 is recorded and we will pick start right now. Kia ora koutou, no mai haere mai for Erika Austin Chokulingua. We will be opening the session today with Akarakea as we transition the energy of the virtual space into our formal session. Akarakea is a non-religious blessing and is a practice of our indigenous people of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Māori people. So here we go. Ate hui, fai te Maturanga ke marama. Hia fai te kake nga mahi katoa tū maia tukaha aroha atu aroha mai tātou ia tātou katoa. Greetings to you all. My name is Erika Austin, EHS community activator and the host for the session. The Edmund Hillary Fellowship, EHS is a community of 500 plus innovators, entrepreneurs and investors committed to Aotearoa, New Zealand as the base camp for global impact. Our vision is that Aotearoa, New Zealand inspires global leadership and solutions for future generations, built on the principles of tangatiditi and values of the Edmund Hillary. In the session, we will hear from fellow Amaret to Rowan Van, aka AIM, on bridging impact tech between New Zealand and South East Asia. First, just some quick housekeeping. The session is being recorded and will be listed on the EHF website afterwards. So, in the meantime, please stay muted, but feel free to put in your questions in the chat box as we go through, and I will read this out for AIM as the Kōreroa Conversation unfolds. And some of you may leave at various times and that is okay too. So just a little bit about AIM. AIM is a Thai angel investor, advisor and founding board member of the Thailand Business Angel Network, the largest angel investment association in Thailand where he is the vice president of Thailand ecosystem development. Through his investment holding and innovation advisory company, AIM Ventures, the various other angel syndicates, he has invested in more than 40 startups and funds combined. He has over a decade of experience in the technology startup ecosystem as he works to support the next generation of startups and ecosystem innovative. And also in the emerging industry verticals such as Climate Tech, House and Well-Being, Food and Agriculture, Space Tech, Web3 as well as Web2. AIM's passion for the startup community and to help entrepreneurs grow. He has actively coached over 1000 startup founders, that's impressive, 1000 plus over the past decade. Because of his impact on the Thai startup ecosystem, he was recognised as an Obama Foundation Asia Pacific Leader, is of course a fellow of Edmund Hillary Fellowship and has been named one of Forbes Asia 30 under 30 Enterprise Technology and Thailand startup and neighbour of the year into 2016. I had the privilege of meeting AIM for the first time as part of Asia New Zealand Foundation Leadership Network when he first came over to attend the Social Enterprise World Forum in 2017, followed by EHF's New Frontiers Centre. I am so honoured to be hosting this session and thank you so much AIM for your time. Just to really to cast us off, tell us more about you as a person, your journey and how you got into all of this impressive portfolio. Thank you. So many familiar faces that I tried to throw a couple of curveball Geoffrey to Larry, Rosalie and everybody else, Hayden. How did I get all involved in that? I have to give credit where credit is due. That would be Hayden Montgomery on this call. He reached out to me, called LinkedIn Message and said, I should go to New Zealand to check out the scene. I've never heard of the Asia New Zealand Foundation. I've never thought of going to New Zealand. But there was a prospect of a free trip to a very beautiful place on Earth. I said, well, why not? I decided to sign up with no expectation but came here and fell in love with the people of the land and just the camaraderie of both the cohort that I was in. A lot of Southeast Asian entrepreneurs. They became lifelong friends and also a lot of the friends we met on the trip. And they said, I really wanted to come back and do more and have that thought in my mind for a couple of years until at another conference. That is when somebody told me about the Edmund Hillard Fellowship. I was first called. I said, you know what, I got lucky once. I might get lucky again. So try as I might. I applied for the first batch and got in. And also, again, not expecting that the Edmund Hillard Fellowship will change my life. But I've always been somebody who has really just kind of followed my gut and felt that a calling and pull and just really sensing the vibe and said, even about 13 years ago before social entrepreneurship or impact tech was cool. I actually had this calling that I was doing a degree in accounting and actually barely passing uni and had a sense back at that time that this wasn't what I was supposed to be doing. It was not really what I saw myself to be. Accountant going to the big four, getting a job, quitting and starting something. And I set out on a personal journey of self-discovery. There's a lot of volunteer work and 20 odd internships later. I had the chance to have an epiphany in the Hill Tribes north of Thailand, close to the Burmese border. Working with the land, working with the indigenous people there. Felt really incredible for two weeks on a high of having felt useful, felt privileged, felt living simply but happily and coming crashing down depressed, having realised that