 A very good morning to all our attendees. I am Punita Sabharwal Kapoor, Deputy Editor, Entrepreneur, Media, India. Today at this episode of Capital Insider, we have with us an investor who is joining us all the way from Singapore. Let's welcome Mr. Vinny Loria, Founding Partner, Golden Gate Ventures. Vinny happens to see both sides of the table as he is not only a venture capitalist but he has been an entrepreneur too. His VC firm has made 50 plus investments still based in Southeast Asia, prominent being in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Golden Gate Ventures is an early stage VC fund focused on internet startups and to all the startups listening to us out here, this is not a fund you want to be turned down by. Vinny, welcome today on this episode of Capital Insider. Thank you very much, honored to be invited. So Vinny, before we get down to the Q&A and the final greeting, tell me how are things there in the pandemic period and how affected is the investment scenario and how soon do you think we are going to bounce back? Sure. So good question. So in Singapore, it's not full as normal like pre-COVID but definitely retail businesses, restaurants, people are gathering. Our office still mostly work from home, few people going in. All of my calls these days are on Zoom, no real travel. So the big thing was I used to travel every week in Indonesia, Vietnam. So now it's just a lot of Zoom calls. Singapore is always our hub for where we invest. So that's kind of what it feels like on the ground. Some markets like Indonesia are not, you know, for a team there, they're not going to the office, things are still pretty locked down. I think it's going to be a while before that loosens up. You know, the reality that used to be very early in this pretty, you know, usually optimistic that, you know, there's going to be a pretty quick bounce back. But I think what we see is like, we're probably, we may not even be at the bottom yet, but as a long-term investor, we're okay with that. We're writing checks, we're making investments. The companies we're investing in are, you know, we want to see them grow over the next decade. So whether it is last six months, one year or even longer, we still have a long-term sort of view. And the big thing that, you know, COVID is not, I mean, it's tragic, I mean, with some globally people, economies and everything. But for startups, there are few verticals that are basically, have grown because of it. And the way I look at it is as a VC, we tend to invest in the future. You know, what is the trend five years out, 10 years out? And what COVID has done is essentially compressed a sort of five-year vision that we've had into five months. And so, you know, we invested in our doctor, a health tech platform two years ago that's in Indonesia and Thailand, thinking, you know, that's going to be a slow sort of grow, but their platform has just been growing so fast in the past few months. So, you know, online groceries, education, health tech, like all of these have just blown up online. And so there's a lot of opportunity for startups in this space, either existing ones or new companies to start. So like you mentioned, you've been investing during the pandemic period as well. So has it been fall on investments in existing companies or you've been looking at fresh investments as well? Both. So it kind of fall into a few different camps. So if you are in a, again, e-commerce, grocery, payments, health, education, you're growing and a few of our companies in the space are raising money and it's inbound. Investors are knocking on their door being like, we want to invest in the space now. We see you're doing this. Can we write a check? And one of our companies, Health Tech Spice, has been turning investors away. They took on one strategic investor and then closed the door to others. So yeah, this is follow on. Golden Gate, we've been doing about one investment per month. So we're also making new investments. You know, the process has changed significantly for us. I look at it as, you know, we invest in people and you know, so many tools to like connect. Generally, we still like to meet people in person, have conversations across from them. That we've not been able to do. So now we've switched over to, you know, full videos sort of calls. It's required us to do a little more different sort of due diligence and spend a little more time on the back network and getting some stories. And what we'll learn over time, you know, if there was mistakes that were made or things that we don't understand, because, you know, we evolved one way and now we're doing it different. But as a VC, we have to be progressive and constantly change. Like you mentioned that it's not like meeting in person. You've been joining people over the conferences, virtual pitches. So how those parameters change as per you when somebody's making a virtual pitch to you? How have parameters changed? So the parameters are pretty much the same. The conversations tend to be the same. Where we're trying to leverage now is more in the background information. So this person, you know, used to work with this other company or went to school here. So we're trying to leverage more of our network to get more reference points on someone because we can't rely on, you know, the face-to-face anymore. But the parameters in terms of growth rates, you know, attraction, retention, behavior, analytics, all of those have pretty much stayed the same. I would think there's certain industries that will have a certain sort of, you know, again, strong industry that's good. Now there's industries are