 Kia ora kato. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening to you all. Welcome to New Frontiers Digital. This session is organised by the Edmund Hillary Fellowship as part of our New Frontiers series of online events. It's a modification of our normal three-day conference that's held in New Zealand. We run these events to showcase leading thinking from EHF fellows and aim to provide accessible, inspiring ideas that can support action. So before we get started, a few housekeeping rules. Any technical issues, put them in the chat window. Post questions for Danny, Debbie or Amarit, our panellists in the Q&A section. And we'll be recording this session and it'll be available afterwards on our website. And that applications for cohort eight are closing on the 1st of June. So you can actually put those applications in. So just a reminder today's session, it's insights from the investment landscape in Asia. And our panellists today, we have got Danny Lee, we've got Debbie Lell and we've got Amarit. And each panellist is going to speak for 10 minutes and they will then will follow that with Q&A for 20 minutes. So I'll get each speaker to introduce themselves. And then Danny is going to touch on the latest venture and PE investing trends in Asia. Family office view on capital deployment during this period. And then Danny's role in Elevate and how that aims to help develop the New Zealand early stage investing ecosystem. Take it away, Danny. Thanks. So my name is Danny Lee. I am an EHF fellow. I'm cohort three. I'm based in Hong Kong and I run the direct investment business for a family office here. And I've been kind of investing in globally for over 20 years now, both in VC growth capital as well as buy it out. So what I'll talk about first is probably give people a overview on the some of the latest trends that's happening in the venture capital and in private equity market globally, particularly in Asia as well. In general, I would say, investing activities have generally slowed down since beginning of the year. The impact is quite a bit deeper and broader felt. This is actually different from 2008. So a lot of people kind of think about all how this is compared to the great financial crisis. The situation that's driving this is very different from 2008. It's broader. And we think the markets are the stock markets in general. If you look at the stock market performance has been greatly exaggerated. We actually think there's a lot more risk in the global economy to come. But having said that, though, there's still a lot of capital in both venture capital and private equity globally, because lots of the funds have raised a lot of money. So we are still relatively awashed in liquidity. Just a lot of people are holding back. In terms of kind of looking at the different type of opportunities, there's really a tail of two cities, if you will. Strong companies today are still able to raise money and continue to drive high evaluations, you can see. But there's a large number of smaller companies where the business model is less proven, where the company is probably not yet profitable. They are facing much more scrutiny from investors, evaluations coming down. There's quite a few down rounds that we see in the region. And actually, that's probably a fact globally as well. People who could raise money are scrambling to raise money to have enough cash to make sure they survive this winter, which people are looking at at least 12, if not 18 months. And you have a little bit of a vision, if you will, in the venture capital space. We all know the soft bank vision fund have drove a lot of the unicorn valuations because of what's happening to them and put to the global markets. It looks like they won't be able to raise a fund too. And a lot of companies that are driven up into very high valuations will have a pretty big down round in this situation. And that will have big impacts on their ESOP pools on management share. So those companies could go into a bigger problems than we all realize. And then I would say lastly, on the market front, there are a few business models that are thriving, and there are a few business models that are not, or industries that are not. I would say in general, online business models, healthcare, sustainable slash EEG type of businesses are being more sought after. People are really looking at those, given that some of these businesses actually have benefited from the COVID experience. Industries such as real estate, education, travel and hospitality are clearly being hit. And a lot of these models are now being reconsidered. In particular, I think the low rate situation has really impacted real estate and a lot of the investment decisions. And people are quite honestly still having a way and see attitude in terms of how that will all play out. I will give you some numbers as well on my second point about how some of the family offices and in general investors are thinking about how they're looking at this whole capital deployment during this period. We have a quick survey that we did with some of the largest well-known family offices in the world. And here's some statistics I could share. Roughly only about less than 20% of the people believe that the economy, the global economy, will recover in 2020. Roughly half the people think that the recovery will probably happen sometime in 2001. But this is not a short-term thing for sure. And about less than a third thing it actually might take longer than that. It might go beyond 2020. So in general, I would say people are kind of thinking about the long term and expecting this to go longer rather shorter. In terms of making investments, roughly two-thirds of the people are still making investments. As I mentioned before, people still have liquidity and they're still making investments. About the other one-third is taking a way and see attitude and holding back in terms of making new investments. A lot of people are focusing on the existing