two weeks was an incredible life-changing experience, but that I have not changed anybody's life up at the Hill Tribes to a village I'll never visit again. Came down from the mountains and said, you know, how can I marry this incredible experience of service and impact and social work with what I really wanted to do, which is entrepreneurship? So I discovered my first job, googling the word social enterprise and finding the one and only non-profit then in Thailand that was building a social enterprise incubator called Change Fusion, and that started my whole journey into this space. So EHF was, I always say, was actually a calling for me to get back into the sector after hanging out with the likes of Todd, trying to change the world to technology and innovation for a while. Got a bit distracted with trying to build Thailand's largest co-working space chain and having lived through WeWork. Fingers crossed that they stick around. I know a lot of people are still working out of WeWork and they love it, but having realised that technology without empathy, minus humanity was not the formula for the world that I wished to live in. So actually, you know, it's just like Alcalau and the Alchemists, we got a little lost. We walked around, wandered the earth and came back to the same spot where we started 13 years in. So thanks for having me today, Erika. Yeah, and I always say that, you know, and always believe that if we're intentional and I'll purpose everything or a line and it sounds like everything has aligned really well for you and for that calling to emerge. So you talked a little bit about, you know, social enterprise and the entrepreneurship journey. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by impact it? Awesome, yes. Well, I think it came from this discovery after being in the sector for so long that we had a lot of words imperfect to describe a lot of the activities that we do. So as I said, a lot of word of social enterprise earlier, but after 10 years in the sector, I could count only in Thailand with one hand, social entrepreneurs who stuck with it for the past decade and were moderately successful and a lot of folks fell by the wayside. And obviously that, I think, words don't define us, but sometimes we get labelled in things that are, you know, a challenge not in service of the mission. And in Thailand what had happened was the word social enterprise, or SE, was sometimes viewed as an entrepreneur who was less committed to the business side of the venture, but more of the impact side and had really, you know, a strong passion and an activist heart that was struggling to make the venture and the impact of that venture quite scalable. And in the community it had shaded a lens where traditional and more kind of aggressive, growth-oriented impact investors would find it challenging to engage, but at the same time more philanthropic or NGO, nonprofit supporters or investors were also really vigilant about how social enterprises operate and what they could do and could not do. And it got to the point where the discussion was becoming a bit unproductive, where the ventures had to, you know, prove, really cut their wrists and show that they bled impact through and through, while at the same time they had to, you know, figure the business out on their own because if they were too commercial, they were selling out to the vision that they shouldn't work with this corporate and that corporate. So the whole community after a decade, a lot of us said, can we really find a different genre of the work that we do in a lens that was more inclusive and not creating kind of an echo chamber and bubble? So with my friends in Korea and a lot of ecosystem builders through this online accelerator impact collective, which I worked with during the pandemic, we ran a couple of cohorts trying to incubate about 100 impact entrepreneurs virtually through the help of 2,000 mentors and supporters. So in a way, taking an EHF-like approach but putting it all on the, you know, the sire space, we have decided to use the word impact time to emphasise our consistent belief in creating an impact. But sometimes when you put the suffix tech on anything, there is an implication that this thing should, you know, this venture should aspire to be more efficient, more leaner, more energetic and aggressive in pursuing its plan and growth. So we stuck with it. And for a lot of the ventures that I plan to invest in, it's not just an impact. I have a portfolio of SMEs and I'm looking at starting an international preschool. There's a lot of traditional tech startups, but where the heart really lies is impacted. Amazing. And while you're doing all of this, you touched on ecosystem development. So what is the key to ecosystem development? And from your experience in learning, from your engagements in Thailand, how do we best build connections between New Zealand and the South East Asia ecosystem? Can you give us some, like, really tangible examples about this development and how you go about it? Sure, sure. This is quite a big question, you know. Definitely, if I say anything wrong, there's a lot of people in this call who are bigger experts in me, like Jeffrey and then Todd and Emmeline. But I guess ecosystem development is really the art of building the market that we wish to see, to support all the ideas and projects that we wish