Huawei to artificial intelligence & Internet of Things. In the first part, we discussed Huawei, the leading hardware technology giant from China on their global focus on the consumer sector with smartphones in 2016, and what to expect from them in

The post Episode 162: Huawei in 2016 with Carolina Milanesi appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 161: Post CES 2017 Part 2 with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 21:49:01 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies and Techpinions joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 in Las Vegas. In the 2nd part of the conversation, we dived deeper into the themes that Ben has summarized in the earlier episode focusing on the TV, home automation, digital assistants

The post Episode 161: Post CES 2017 Part 2 with Ben Bajarin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 160: Post CES 2017 Part 1 with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 06:36:45 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies and Techpinions joined us in a two part conversation to discuss the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 in Las Vegas. We discussed the major themes which have emerged from the show: the developing television sets and screens from Asian OEMs, the dominance of the Amazon Echo, the rising average

The post Episode 160: Post CES 2017 Part 1 with Ben Bajarin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 159: Are Asia Telcos dumb pipes? with Grace Chng - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 05:27:16 GMT

Grace Chng, author of “Intelligent Island” & former correspondent of SPH, joined us to provide a broad overview of the telecommunications industry across Asia and whether the telcos are just dumb pipes in Asia Pacific or evolving with new business models and products. With an overview on China, India and rest of Asia Pacific (including

The post Episode 159: Are Asia Telcos dumb pipes? with Grace Chng appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 158: Wechat Mini Apps with Matthew Brennan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 06:09:43 GMT

Matthew Brennan from China Channel and a well-known expert on Wechat joined us for an in-depth discussion on the recent launch of the Wechat mini-apps or programs, the philosophy behind them with interpretations on Allen Zhang, the founder of Wechat and their impact to the Wechat developers, businesses & brands living within the ecosystem. He

The post Episode 158: Wechat Mini Apps with Matthew Brennan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 157: Musical.ly with Eva Xiao - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 06:16:09 GMT

Eva Xiao, China reporter for Tech In Asia joined us to discuss an interesting video and entertainment company from China, Musical.ly and how it has skipped the domestic market and built a massive following from US, Europe and rest of the world with an impressive portfolio of investors from Silicon Valley and China. She provided

The post Episode 157: Musical.ly with Eva Xiao appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 156: Low Power Wide Area Networks in Asia Pacific with Charles Anderson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 04:58:28 GMT

Charles Anderson from Charles Reed Anderson & Associates joined us in a conversation on lower power wide area networks aka WANs in Asia Pacific and its significance to smart cities & Internet of things. Charles dissect the three major players: NB-IoT, LoRA & SigFox and their backers & operators behind the scenes and explained the

The post Episode 156: Low Power Wide Area Networks in Asia Pacific with Charles Anderson appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 155: 5 Predictions for Asia in 2017 with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 05:25:12 GMT

Sameer Singh from App Annie and our host Bernard Leong offer their five predictions to what will rock the Asia landscape in 2017 and examine side events that hit the road ahead after a turbulent and unpredictable 2016. We discuss: (a) Softbank’s gambit with Sprint & T-Mobile, (b) Asia messaging apps vs Facebook & Whatsapp

The post Episode 155: 5 Predictions for Asia in 2017 with Sameer Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 154: The 5 Major Events in 2016 with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 13:20:25 GMT

Sameer Singh from App Annie and our host Bernard Leong discuss the five major events which rocked the Asia landscape in 2016: (a) Softbank’s acquisition of ARM for US$32B, (b) Pokemon Go, (c) Uber and Didi’s deal in China, (d) the Indian unicorn startups apocalypse & (e) the ecommerce war between Amazon & Alibaba in

The post Episode 154: The 5 Major Events in 2016 with Sameer Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 153: Cloudera in Asia & the 4th Industrial Revolution with Amr Awadallah - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 24 Dec 2016 00:49:02 GMT

Amr Awadallah, the chief technology & co-founder of Cloudera joined us in a conversation on the data and analytics platform’s footprint in Asia. We began with his story from how he moved from Cairo, Egypt to Silicon Valley in the US, and how he eventually become the founding team of Cloudera. We discussed the interesting

The post Episode 153: Cloudera in Asia & the 4th Industrial Revolution with Amr Awadallah appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 152: Cybersecurity in Asia Pacific with Vincent Loy - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 14:41:58 GMT

Vincent Loy, partner in financial Crime & cyber leader from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) joined us in a conversation on the trends in cybersecurity, financial crime & anti-money laundering across Asia Pacific and the implications of technology in fintech. We start with Vincent’s background moving from Singapore to US and UK where he has advised the Interpol

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Episode 151: The LeEco Group with Wang Boyuan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 17 Dec 2016 11:43:49 GMT

Wang Boyuan from Technode & TechCrunch China joined us in an interesting discussion the LeEco Group. He began with the vision, mission and team behind the company and break down the intriguing web of business structures within the group. Last but not least, he also discussed whether the LeEco can survive their ongoing crisis and

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Episode 150: Brinc & Shenzhen Hardware Ecosystem with Bay McLaughlin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 03:06:25 GMT

Bay McLaughlin joined us in a conversation to discuss Brinc, the hardware accelerator in Hong Kong he co-founded that leverages on the Shenzhen ecosystem. He shared how Brinc selects founding teams and helps hardware startups to scale, and their latest drone accelerator program. Last but not least, he shared his perspectives on the Shenzhen hardware manufacturing

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Episode 149: Fintech in China with Zennon Kapron - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 11:46:32 GMT

Zennon Kapron from China Fintech & Kapron Asia joined us in a conversation to discuss the state of fintech in China. We discussed the different verticals within the fintech sector from digital payments, peer to peer landing to wealth management. He explained how the Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent axis are dominant in fintech against the traditional Chinese banks and

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Episode 148: The South Korea technology startup ecosystem with Eva Yoo - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 23:19:58 GMT

Eva Chaewon Yoo from Technode joined us in a conversation to discuss the South Korea technology startup ecosystem. She offered a comprehensive overview in how one can navigate the startup ecosystem from Seoul to Pusan, the five booming startup verticals, the key investors from angel investors to venture capital and the interaction with the Chaebol

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Episode 147: Twilio in Asia and Product Management with Patrick Malatack - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 07:12:24 GMT

Patrick Malatack, vice president of product management from Twilio joined us in a conversation to discuss the footprint of the communications platform company in Asia Pacific. We discussed the various products and services of Twilio and how they have evolved over the years, and how traditional and technology companies are building interesting business applications on

The post Episode 147: Twilio in Asia and Product Management with Patrick Malatack appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 146: Singularity University Labs and The Heretic with Pascal Finette - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 14:18:41 GMT

Pascal Finette joined us for a conversation on the story behind Singularity University Labs and how they work startups with exponential technologies focusing on different global grand challenges out there. We also discussed his new book “The Heretic” and his reflections on the Silicon Valley ecosystem and why it has been difficult to be replicated elsewhere in

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Episode 145: An Uncertain Technology World with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 06:25:49 GMT

We conclude with the second part of our conversation with Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies and Techpinions. We examined the uncertain future of different technologies from wearables, VR & AR and home automation after the smartphone platform. We also looked at the evolution of AI and the key trends for the coming year. Here are

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Episode 144: The October Surprises from Google, Apple & Microsoft with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 13 Nov 2016 07:39:47 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies & Techpinions joined us in a two parter conversation about the ongoing trends of technologies globally. We began the first conversation on the October announcements that emerge from Google, Microsoft and Apple, and discussed their road ahead with their philosophies in different products and the impact to the Asian OEMs from

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Episode 143: Alibaba vs Amazon in Southeast Asia with Jon Russell - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 10:14:27 GMT

Jon Russell from TechCrunch who broke the two big stories on Lazada’s acquisition of Redmart and Amazon’s foray into Southeast Asia starting with Singapore next year, joined us on a conversation to discuss the backstory behind the event. We discussed the implications of the acquisition and how it is setting up the narrative of Alibaba

The post Episode 143: Alibaba vs Amazon in Southeast Asia with Jon Russell appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 142: PALF and EdTech Startups in Asia with T T Nguyen Duc - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 17:13:54 GMT

T.T. Nguyen Duc, Head of Asia for Pearson Affordable Learning Fund (PALF) joined us for a conversation on the coverage of their funds focusing on education (or edtech) startups globally. She shared with us the investment thesis of PALF & how they evaluate the education startups with metrics pertaining to their mission to help uplift