portfolios, trying to fix things up. In terms of investment strategy, about 75% of the people are not significantly shifting their strategy because of what's happened. They're maintaining their allocations, they're maintaining their strategic focus, the industry focus, geographic focus, etc. The rest would say it's probably too early to say, but they are thinking about some changes maybe in the six- to twelve-month timeframe. But in general, most people are open for business, if you will. Investment is still being done. It's just a lot slower pace and the terms are being readjusted. We're starting to see some of the terms with venture capital become a bit more investor-friendly versus before. The greatest concern that people have is the hit of a second wave. This year is pretty much a write-off for most people, with the exception of perhaps some of the Chinese investors who sees a slightly brighter outlook in China. But in general, I think people are really concerned about the second, maybe even the third wave hitting if the markets are open too quickly. And then lastly, I will talk about my role here in New Zealand in relative to Elevate. So in times like this, I think we really try our best to step up and help smaller and less mature companies and ecosystems to survive and to develop more. Elevate is basically, think of it as a fund of venture funds that are sponsored by the New Zealand government. We have about 300 million New Zealand dollars. With the goal is to fill a funding gap in New Zealand, basically for venture capital. There is a shortage of funding from what we can see, usually around series A and B stage in New Zealand. There is a relatively thriving C, very early stage, angel round investors in New Zealand that can start companies. And you can see also there are mature funds that come in through Australia to invest into New Zealand companies as well. But in the middle, there is a gap. And what a lot of companies need is that development capital, usually the A and B stage, to take them through from concept to develop the business model to prove and to scale up to a certain point. And that's what Elevate is trying to do. The things that we're looking for in this is to find managers that will have won a good track record. That includes obviously, you know, your investment performance, having a stable team with some scale. And then second thing we look at is the value add that these managers will have to New Zealand. Whether or not they have, they're focusing on the right stage. So we're looking for people who are doing more series A and B stage work. Whether or not they have a dedicated fund pool to New Zealand, either if you know they're New Zealand based, or if they're not, they should have very clear dedication of time and resources and people and fund size to invest into New Zealand and help develop the ecosystem. And lastly, we look for, you know, alignment of interest because we'll be investors kind of starting LPs into these funds. We'll look for alignment of interest in the sense that we expect the investors themselves, the general partners to make commitment into the fund themselves. So that's a quick summary of what I have to discover. I'll turn the mic over. Thanks. Thanks, Danny. That was great. So now we're going to have our next speaker, our guest speaker, Debbie. And Debbie's going to take us through these few points. What's the Asian LPs recent reactions to the markets and plans for capital deployment? How the US and European GPs are reacting to the current environment of travel restrictions, i.e. delaying and or extending fundraisers? And does the world need another first-time fund, whether it's VC, growth, capital, or buyout? If you're raising your own fund, what are some of the key points to address? Thanks, Dewey. Great. Hi. Hello, everyone. I'm Debbie. It's good to be here. So the topic, especially the first in LPs, a little bit of that actually will overlap with what Danny shared, but I'll try to focus more on the institutional side of the LP world. So what I do for work is I fundraise full time for a variety of different private funds, so from strategies like private equity buyouts to growth capital, venture capital, credit funds, infrastructure, et cetera. And we primarily work with a broad segment of institutional LPs, including sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, insurance companies, and then larger family offices. So Danny is not only a friend, but also one of the LPs that we cover. So what we have seen in the past, I would say four to five months, given the market downturn and the volatility, is exactly kind of what Danny touched on. And I would kind of roughly categorize LPs into two camps. One is the more sophisticated and experienced LPs. So those that have gone through cycles, they understand that you can't completely stop your private investing program right now. Generally, a lot of the LPs we're talking to are saying that they understand in the downturn some of the best returns occur if you can find the right managers. What's happening is people are slowing down partially because there's working at home and the challenges of getting the IC together to discuss due diligence or discuss fund recommendations. But generally, we are seeing the more sophisticated LPs still saying they want to and they have to deploy capital into funds across different private strategies. I think within that, we've also looked at some research. So during 2009 vintage funds, they actually were some of the best returning funds. So 2009 funds had a net IRR of 13% across private equity. And then if you compare it to 2006 vintage funds, that was about 8.9%. So there's definitely an alpha if LPs consistently invest into this downturn. I think what's also happening right now is the past 10 years have been relatively easy money because the markets have just been good for everybody. And managers often pitch and say, we're good at managing risk. We invest in strong companies, et