to either start or invest in so that all boats are lifted when the tide rises. And that was my first role in technology in 2010. I realized I want to start an app. Right now, the Bangkok governor is trying to build a super app for us, the city. Basically, you can book any of the government services, ask for data for anything, and really just pay for your bills and whatnot. I had the same idea in 2009, 2010. And I realized that not only did I not know anything about building apps, this idea would not fly very well with the governor back then because it would be an app to tell him how badly he has failed at his job. That you see, we are pioneers, so I saw the market coming 13 years early. But I said, OK, well, wait a minute. For I thought this app, I don't even know if it's a good idea. I don't even know how to build a tech company. How would people build startups back in the days? So we did some homework and research and then stumbled upon a couple of articles on tech crunch and blogs by Paul Graham and Y Combinator, who said that the best entrepreneurs just started in communities. If they can't think of anything, first thing they do is they go to find people who know what they're doing and then figure out where they hang out. It could be in meet-ups. It could be in cafe. There were co-working spaces. I went to a couple of meet-ups. I liked the vibe. Cafes were annoyingly expensive back in the days. This was 3G days where you couldn't stream on YouTube. And I said, well, co-working spaces was booming, but none had arrived in Thailand. So I would start by starting the space and then figure out from meeting a lot of smart people how to build the app. And from there, maybe I'll meet the governor and I'll put him this idea. So I never got to step two and three of my grand plans to conquer the Thai civic tech sector. But through that, I realized the importance of the work that everybody in this call is doing, which is we all see some parts of the business and impact environment as lacking. And we feel that if somebody had done something about it, all of us would be so much better. And then we just said we couldn't wait for anybody to do it anymore. So we'll just kind of roll our sleeves up and build a part of the market that we wish existed and would benefit everyone. But that's kind of the way I view fundamentally of ecosystem. It's, you win, I win, we all win. It's virtuous. It's what Rosalie is doing. It's what all of us here, I think showed up because we are doing it in some way. And actually there's a few projects in this room that we are continuing to doing and starting new ones to say, we want to build that ecosystem. Now to your second part of your question, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. I've been, there's been a couple of articles circulating that the New Zealand tech ecosystem or impact could do with a lot of work. And having been recently there last month, first hand just to reconnect with my fellow EHF and at the Mission Studio, I realized that the work continues perpetually forever. And I'm very excited because I went also there for the Mission Studio. There's this thing called the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and the Thai, the New Zealand Embassy in Thailand. And we went to do a Thai economic market update. And actually there's an update at Singapore, Vietnam and most TV entrepreneurs will not realize that trade between New Zealand and Southeast Asia has never been better. The region's growing rapidly, pre-pandemic. Thailand was the largest source for New Zealand education and the number one peak season tourism market. For Kiwis and exports growing 8% annually. Part of that was because for a lot of people that might not know, there's actually an ASEAN, Australian, New Zealand free trade agreement. So, there's already a lot of connectivity but maybe a lot of folks have not either one had the chance to visit. Two hadn't really figured out whereas some of the opportunities have never really had a good sit-down with a couple of local entrepreneurs, local ecosystem builders to see where some of the gaps, where some of the trade winds and opportunity. Here we have some interesting stats that beef exporters were having a bumper year in Thailand going from $250 million worth of beef in 2022 up from 113 in 2019. So, that's almost double the size in two, three years. And warren renewable energy with the gentleman who was building electric ferries on a panel and designing New Zealand and already attracting Thai investors and customers. So, I think how do we do that? Definitely shared values is often number one the reason for people to congregate. If we don't believe and agree on something, then there's no reason for us to meet each other. And I think the Asian New Zealand Foundation has done an incredible job for that. And I recommend everybody in this call if there's a chance to be a part of that other network because that number one shared value of the Asian New Zealand Foundation is, do you believe that Asia represents like a generational, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for New Zealand to connect with the people, the culture and the business opportunity? And if it's a yes, then you should meet more and make more Asian friends. And in that network, you will have friends from everywhere. And obviously, the world is a big place. I was in