The post Episode 142: PALF and EdTech Startups in Asia with T T Nguyen Duc appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 141: Reflections on China with Kaiser Kuo - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 06:52:52 GMT

Kaiser Kuo, co-founder & host of the Sinica Podcast and formerly from Baidu, joined us to share his reflections on China after 20 years of stay and how he has changed from living within the Great Firewall of China to observe the middle kingdom from the outside. We examined a variety of topics from how

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Episode 140: Greylock, Mozilla & Blitzscaling with John Lilly - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 16:46:33 GMT

John Lilly, partner at Greylock in Silicon Valley and former CEO of Mozilla joined us for an interesting conversation about his current stint as a venture capitalist, and the backstory of how the team from Mozilla orchestrated the onslaught against Microsoft in the browser wars may years back. He also shared how technology enabled blitzscaling

The post Episode 140: Greylock, Mozilla & Blitzscaling with John Lilly appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 139: Live-streaming in China with Eva Xiao - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 06:29:38 GMT

Eva Xiao from Tech In Asia joined us in a discussion on the live-streaming ecosystem within China and debunked the major misconceptions by western media on the phenomenon itself. We dived deep to the major live-streaming apps, the business models for the live-streaming platforms, celebrities and online users and how digital gifting has become the

The post Episode 139: Live-streaming in China with Eva Xiao appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 138: Xpressbees & Logistics in India with Amitava Saha - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 22:27:11 GMT

Amitava Saha, co-founder and CEO of Xpressbees joined us in an interesting conversation on the story of his company and shared his perspectives on the state of logistics in India. We began a discussion of how Xpressbees has evolved from Firstcry which he has co-founded, and how they tackle the challenges of infrastructure on logistics

The post Episode 138: Xpressbees & Logistics in India with Amitava Saha appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 137: Map of the Money in Southeast Asia with Arnaud Bonzom - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 00:04:25 GMT

Arnaud Bonzom from 500 Startups joined us for a conversation on the launch of his recent project, “Map of the Money” version 4 jointly with Florian Cornu. We discussed the ongoing trends in venture capital and fundraising across Southeast Asia from how seed stage funds have matured to series A and B funds now to

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Episode 136: With Friends Like These, Who needs Enemies Edition with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 24 Sep 2016 04:21:06 GMT

Continuing from our first discussion, Sameer Singh from Tech-thoughts.net and our host analysed the changing alliances in both the transportation and gaming industry where allies within the space turn to rivalries in two interesting cases: Google versus Uber in ride-sharing and autonomous vehicles, and Niantic versus Nintendo in the mobile gaming space. We also dissected why

The post Episode 136: With Friends Like These, Who needs Enemies Edition with Sameer Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 135: The Apple iPhone 7 Event with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 23:08:45 GMT

Sameer Singh from Tech-thoughts.net joined us for a two parter conversation on the recent major events in technology & their impact in Asia. In this episode, we discussed the recent announcements which came out of the Apple iPhone 7 event and their implications to the smartphone industry. We also examined whether the new iPhone offered

The post Episode 135: The Apple iPhone 7 Event with Sameer Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 134: The Open India Market Onslaught with Newley Purnell - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 05:53:22 GMT

Newley Purnell from Wall Street Journal joined us to discuss his current coverage on the India startup & technology ecosystem. We examine the day of reckoning for the India startup unicorns and their challenges from both funding and competition from US technology companies. We also discussed how the India startups are competing with the US

The post Episode 134: The Open India Market Onslaught with Newley Purnell appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 133: SeedPlus in Southeast Asia with Michael Smith - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 21:48:01 GMT

Michael Smith aka Smithy, now partner of Jungle Ventures and their new fund, SeedPlus. We discussed the backstory in how the fund is assembled, the key people from LPs to partners and their investment thesis. We examined the broader Southeast Asia market and the key issues in how startups can scale across a highly fragmented

The post Episode 133: SeedPlus in Southeast Asia with Michael Smith appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 132: The Alliance and Blitzscaling with Chris Yeh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 22:07:31 GMT

Chris Yeh from Wasabi Ventures joined us for a conversation on the future of employee & employer management and technology enabled blitzscaling. We discussed the book “The Alliance” which he co-authored with Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha and how the concepts are adapted to a new world where long term employment looked like a relic

The post Episode 132: The Alliance and Blitzscaling with Chris Yeh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 131: Play Bigger with Chris Lochhead - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 21:08:58 GMT

Christoper Lochhead joined us in the podcast to discuss his new book “Play Bigger” (co-authored with Ramadan, Peterson and Maney) during my stay here in Silicon Valley. We discussed the concept of category kings and why the modern tech startups and companies need to embrace category design in addition to product & company design to

The post Episode 131: Play Bigger with Chris Lochhead appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 130: The Future of Xiaomi with Eva Xiao - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 20:10:09 GMT

Eva Xiao from Technode continued our discussion on Xiaomi, focusing on what kind of company that Xiaomi truly is, and the current challenges they are facing to justify their US$45B valuation. We discussed the company’s recent failures to hit their 100M smartphones target, the loss of smartphone market share, failure to expand aggressively into international

The post Episode 130: The Future of Xiaomi with Eva Xiao appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 129: Xiaomi – Team, History & Products with Eva Xiao - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:38:34 GMT

Eva Xiao from Technode joined us in a two parter episodes on one of China’s top unicorns: Xiaomi. We traced the history of the company starting from the founders of the company, most notably Lei Jun and Bin Lin, and how they managed to bring in top talent such as Hugo Barra into the company.

The post Episode 129: Xiaomi – Team, History & Products with Eva Xiao appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 128: The Uber and Didi deal with Josh Horwitz - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 08:29:13 GMT

Josh Horwitz from Quartz joined us to discuss the Uber and Didi deal in China and analysed the fallout that will impact the anti-Uber alliance. We discussed the potential reasons to why Uber sell their China business & operations to Didi and made a deal to let each other invest in one another, from investor

The post Episode 128: The Uber and Didi deal with Josh Horwitz appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 127: Pokemon Go with Serkan Toto - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 00:29:19 GMT

Serkan Toto joined us for a conversation to discuss the global phenomenon of Pokemon Go. We discussed the backstory of the creator behind this new sensational game, Niantic Labs and the backers behind the game maker from Google to Nintendo. We discussed why the game has been so successful, the game mechanics and why it

The post Episode 127: Pokemon Go with Serkan Toto appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 126: The SoftBank Group 2016 Edition with David Corbin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 02:15:00 GMT

David Corbin from Tech in Asia returns to our podcast to discuss the three major events that rocked the SoftBank Group in the past few weeks. We reviewed the departure of Nikesh Arora, the rapid divestments of SoftBank’s stakes in Alibaba, Gungho and Supercell and their most expensive gambit in acquiring ARM. In our conversation,

The post Episode 126: The SoftBank Group 2016 Edition with David Corbin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 125: Beijing Makerspace & Indiegogo in China with Joanna Wei - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 07:15:48 GMT

In this episode, Joanna Wei, co-founder of Beijing Makerspace, an angel investor & evangelist for Indiegogo China. We discussed how the maker movement in China was inspired, begun and then progressed for the past 5 years. Joanna also shared with us how the makerspace has evolved with a fund and hardware accelerator to help build

The post Episode 125: Beijing Makerspace & Indiegogo in China with Joanna Wei appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 124: Connecting with Youth in Asia with Patrick Rona - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 20:14:53 GMT

Patrick Rona, chief digital officer in Asia Pacific from the McCann World Group, joined us on an interesting conversation about connecting with youth in Asia. Drawing from the McCann World Group’s recent study “Your Toughest Audience? Connecting with Youth”, we discussed how the youth market is defined, their habits and characteristics and the interesting observations

The post Episode 124: Connecting with Youth in Asia with Patrick Rona appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 123: Jingdong or JD dot com with Wang Boyuan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 06:25:35 GMT

Wang Boyuan from Technode and TechCrunch China joined us for a conversation on Jingdong or JD dot com. We discussed the backstory behind this company and the key people behind the 2nd largest ecommerce company in China. He also explained the different revenue streams behind JD dot com and Tencent’s backing of this company as

The post Episode 123: Jingdong or JD dot com with Wang Boyuan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 122: Red Hat & Open Source in Asia with Harish Pillay - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 14:37:32 GMT

In this episode, Harish Pillay, Head of Community and Architecture from Red Hat joined us for a conversation to discuss on the footprint of the open source enterprise software company across Asia. We discussed how Red Hat has evolved from a free Linux operating system in their early days to its present incarnation as an