cetera. But it's in a downturn that you really see managers true colors. How are they performing in a crisis? How are their portfolio companies doing? Do they really deliver on the risk or the downside risk management that they were promising? And Q1 valuations have started to come out. So we have seen quite a broad range of markdowns. A lot of GPs or fund managers have marked down between 15% to 25%. But some have actually very minor markdowns. I've seen kind of 12%. And that manager really is continuing to close his fund and raise capital, right? Because they really are delivering on what they said. I think LPs are also just very nervous about Q2 valuations. And that kind of goes to Danny said is this recovery in the stock market may not reflect in underlying fundamentals. So I think a lot of LPs are waiting to see what's going to happen with Q2. So the second broad category is the more, the LPs that are less experienced. So they may not have gone through cycles before. And their ICs are just very cautious right now, right? So a lot of them actually have pulled back and just stopped their programs in general. What they're doing instead is looking at their existing portfolios and really scrutinizing the managers that they have today. So setting up conference calls and really asking them questions around how are you managing the risk? What's happening to your portfolio companies? What's happening to the industries that you're investing in, et cetera. But yeah, like for example, in Korea, in Malaysia, there are also different dynamics. Again, Malaysia is a little bit because of politics and then the currency depreciation. So a lot of those LPs have just stopped their program in general and they want to see what happens. Korea is interestingly culturally, they don't take as many phone calls. They would prefer to have face-to-face meetings. So that's also creating this dynamic of just delaying a lot of fund raises. But as the markets, the stock markets have come back, we are finding some LPs slowly cautiously coming back into the market as well. So they're taking more calls now. They do want to figure out which managers are good and which ones are the ones that they want to invest in. I think the other point that I would make here is for any new GPs, new to an LPs portfolio, it's going to be a very tough year to fund raise unless you really have something truly differentiating. So it could be again that you're very good at managing risk and you're demonstrating that now in this crisis or you have some type of strategy or some type of sector that is very unique and you can prove that or be able to communicate that. So second topic is just how are GPs reacting to this market? So we generally work with more experienced US and European managers that are probably fund three or fund five and etc. So a lot of them have gone through cycles. But with global travel restrictions, everyone is also realistic. LPs can't travel so they can't do on-site diligence. So the GPs are also slowing down. It's like one of our clients originally thought, okay, they'll start in January, they'll be done by July. Okay, after a lot of discussion back and forth and trying to get them to be realistic, they're doing rolling closes and then extending probably until December. We've also asked a number of other GPs, you probably want to extend till next year because not only do we have more clarity on the economy, but also next year gives you a different budget from the LP side. So you'll actually hopefully have a little bit more fresh capital next year as well. I've also seen some GPs just do smaller quicker raises. So instead of, again, past 10 years, it's been a good market for fundraising. A lot of people have been able to double their fund size or go up to plus 50% in their new fund. But what we're finding some of the experienced GPs say is, let's just keep it the same size. Let's just focus on LP's re-upping and just get it done. So instead of being overly ambitious, let's just be realistic and get this fund done. So I would say, again, GPs are reacting in a couple of those different ways. The other point that I would make is it's even more imperative, I think, in this downturn and crisis that GPs have been thinking about diversifying their LP base, whether it's across geographies or across different segments, because Asian LP's generally have slowed down, right? US LP's I think generally also have slowed down. Interestingly, I heard a data point a few days ago from a friend in the industry who actually said Middle East LP's are continuing to deploy because despite the oil price impact, the Middle East institutional LP's actually are quite sophisticated, and they have been trying to diversify away from oil and into private equity funds across different industries. So a lot of them actually will continue to deploy capital. So I thought that was an interesting point. And the last topic, okay, does the world need another fund? Or if you're a first time GP manager, how are you going to raise capital? So one, it's going to be very difficult. First time managers are always very difficult. I think in the current market, it's going to be extremely difficult, unless, so just some advice, unless you really have something very, very unique and differentiated. So if you're, let's say, an early stage venture capital firm, and even within that strategy, there's hundreds, if not thousands of managers, and I get pitch books a lot, or I listen to, you know, a friend's friend introduces someone that wants to start their own venture fund, and we talk about it. But you really have to have some type of focus, whether it's cryptocurrency or medical devices, or something that's really differentiated, especially if your fund is a bit smaller, which venture capital generally is right ventures usually a couple hundred million. So within that really think through like, what do you bring that's really different. The other kind of points I would add is you yourself as a