heavily hit travel, for instance. So I think travel for new investment is going to be very hard, you know, probably for maybe even two years. And so then what we'd want to see there is, is there something that's complementary to the business? Is there a new line of business that's, you know, going to be helpful during the next year or two? Because I do think it'll be a little bit slower to bounce back. So I guess those would be the different sort of questions that we're asking. And any specific qualities that you look for? I mean, a lot of startups are listening to us right now. When they are making a virtual pitch, maybe four things they should keep in mind. Good question. All right. So, I mean, the old adage of like doing your homework before, like knowing what the investor has invested in, speaking to, you know, they should do their due diligence as well. They should speak to founders that we've invested in, people in our portfolio, get really honest feedback from their colleagues and their peers. So doing some of that beforehand, you can ask the right sort of questions. I think that's always very, very helpful. The other thing would be, you know, I think when you're actually pitching and you're doing slides, in the room can read body language a little bit better. Is this going well or not? So just being a little bit more aware of kind of what sort of signals you're getting from somebody on the video screen. And so that's great where you can have a co-founder where they can maybe just be commenting to you like, hey, you know, they seem to be dying off on this. The other thing I think this is a good thing for a pitch. And so probably more so in an online virtual sort of thing. But like, how some anecdotes on hand, you know, think about being like a comedian going on stage, you know, while it looks like they're kind of just riffing, the reality is that that is 100% sort of scripted. And, you know, sometimes if they get interrupted, they'll still have like, you know, default stories that they can come back to to use. I would take you to the same sort of thing. So in a Zoom call where you think maybe you're kind of losing somebody in the slides or in some of the numbers, have that anecdote on file, that's an interesting story, compelling, captures somebody's interest brings them back in. The other thing I might say to change is, yeah, it might not need to be your full hour of slides. Like generally a pitch, you're kind of doing it over a full hour of slides. I think that is harder on video that, you know, spend a little more time engaging in the beginning of the call. And maybe the idea that the slides would be more of like a half an hour. So you're really holding their attention tighter. And then a little time at the end for some more, again, conversational Q&A is probably better. So I would say probably trim the presentation a bit. Interesting. So it's not just editors who like listening to great stories. It's investors. Yeah. I mean, it's your employees. Like, you know, if you're a CEO, like, you know, the idea that you can lead people and inspire them. Yeah, I think being a great storyteller is probably one of the most important things for it is like any line of business. Okay. Okay. Sure. So in the time of the pandemic, have there been cases where any of your portfolio companies have undergone any kind of pivot or any kind of transformation they would have suggested? Yeah, quite a few. And so this is where we spend time. We triage the portfolio similar to like a hospital ER room, red, amber, green. And so for the companies that were critical where it's a vertical really hit by the space, they're going to need to do something different. Have tried to spend a lot of time with them. So one of our companies in Indonesia was working with a lot of offline retail and all of that, you know, gone away and had a fast product. So from research that we were doing in China, in India, models that had evolved, we were able to share some information on some stuff that was more of an online model. And they have pivoted into that. So some companies, yes, have needed to. And we've tried to basically do as much research as we could, educate ourselves on different models, and then share that with our cross portfolio. And as a good investor, what we're always trying to do is learn something from one portfolio and share it with another. You know, we're not sharing private numbers, what we're just sharing best practices, lessons learned, mistakes being made. And I think that's the other good thing is that, you know, for any founders, start us on the call, like, if you have thinking of your investors, your board, you know, don't ever think of it as one way of reporting. It should be two way. And so I think it's good to be pretty transparent, like, hey, we're running into an issue here, or this part of the business is, you know, being hurt. As an inside investor, I do spend a lot of time trying to really smoke that out, like, where are things not going well? Some of our entrepreneurs are very upfront with it, and it makes for great conversations. Others kind of feel like they need to hide that from an investor, but I think we're a long-term partner. I'm already an investor. What am I going to do? You know, run away, I can't take my money. So if you're a little bit more open about, yeah, this is where we're having some sort of difficulty, then we can have a meaningful conversation of, all right, so what's next? Do we change something? Is there a different way to approach it? Does there need to be a pivot? And so that's where I'll probably spend more time is really trying to get out