The post Episode 122: Red Hat & Open Source in Asia with Harish Pillay appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 121: Smartkarma and Fintech in Asia with Raghav Kapoor - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 20:52:18 GMT

Raghav Kapoor, CEO & co-founder of Smartkarma joined us for a conversation on his company and a broad conversation on fintech in Asia. Drawing from his experience and background in finance, Raghav talked about the origins of Smartkarma and his vision to build it towards a premium collaborative research marketplace. We also discussed the emerging fintech industry

The post Episode 121: Smartkarma and Fintech in Asia with Raghav Kapoor appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 120: LINE IPO & SoftBank’s divestments with Serkan Toto - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 01:39:41 GMT

Serkan Toto from Kantan Games joined us for a conversation on the three recent events that impact the mobile gaming market from Japan to the rest of world. We analysed the progress of Nintendo’s new mobile games with the impact of the new Apple app store changes, the upcoming LINE IPO and why SoftBank is

The post Episode 120: LINE IPO & SoftBank’s divestments with Serkan Toto appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 119: From Newsroom to Digital Media in Asia with Alan Soon - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 23:22:18 GMT

Alan Soon from the Splice Newsroom and Rockstart Accelerator joined us in a conversation about the media business in Asia. Drawing his experience from the media business media from Bloomberg, CNBC to Yahoo!, Alan offered his perspectives on how the media business has changed across Asia in the past two decades. We discussed the business

The post Episode 119: From Newsroom to Digital Media in Asia with Alan Soon appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 118: The State of IoT in Asia Pacific with Charles Reed Anderson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 08:50:26 GMT

Charles Reed Anderson from IDC joined us to discuss the state of Internet of Things (IoT) in Asia Pacific. We started with the analysis of the IoT market maturity index across China, India and the rest of Asia Pacific, and dissected how Asian companies are currently prioritising their objectives with Internet of Things. In our review, we

The post Episode 118: The State of IoT in Asia Pacific with Charles Reed Anderson appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 117: Why Apple Invest in Didi with Josh Horwitz - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 00:56:37 GMT

In this episode, Josh Horwitz from Quartz joined us in a conversation to dissect why Apple has invested in China’s largest ride hailing app, Didi Chuxing and the implications for Uber in their plans to conquer China & the rest of the world. We move beyond the obvious reasons such as managing their diplomatic relations

The post Episode 117: Why Apple Invest in Didi with Josh Horwitz appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 116: Mashable in Asia with Michael Kriak and Gwendolyn Regina - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 27 May 2016 23:33:46 GMT

Michael Kriak & Gwendolyn Regina from Mashable joined us for a conversation on Mashable.com and its recent strategy on video & expansion to Asia. We discussed how Mashable has built out a global media platform with their proprietary technology and strong editorial team distributed across the world. Michael and Gwen also shared with us the

The post Episode 116: Mashable in Asia with Michael Kriak and Gwendolyn Regina appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 115: Singapore Startup Ecosystem & Asia Funding Trends with Arnaud Bonzom - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 22 May 2016 14:39:09 GMT

Arnaud Bonzom from 500 Startups continued our conversation on his two interesting reports (prior to the 500 Corporations report which we discussed earlier) that focus on the Singapore startup ecosystem and the funding trends across Asia Pacific. We discussed the key observations and funding dynamics of the Singapore startup ecosystem with the recent focus on

The post Episode 115: Singapore Startup Ecosystem & Asia Funding Trends with Arnaud Bonzom appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 114: Will Apple’s Asia & Car strategy work? with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 18 May 2016 14:53:47 GMT

Continuing our discussed from the last episode, Sameer Singh from Tech-thoughts.net analysed the recent Apple Q1 2016 earning and challenged the notion whether Apple’s Asia (India and China) and their rumoured car strategy will bring them back to growth. Through the lens of the Apple rumoured car, we dived deeper into the conversation on artificial intelligence &

The post Episode 114: Will Apple’s Asia & Car strategy work? with Sameer Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 113: Facebook vs Asia Messaging Apps with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 14 May 2016 22:53:16 GMT

Sameer Singh from Tech-thoughts.net joined us in to reflect on the major themes that has been ongoing in the technology space from messaging apps to self driving cars. In the first part, we discussed the recent Facebook F8 announcements on their new chatbots platform and video live streaming. From there, we analysed the implications of

The post Episode 113: Facebook vs Asia Messaging Apps with Sameer Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 112: The Baidu Group with Cate Cadell - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 10 May 2016 13:13:39 GMT

Cate Cadell, editor in chief from Technode at Beijing joined us in this episode to discuss the Baidu Group, China’s largest search engine & maps and part of the BAT axis in China. In our conversation, we discussed Baidu from the perspective of the management team & board led by Robin Li, their business structures

The post Episode 112: The Baidu Group with Cate Cadell appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 111: Wither Rocket Internet? with Jon Russell - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 05 May 2016 13:35:35 GMT

Jon Russell from TechCrunch joined us to discuss Rocket Internet’s 1B exit to Alibaba & its impact to ecommerce & funding cycles in Southeast Asia. We dissected the implications from the Lazada exit and the continuing movement of Rocket Internet spinning off their other assets such as Zalora and Foodpanda within the region and foreshadowed the

The post Episode 111: Wither Rocket Internet? with Jon Russell appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 110: Tencent and WeChat with Eva Xiao - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 02 May 2016 06:00:17 GMT

In the final of the two parter episodes, we continue our conversation with Eva Xiao from Technode on the Tencent Group, specifically focusing on WeChat, the most popular messaging app in China. Eva dissected how WeChat is the platform for other popular online to offline (O2O) services and dived deep into the various monetisation models

The post Episode 110: Tencent and WeChat with Eva Xiao appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 109: Tencent and QQ with Eva Xiao - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 08:21:41 GMT

Eva Xiao from Technode joined us for a two parter discussion on one of the BAT companies: Tencent. We dived deep into the holding company behind the two successful messaging apps in China: QQ & Wechat. In this first part of 2 episode arc, we discussed the vision, mission & corporate structure of Tencent, how

The post Episode 109: Tencent and QQ with Eva Xiao appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 108: How can a US tech company succeed in China with Scott Livingston - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 23 Apr 2016 07:57:36 GMT

Scott Livingston, a senior associate at SIPS, joined us on a discussion starting from a hypothetical question, “What are the requirements do Facebook need to satisfy in order to access into China’s market?”. By navigating through this question, we gain an in depth understanding to how US tech companies should navigate China which combines legislation

The post Episode 108: How can a US tech company succeed in China with Scott Livingston appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 107: Alibaba Cloud in Asia Pacific with Yu Sicheng - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 08:49:21 GMT

Yu Sicheng, Vice President International, Alibaba Cloud (aka Aliyun) under the Alibaba Group, joined us in a conversation to discuss the popular cloud computing services from China and its plan to expand their offerings across the geographies outside China. In the conversation, Sicheng shared the success stories on Alibaba Cloud in China where it powered

The post Episode 107: Alibaba Cloud in Asia Pacific with Yu Sicheng appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 106: Connectography & Connectivity is Destiny with Parag Khanna - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 22:25:00 GMT

Parag Khanna, senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, joined us to discuss & launch his latest book “Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilisation” from Asia first. Our conversation began with his new maxim “Connectivity is destiny” over the age old wisdom of “Geography is destiny”. We discussed how

The post Episode 106: Connectography & Connectivity is Destiny with Parag Khanna appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 105: The Next Billion Initiative for Google with Caesar Sengupta - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 08:22:46 GMT

Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Product Management from Google joined us to discuss the “Next Billion” initiative for Google, based on present and new ideas to allow the company engage with the next billion users in a mobile first world of Asia Pacific. We start from Caesar’s early work with Chrome browser and OS in the

The post Episode 105: The Next Billion Initiative for Google with Caesar Sengupta appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 104: Corporate Innovation and 500 Startups with Arnaud Bonzom - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 22:11:00 GMT

Arnaud Bonzom, the director of corporate innovation from 500 Startups joined us in a conversation on the interesting trend in how major corporations are engaging the startups today. We began with Arnaud’s story from his early days as a trade advisor for the French government to INSEAD and finally to 500 Startups, and what he

The post Episode 104: Corporate Innovation and 500 Startups with Arnaud Bonzom appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 103: The SingTel Group with Grace Chng - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 06:10:03 GMT

Grace Chng, senior correspondent of The Straits Times under SPH Group, joined us in a conversation to discuss the SingTel Group and its global footprint across three continents. Starting from the history of how the SingTel Group transformed from a government agency to a public listed enterprise, Grace offered a primer to understand the vision