manager should have very high conviction in your fund. And that usually means you really do need to put your own dollars into your fund. So the industry generally, in terms of GP percent of contribution is probably 2% up to I've seen up to even 10%. But if you're a first time manager, and you're only, let's say, putting in only 2%, and if your background and your net worth is pretty high, I don't think it's that convincing to only put in 2%. Right. Again, your first time. So you need to be able to convince LPs to be putting in millions of their dollars. And if you're not putting your own money in, it's a pretty hard story to, it's a pretty hard way to convince people. And then I think with portfolio companies, and then I think your pitch, you also really have to think through are the companies you're investing in going to have cash flow? What is that business model? Is it resilient, right? It resilient to cycles like now? Are you really delivering a customer need? And we're seeing that even with the large funds like Vision Fund, which is going through a lot of issues in a lot of their portfolio companies, but even more so if you're a first time manager, how do you put together a convincing story? That's it. Brilliant. Thanks, Debbie. That's really good. Actually, I've got a lot of notes there on that one. So now we're going to move to our third panelist, Emerit. He's going to take us down a slightly different path now. He's going to talk about impact investor views from Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific, looking at new modes of philanthropy for corporates and family offices coming from Southeast Asia. And then also this is what I like, how innovation is going back to research and deep debt. Take us away. Thanks, Emerit. Awesome. Yeah. So, come in. I'm the EHF fellow co-represent. I bring a lot of my perspective from 10 years running for social enterprise incubator, not into tech and co-working space. And I love to mention about Vision Fund. We definitely got told by a lot of potential investors to copy the WeWork pitch deck. Thankfully, we didn't do that. And obviously, Claim to Fame is running a conference technology media company that has through and reads 20,000 attendees every June. But now I'm here to represent a new project. And this is the first time I'm mentioning it as the as in director of Impact Collective, which is a community-driven accelerator program and a fund that focuses on opportunities in Asia. And we've been in partnership with folks like the World Federation of UN Associations, UNSCAP, and Citypreneurs. So what I've really came about full circle is now to come and look at the companies in the co-working space, through my media company, through my network, and say it would look to work with about 100 promising startups in Asia Pacific over a six-month virtual celebration program, which will be anchored in four cities across APEC. And right now being backed by a fund of five, maybe up to $10 million. So I'm small fish in this big pond of a Zoom verb down. But today, I'd just like to mention that as somebody who's been looking at hundreds of startups annually, we're seeing three very interesting shifts that's happening in the past three months. So firstly, Southeast Asia startups, like Danny was saying, the winners are getting a pile of capital as the riskers in the view of investors are lower. And the weaker ones are being basically getting less access to funding or just even the opportunities to pitch. And I think a lot that's driven by in the past, unsustainable business models, weak financials, and in many cases, a lot of early stage entrepreneurs are first-timers. So a lot of gaps in terms of management experience, governance, treasury, and finance. And that's something that, you know, and our impact collective we've been trying to look at to fulfill, because as we try to graduate these companies and pass them on to our investment partners in the series A and A plus stage, we find that this is the often ideal breaker and then creates headaches that takes, you know, one to two years to resolve. We're also seeing a hashtag pandemic pivot. Then the big question now is everybody has seen it in their ecosystem where, you know, a entire tech company or home cleaning service is now moving into food delivery and all sorts of other short-term measures to bootstrap to stay alive, stay afloat. I think we're getting into a lot of conversations and board meetings. And I understand what is the true business model going forward for the next 12 to 24 months? And would these privates or kind of short-term consulting gig or bootstrap mode just to bring in the cash just to keep the lights on? Do some of these companies need to hibernate? A lot of travel companies have zero bookings. So, you know, do they keep the team or do they move out into different sectors? And I think that's an ongoing conversation that's starting to accelerate as a lot of investors want to know whether they should be doubling down on the team or should the team be doing something else. And then so opening up new opportunities as in Southeast Asia, some of the biggest funders and investors of startups happen to be conglomerates, corporate venture capital, some family offices. So we've really been in touch with about five education institutions and they are in desperate need of solutions that might be coming in US or Europe, but right now people are sending homework on chat apps and having webinars and the experience is abysmal. And we're seeing parents literally paying tuition and saying that they're going to pull the kids out of school because they can't access any of the facilities. So, as mentioned earlier, education is an interesting space that we're tracking. Obviously, biotech, health tech, that's a strong base that we see in Thailand. FinTech, a lot of companies in the region are raising as we're going to a cashless, contactless economy faster than anybody has expected. Also around future digital literacy, a