the, you know, where things not going so well, and how do we work together on that? Okay, sure. And how would you look at companies who are looking, who are looking at diversification at that point in time, I mean, before the pandemic hit, and now how things shape, would shape up in the coming times? In terms of, like, so diversification in a few different ways, I've told some of our companies diversify to different countries. So this is where for a lot of our Indonesian startups that would never look at Singapore as a market, just in terms of size, in terms of even consumer behavior, it's very different. I've now suggested to some Indio startups like, think about launching a product in Singapore, maybe Hong Kong as well, Taiwan, these other sort of markets that are clearly, you know, weathering this better because of, you know, political decisions, governance, whatever that might be. And so even if it's a small market for you, at least what you're able to show is over the next year, that like, hey, we were able to go into a new market, we were able to get, you know, maybe it's not growth that affects the top line, but on this segment, we were really able to grow, we do have a good product, it's, you know, and this proves that outside of COVID, it can really grow. So that's sort of a diversification to different geographies that's been one of our recommendations. Clearly for some businesses, the idea of, you know, going into a new area, and then my conversations sometimes are, we've had companies that are trying to go into a new area that are still kind of tied to their original DNA. And I've even suggested to them, like, if you're going to go into the area, just while you may have domain expertise and relationships there, just take a step back. Think of it completely, if you're starting from scratch a new area, what would you do? And do you still need to work with the partners, the clients, the customers you currently have, or would you target completely new ones? And again, that is okay. So like sometimes it's got a little leverage that sometimes it could be more valuable for a pivot to kind of start with that blank slate. So I also will encourage entrepreneurs to really compare both sort of options. So any trends, do you see emerging in Southeast Asia post the pandemic and any shifting paradigms you could share? Yeah. So there are a lot of services. So I mean, globally, health tech and education, which, you know, online telemedicine, online learning like that, that is blowing up and will continue to blow up. So that is global phenomenon locally here in Southeast Asia. I think FinTech, insurance tech, we're seeing a lot of innovation still because, you know, people can't go to a physical bank. That's the thing is in like a place like Indonesia or in Jakarta, that's very digital. But the rest of Indo, it still is very in person, top ups, giving cash. So, you know, years behind even India in that sense. So there is a lot of opportunity for innovation in this space around, you know, digital payments or lightweight agent models that would allow for maybe some cash or some goods to be delivered. Because there is still some for that. Insure tech, insurance, new products being created, new ways of doing collections, we're seeing a lot there. We've definitely seen, but this is global, like a number of starts are kind of tackling like, how do you make, you know, Zoom is great, but does Zoom work great for classrooms? No, does Zoom work great for events and conferences? No. And so they're, we're seeing a bunch of innovation in new sort of video conferencing tools that are really for these kind of specific verticals. Trying to think of what else. There is a lot, and I would say everything pretty much is just focusing on, okay, what was traditionally in the real world and how do we make that digital now? And while maybe it wasn't ready to be digital yet, you know, back in January, now there's clearly a real need for it. I mean, education would be the clearest example, like while there's been a move to go online, nobody's done full on classes all day online. So it took something like this to make that sort of switch. And now we're seeing a lot of innovation in the space. Any areas, I mean, when we're talking about again, education, health tech, retail, and e-commerce, I mean, what you think is still has not seen much disruption. And you as an investor would like to see some startups emerging in that area. Well, so I mean, logistics would be then another area that supports a lot of this e-commerce and that those tend to be very old sort of industries. I would say they have not yet seen lots of disruption yet, but they are like we're investors in ninja van in this space. So I think there's on the logistics side, huge, huge amount of opportunity in that space, like that game has not been answered yet. And there's a lot of legacy sort of dinosaurs that probably will not be around, you know, five years out, and that gives opportunity for young startups. So I think logistics would be one of them. You know, it's talking about like, hey, people doing more video. The fact is, like, there's a lot of engineering resource power that has to go into streaming video live, real time, low latency. So there's also going to be a whole crop of startups that like, you know, maybe Slack is using a third party startup to do some of the video or the audio or something like that. So there's going to be, you know, I was mentioning obviously there's Zoom, but there's these front facing startups for conferences for classrooms. Generally, they're going to use sit on top of technology on underneath. So that