Vienna, Azerbaijan, and then New Zealand headed to Dubai, headed to Warsaw. And I think we all can fall in love with every country in the world. I think there's something beautiful about the people, the food, the culture everywhere. But at some point, I think the world is a very big place. So all of us need to find a reason, a story, why certain geography draws its there and matters more. And for a lot of ventures, Southeast Asia or Asia would be a great place to have a lot of impact. There's a lot of interesting people doing ocean cleanup and plastics because a lot of ocean waste is originating from the region. There's a lot of issue around food and ag. Half of the world lives in that little small circle, but most of the country in Southeast Asia are also globally net food exporters. They can improve their agricultural practices with New Zealand health. So I think shared values is number one and in proximity. We're close yet far. I had a chance to meet a couple of ed tech companies. I had a chance to talk to Zero and Allbirds back in the days for five, six, seven, 10 years. And I've been preaching to the team, please come to Asia, please come to Thailand. I will roll out the red carpet. I'll do whatever it takes, let me help you. And the founders were very polite and they said they have this bigger puzzle to crack in the US and Europe. And yes, I have heard of many founders say like Yoda America first, it's big. You'll get really big really quickly. It's the toughest market. So it's the most challenging. Take a crack at it. And I think they're right in some ways. And I think that's a well-tried and path. And then now I actually found one company. The ed tech company said we've already cracked the US and the Europe market. We're next Asia. So I don't mind if we're third in the list of priorities that eventually folks come around to it. I don't mind if it's first in the party. I said, I think our biggest customers are actually ringing us from the region. But I think we are close, closer than you realize. We are in an abundant amount of entrepreneurs willing to take you there. And I think the key, the work that I still need to do and ecosystems need to continue is to how to make that seamless and easy. I had a chance to support a Kiwi founder who was trying to bring a very important hospital management solution to China. We set him up with the office. We had his team, his higher 10 staff. Fortunately, he had some issues with his co-founder and then he had to back out. But that was only of the past decade. There was one guy who I really had a chance to help. And he said his business was doing great. Everybody loved his product. And he was just getting started. And time was cut short. But if he had stuck with it, if he had continued to pass the company on rather than retreat and say, okay, let's find some local partners. Let's carry on the torch and embrace the craziness of Asia, the energy, the lack of green space and work life in balance. But you're going to sprint for a couple of years, make a lot of impact, have a lot of fun, embrace the madness, embrace the chaos. Then I think his business was done really, really well. So, yeah, I think that's why I'm going to keep coming back to New Zealand, to be closer to the founders, to really just put Asia on top of mind. And hopefully some of you are already connected and coming over, so I'm definitely preaching to the core, but definitely more to be done. Thank you for that. And again, thank you for being the connector between New Zealand and Southeast Asia. And we've got a question from Jeffrey, who has submitted prior to the session, is how do we best leverage Southeast Asia and what are some of the currently existing opportunities out there right now? Korra, well, I guess the basic way to start is to really seriously view it as not a backwater in certain fronts, but also as a leader and a pioneer and others. So once we establish, you say that there is a tremendous, you know, for climate tech, $1.5 billion sitting in Southeast Asia that is waiting to be deployed. A lot of it is in Singapore, and that those are sophisticated family offices, multinational conglomerates, nonprofits, and they are looking for the best technology anywhere with an application for obviously scaling in the region because, you know, the region has a lot of problems but not limited to that. Then I think it makes sense to say, you know, that your investors, your philanthropic donors, your partners can open a lot of doors and encourage you, nudge you to take this region seriously. I think that could be a great start. Rosie mentioned it that there could be some investor delegates from here with some founders to go over across the region to say, let's have a, you know, get a layer of the land, co-invest in some projects, co-invest in some funds. I think global from day one with Shintaka is a good example. I, you know, Kiwi, I think that was Taiwanese kind of investors' government on otherwise, back in the days and, you know, Shintaka being Sri Lankan, so very eager always to, as a Kiwi VC to engage with the region. So with that, capital is like the low-hanging fruit, benefits the region tremendously because we now get a chance to have the founders motivated to be involved in the region. But, you know, one of the great accelerator programs that I work with is actually called the German