The post Episode 103: The SingTel Group with Grace Chng appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 102: ZhenFund in China with Anna Fang - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 03:02:25 GMT

Anna Fang, partner and CEO of ZhenFund joined us in a conversation to discuss early stage investment and startup ecosystem in China. We traced her serendipitous route on how she become an early stage investor by working with Xu Xiaoping, a famous super angel investor in China that led to building up ZhenFund. Anna also shared

The post Episode 102: ZhenFund in China with Anna Fang appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 101: muru-D by Telstra with Charlotte Yarkoni & Annie Parker - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 00:13:10 GMT

Charlotte Yarkoni, President of Telstra Software Group &, Annie Parker, co-founder of muru-D, the startup incubator by Telstra joined us in a conversation to discuss the story behind the digital startup accelerator which has expanded across globally from Singapore to Australia. Just before the first demo day event for muru-D Singapore, we discussed the thinking

The post Episode 101: muru-D by Telstra with Charlotte Yarkoni & Annie Parker appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 100: The Dawn of Augmented & Virtual Reality with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 20 Mar 2016 14:05:00 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies and Techpinions joined us for the special 100th episode to discuss the dawn of the augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology. Starting from an account of his recent trip to Game Developer & VR developer Summit, Ben shared why this is the year for AR and VR to break out

The post Episode 100: The Dawn of Augmented & Virtual Reality with Ben Bajarin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 99: Understanding China’s Economic Indicators with Tom Orlik - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 22:14:09 GMT

Tom Orlik, the Chief Asia Economist from Bloomberg and author of the book “Understanding China’s Economic Indicators”, joined us in an interesting conversation in analysing China’s economy and helped us to understand how reliable the economic indicators are. We start from a primer to how one navigate across the aims of the Chinese government with

The post Episode 99: Understanding China’s Economic Indicators with Tom Orlik appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 98: The India Startup Ecosystem with Ashish Sinha - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 09:29:18 GMT

Ashish Sinha, founder of NextBigWhat, joined us for a conversation on the emerging India startup ecosystem. From his origins as a product manager in Yahoo! India to setting up the media site to help India entrepreneurs to gather feedback for their products since 2009, we discussed the India startup ecosystem from decoding the unicorn startup

The post Episode 98: The India Startup Ecosystem with Ashish Sinha appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 97: Winter is coming to Asia with Jon Russell - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 15:25:43 GMT

Jon Russell from TechCrunch joined us for a conversation on whether “winter is coming” for the startup ecosystems across Asia from China, India to Southeast Asia. We started with the continuing war between Uber and their counterparts, Ola, GoJek and Grab from a four wheels to two wheels transport and the continuing fundraising tales of

The post Episode 97: Winter is coming to Asia with Jon Russell appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 96: Paytm in India with Vijay Shekhar Sharma - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 14:03:34 GMT

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO and founder of Paytm joined us for an interesting conversation on his journey with Paytm and his thoughts on the evolving India startup ecosystem. Starting from the early days with One97 in feature phones, Vijay discussed how the dawn of the smartphone world led him to build a mobile first payment

The post Episode 96: Paytm in India with Vijay Shekhar Sharma appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 95: The TSMC Group with Tim Culpan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 01:34:53 GMT

Tim Culpan from Bloomberg Gadfly, joined us again to discuss the TSMC Group, where they are leading semiconductor foundries for many major companies from Apple, Qualcomm and Intel. We began our conversation with the recent happenings with Foxconn’s acquisition of Sharp and whether the acquisition will work given Foxconn’s early history with Innolux and the

The post Episode 95: The TSMC Group with Tim Culpan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 94: Wechat Ecosystem & Grata.co with Andrew Schorr - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 02:02:59 GMT

Andrew Schorr, CEO and co-founder of Grata.co, joined us for an interesting discussion to dissect the platform and ecosystem behind Wechat in China. Starting from his journey with building three startups including Grata.co across 11 years in China, he discussed how Wechat has changed the landscape for both startup founders and major corporations and brands

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Episode 93: The Japan Mobile Gaming Market Consolidation with Serkan Toto - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 02:31:09 GMT

Serkan Toto, co-founder and CEO of Kantan Games JP, joined us to discuss the major trend of consolidation happening in real time within Japan’s mature and sophisticated mobile gaming industry. We discussed the progress of the Nintendo-DeNA deal and where the major players are heading in this challenging year. While discussing the broader trends, Serkan

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Episode 92: Dating Industry in Asia & Lunch Actually Group with Violet Lim - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 08:21:57 GMT

In our Valentine’s day special for 2016, Violet Lim, CEO and co-founder of the Lunch Actually Group discussed the major players of the dating industry in Asia and how she built a full stack dating company over the years to matchmake her customers from online to offline. Starting from her story from how she quitted

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Episode 91: BitX, BitCoin and Blockchain in Asia with Marcus Swanepoel - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 01:25:26 GMT

Marcus Swanepoel, CEO and co-founder of BitX joined us for an interesting conversation on the bitcoin and blockchain industry in Asia. Beginning from his background as a banker to his current stint as a startup founder, he discussed the origins of BitX and how it is leading the charge on bitcoin and blockchain in the

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Episode 90: Smart Cities in Asia Pacific with Charles Reed Anderson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 20:14:03 GMT

Charles Reed Anderson, Vice President, Head of Mobility and Internet of Things Asia Pacific, IDC, joined us for a conversation to discuss all things Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities in Asia Pacific. Starting from his observations from the recent CES 2016, we focused on the discussion how businesses and vendors are figuring out

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Episode 89: Asia Startup Ecosystems with Kevin McSpadden - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 15:47:49 GMT

Kevin McSpadden from e27 joined us for a fascinating discussion on the different evolving startup ecosystems across Asia. Starting from Singapore, drawing interesting comparisons from the rise of Hong Kong and the recent startup India initiatives, we discussed whether Singapore can maintain its advantage as the Delaware of Asia. We examined the recent departure of

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Episode 88: India Startup Ecosystem & SAIF Partners with Deepak Gaur - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 06:16:13 GMT

Deepak Gaur, managing director of SAIF Partners joined us for a conversation in Delhi, India. Beginning from the early days of venture capital till the recent surge in funding, Deepak shared his reflections on how far the startup ecosystem of India has come. He also discussed his work with SAIF Partners and the interesting companies

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Episode 87: From DeNA to 500 Startups in Japan with James Riney - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 17 Jan 2016 07:26:30 GMT

In this episode, James Riney from 500 Startups Japan discussed his story from an entrepreneur to a venture capitalist. We recapped his first company, Storys.JP, following his role as a principal in DeNA Capital to the Japan fund in 500 Startups. We also tapped his brain on the interesting areas in robotics, virtual and augmented

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Episode 86: Insurance & CXA Group in Asia with Rosaline Koo - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 03:22:09 GMT

Rosaline Koo from CXA Group joined us for an interesting conversation on how she is building a digital company focusing on employee benefits and insurance across Asia. We discussed how she started from an interesting background of cybernetics and headed to work with startups and corporate turnarounds from US to Asia, and subsequently to her

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Episode 85: The OTT Video Market in Asia Pacific with Michael Smith - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 07:53:20 GMT

In the first episode of 2016, Michael Smith Jr, chief technology officer in HOOQ joined us to give us an overview of the over the top (OTT) video streaming market in Asia Pacific. We discussed the major players in the Asia Pacific market and how they will be shaping up against global competitors from the

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Episode 84: The Five Predictions on Asia in 2016 with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 08:02:55 GMT

Starting the new year, Sameer Singh, author of Tech-Thoughts.net and our host Bernard Leong discussed the five predictions on Asia technology landscape 2016 in the second part of the two-episodes arc. Building on their earlier conversation on the five major events that rocked 2015, they forecast the events in 2016 which will shape the technology landscape

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Episode 83: The Five Major Events in Asia 2015 with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 30 Dec 2015 03:34:21 GMT

Sameer Singh, author of Tech-Thoughts.net and senior industry analysis manager of App Annie, joined our host in a two episodes arc discussion on the five major events that shook Asia for the year of 2015 and the predictions for the year of 2016. In the first part, we discuss the five major events in Asia

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Episode 82: Seedstars World in Asia with Karen Mok - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 20 Dec 2015 11:44:11 GMT