lot of people that can work from home and are working from home have the luxury and privilege of broadband internet and the ability to use the tools that they have to find opportunities. But we're seeing people that are in the retail sector, tourism sector, hospitality and a lot of countries that are not well equipped to help these people transition to more sustainable jobs. So, on that front, we also find that the startups that we work with, on the social impact space, past 10 years, looking at the entire example, there's a handful of names, household names that 10 years ago you've heard of and they're still around. But the challenges we are also trying to see whether in the past we've been always looking for the passionate social entrepreneur that wants to change the world and trying to give them the tools of business. Nowadays, I think the market has brought it as basically jaded tech entrepreneurs also looking for both money and meaning. And there is kind of a convergence of the impact and tech. So, while the investments that we'll be looking into the entrepreneurs that we want to work with are ones where there is a scalable business model to begin with, I mean we're going to wrap impact sustainability and measurement around that. We're also seeing a sort of great feedback from an interesting source of philanthropic capital and new family offices. So, nothing against you Danny, but we're seeing a lot of very powerful matriarchs and women that are leading family offices in Hong Kong, in Thailand. For some very interesting reason, we have the highest percentage of women in executive positions for companies that are in stock exchange, I think over the mean of our close to 30% and a lot of them are very much reaching out to and trying to see how they can divert some of their corporate budgets, especially their marketing budget and events budget that are now on hold or completely cut and shipping to CSR budget this year. And they're trying to see if they could make their impact dollars go further rather than invest on a one-off charity or project. They're also looking at opportunities to project that will provide ongoing sustainable returns and impact. So, I think without the support of large enterprise, which happens to be one of the biggest accelerant of market adoptions and scale in the region, there's no doubt that in every country in Southeast Asia about 10 to 20 families run the show and that's something we just have to contend with. And that said, the investments that were mostly earmarked just for startups and accelerator programs and whatnot, we're also seeing a lot of them being deployed into deep tech R&D. Hence to the point that three of our major banks are saying that they want to build the next unicorn versus another ecosystem where there's more open innovation or people trying to work with startups. And it goes to show that these companies are seriously adapting the startup tools, are very much attuned to what's going on, the big shift in their ecosystem and the critical risk that business as usual no longer works. But at the same time, there's still massive opportunities for new companies to work with these corporates, but they no longer can you just come in and pitch a marketplace or an app that has a million downloads. I think one of the things I mentioned earlier is R&D and going back to unsexy business software as the services, a lot of companies move to part time or even some permanently remote working or working from home, as you see with Twitter, a lot of companies are selling the digital transformation process. And if you have the tools and innovation that can help them, working with their legacy systems, solving some really hard problems, that's a great opportunity to get investment and then business and partnerships. But if you're looking at just another clone problem and more mature market, I think corporates have adjusted very well. And I think the point is that there's a lot of hidden gems and an undervalued deal. And that is why we're at Impact Collective. We're trying to uncover these deals and give them the spotlight, give them the platform, give them the market access through our community across the region, the growth and scale. Because for an example, one company I work with, E-Tron, is building a fleet of electric motorcycles designed both in Thailand. They won the Red Dot award. They won the UN Environmental Program Low Carbon Lifestyle Challenge and worked with two of the major components in Thailand. But across the world, nobody has heard of them and it's been very difficult to fundraise. But there are great companies like this, the hidden gems that just need a little bit of the advice and support that hopefully we can provide. And not only will we be providing that for the companies in the region, I specifically as part of the Impact Collective would like to also focus on New Zealand. So firstly, very soon we're going to be doing a pilot internally with the Edmund Hillary Fellows to see how we can help source some of the amazing projects and put them in front of great investors like Dan and Debbie and all the investor fellows in the program. And if all things go well, we hopefully will open it up to Kiwi entrepreneurs. So that's my contribution to being part of such an amazing fellowship, Michelle. That's great. How about touching on how innovation is going back to research and deep tech? Sure. So we've been looking at a lot of opportunities where in the past a lot of the startups that we've been working with have and in South East Asia don't really have any IP or acquired technology or have any tech teams. There may be something like web development, app development teams and for a lot of the companies that we help to try to ensure they get up to a stage where once they meet investors, once they meet a potential buyer, a lot of them feel that, well, this is something that we could very much duplicate with the army of engineers, the resources, the technologies that