Accelerator. And every three months, there's about 10 founders that sign up for the Southeast Asia program. And the German Accelerator is government funded and helps the Germans to land and figure out to come to Singapore. Meet a lot of great mentors, 400, 500 folks in this WhatsApp group, I think, and figure out if the business is right for the region. And we work, I work closely with about one to three companies every quarter to really dig in, to talk to people, to open a couple of doors to potential customers to host them in on-market, to help folks set up their offices. So I think that that sort of program is needed and then the mantle, it doesn't have to be another Kiwi landinghead. It doesn't have to be a physical location. It can be parked with a local player in the region. But the network already exists with EHF and they keep time rolling. They should be, you know, at every stage in our journey, Basecamp Zero is, you know, New Zealand. So we start there, we work on stuff and receive it works. So whereas Basecamp One, Basecamp Two, Three, Four, and I say, I've signed up Basecamp One to be Bangkok because the UN Regional Office is in Bangkok, USAID in Bangkok. You have some of the largest nonprofits headquartered there and, you know, there is already my infrastructure and existing network for people to plug into. And then lastly is to respect the market and believe that, yes, it's annoyingly hard. Southeast Asia has six countries out of 11 that the largest economy in Indonesia being, you know, 20,000 on islands, Philippines, Vietnam growing at 7%, 8%, Thailand second largest economy that we have to get our politics right. Fingers crossed. Ex Prime Minister in Exiles coming back in a day. We have no idea what's going to happen from there, but if you crack that code of landing in Singapore, finding great engineering talent in Vietnam, expanding to Thailand because it's quite relatively easy and open to foreign direct investment, taking a crack at Indonesia, Philippines, super hard, super populist, 300 million people market, and then, you know, eventually it's training wheels to the create even harder mode of Asia to take a crack at India and China. And basically, you know, try to conquer half of the population of the world. And that is already a life's work. So if you believe that the market is an aggregate hard problem that if you can beat it, you would have created a very valuable company. And you've already done the U.S. or Europe market in the past. So if you already conquered that, then, you know, Asia is waiting at your doorstep. Felda, Aimee. And I hope that answers your question, Larry, in the chat and also Rosalie. We've got a two-part question from Emeline. What are the existing organisations like Asia New Zealand Foundation should organisations businesses collaborate with to strengthen partnerships or find opportunities to connect? And the second part is slightly political question. Is China considered an Asia market to collaborate with and what are the challenges? What is New Zealand's position maybe for others in the call in business collaboration in general? Big, big one. Definitely other folks can chime in. I know Jeffrey has a lot of opinions. I'll answer the second one first because it's much easier. I think if you've ever been to China many, many times, things are just so crazy, so advanced, so nuanced. It's kind of its own little ecosystem. So the entrepreneurs there fight tooth and nail because, you know, in any idea, let's say in Thailand, you probably have two, three major competitors out of 10 or 20 that are like the two or three and a half decent. I think in China you have tens of thousands of folks doing the same thing and they don't sleep. They don't go home. Folks work their butts out. So it really brings out the best or, you know, the toughest in everybody. So I think from a Southeast Asia perspective of Thailand, we look to China for investment, for mentorship. Market maybe to be acquired or to do joint ventures with, yes, but to take an existing project from from Thailand into China, we will be selling a lot of durians. I think we've sold a couple of billions more and there's now a freight train that links Thailand to China. So that's been going really well. But for certain ventures in tech, it may require some of your networks and experts to really, you know, give you a lay of it. I think a good example would be like Tesla, you know, having a foothold in the Chinese market and getting knocked around heavily, fighting with the BYD, losing the crown and obviously the Chinese company winning but still having a chance and access to that market. Whereas the likes of Toyota or Volkswagen they need to do a joint venture locally to learn about how to build better EVs or with the Toyota case they actually just take a BYD, a local company and re-skin the car. So actually learning from the Chinese how to build better electric vehicles. So I think that's how advanced certain things are in China. But it's definitely in Thailand 15% of trade goes to the US a little bit less like 14.5% goes to China. So we are, you know, always at the crossroads of superpowers. And luckily we're, you know, we don't share an immediate border with China. So we're a little bit, a little bit off to the side, you know, the South China Sea doesn't bother us. So we're best friends with China, best friends