With Karen Mok, we discussed the initiative & footprint of Seedstars World & her perspectives on startup ecosystems after traveling 15 cities in Asia. The conversation started with her background as a social entrepreneur and how she eventually joined SeedStars World. We continued her journey with Seedstars World, where she organised the business competition across different

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Episode 81: Semiconductors are eating the world with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 23:05:42 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies and Techpinions joined us in an interesting conversation why semiconductors are eating the world. By giving a broad overview of the industry spanning across the globe with a significant presence in Asia with the major players, Samsung and TSMC, we dissect how the semiconductors industry and Moore’s law are shifting

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Episode 80: Approach Asia with Lisa Enckell - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 23:18:31 GMT

Lisa Enckell from Approach joined us for a conversation to discuss their new project Approach. We started with a chat on how she started from a theatre producer and journalist to her previous role as the vice president for marketing in Wrapp working between Sweden and San Francisco. Then she shared how both her husband

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Episode 79: Hadoop, Cloudera & Big Data with Doug Cutting - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 09:01:52 GMT

With Doug Cutting, the chief architect of Cloudera and the co-founder of Apache Hadoop, we discussed his journey from a software engineer to a contributor and creator of several open source software which are widely used today. We also deep dived into Cloudera and Hadoop, and discussed various topics from talent shortage to how Hadoop

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Episode 78: Innovation, Global Challenges & Asia Healthcare with Claudia Olsson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 02:53:54 GMT

In this episode, Claudia Olsson, founder of several startups (Exponential AB, Stellar Capacity AB and Catalyse Delta Group) and former senior advisor to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on technology and innovation trends joined us for a conversation on innovation global challenges and Asia healthcare. Drawing from her experience in the Singularity University, Claudia

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Episode 77: Facebook Internet.org, Android One & India with Newley Purnell - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 09:37:05 GMT

In this episode, Newley Purnell, journalist from Wall Street Journal joined us to discuss the recent controversy of Facebook’s Internet.org initiative in India and the implications of the initiative with reference to net neutrality, privacy and security among the different stakeholders. We discussed the relaunch efforts of Google’s Android One, and understand how US technology

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Episode 76: Quibb & 50-50 Pledge with Sandi MacPherson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 13:54:25 GMT

In this episode, Sandi MacPherson joined us to discuss the story on how she started Quibb, a platform for people to share what they are reading at work. From her background working in government on environment and clean tech, she discussed why she has moved to Silicon Valley and bootstrapped her company till fundraising unconventionally via a

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Episode 75: Braintree in Asia Pacific with Tyson Hackwood - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 23:09:20 GMT

With Tyson Hackwood, Head of Asia at Braintree (under Paypal), we discussed the footprint of the online payments company in Asia Pacific. Starting from Tyson’s early career in online advertising and premium mobile services in a 2G or WAP world, we discussed how he moved into the mobile payments with Paypal and subsequently to Braintree. During

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Episode 74: Vizable & Tableau in a Mobile First Asia with Dave Story - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:49:39 GMT

In this episode, Dave Story, VP, Mobile and Strategic Growth at Tableau Software, joined us for a chat to discuss his perspectives on how Tableau is poised to grow in a mobile first Asia with the vision of analytics everywhere, and their new free mobile app, Vizable, which helps to turn data into beautiful interactive

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Episode 73: On China with Kaiser Kuo - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 10:27:02 GMT

We interview Kaiser Kuo, the host of Sinica Podcast to discuss China. With a background in East Asian studies and corporate experience from Oilgvy China, Youku to Baidu, Kaiser discussed the challenges of China and how the country has evolved from 1995 to 2015. Sharing the story of the Sinica podcast which he co-host with

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Episode 72: Monk’s Hill Ventures & Southeast Asia with Ong Peng Tsin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 21:51:15 GMT

Ong Peng Tsin, general partner of Monk’s Hill Ventures joined us to discuss his story from an entrepreneur in the US to subsequently moving to China as a venture capitalist. Drawing his experience from Match.com, Interwoven and Encentuate, he offered his thoughts about the lessons learnt as an entrepreneur and also highlighted his observations on both

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Episode 71: Deep Learning & Baidu Research with Andrew Ng - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 15:42:19 GMT

Andrew Ng, the chief Scientist at Baidu & head of Baidu Research, joined us for a conversation on the exciting developments in artificial intelligence & deep learning from US to China. Sharing his story and the lessons learnt from his past experiences on Google Brain and Coursera, Andrew offered his thoughts on why he has

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Episode 70: The Foxconn Group with Tim Culpan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 01:17:07 GMT

Tim Culpan from Bloomberg in Taipei joined us to discuss the Foxconn Group and how the company rose from a plastic injection moulding company to the largest contract manufacturing company building Apple iPhones and SoftBank Pepper robots. In this conversation, Tim provided an in-depth analysis of Foxconn from its corporate structure to the business units

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Episode 69: Uber versus Didi, OlaCabs and GrabTaxi with Josh Horwitz - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 24 Oct 2015 23:11:00 GMT

With Josh Horwitz from Quartz, we discuss the ongoing major war of the four important on-demand taxi hailing apps: Uber, Didi, OlaCabs and GrabTaxi and how these battles between them are now becoming proxy wars between major corporations, investors and governments in Asia. We dive deeply into various issues regarding these four companies from their

The post Episode 69: Uber versus Didi, OlaCabs and GrabTaxi with Josh Horwitz appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 68: Little Rice – Xiaomi, Smartphones & the Chinese Dream with Clay Shirky - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 22:42:24 GMT

Within the great firewall of China, Clay Shirky, associate professor from interactive media & arts department in NYU Shanghai and also TED speaker, joined us to discuss his latest book “Little Rice – Xiaomi, Smartphones & the Chinese Dream”. In this episode, he shared his thoughts about the revolution of different media platforms and its

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Episode 67: Enterprise Mobility in Asia Pacific with Charles Reed Anderson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 17 Oct 2015 03:37:49 GMT

Charles Reed Anderson, Vice President, Head of Mobility and Internet of Things Asia Pacific, IDC, joined us in a conversation to discuss all things enterprise mobility in Asia Pacific. We discussed the recent report “Enterprise Mobility in Asia Pacific 2015” by IDC, where we defined the landscape of enterprise mobility, the key trends in how

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Episode 66: How will you measure your life with James Allworth - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 00:16:38 GMT

James Allworth, co-author of “How will you measure your life” with Clay Christensen and Karen Dillon, joined us in an interesting discussion on the book and his reflections on disruption theory. From discussing motivational factors to why you should not outsource your childcare, James offered his thoughts and perspectives to how we can draw valuable

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Episode 65: Tableau in Asia with JY Pook - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 10 Oct 2015 06:28:44 GMT

Sitting in the Tableau Asia Pacific headquarters, we interviewed JY Pook, the vice president, Asia Pacific for Tableau, a NYSE listed data analytics software company. We start from JY’s early career in data to his current role in Tableau. In the conversation, we discussed Tableau’s footprint in Asia, and how Tableau has helped companies such

The post Episode 65: Tableau in Asia with JY Pook appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 64: Spotify in Asia with Sunita Kaur - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 06:01:38 GMT

Sunita Kaur, managing director, Asia from Spotify joined us for a conversation to discuss the music streaming service and its footprint in Asia. We discuss the current state of Spotify and its value proposition to the customers and the artistes, the specific challenges that Spotify faced to expand their footprint in Asia, and how the service has

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Episode 63: The Rakuten Group with David Corbin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 03 Oct 2015 21:29:31 GMT

David Corbin from Tech in Asia, joined us to discuss the Rakuten Group, one of the fascinating Internet company in Japan. Starting from a chronological perspective, we analysed the company based on major milestones from how they started from an ecommerce online marketplace to a conglomerate that spanned from different Internet services (travel, digital media,

The post Episode 63: The Rakuten Group with David Corbin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 62: Product Hunt with Ryan Hoover - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 14:15:34 GMT

Ryan Hoover, co-founder & CEO of Product Hunt, joined us for a conversation. From sharing his background to the origins of Product Hunt, Ryan shared the story in how Product Hunt has managed to grow since its early days and establish its credibility as the destination for makers to post their products. He also offered

The post Episode 62: Product Hunt with Ryan Hoover appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 61: SparkLabs & Startup Hubs with Bernard Moon - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 14:58:20 GMT

With Bernard Moon from Sparklabs Global Ventures and SparkLabs accelerator, we discuss their recent report “Global Technology Trends and Startup Hubs 2015” and its implications to technology startups in this year. We start with Bernard’s journey as a startup operator to an early stage investor and mentor to startups from Silicon Valley to Korea and