we have. So when you go up in markets that are challenging or have a lack of private funds, in certain cases, any market outside of Singapore, Indonesia, there's always going to be a challenge in fundraising at the moment. I have not so more. We're seeing a lot of companies, especially in Thailand, they're going back to R&Ding their own battery technology in-house, looking at commercializing some of the amazing research that are coming out of university-led government labs. So the big joke, I'm a mentor at the National Science Technology Development Agency, R&D lab here in Thailand, and to be honest, the innovations that are going to come out in the next three to seven years around biotech and cosmetic and food science is probably more exciting than a lot of the startups I see and in pitch competitions. But the challenge is that the research company and the commercialization office has not fully embraced helping their researchers to become entrepreneurs. And in many cases, they're not matched with the right entrepreneurs, so they're actually not keen to become entrepreneurs in such an unfavorable economic climate. So I think there's a lot of work that we could be doing there, but if all things go well and more and more universities these days that we work with would like to do that really well, we've been in touch with some universities in New Zealand who have a lot of experience and actually would like to partner up with the Thai government, the Thai universities. So I think if that pipeline is sorted, you're going to see a lot more interesting innovations. Like we've got researchers who, you know, research curious or anti-virro drugs, HIV coming out of Thailand and make some very great progress with many cancer research. So stay tuned for that. Great, that's great, thanks. Danny and Debbie, do the Asian funds like to invest, you know, outside of market into New Zealand companies? So if the companies have had some good angel investment, they may have had their early series A, and then they're looking at becoming exporting companies up into the Asian markets, how keen are the Asian funds to invest in these New Zealand companies? Yeah, so maybe I'll take a first crack at that. The short answer is they're still fairly keen to invest into that space. The issue I mentioned before is that historically a lot of those funds that are investing in these growth stage type of companies even out of New Zealand came from outside of New Zealand. So they came from mostly probably Australia, some of them based in Singapore, some of them based in China, maybe even Taiwan. But there's a lack of New Zealand based investors funds that are providing this kind of funding and support. And that's what Elevate is trying to address. We're trying to find these investors and funds and put money to them and allow them to have the firepower to help New Zealand companies to take them through that stage. Because a lot of these funds when they're coming from outside, the issue is they don't have enough time and effort. They don't know the market as well. So they tend to focus on only the bigger ones and not, you know, there's a host of others as this kind of gets left out. And you know, Elevate is trying to address that by hopefully putting more money on the ground and putting more managers on the ground to help some of these companies to give a better chance, a better shot. Nice. Debbie, anything to add on that? Otherwise, I've got another question for you. Yeah, I think a couple, a couple thoughts. It could just be, so I know that a number of the Asian GPs, like the larger ones probably that have, you know, north of $500 million fund sizes, they are trying to diversify. So a number of them probably in the past looked in China, but increasingly that's very competitive. So they have shifted to also invest in Southeast Asia. And I do think there is opportunity for New Zealand. I think it's just increasing awareness. That would be one piece. And I think secondly, a bit to what Downey is talking about is just as long as there are good companies to invest in, the capital will follow. Yeah. Nice. Thank you. Amira, one for you. We've got a question out there from Ellen. It's about social impact investors. Woman-led businesses can be amazing, which is true. Would you have some advice for her on social impact woman-led businesses like that are scalable? Who should she approach? Well, this is for as a mentor or as a potential investor to pitch? I'm not sure. She hasn't really said. So I'm assuming it would be for getting investment. Okay. So I think there's a few things to do before pitching, I guess, one of which is to make sure that you're finding friendly mentors that can give you the advice and support network. And I think for Downey and Debbie, they're getting a gazillion pitch decks and funds and deals and opportunities. And there are channels and sources of trusted, vetted deal flow that are coming. And then if it's coming from this person, it must be legit and warrants higher attention. And I think that through the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, maybe our co-host and host Paula, Michelle, you can definitely point to some women investors. There's one in Singapore, Audrey Tan, of Circles of Angels, a beautiful soul. She'll laugh, she'll giggle, she'll help almost anybody. But she'll also give you some very stern comments. So I think that would be another Kawa Kawa cohort one fellow that I highly recommend. And obviously we are the team that is mostly running Impact Collective. Not only do we have co-founders that have exited for $100 million, but more than half of the people on the team are women and are all entrepreneurs. So at the Impact Collective, we're more than happy to stay in touch as well. So give me a shout if you'd like to be connected to us. Thanks. Debbie, one for you here. I think it's New Zealand VCs and maybe some of the mid to small size sort of VC firms in New Zealand are raising funds. How interested do