with the States, incredible position and connected to India and five, six of the rest of the countries in South Asia. So like I say in every call like every country in Southeast Asia say it's the middle of Southeast Asia. Thailand really believes that maybe we are about to be even more strategic because they're going to cut the southern tip of Thailand to create this called so-called land bridge which is like the Panama Canal as a second route for the straight to Malacca. So much trade pass through the straight to Malacca that goes through Singapore and Indonesia and for geopolitics Thailand is going to be even more important. So yeah, it's good to be in a country that plays every side as well and we've done that since forever and it has never colonized. So for other organizations like me at this one that are good to plug in. I'm part of the chamber. I hang out with NZTE and the embassy and I know they're trying really hard to do a lot of things but government has its limitation. Asia New Zealand foundation tries really hard but as the non-profits we can always do more with more money and resources. I think one doesn't perfectly exist for market expansion focusing for, let's say, New Zealand and Australia to the rest of Asia. Perhaps that's a gap waiting to be filled. Maybe it's the EHF Southeast Asia launchpad or something. I kind of throw it out there to the universe to say I wish that exists I wish to be a part of that but the chambers are nice that has not cut it. I think there needs to be one that's more shared values towards impact and sustainability and the things that we care about or Web 3 or making sure that a lot of great technologies that will change the world like Chen AI will not go by the wayside and be negative for humanity. Every now and again even after my co-working space went through its peak and we were badly affected by the pandemic and I told a few folks in this call I never want to do another co-working space again this is it's giving me PTSD Todd's nodding it's like the joke that Elon said how to become a millionaire become a billionaire and then buy Twitter it's the same with co-working space become a billionaire and start a co-working space and then lose all your money but I guess the ecosystem has found me so this year I've already been approached twice to say let's bring the band back and start another space because people miss working in proximity with other incredible people and there might be a new one coming back in Bangkok early next year fingers crossed. We've got a few more minutes I'll jump to Paula's question and then we might have some time to open up the mic if anyone else has any questions Paula is asking what was the most unexpected connection or highlight that's happened for you as an EHF fellow or as part of this bigger whanau or community? Wow That is Every day is the gift and blessing I could say that you know so many there are some examples here like Emily is a blessing because I never thought of getting into space tech but hanging out with her learning it I had a very weird chance somehow the Japanese government thought I was a very knowledgeable investor so I must know something about space tech and these folks the Japanese space agency said you should come on a panel and talk and do a keynote and I'm like okay sure why not and I ran immediately to Emily and said I know nothing about space tech please give me a crash course and she sent me a couple of resources and then I really just absorbed becoming a sponge overnight creating a bunch of blogs and podcasts and okay I think I know a thing or two and I went on stage and four years later the Japanese government has never realized I was an imposter but I didn't always tell them I'm really like nobody else cares about space tech in Thailand but thanks Emily and Jeffrey we built conferences he was bringing a bunch of Taiwanese delegation over and then I realized he was moving back home to put his kids to school in Christchurch and we have all this meetups whenever I'm in there and he's giving me a lay of the land at the market and then Todd was another blessing I met him in of all places in some crazy retreat in I think a geely air in Lombok in Indonesia for burned out ecosystem leaders it was called a decelerator we were there to not work and we had a do four hours of workshop we ate great food and hopefully I didn't snore too much because we were roommates but we probably one of the most memorable retreats and experience and obviously Larry meeting recently Paula and everybody else that haven't mentioned Rosalie but yeah that's the power of the ecosystems you share some values you show up a lot of folks become lifelong friends so you know everything is an interesting journey in a side quest hopefully we will do Tahiti retreat pretty soon next year if everybody wants to know more about it talk to Larry we are all in this call going to go to Tahiti not Bora Bora and we are going to go work out there and figure out how to change the world from one paradise to another amazing does anyone else have any questions you can put up your hand and unmute yourself in the meantime I'm just really curious you talked about decelerator how do you look after yourself being such a ecosystem driven ship sort of weaver like how do you find time for yourself it took a long time because I was definitely extremely full FOMO you