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Episode 60: Air Travel in Asia with Paul Papadimitriou - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:07:07 GMT

With Paul Papadimitriou from Intelligencr and the host of two podcasts (Digital Loop and Layovers), we discuss the air travel and aviation industry in Asia. We started our conversation from his international relations roots and how he came to Asia and started his consultancy, Intelligencr. Paul also shared his experience as an angel investor and

The post Episode 60: Air Travel in Asia with Paul Papadimitriou appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 59: China’s Five Year Plan and Huawei with Kitty Fok - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 06:46:47 GMT

With Kitty Fok (Country Manager, China) from IDC, we discuss the Chinese government’s five year plan specifically on their ambitions on technology, innovation and digital infrastructure for the next 5 years. In the same conversation, we analyse Huawei, one of China’s top technology companies where they are now growing in three important segments: (a) carriers

The post Episode 59: China’s Five Year Plan and Huawei with Kitty Fok appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 58: Building Relationships thru LinkedIn in Asia with Vicky Skipp - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 14:35:51 GMT

We interviewed Vicky Skipp, Head of Sales Solutions in Asia Pacific and Japan, LinkedIn. From Vicky’s experience in sales from Adobe to LinkedIn over the past 15 years and building her own personal board of directors to guide her career journey, we discuss how the sales process in Asia have changed from a wide broadcasting

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15 Minutes Beta Episode 3: FirstRide - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 14:49:25 GMT

Bernard and Justin talk all things India and cars with the ever exciting Prasoon, CTO of FirstRide. Prasoon lends great advice to young entrepreneurs looking for problems to solve: look at what annoys you in your own life! India’s burgeoning middle class is increasingly looking to buy cars, as Prasoon explains, car ownership is a

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Episode 57: Innovation in Asia Banking with Neal Cross - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 06:45:08 GMT

Neal Cross, the Chief Innovation Officer from Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) shared the story behind how DBS kickstarted its innovation efforts both internally with the bank and externally with the startup ecosystem from Singapore to Hong Kong. He also offered his thoughts and perspectives on the disruptive technologies to banking from blockchain and bitcoin

The post Episode 57: Innovation in Asia Banking with Neal Cross appeared first on Analyse Asia.

15 Minutes Beta Episode 2: Bakipa - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 14:39:50 GMT

In an exciting chat, Bernard and Justin talk with Marigold and Tom, the founders of Bakipa. As we learned in the show, Bakipa stands for Babies, Kids and Parents as the marketplace caters to all three! In this revealing discussion, Marigold talks about the success of the duos Facebook campaigns and varying strategies to monetize

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Episode 56: SMART Nation and Singapore Start-up Ecosystem with Steve Leonard - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 30 Aug 2015 13:58:50 GMT

Steve Leonard, deputy executive chairman of IDA Singapore joined us in an interesting conversation on the SMART Nation initiative in Singapore & his thoughts on the startup ecosystem. Our discussion began with his reflections from an illustrious career in enterprise technology to a government role, and subsequently, we discuss why the Singapore government has embarked on

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15 Minutes Beta Episode 1: Taembe - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 29 Aug 2015 02:11:45 GMT

In the inaugural episode of 15 minutes, Bernard and Justin talk to Don Phan, founder and CEO of Taembe.com (ta-um-bey). The trio discuss the the evolution of e-commerce in Vietnam, a key factor in Taembe’s success. Don also provides insight about Vietnam’s demographics, making it ripe for Taembe and ecommerce in general. We also discuss

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Episode 55: From Alphabet to Uber and 1 Year on with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 13:27:03 GMT

Sameer Singh, our first guest on the podcast, joined us to discuss all things business and technology from Alphabet to Uber. We began instead with an interview our host of the show, Bernard on his reflections on the first year of Analyse Asia to the future plans of the podcast including the upcoming launch of

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Episode 54: Twittamentary & China’s Media Landscape with Tan Siok Siok - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 22 Aug 2015 07:27:17 GMT

Tan Siok Siok, CEO of Kinetic One and a notable documentary film-maker who made Twittamentary in 2012 entirely with social media and crowdsourcing, joined us for a conversation on how she has managed to make interesting documentaries from China to US. Tracing her story across Singapore, China and US, she discussed her journey from a filmmaker

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Episode 53: Mapping the networks in Asia with Parag Khanna - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 23:13:32 GMT

Parag Khanna, CEO & founder of Factotum, global strategist and TED speaker joined us for a fascinating conversation about mapping the different networks from logistics to infrastructure in Asia. Drawing his background in international relations with his experience in the US military and work in the foreign affairs advisory council for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign

The post Episode 53: Mapping the networks in Asia with Parag Khanna appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 52: The Vietnam Startup Ecosystem with Anh-Minh Do - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 15 Aug 2015 09:00:54 GMT

Anh-Minh Do from Tech In Asia joined us for a discussion on all things start-up and venture capital in Vietnam. We discussed the current local major players within the ecosystem, the top three venture firms and the important people who you must get to know in Vietnam. We also discussed the most interesting startups that

The post Episode 52: The Vietnam Startup Ecosystem with Anh-Minh Do appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 51: The SoftBank Group with David Corbin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 16:42:15 GMT

David Corbin from Tech in Asia joined us for an in depth discussion on SoftBank, one of the most exciting companies in Asia. We started with the organizational structure of the company and offered some perspectives on her charismatic founder, Masoyoshi San and his potential successor, Nikesh Arora. We also discussed SoftBank’s foray into US

The post Episode 51: The SoftBank Group with David Corbin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 50: A Tribute to Satoru Iwata & Nintendo’s Future with Serkan Toto - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 06:21:29 GMT

Serkan Toto, CEO of Kantan Games, joined us to give a tribute to Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo who has just passed away at the age of 50. We discussed his legacy in Nintendo and the contributions that he has made to the company and also to the console gaming world as a whole. We

The post Episode 50: A Tribute to Satoru Iwata & Nintendo’s Future with Serkan Toto appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 49: The Shortest Interview with Jenny Lee from GGV Capital - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 15:03:19 GMT

In this episode recorded during the RISE Conference, we got the shortest interview in our podcast history with Jenny Lee from GGV Capital. In this episode, Jenny Lee discussed how she started in venture capital and offered her perspectives on start-up investments from US to China, from how both cultures differ from management styles to

The post Episode 49: The Shortest Interview with Jenny Lee from GGV Capital appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 48: Decoding the Asia Landscape with Jamie Metzl - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 07:19:08 GMT

Jamie Metzl, currently a senior advisor to Cranemere LLC & a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, joined us to dissect the economical and geopolitical landscape of Asia. Drawing from his illustrious career and experience in foreign relations and international diplomacy (Asia Society, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Senator & now Vice President Joe

The post Episode 48: Decoding the Asia Landscape with Jamie Metzl appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 47: App Annie in Asia with Yu Junde - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 09:46:41 GMT

Yu Junde, Vice President, Asia Pacific from App Annie joined us to discuss the footprint of App Annie in Asia Pacific. Starting from the origins of App Annie and how the company went from Beijing to San Francisco, Junde shared why Asia is the most interesting market in the world for mobile. We also discuss

The post Episode 47: App Annie in Asia with Yu Junde appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 46: Smartphones, Watches & Bubbles in China & India with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 06:36:27 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Techpinions and Creative Strategies joined us again to discuss the different market dynamics for smartphones in China and India, the recent debate on Apple Watch sales based on non-sequitur numbers, and the hot technology bubble discussion in US as to the consequences to the Asian market. We also discussed how the research

The post Episode 46: Smartphones, Watches & Bubbles in China & India with Ben Bajarin appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 45: The Rise Conference 2015 with Mike Harvey - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 09:54:09 GMT

With Mike Harvey, head of strategic communications from Web Summit, we discuss “behind the scenes” for the upcoming Rise Conference 2015 in Hong Kong and his thoughts on the Asia digital landscape. We hear the story of why they decide to bring the conference to Asia, the key people who will be speaking in the

The post Episode 45: The Rise Conference 2015 with Mike Harvey appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 44: The China Ecosystem with William Bao Bean of SOS Ventures - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 09:58:29 GMT

William Bao Bean, partner of SOS Ventures and Chinaccelerator, joined us on Analyse Asia to discuss how their accelerator and venture fund spurred the entrepreneurial ecosystem in China. We discussed the interesting companies under his portfolio, how they are working on growth hacks in Wechat and also why media is an exciting category in China.