you think that Asian sort of market would be to invest in the actual funds themselves? I think there's so there's always potential. To be country specific, you would probably have to find one of the more sophisticated LPs that has a larger portfolio, right? Because then they probably invested in a lot of generalist funds. So they have good allocation in that space and then a lot of a lot more experience. So they will start to look for country specific. But in any case, no matter what type of fund you are, you do need to have a demonstrated story and demonstrated track record, right? So let's say within New Zealand as a venture fund, maybe you're doing something. I'm just going to throw an idea out there like related to agriculture tech or maybe the space sector, right? Because I know that's a emerging growing tech growing space within New Zealand. And if you can demonstrate like where you think the growth will be over the next 10 years, maybe your team of partners are all scientists, how you think this is scalable across the region or across the world. You don't have a story related to that that excites LPs and then related to that, maybe why your unique and why only New Zealand can deliver on that. So that LPs will feel like, oh, this is very different, right? They'll feel like your fund or your portfolio is very different from anything else that they have, so that they have to put money with you. Nice. Just opening it up for questions out to the floor there, please. Pop your questions in the Q&A section and we can ask them to the panel or to each panel member or to all of them. It would be great. Do any of you panel members have any other points that you want to make on all of the bits and pieces that you've heard so far? Yeah, I'd love to add a little for Kiwi, all the entrepreneurs in the chat that may be still contemplating. There's a tremendous amount of opportunities in Southeast Asia and I understand the view that it's go to Australia first, maybe the US because a lot of Kiwi entrepreneurs are there, maybe it's Europe or the UK, but I think through building strong networks like the Edmund Hillard Fellows coming to New Frontiers and our virtual webinars and summits through the Asia New Zealand Foundation and perhaps through the impact there's a lot of opportunities to build the network and the understanding of the Southeast Asia market and Asia Pacific in general. So that one day if you feel that you'd like to expand your business here, there is actually a strong brand that New Zealand is recognized for and people not only appreciate the politics with the leadership but also just the amount of investment that is been done to the education industry that so many people are sending their gifts here. Obviously tourism was big and the food is up and you know right now and I think there is a lot of goodwill, there is a lot of opportunities. I do find that Kiwi entrepreneurs may feel that Asia is a little overwhelming. As you can see this, I work with a lot of Koreans so this is Itaewon and this is like the concrete jungle nightlife district but that's just something you have to get comfortable with. It's you know many different cultures, different languages and really just enjoying and embracing it and it will be a different pace. You know there's no walk in the woods, no more a five minute walk to the ocean and unfortunately that's what I missed about the year of Bangkok. That said the spoils and the opportunities can be rewarded but there is a lot of adaptation that you'll need to make as people obviously with a lower level income or corporates that used to buy illegal software, they're not used to SaaS, they're not used to expensive implementations, subscriptions and they're not and the consumer generally are going for free and have different concerns. Maybe privacy is less so and they want product that is designed and suited and localized to their needs and that is where you know having great business partners and communities who support and help you navigate through these market entry points is so crucial. So you know have a look at some of the communities that I mentioned and do keep this on your radar because if it wasn't important we wouldn't be having this call. Thanks for that. A question here from the floor. Given that it's a current recession economic downturn risk taking decreases what is the impact of the current crisis on investor interest in young IT startups versus mature startups? I guess I'll take a crack at that as well. I'm not quite sure exactly what's the his definition of mature versus young startups. Younger startups I think it's they're basically different group of people looking at them. The risk is obviously very different what they need is different the stage is different so you have different group of people looking at it. I think in times like this there are also a lot of opportunities as well. I think people see a lot of negatives to the downside but we always see there you know there's also opportunities in times like this as well. So there are a lot of companies that are coming up today particularly on online education like I mentioned before sustainability and vertical farming. So there are coming up with really interesting ideas and addressing some of these issues like in COVID testing there are at least as far as I know probably 10 20 if not more than that companies are focusing on that doing vaccines doing antibodies. So there's a lot of stuff that's coming out and investors are certainly taking notice and still focusing on that as I mentioned people still have liquidity so people are still looking to invest. I would say mature startups I guess if you mean like a unicorn startup that are that have pretty large valuations but still probably not profitable I think they're probably a little bit under more of a scrutiny. People will be looking at how they are actually going to turn the profitability on instead of keep burning cash for the next two three years for the