know let's pass 200 name cards at a networking event let's meet every every speaker in my show and I need to be everywhere to be relevant I need to be speaking on stage every week I went from being that guy to the pandemic and I said this isn't just sustainable every day if my mission is to serve everybody I keep adding more to the to-do list pile and then diluting the priority of the people that really matter in my life that was myself and my family and some of the projects I really care about during the pandemic was a big reset everybody asked me you must have 8 to 10 meetings today which in the past I said this is unsustainable a lot of these meetings were going nowhere it's just helping a lot of people the most common one I get back for is Aimee can you give me a deep dive into the Thai startup ecosystem this call is important for EHF and New Zealand it's a priority and I said I can't do any of these meetings it's too much so I had to figure out a way to scale myself so I basically dumped everything on blogs and Zoom calls and I said if people needed to find about me about Thailand and whatever they can read about it they can watch it and come to me I had a no meeting rule so I said I delete all meetings and all you need to do is email me the questions send me a voice note send me a clip I'll get back to you and that way I went from 8 meetings to almost no meetings today every meeting had to pass a threshold would this get closer for me to my goal is this somebody I really care about and going to spend my valuable life with if yes then it's on if not I find every way imaginable to avoid it respectfully and then with all that free time as Steve Jobs would say your job is to be creative and to pace yourself to have that energy and space to create and not just be reactive to every email and I said okay now that I've cleared up all my agenda and subscribed to every mail you know figured out ways to outsource all my FOMO the way I did that was looking back it's now ingenious but actually it was also even more hard work is I then became a coach and mentor and advisor to new community leaders so right now I advise 8 conferences after stopping to run my own 20,000 person show and through them I network so they go out there and attract the speakers and know everybody and when I need to know somebody I said well I don't know much about folks anymore but I know this person who knows this person so that's how I operate now and then that means I don't know to meet up if I'm not speaking if I'm not contributing in a great way or being particularly interested I don't show up not because I'm being snobbish it's just because I have to go to the ones that matter so once I got all that time back so what do I do now so I have this call I'll go for a run a bit of meditation a game plan being a digital renaissance man or woman and that means being financially lit as they say to be able to do only the work that interests me and and then being very physically fit and to tonight I got home nine last night went to bed around midnight got up this call at six I'm already feeling it it wasn't the best sleep ever so now I monitor my sleep every day and to be in peak performance is to sleep really well and and then that also means exploring fasting and what that so I don't want to sound like the new age hippie but to really run this marathon the pandemic that says that me wonders to reset how I operate and no longer the guy to be at the bar and the mark of pride for an ecosystem builder is to be the first person to show up and the last person to leave clean up the venue with the organisers that's not me anymore but that also means I have more energy and time for this call and for everybody else that really needs it yeah let's change that narrative of what we expect ecosystem developer to be I did see a hand up do you still want to ask that question if you want to some mute go ahead so I wanted to ask a question but my co-founder put it in the chat so I'm going to ask it a little bit more elaborate than that I guess so my co-founder and I from Chile South America and I'm living now in New Zealand that's why we're in this call and we are part of Jeffrey's program the founder catalyst very helpful now a while ago our company is in the housing tech in the prop tech we're trying to solve a sort of a market that exists which is people don't naturally buy sustainable housing so a while ago when I was developing this concept that led to this app we thought about Asia as a really good target because most houses are not being built in Europe or the US now what everyone told me is you don't get to just go into South East Asia being a Chilean guy living in New Zealand so how welcoming are of companies like ours or others in there wow there's a bunch of there's a very famous Colombian guy, not so close to Chile but close enough who just showed up because he was doing this degree and wanted to explore South East Asia and Singapore liked it moved to the Thai office built some software got board, started a developer agency so with zero contacts in the market now it leads a team of 150 people and multiply that story by millions I think in Bangkok alone is probably plus minus or 4 million foreigners to be something as in Bangkok and the four across Thailand a lot of them are in Kaupungan a lot of web 3 digital nomad people trying to build interesting