The post Episode 44: The China Ecosystem with William Bao Bean of SOS Ventures appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 43: All on Mobile with Benedict Evans - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 23:59:56 GMT

Benedict Evans, partner from Andreessen Horowitz, is here to discuss all things mobile, beginning from the different approaches from Google and Apple to dominate the next phase of the mobile ecosystems, with new perspectives arising from his questions on the shifting layers of interaction, Google’s vision of Android, Google Android vs AOSP. We also discussed

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Episode 42: Lazada vs MatahariMall in Indonesia with Rama Mamuaya - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 01:47:14 GMT

In this episode, Rama Mamuaya, founder of DailySocial.net discussed the fierce competition on ecommerce in Indonesia between two powers: Lazada (Rocket Internet) vs MatahariMall (Lippo Group). What are the implications to the whole Indonesia ecommerce market? Rama dissects how the war between both ecommerce entities will play out and how it affects the other ecommerce

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Episode 41: The 500 Mobile Collective with Edith Yeung of 500 Startups - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 02:45:51 GMT

Edith Yeung from 500 Startups joined us for a chat on all things mobile and an overview of the mobile landscape all over the world. Drawing from her career experience with Dolphin and BiztechDay, she explained her investment thesis: how it continued to evolve with a ever-changing landscape of mobile and how she looked at

The post Episode 41: The 500 Mobile Collective with Edith Yeung of 500 Startups appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 40: Is there a bubble in Asia? with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 09:34:28 GMT

Sameer Singh from Tech-thoughts.net, also a long time recurring guest, joined Bernard for an awesome discussion on post Google I/O and Apple WWDC 2015, and how some of the announcements from the two major conferences of the year will impact Asia as a whole. We have a brief and short chat on Softbank’s recent launch

The post Episode 40: Is there a bubble in Asia? with Sameer Singh appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 39: Alibaba’s World with Porter Erisman - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 20 Jun 2015 00:48:37 GMT

Porter Erisman, the author of “Alibaba’s World” and filmmaker of “Crocodile in the Yangtze”, joined us to offer an insider’s perspective to the early days of Alibaba, now the largest ecommerce company in the world. We discussed the interesting period of his tenure in Alibaba from the company taking the funding from Yahoo! to the

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Episode 38: Messaging Apps, Games & Platforms with Jan Dawson - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:33:33 GMT

Jan Dawson from Jackdaw Research & a regular contributor of Techpinions joined us on the podcast to offer a broad perspective on how the messaging apps in Asia are operating as platforms and ecosystems against their western counterparts. In the same conversation, he discuss the unpleasant economics of “free to play” games which originate from

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Episode 37: All on Uber in Asia with Josh Horwitz - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 13:31:30 GMT

Josh Horwitz from Quartz joined us to discuss all things Uber in Asia. From how Uber ramp up their operations to their recent troubles with regulation in Asian markets, we analysed how they are shaping up against their Asian competitors in China, India & Southeast Asia: Kuaidi-Didi Dache, Grabtaxi, Olacabs and Gogovan. After our Uber

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Episode 36: Venture Capital Asia with Michael Dempsey of CB Insights - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 23:59:34 GMT

With Michael Dempsey from CB Insights, we decipher the trends that are shaping venture capital investments across Asia for 2014 and look at the current movement this year. We also discussed the verticals: ecommerce and on demand mobile apps; the major players: Tiger Global, Sequoia and Softbank and the impact of Rocket Internet in the

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Episode 35: All about Wechat with Charlie Custer - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 14:44:18 GMT

Charlie Custer, editor of Tech In Asia joined us to talk on everything about Wechat by Tencent, the most popular messaging app in China by one of the top Chinese internet companies and why Facebook and Snapchat are now focused on cloning it for the western markets. We discuss why Wechat is so successful not

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Episode 34: The Rise of China Smartphone Makers with Bryan Ma - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 31 May 2015 22:07:50 GMT

We interview Bryan Ma, Vice President for IDC’s Asia Pacific client devices research group to have an insightful discussion on three interesting topics: (a) the rise of the chinese smartphone makers and where they are heading with a short discussion on why Xiaomi is adapting their strategy to overseas markets, (b) the tablets and PC

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Episode 33: The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 3 – The Asian Cars Edition - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 25 May 2015 23:02:46 GMT

Horace Dediu, current fellow of the Clayton Christensen Institute and founder of Asymco.com joined us for an epic and insightful discussion focusing on few key interesting topics: (a) new market disruption theories, (b) Apple in China and the luxury market and (c) the Japanese automotive industry and how it shapes up against disruption from Tesla,

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Episode 32: The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 2 – Apple in Asia & Luxury - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 22 May 2015 05:52:41 GMT

The post Episode 32: The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 2 – Apple in Asia & Luxury appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 31: The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 1 – New Market Disruption - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 19 May 2015 05:44:32 GMT

The post Episode 31: The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 1 – New Market Disruption appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 30: Twitter in Asia Pacific with Aliza Knox - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 17 May 2015 06:17:51 GMT

Aliza Knox, the managing director for online sales for Asia Pacific (APAC) & Latin America (LATAM) joined us for an interesting to discuss Twitter’s footprint in Asia Pacific. Aliza offer insights to how twitter is used in Asia Pacific from all walks of life, from citizens using it to communicate during major disasters (for e.g.

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Episode 29: Founder Institute & Venture Capital in Southeast Asia with Jeff Paine - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 12 May 2015 11:15:00 GMT

Jeffrey Paine, founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures and director of the Founder Institute (FI), Singapore sits down with us to discuss the story behind Founder Institute in Asia and the state of venture capital in Southeast Asia. He start his story from the days of he first built the institute in Singapore and subsequently

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Episode 28: Airbnb in Asia with Jia Jih Chai - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 09 May 2015 07:08:33 GMT

Chai Jia Jih (aka JJ Chai), managing director of Airbnb, Southeast Asia and India sits down to discuss the story of Airbnb in Asia from how they started in a diverse market and gradually build themselves into one of the important players in travel and hospitality industry. We also discuss the challenges for US companies

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Episode 27: The Lean Hardware Startup with Cyril Ebersweiler - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 02 May 2015 05:46:02 GMT

Cyril Ebersweiler, the founder of HAXLR8R & venture partner of SOSventures, joins us to discuss the lean hardware startup in Asia and the metrics that investors look at to evaluate a hardware startup. He shares with us the concept of the lean hardware startup and why hardware is the new black. We also discuss the

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Episode 26: The Nintendo and DeNA Deal with Serkan Toto - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 11 Apr 2015 05:24:24 GMT

Serkan Toto of Kantan Games is back on the podcast to discuss the mega deal between Nintendo and DeNA which created a dent in the gaming space for 2015. We discussed the pre and post press conference, speculated the motivation in what pushed Nintendo to break its sacred code of not venturing into mobile games,

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Episode 25: The Apple Watch Conundrum in Asia with Sameer Singh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 09:52:40 GMT

Sameer Singh from Tech-Thoughts is back for an interesting discussion with Bernard Leong on the three major topics which dominate the Asian technology and business landscape. Discussing in depth the Apple Watch conundrum, they explained why there are flawed misconceptions from western analysts on the Apple Watch market in Asia. The discussion also revolved around

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Episode 24: The Risk Driven Business Model with Serguei Netessine - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 07:43:55 GMT

Professor Serguei Netessine (@snetesin) joined us to discuss his book “The Risk Driven Business Model” (co-written with Karan Girotra). In the discussion, he explained the theme of the book in coming up with the four key questions that will define any company, with examples of companies not just from the US but also in Asia.

