Quite recently, we’ve decided to shutter Certo - our AI driven college guidance platform. Since then, we've been running around like a headless chicken. This is a round up of the lessons learnt, observations made, and future plans. Why we shut down Whilst we deeply love our mission of accessible educational support for all, it is becoming more and more apparent that we cannot build a company with values we stand by. We wanted to create a market for a cheap, university guidance selling di...

Hong Kong has largely failed in its quest to become a serious startup hub. There was never really any competition with Shenzhen (or Hangzhou or Shanghai even). In our race against Singapore, we've also definitely lost. Singapore is a serious hub for SEA/Indonesia/Malaysia facing startups, with Gojek taking off. Meanwhile, Hong Kong is left in the dust. We fail to keep our unicorns and decacorns. Our unicorns are not based here due to the city's capital or ability, but rather as a weird quirk...

A lot of people like to play fantasy football (I'm told, in the US). Playing fantasy VC, is certainly one way that many people recommend to get into VC. I want to take that concept and flip it. Let's talk about my fantasy fund. Disclaimer: Thoughts my own, not representative of any of the funds I work for. I LOVE the funds I work for. They're dream jobs. This is in no way a criticism. This fantasy fund is a reflection of my ideal world. It's not aiming to make return to LPs or work within t...

Crypto’s Under-appreciated Role in the Disruption of the Music Industry The discussion of crypto’s place in the future of the music industry has been talked to death. It is obvious that change will occur, e.g. in the financing (investing) of entertainment, the payment for consuming content, and the distribution of proceeds. It’s the same process that has been applied to any asset of value that we have made crypto. That’s boring. Let’s not talk more about that. Let’s talk about a more meaningf...

I've been working on my startup for a year - and it hasn't gone anywhere close to the way I would have wanted it to. It's been a truly humbling, soul crushing exercise. Customer acquisition has been slow, as has been fund raising. Having previously started funded projects and gotten job offers and scholarships easily, I thought the success would be easy. I really didn't appreciate how lucky I was. I've had to learn to tame my jealousy as the corporate alternatives I've forfeited or the peers...

More personal notes - lifted from the best blogs Business and Financial Metrics Bookings (value of contract) vs. Revenue (recognised when revenue provided) NB Letters of intent and verbal agreements are neither revenue nor bookings. Recurring Revenue vs. Total Revenue ARR (annual recurring revenue); ARR per customer: Is this flat or growing?; MRR ARR should exclude one-time fees, professional service fees, and any variable usage fees. Gross Profit Total Contract Value (TCV) vs. Annual Contr...

My own personal primer. THE BASIC CASE OF EQUITY FINANCING Pre-money valuation: $5M Founder owns: 5,500,000 shares Total shares: 10,000,000 shares Simple equity investment, e.g. Investment of: $2M = “Post-money” valuation: $7,000,000 = Investor purchasing 28.57% of the company ($2M/$7M). Price per share = pre-money valuation / number of fully diluted shares, e.g. Price per share = $5M / 10,000,000 shares = $0.50 Sanity check: investor’s $2,000,000 will buy at $0.50 per share for a total ...

What is it? Prescription Digital Therapeutics (PDTs) are basically prescription medication - but in a digital form, i.e. replacing a pill with the phone. PDTs are not Digiceuticals - the Luminosity 🧠💪 of the world. PDTs are subject to randomized clinical trials 👩‍⚕️ and held to the same standards of other prescription medicine. Digiceuticals aren't - they're wellness products similar to the conventional Vitamin D supplement. How effective are they? 📈 Very. By definition, PDTs are required...

Quick thoughts today - I've been talking to a lot of VCs recently, and was surprised to find out about a major pain-point shared: purpose built tools. 🛠 (Some research shows some exist 😅, but are apparently not widely used yet.) On second thought 🤔, it makes a some sense. There are only 1000 VC firms in the US, and maybe a handful more angel investors - so you can imagine the total number of potential users would be quite small, even globally. This also isn't a Bloomberg Terminal situation - V...

I've just finished my New Year's Resolution to read 40 books this year. These are some of the best - the must reads. Non-fiction: 1. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 🏛 A must read and tonic for the soul. Also really interesting how Stoicism converges with Taoism (I also enjoyed 道德经) and converges with new behavioural economics - many of the meditations really center around taming System 1 thinking with System 2 thinking, to let go of ego and find inner peace. 2. How Asia Works 🌏: Success and ...

Verdict ⚖️ and disruption possibilities 🚀 Disruption is inevitable and welcome 🎉. The question is, what form it will take. Let's start with what existing disruption we see, and where we think it'll end up. I've structured the disruptions below chronologically ⏳, where possible. Many disruptions also are combinations of the below. Old-school education archetype: groups of students taught by teachers, sitting standardised tests 👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓 👨🏻‍🏫 The below three trends really all come down to improv...

Problem 1: Education 👨🏻‍🏫 ≠ learning 📚 Our Miseducation - A daring assumption to make at 22, but nonetheless one I’m happy to commit to currently. The problem I will introduce is a Gordian knot, but let’s tease out some issues. Let’s start from the beginning, what is the point of education. I vaguely think the point is to prepare children for (their, our, your) future. The problem is, our education doesn’t do any of this. 🤷🏻‍♀️ We teach things that are useless in real life. Of course, an arg...

5G’s promise 🎉 Faster connection - near real time Reduces latency, allowing more data to be delivered and processed faster 💨 Increased usability: connecting Internet of Things or IoT This would allow us to harness connectivity in ways yet unseen, e.g. remote surgery 🤯 But wait, whoops...🧐 Infrastructure 🏗- still requires fibre optic connection - sorry folks, you may not get this if you don’t live in New York🌇 (+ inequality, bleh) Shorter wavelengths + Blocked by glass - scalability block ...

Process: Issuing bank 🏦 —> customer 💵 hands information to payment gateway 🚪—> payment processor 🏭 handle the rest of the transaction details —> card network 🌍 authorises credit —> acquiring bank 🏦 pays merchant 💼 How it works? Many middlemen between customer and merchant charges fee = merchants lose ~ $3 in a typical $100 transaction 💸 Disruption possibilities 🚀 Bypass system entirely, e.g. Kenya’s M-Pesa and China’s Alipay Reduce middlemen/edit existing system, e.g. Appl...

There are too many problems with the healthcare system to note. 😢 We’re skipping to the verdict. Verdict ⚖️ It’s inevitable that disruption is coming. Several headwinds inform this: increasing dissatisfaction, more ‘on-demand’ technology, greater data processing. The key is what disruptions we are likely to see. Non-educated guesstimate trend #1: from binaries ⚖️ to sliding scales ↔️ Historically, health has existed in a binary. One is either “well” or sick, receiving care or not, a patient ...