whole layer wide open right now. And so for a startup in India could definitely make a global company from India right now that just has better video streaming, lower latency, better compression, whatever it might be, there's just going to be huge demand for that with a lot of tools that sit on top of it. So somebody that focuses on that servicing other startups in this space. And that's the old adage of Silicon Valley when it was a gold rush in the 1840s in the US. The people that really made the money weren't the people that went out in search for gold because it was really a few of the larger groups that did well, all the individuals lost money. But by and far, individuals that did really well with the ones selling the pickaxes, the shovels, but you know, all the gear that everyone that was coming. So I would kind of use that same analogy. So what are the tools, the pickaxes, the shovels that video conferencing software might need or an education startup might need? That would be a very, very sweet spot to be building some software right now. Vinny, you have helped propel your portfolio companies to a new level and even your unicorn status. So what makes the startup investments unique? I'll start off really want to know what's that value at you bring to the table? As a VC, fair question. So one, I've been to this before. I built two startups from scratch, co-founded two startups, raised money, sold one, closed down one. So you've been through failure in Silicon Valley. So I think having the kind of, you know, roll up your sleeves, operational sort of know-how has been something that's been helpful and allows me to connect a little bit more meaningfully to our founders. Second, you know, our brand Golden Gate Ventures, like Silicon Valley Experience, all, a few of the founders who spent time in the Valley, we have a very good network there. We've helped some of our portfolio companies raise from global VC brands that are, you know, in India and China and now Singapore, but had started in the Valley. And so our network there has been helpful. I would say over time, what we've really evolved in has been our regional footprint. We now have offices around Southeast Asia. We have a portfolio on the ground and all the companies, countries we're operating in, they become local partners for us. We have LPs, strategic LPs in each country, they become local partners for us. So I think one thing that we really try to do is help our founders go regional, go into other countries and hire people, make the right sort of intros to some of the conglomerates, the family-owned businesses. I think that's an asset that we're able to offer. And then we have an entire portfolio support team. As do some of the, a number of the other global and Silicon Valley DCTs, which is, you know, recruiting, marketing, growth, hacking and things like that, resources we're able to give out to the portfolio. Given the international footprint, what kind of a cross-border movement do you suggest for startups? So this is where I mentioned markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan. I think they have weathered this pretty well. And while they're each like a, you know, Taiwan, Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore, you can think of those as three different cities that those would be good cities to consider in terms of hedging the bet. Even if the offering would be quite different, it should be something to be considering. And then I think if you're looking at Southeast Asia, a market that's showing a lot of potential right now and has weathered this really well is Vietnam. And again, it comes down to government and policy decisions that they made very early on in terms of lockdown. And they didn't allow people like to travel between the cities early on and stuff like that, close the borders, and that's paid off for them. So Vietnam would be another market. Other than that, you know, I look at it as going from your home market into a new country is really difficult. Like I'm naming these cities as if it's easy, that it's also probably good to know that you're going to make some mistakes. You're going to have stumbling blocks. So at the end of the day, whatever country the founders may have some sort of affiliation to, a safety net, people that they already know, that might actually be the most important thing just to demonstrate the capability or the ability to understand how do you open a new market? How do you hire people there? How do you sync them with, you know, the culture of the team and the mission and the vision and all of that? That's actually one of the more difficult things. And then if you can get that right, it makes going into other markets much easier. And when we talk about industries like in short take and data science, I mean, how do you see software is changing in the back alleys of Asia? Yeah, so in places like Indonesia, the back alleys, they're called Guarangs like little shops that basically which you have in India as well, that are like independently owned. So software is completely changing that landscape. More so under COVID right now. So one, like how they get their supplies. Now it's very common that there's dozens of apps in the space where the shop owner will basically in the morning, open the app and take a quick inventory and I need more fresh vegetables or fruit or whatever it might be. And it's like app based. And then you're kind of like clicking on a few things. And then literally later that day or the next day, it gets delivered. Very different than previously where they would have needed to go somewhere and kind of place their