stuff a lot of people in Chiang Mai 5 of 10 cities of the digital nomad capital in the world are always Thai and some others Bali obviously in there always competing but that means come because it's a great place to live like you need to do it stay because it's a great place to do business build the team, raise funding and connect with your target market and to do that is a tax-free incorporation structure called the Board of Investment you can wholly own 100% your company takes about three to six months to apply for allows you to grant work visas to yourself they're always looking for innovative high-tech companies to come over so we can sort that out some of the largest cement construction materials company originate from Thailand so they will be interested in what you have to say although we have to note that every Southeast Asian market is a little different and Thailand the strength of the ecosystem but also its curse is that the conglomerates are near monopoly so they have the power to invest and Christ in you as winners they also have the power to compete with you because they have all the smartest people and they have all the money and the distribution so figuring out a game plan for that and obviously each market is either the same or a little different in the Philippines in each country 6 to 20 families run the entire ecosystem the Philippines even smaller number of families obviously a little bit more in Singapore it's the Lee family of the Prime Minister and the government is Singapore incorporated so run very efficiently but if you make it and you get Temasec the sovereign wealth fund undercap table the Sequoias and the recent Horowitz and the lights will come knocking at your door so we have specific game plan for each market and the idea is to come and spend some time here build a network figure out if I think I love the name German so when I need folks Germanic roots they usually have very expensive SaaS they want to sell to the region this incredibly high quality technology but it's really expensive to deploy using expensive specialist machinery and I say if you come to Southeast Asia it's just not going to fly our ability the price point that the corporates are willing to pay for the purchasing power is much lower the scale that you need to do is much bigger but the financing model and sometimes the business model is different for an example a lot of people don't like to pay for software as a service because they are not used to that they would try in every way they can to not pay but they might pay for some other things for an example that it's a very important software that allows them to make more money or it's linked to to your software allows the brands to be able to monetize better and accept payments from the customers or access to loans cheap loans from Europe or there's an innovative financing model where the the corporates can use the software first and pay later based on usage based on you know after a premium trial and then a lot of European Western companies have a fixed model that this is the only way and it doesn't work even Disney in Southeast Asia as a Disney hot star it's just like Disney Plus at a fraction of the price just for the emerging markets doesn't have all the same content that has Korean drama Indian Malay Indonesian drama Korean drama so if you're coming with an open mind and you want to build a model that works for the region then yes but if you say it has to be built in New Zealand only in New Zealand quality and filming and then you ship it I had this project where we wanted to ship these office phone boots you know like the ones you see insulated phone boots that you can zoom call it was going to come from Finland and the Finnish guy said it has to be Finnish wood and Finnish quality only and then the furniture tax was like 300% I said no it's got to come from China man because it's free there's no tax I know you don't want to build it but it doesn't matter you could even make it made in Thailand for all I care but nobody is going to buy because that phone boot would cost me equivalent of a small car and guess what I wanted to do that business 4 years later you see it all online people have copied the design quality maybe 70-80% doesn't insulate sound as nice but it gets a job done and a fraction of the price those Finnish guys lost the market and they never took it seriously Kia ora Aime just an honour of the time and also I know Aime you wanting to go on a run and I'm sure Jeffrey will be able to connect you and your co-founder Pedro to Aime and continue this conversation so I just want to thank you Aime for taking this time and prioritising this session it's been a great corridor and conversation and thank you to everyone here that joined us today you can find the recording on the EHF website to share with your peers if you wish to just a really quick update as well is that we've got another live session next week on the Tuesday 29th August you can be mystifying early stage fundraising avoiding common mistakes to get your first investor check with two other fellows so please sign up I will close with a karakia as we again transition away from the virtual space so tuia i runga, tuia i raro tuia i roto, tuia i waho tuia i te here tangata ka rungo te po rungo te aw ti hei moori ora mi amahinui kaki te ano kia ora thank you and thank you so much