foreseeable future. I think you see a lot of mature VCs or mature startups probably aiming to go IPO sooner than they had planned then before. So things will change. The good companies like I said still gets the capital but the medium or the mediocre companies will certainly get a lot more pressure. Nice. I've got another question here. How do you see the risks of increased Asia regional or global backlash against CCP state capitalism and how it affects tech investing and broader global investment landscape? Debbie you want to crack at that? Sure just to clarify CCP being like the communist government investing? Yeah I assume that's what Eric put there. Okay I mean it's interesting so look between the without getting into politics right but between the US and China the leadership obviously is taking this virus and then escalating it and adding you know dialogue back and forth and it is concerning but there continues to be a lot of capital coming from Asian LPs and Chinese LPs and the China sovereign wealth fund investing into US managers across strategies across venture capital growth capital buyouts etc. Is that going to slow down? No I haven't seen a slowdown. China capital is still very important to the world. There are actually pretty interesting articles if you just search online on Bloomberg and about these types of topics the capital also flows the other way right so a lot of US public pension funds so you can search for this online or university endowments out of US are big investors and big LPs in Chinese based managers as well whether it's venture capital private equity etc. I think it's sensitive right now but you know the reality of two of the biggest markets for whatever industries and especially for the future of innovation there's a lot of startups coming out of China and a lot coming out of the US so LPs that have millions or billions to invest will continue to do so. It may slow down in the short term because of geopolitics but I don't see them diverting it to other places because again these are the two largest economies. Did that answer the question? Okay. Yeah Eric he can let us know if it hasn't quite got there. Anyone we've got time for one last question yep here we've got one that's come in. Indeed Peter constraints brought about COVID-19 and not shackles. I am heartened that EHF recognises that New Zealand has undervalued entities that Canada must be optimised well done great. I'd love to have just one kind of leaving piece from each of you that you'd love to leave the audience with. Maybe I'll go first so I'm making a big picture for Elevate. I hope all the aspiring investors out there including Emirates can go and apply for Elevate to get the funding that they need to invest in more good companies that will help the ecosystem in New Zealand and rest of Asia. Nice thanks. Dibi? Up next. Yeah sure so there always will be capital so even with the current downturn whether the recovery takes a year or two years or longer there will always be capital that wants to find smart ideas, smart people, consumer behaviour is slightly shifting right because of work at home or social distancing so a lot of the kind of sectors that Danny touched on could also be super interesting even in the short term if you've got an idea or a fund that fits into online education or vaccines or whatever so I think on the optimistic side if you have something to offer that is unique that is either proven or at least you can give a good story I think you can still raise money. I agree. Emirate. Yeah just leaving a note I guess it's not all doom and gloom you know recently there's a blog posted I wrote inspired by another friend who said that you know some of the best companies are grown through the downturn and I think we hear that a lot. I certainly feel that I'm running a co-working space and we have no space to operate because the partial lockdown social distancing is going to cut occupancy by at least 50 percent we have to pivot but that goes to show that you know these ideas that we said we're going to do all these online programs were stuff that we had eight years ago and we just never got round to it because we were so busy you know doing the same old things and it was a great time to pause reflect and strategize of how you've been doing business have you been applying too much effort for a too little return is it making the impact that you wish it could and a lot new business models that now weren't possible and now is in the past nobody would imagine all of us having these webinars we were clamoring to go to New Zealand to be part of the new frontier summit but then unfortunately we can't and now this is the new normal and we're on a webinar literally every day so I think besides that is there's going to be a massive glut of talent that's on the market and you know so many companies benefit from being able now to get the the ears of engineer that has been furloughed or laid off and say well let's hack something together there's a ton of hackathons and competitions and free accelerator programs like why why combinator started schools amazing tech stars anywhere and and you could literally build your company with all these free tools and get to a point where you start to get free grants and funding and support I think that whole piece and so many people focus on supporting the next wave of the next ventures are impacted included so we're really exciting to see if you know the next 10 years that we will be part of some exciting growth story hopefully some coming out from New Zealand yeah exactly that's what we want we want them coming out of New Zealand thank you very much for your time today it's been great having you online with us and please fill out the feedback form and we've got other webinars that are coming up and don't forget that cohort 8 applications are open until um June the 1st for late applications and thank you very much team and we'll see you again soon thank you thank you thank you thank you bye bye