orders sort of in person and then have that delivered. There was kind of an in between stage where like what's app was being used. But the apps in terms of making the payments, knowing if something's available or not, being able to choose something easier, it's just so much more efficient. So we're seeing a number of companies in this space for these small little shops that are basically just like somebody who would turn to Amazon.com, you know, the Amazon.com sport for shop owners. So that's one area that's taking off. The other is around financing for somebody's small little shops or sometimes they're just like it's a person on the street with a little cart. But they do do and we have an investment in Book of Loron, which is doing basically financing for these little one person shops where they'll know their clientele and they'll say, all right, just pay me at the end of the week. When you get paid, just pay me at the end of the week. And you know, if you're getting coffee, rice, whatever, I'll kind of mark it down, pay me at the end of the week. I mean, this is how traditional stores had operated, you know, before modern times, you know, you knew the shop owner, small village, and I'll just keep a little wide of credit. But coming to Book of Loron and cost book in India and a ton of other companies are now digitizing that. And this is changing it because it makes it more efficient. It means the shop owners are definitely getting paid. Like some of them would feel pressure, like stress, like, oh, I don't want to cause conflict or embarrass somebody. So I won't keep pushing them or I'll just like let it slide. But the fact that it's digital kind of automatic, it happens in the background. It helps ensure shop owners actually do get paid and that, you know, it doesn't sort of drag on and put on pressure for them because it's not like they have a lot of money to support that as well. So it's on the financing side. Payments, the fact that, you know, you have go pay, grab pay and dozen other payments, sort of companies, it's allowing them to now accept, you know, digital payments where we obviously seen trends like in China where it's gone all solid pay and we check pay. We're starting to see that in places like Indonesia. But these are the sort of tools that these back alley shots are using that just did not exist a few years ago. And the last sort of thing I'll add is actually the marketplaces that allow them to sell, like some of these sometimes shops might have more of a, they're creating something. It's not just, you know, reselling and consumer goods, but there might be something that they've created art, clothing, something, a boots, we've even seen some of these small sellers shoes and stuff like that. And now they're able to post on these marketplaces of Tokopedia and then reach a much, much larger audience. So now the, I mean, on the flip side is like you're not just selling to people nearby, but now you can be selling to the whole country. And when you, when you're talking to your portfolio companies, I mean, I know in every investor is at certain point looking at growth and later on at exit. And now in the current times, every penny is being counted. So how decisive are you in terms of any new approaches they would be taking? I mean, are there new measures? You would suggest them to adopt to see how it's going to figure out in the coming times? Yeah. So I would say if you haven't already adopted it, it could, it could be a little too late. Like if you haven't made drastic changes already, then it means you may have potentially burned too much and whatever changes now. So this is where we've really intervened and we had a like hammer hole in it. Like I sent out emails, but that didn't work. I had to do one on one call to be like, this is how bad this is going to be. It took a while for me to understand that, but then it was clear. But the things that we were basically telling. So one, if you were planning to raise money before your end, like that's going to be, and you're in a affected sort of vertical, it's going to be incredibly difficult. So you now need to get, you know, 18 months of runway, figure out how to get 18 months of runway. Obviously easiest thing slash marketing sort of sells. And that's okay. It's okay that you don't have growth. You need to survive. For some companies, they needed to make salary reductions. And I, you know, one company that reduced salaries between 18 to 30% with the founders taking the most. Some companies had to make cuts. And as a former founder, you know, gone through this and then telling our portfolio is like, you don't want to make cuts slowly and over time because some of our founders asked like, Oh, we'll do one batch now. And then if it's still bad, we'll be second one later in the year. And that's the best signal because that sends a signal to your team that like, you could be let go at any time. And so if you're going to have to make cuts, then as a CEO driving that ship, take that more conservative route, make, make bigger deeper cuts now rather than, you know, two or three trickle over time because that doesn't, that kills team morale. Other sort of things, like I've seen some cool little hacks, like so many startups use subscription software for, you know, email and Slack services. And you kind of forget what you might be paying for. And if you're a startup, you eat your every dollar, every penny counts. So what they recommended was just cancel your credit cards or freeze your credit cards. So all the subscription software just stops. And now you'll just re-op in for anything you want. And that's a very easy