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Episode 23: Hardware 101 with Bunnie Huang - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 06:14:23 GMT

Bunnie Huang (@bunniestudios), founder of Bunnie Studios and Kosagi, joined us to chat about building hardware companies in Asia. From his early experience in hacking the XBox and Chumby to his recent open hardware projects: Safecast Geiger Counter Reference Design, Novena Laptop, Chibitronics: peel and stick electronics, he shared great advice and thoughts on trends

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Episode 22: The Firefox Browser & Mobile OS with Gen Kanai - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 15:29:36 GMT

Gen Kanai, @gen joined us here to discuss the Mozilla footprint in the form of Firefox browser and mobile OS in Asia during the FOSS Asia 2015 conference. We discuss the new features of Firefox browser with the new Firefox hello adopting the web RTC format, the Firefox mobile OS and how it is shaping

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Episode 21: MaGIC & Malaysia with Cheryl Yeoh - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 14:09:13 GMT

Cheryl Yeoh (@cherylyeoh) the CEO of Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC) joins us to discuss her current project to support, enhance and accelerate the startups in Malaysia and scale them regionally towards the Southeast Asia market. She also discuss her background, dating back from her life as an entrepreneur with her startup ReClip.it that was

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Episode 20: All about LINE with David Corbin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:47:25 GMT

David Corbin (@CorbinDB) from Tech in Asia joins us for a deep dive discussion on one of the most exciting messaging apps in Asia: LINE. We discuss the origins of LINE, analyse how LINE has successfully build up different revenue streams and grow users in a rapid rate and predict when the company will go

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Episode 19: The Mobile-First Era in Asia 2015 with Ben Bajarin - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:31:38 GMT

Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies & Techpinions joins us in this episdode to discuss the important questions dominating mobile in the dynamic and vibrant Asian market and what matters in 2015: How does the mobile-first Asia look like in 2015? Can Apple sustain its competitive advantage in China given its stunning quarter? Is Samsung’s fate

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Episode 18: The 500 Startups footprint in Greater China & Angel Investing with Rui Ma - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 06:32:11 GMT

Rui Ma (@ruima), partner from 500 Startups covering Greater China, joins us to discuss her investment thesis and the kind of founders she back in a vibrant and dynamic ecosystem. She gives an introduction to 500 Startups and how they help startups with their mentors network and events, and discuss some interesting companies under her portfolio.

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Episode 17: Analyse China and Xiaomi with Hans Tung - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 14 Feb 2015 09:14:29 GMT

Hans Tung (@hanstung), the managing partner of GGV Capital and #69 on The Forbes Midas List joins us for an interesting conversation on his journey as a venture capitalist which traverse between China and US. He also discuss some of the interesting companies on his portfolio. Starting his time as a venture capitalist in China,

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Episode 16: Dim Sum & Startups in Hong Kong with Casey Lau - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 09:35:22 GMT

With Casey Lau (@casey_lau) from StartupsHK.com in this episode, he share with us the origins of the interesting nascent Hong Kong startup ecosystem and why Hong Kong is now a port of call for prominent investors out there. We discussed the culture, infrastructure & the type of start-ups (financial tech, logistics and ecommerce) that are

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Episode 15: The Golden Gate from San Francisco to Singapore - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 08:22:35 GMT

We interview Vinnie Lauria (@vlauria), founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures in Singapore. We discuss how Vinnie moved from Silicon Valley to Singapore with his wife Kristine Lauria (our guest on episode 6), the Kauffman fellowship, the back stories behind the most interesting start-ups in Southeast Asia: RedMart, 99.co, Carousell, Bilna and Coda Payments where

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Episode 14: State of North East Asia & Taiwan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 01:59:06 GMT

Catherine Shu (@catherineshu) from TechCrunch shares with us her perspectives on the state of Northeast Asia (China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan & Hong Kong) from interesting companies to startups. In the discussion, we analysed the BAT (Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent) companies in China and the emerging Xiaomi gearing to step out globally out of China. We also deep dived

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Episode 13: Big in Japan with DJ Tokyo - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 02:42:30 GMT

Hiro Maeda (aka @djtokyo), managing partner from Beenos Venture Capital joins us on an interesting conversation about the nascent and exciting ecosystem in Japan. Covering the landscape of entrepreneurs & investors in Tokyo and describing the ongoing three wars between startups within the ecosystem, Hiro provides a fresh perspective about Japan that we have not

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Episode 12: New Questions in Mobile, the Asia Edition - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 15:07:58 GMT

Sameer Singh (@sameer_singh17) from Tech-Thoughts.net comes online with our host Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) to discuss and debate with an Asian perspective on Benedict Evans’ recent piece “New Questions in Mobile”. We first return to a lost discussion where we discuss Uber and its recent problems in Asia and categorically provide an answer to some US

The post Episode 12: New Questions in Mobile, the Asia Edition appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 11: Ben and the Shenzhen Hardware Factory - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 06:02:59 GMT

Benjamin Joffe (@benjaminjoffe) from HAXLR8R joins us for an interesting discussion spanning from his travels around the world to his current role to help hardware companies to incubate and scale in the Shenzhen on-demand hardware global factory. In this discussion, Ben offered a primer to how entrepreneurs from all over the world can leverage on

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Episode 10: The Malaysia Magic Show - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 01:49:58 GMT

Gabey Goh (@gabeygoh) from Digital News Asia joined us to dissect the technology entrepreneurial scene in Malaysia and her perspectives on how it is different from Singapore given her recent move down south. In this interview, we discussed some stories which are never aired in public: (a) the origins of GrabTaxi, (b) how MOL made

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Episode 9: Gangnam Style is Startup Style! - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sat, 13 Dec 2014 01:09:55 GMT

In this episode, Nathan Millard from beSuccess joined us in a conversation on the Korean startup and investor ecosystem and provide the perspective on how the major players (Samsung, LG and SK Planet) are shaping in South Korea. The surprise is that PSY’s Gangnam style is the startup style, where most of the startups are

The post Episode 9: Gangnam Style is Startup Style! appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 8: State of Southeast Asia and Rocket Internet - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 04:17:17 GMT

Jon Russell (aka @JonRussell) from TechCrunch joined us in this exciting episode to discuss the state of Southeast Asia from entrepreneurs, investors to infrastructure and the influence of Rocket Internet in this market. We mulled over whether Southeast Asia companies can truly go regional given that the fragmentation of the markets and users being more

The post Episode 8: State of Southeast Asia and Rocket Internet appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 7: Five years later on Indonesia after Echelon 2009 - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 02 Nov 2014 06:31:26 GMT

In this episode, we have Rama Mamuaya, the Chief Executive of DailySocial.net, Indonesia’s equivalent of TechCrunch and GigaOm combined to discuss the state of affairs in Indonesia five years later after Echelon 2009, where the technology scene exploded there. Our focus in this episode is to discuss the few growing areas of the technology scene

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Episode 6: From Adventures to Communities in Southeast Asia with Kristine - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 07:07:48 GMT

In this episode, Kristine Lauria, the country manager Elance-oDesk in Singapore joined us for a conversation on her interesting work in building and managing communities in Singapore (TheList.SG and Walkabout.SG). Starting from San Francisco, she told the story of her adventures in Asia through her blog: UrbanHikers. After settling in Singapore, she created two major

The post Episode 6: From Adventures to Communities in Southeast Asia with Kristine appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 5: Tying the knots of Location, Communication & Video in Asia - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 07:21:54 GMT

In this episode, Michael Smith (otherwise known as “Smithy” or @dreampipe) from Spuul joins us here for an interesting conversation on Southeast Asia from the past to present. Starting from his current gig at Spuul, Smithy offered insights on the global video streaming market with respect to Indian content and how Spuul has to apply

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Episode 4: JFDI, the YCombinator of Southeast Asia - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 14:42:47 GMT

In this episode, Hugh Mason, co-founder and CEO of Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI) joined us on an interesting discussion on the role of incubators and accelerators in Asia @ Blk 71 (where most startups in Singapore are located with a total valuation of US$1.5B). We traced the story of JFDI, from how they started

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Episode 3: The Battle against Apple & Android One onslaught in Asia - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 06:31:31 GMT

In this episode, we discuss the impact of Apple’s announcement of the new iPhones, Apple Pay and Apple Watch and Google’s new “Android One” on Asia with Sameer Singh. Of course, we discuss two interesting observations: the bifurcation of Asian companies moving upstream but unable to break into an upstream brand like Apple or Louis

The post Episode 3: The Battle against Apple & Android One onslaught in Asia appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 2: Console, Social & Mobile Gaming in Japan - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:28:30 GMT

Our second episode of Analyse Asia features Dr Serkan Toto (@serkantoto), CEO of Kantan Games Inc and former TechCrunch correspondent in Asia. We focus on the evolution of the gaming scene in Japan from its leadership position in console games through Sony, SEGA and Nintendo to the present state in mobile and social gaming with

The post Episode 2: Console, Social & Mobile Gaming in Japan appeared first on Analyse Asia.

Episode 1: Mobile Ecosystems in Asia with Micromax, Xiaomi and Samsung - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong

Bernard Leong — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 06:23:35 GMT

We kicked off the first episode of Analyse Asia with Sameer Singh, author of Tech Thoughts. Our first conversation centers on the mobile ecosystems in Asia, focusing on a few interesting topics: (a) the mobile operating systems in Asia with Apple iOS and Google Android leading the way, and the implications for platforms with small

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