way to like stop that bleed because for some startups, they could literally be paying, you know, $1,000 a month in subscription software. You know, we've done partnerships with AWS, Amazon Web Services, which hosts a bunch of startups. They've been very flexible, you know, sometimes helping forgive or giving some grants that, you know, startups don't have to pay some hosting costs. So we talked to your hosting provider. What are other creative ways? Leveraging, if you do need extra, I just spoke to a startup right now, like, hey, you know, our clients are asking to build this, we don't have the engineering resource and we can't hire anybody right now. And my suggestion then was get some freelancers, some outsourcers. So it's something that's not internal core, but it like an add-on that basically allows their software to interface with another API. So that's external. So like hire freelancers. Now you don't have to, it might be a three month project, maybe you're hiring two or three people part-time, but that can be a way of, you know, doing things differently to build the software. Normally, as a startup, you're not hiring freelancers, you're hiring everything in the house. So just thinking differently about it has probably been a lot of our advice. And when we talk about investors per se, and when you go to the market to seek the next round of funds for call and get ventures, how do you think the response is going to be? And would your approach be different in the coming times? Yeah, yeah, the approach would definitely be different. So I think the thing is, there's a lot of unknown. And where I'm sort of advising our startups right now is, and maybe it's as a former American, or not former, still American, but it's been a decade since I live there. The U.S. is going through some very trying times, but it is an economy that affects global economies, and we really have a lot of uncertainty. The U.S. election particularly has a lot of uncertainty, and I can very much just see, you know, it getting dragged on in the courts for like three months and like who won and recounts and stuff like that. That sort of uncertainty killed the markets. And so there could be worse sort of news, you know, coming from the stock exchanges and stuff like that towards the end of the year. I do think that is a likely scenario. And so then people should be bracing for that, like the economies could get worse. And then how does that affect, you know, India, Indonesia? Well, you know, sometimes it might not be a startup, but like very large corporates, they might be borrowing money from like a U.S. bank or an international bank, they might have debt terms that, you know, if the economies or something falls will flow something that they have to start making debt repayments, or they might have to plan on raising some money by this point and they can't do that. And so then as those large corporates, you know, local domestic sort of companies face some issues, that's going to have a huge trickle down effect. Employees being laid off and then consumers don't have the same sort of spending power, you know, software needing to be cut. For a lot of our B2B SaaS software, I was really pushing on them earlier on to like, just expect that you're going to have some clients that don't pay you. And we did see that. We saw, you know, some B2B SaaS software startups that were selling to other startups that were well funded, and those startups have either, you know, gone through a third of the size or some have not even fully closed up. And then payment channel that you were expecting and back money, though it just disappears. And so you could expect more of that to happen from some like larger sort of corporate set. You might have thought as being a safe bet. So yeah, my on that sense would be, I don't think there's a safe sort of answer now, but I am still advising that it could be potentially stormier waters ahead. Yeah, we're still investing again, it's a long term sort of investor long term partner of optimistic what the next decade would look like. But when we hit rock bottom, how fast the recovery is that I don't know. Okay. Okay. Sure. And the focus areas is going to remain the same or would you look at some different venues as well? So I mean, focus area in terms of country. So for us at Southeast Asia, ASEAN, that will stay the same in terms of verticals that changes. I would say we will have seen species that kind of, I would say maybe on like a six month sort of cadence. So this has nothing to do pretty post COVID or anything. But generally we're trying to get ahead of the curve. We're trying to go out and find, you know, founders before it's, you know, it's obvious and it's a trend. And we do a lot of global research. And we have a proprietary database, the TGD brain that helps us with that. So the vertical guess that those will definitely change. And that's why some of the verticals I mentioned earlier, that's what's popular right now. And in six months, that could be different. Okay. Okay. Sure. Interesting. And there's another focus area your venture has and female founders, right? So tell us more about that. Sure. I appreciate that question. So for me, I think a lot of it's around diversity. If you look at the Valley, Kauffman, the foundation did a study a few years back, and they found 51% of all founders in the Valley are foreign born. They're not from the US. And people forget about like giant companies like Google and YouTube. And this is a really big list. And so for me, what that really says is Silicon Valley, it's not just because you're American that you build a company. It's because Silicon Valley is a magnet for international talent. People with diverse backgrounds being drawn there. And that's where they create magic. I think the same. And so for women, for founders, we have a fast track program. And it basically says that if there's a female co-founder, there's a checkbox and then they're fast track, which means they can be brought up in a partner meeting earlier with like less sort of requirements and kind of can be discussed. And it's kind of highlighted that this is a female co-founded company or female founded CEO. And for us, that sort of diversity that's going to be different sort of innovation, different sort of product, different sort of team building, we really, really like that. If you look across our team, I mean, gender split 50-50, but just backgrounds, religions, the countries, out of 18 people on the team, we have eight different passports. So it's just a very, very diverse team. So it's not that we set out to do that in the beginning, but I've now learned that that is where the magic happens. Any insights you could share in terms of the kind of pitches which have been coming during the time of pandemic? I mean, are there female founded companies more or male founded companies or any segments or sectors you could throw some light on? Yeah, I don't have the hard data, but my feeling is that ratio has not changed. But that ratio is not that there are way more companies that pitch with all male founders that still very much encourage seeing more of that. And that's hence why we try to think of like, yeah, what are the ways that we can make sure that we're not just kind of following the status quo, but can kind of bring something up to the surface. So I haven't seen that ratio change because of the pandemic, but I do think, you know, we've been doing this for 10 years. That ratio has definitely changed today versus, you know, when we first started, but it's still very far off. And I would like to see that be way, way more even. It should be 50-50. There's no reason for that. So I think the other thing that you're seeing is like, if I look across our portfolio, just females, women in top management, CXO sort of level roles that maybe they weren't the co-founders, but that is really increasing over the past few years. And so to me, that's that next generation. Like, you know, a lot of times a founder might have been part of us a high growth startup before. And so now if they're in that position, they're learning like the ability to go out and raise capital, build that team is going to be much, much, much easier. And so one thing we do that, so we have a recruiter in Golden Gate. And every time he sends a, you know, a batch of candidates, there always has to be at least one woman. So with the whole idea that's another way now we can kind of, you know, diversify it within that portfolio. And so the founders may not even realize that sometimes I will mention that like, hey, you have an all men team, it would be good to get some, you know, diversity of opinion here in terms of the product, in terms of demographic and audience. So sometimes I do mention that. But other times we just do it possibly just to make sure that people are kind of getting that to consideration. I'm not aware of other VC firms that at least in Southeast Asia do that. Talking about online entertainment, I mean, any trends do you see emerging in the space? It was needed first or dropped out for a second. Any online trends in what space? Online entertainment space? Oh, online. Yes, quite a lot there. So we were investors in Lomo Teeth, which is basically a TikTok competitor, you know, short form music videos. The big difference that they have is they allow people to re-edit. So it's almost like being a DJ and kind of mixing other people's videos. But because of everything that's been happening with TikTok being banned in India, potentially being banned in the U.S., they've seen phenomenal sort of growth over the past few months. They were seeing growth before even any of the ban being TikTok being banned, because people are being at home. So therefore they're creating more content and sharing it. So Lomo Teeth was growing, I would say, stronger as soon as lockdown started happening in U.S. So their strongest markets right now are North and South America, even though it's a company that started in Singapore. What else are we seeing in the entertainment space? We did an investment in GoPlay. So GoJack launched a streaming video service that's going head-to-head with Netflix in Indonesia, but they're doing really well for two reasons. Number one is local content. You know, people do want to see local content. It's not just translating, like people want local stories and local dramas and local comedies. Even think in the U.S., you know, some of the top shows, the Office, for instance, that was a U.K. show that then in the U.S., they localized it, you know, American actors, American comedy. So that's what we're starting to see. And so GoPlay even, they got the rights to do Gasa Girl, very popular show in the U.S., and so the rights that they got was to film it with an all Indonesian cast in Bahasa, different sort of storyline, and that's doing very well. So localized content has been huge for them. The second thing is payments. In places like Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, collecting subscription payments is, you know, when people don't have a credit card, it's actually very difficult. But GoJack, which, you know, has GoPay, which they even spun out, is the strongest wallet in the Indo, that supports subscription billing. And so now their video streaming service does work with subscription billing. And this is where the other players, HBO Go, and folks have just not been able to get any sort of traction. What else are we seeing in entertainment? A lot of audio podcast that really had a resurgence there. Again, people are at home spending more time not out and about. So it's a way of digesting content. Yeah, we have a yet unannounced investment that we've done that specifically focuses on Asian content globally. And it's really to highlight Asia's stories globally. They have an office in Singapore, an office in the US, and they're doing very well to self-start up right now. So that's another thing. I think Asia, like culture, like for a few years now, especially like India culture, but Bollywood is definitely a food, you know, definitely been in the top of mind in the US. Now we're seeing like K-pop and stuff like that. I think like the next decade or even 20 years, I think this is the part of the world that will really be exporting a lot of culture that people are interested in digesting. So now these sort of companies that are helping that go across borders and how do you promote that and distribute that and get partnerships? That's another area that is open for innovation. Those are some good insights. Before we conclude, we have an audience question from Prachi Jaktap and she's asking what is what do you think are the best steps to approach good investors? What are the best steps? So do your homework. And so what does that mean? Is all right, find out who the best investors are, put that a list. What makes them the best? So then talk to their founders. What are their founders say? What sort of value do they add? Look at their portfolio. Have they been investing in spaces similar to yours? That's generally a good thing. I don't think I knew that when I was an entrepreneur. I think I thought like, oh, they've, I mean, as a competitor, then you don't want to talk to them. But if it's in your space or kind of upstream or downstream view, it means they have knowledge of that space and they would actually be interested. You know, the thing is when I was an entrepreneur, I used to think like, oh, I have a good idea. Therefore, any investor I meet should be backing me. But the reality is investing is very, has a lot of flavor to it. So really kind of understanding like, is this a good fit? Both ways is important. I mean, so easily would be like get geography to invest in India. Are they actively investing on the ground stage? Is that a line, you know, sort of verticals? Those are very easy sort of top level questions. But then starting to get a little bit more minute in terms of like, what are their expectations, you know, to be a board member? How much, how often do they think you should be raising? How fast is growing? Is there alignment there? So those are the questions you can ask some founders. Other ways to approach an intro, like anyone can email me and I'm definitely going to read it or somebody in the team can read it. But generally, it's better coming through somebody I know, because I look at it, that's a filter. And I definitely know they're the best way to get an intros through a founder already in the portfolio because the founders are going to filter very well. They definitely get a lot of requests for intros. They don't intro everybody. They're only going to intro things that they know are going to kind of fit our thesis and mandate, and they're going to know that best. They might even know that better than our LPs. So I think a founder intros probably the best way. The other thing is down to the messaging. This may be different for every investor, but for me, I want it kept simple. You know, however you would describe your company to your mom, like that's how it should be described to me. I don't need buzzwords. I just need to know, what is it that you're offering? And who are you serving? And why are you different? Like, and that you can say in literally two to three sentences. And I will tell you, like, when I bet really long-winded text emails, I kind of gloss over that. And I have a feeling that probably a lot of investors do it. Like, you have a better chance of grabbing my attention with, like, two to three sentences than, you know, three paragraphs. Yeah. And then in today's day and age, the fact that you're not going to be like running into investors as much in conferences, then, okay, it's good to call, it's okay to call the email. There's nothing wrong with that. Just make sure, again, that message is really, really short. And then attach a teaser. It doesn't need to be the full deck. It can just be a one-pager or just a few pages, but just a teaser. Keep it small. Remember to compress it. But just so I can quickly read it. And if it grabs my attention, I'll click the PDF. But you have to realize that investors are not going to be able to take a call with everybody that emails them. So you do need to capture their attention, which is the right intro, a founder, or that right sort of, you know, pitch that's short and compelling. I think many of you have outlined it really well. I'm sure it's going to help all entrepreneurs. And we're going to see some new innovations coming up post the COVID-19 period. Thank you for joining us today. And for rest of our attendees, in case you have any more questions, please reach out on our Facebook page. And we'll see if Vinny or somebody from his team at Golden Gate Ventures could answer your questions. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you Vinny. Thanks for your time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.