Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Jeep Kline: Thailand's First Silicon Valley Impact VC Talks Trump, Life After Intel

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

About Jeep Kline: Jeep is a venture capital and technology executive with over 20 years of experience. She has launched four VC funds and serves on multiple boards across the US and Asia. She is also an advisor at Berkeley SkyDeck, Alchemist Accelerator, and UCSF Health Hub. A former World Bank economist, she brings deep expertise in emerging markets and has co-founded a Latin American-focused VC fund. Jeep is the founding partner of Raisewell Ventures and was the first Thai woman to launch an impact VC fund in Silicon Valley.About Gita Wirjawan: Gita is an Indonesian entrepreneur and educator. He is the founding partner of Ikhlas Capital and the chairman of Ancora Group. Currently, he is teaching at Stanford as a Visiting Scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC); and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.Explore and be part of our community ⁠https://endgame.id/⁠Collaborations and partnerships: ⁠https://sgpp.me/contactus

Southeast Asia, we are neutral. And we can work as a team. The geopolitics between U.S. and China, it actually benefit us. We should be the region that absorb all of the economic development and the scalability that would come from the U.S. Anything that involved, like labor and hardware, is good for us because we have lower cost. every jobs will be replaced one way or another because the industry changed so fast.

So we have to be on top of it. And for our countries in Southeast Asia, if we don't capitalize on this new revolution, the AI revolution, we're going to be left behind, far far behind. But I would love to see people become very hungry because they know that they are actually competing in a global stage. How do you spread that hunger? Yes. Hi, friends. Today we're visited by Jeep Klein, a good friend of mine, who is the leadership of racewell ventures in California.

Jeep, thank you so much for coming over. Thank you for having me. Tell us, you know, you're from Thailand. You were born in Bangkok. And tell us a little bit about your journey. Yeah. I was born in Bangkok. And, oh my gosh.

It's been quite a journey. We met here at Stanford, born and raised in Thailand. I went to college in Thailand, all in Thai. So I didn't go to international school or anything like that. And when I was in a last year of my high school, it was in 1997, as we all remembered, Asian economic crisis, which impacted my family. But at the same time, it also drove me to study. And I fell in love with it in college. I did really well.

And I felt that, you know, four years in college learning economics, I want to come out from college and help Southeast Asia develop long-term, sustainable economy growth based on the knowledge that I had. But it was not enough. When I graduated, I felt there was a lot more to learn. and I told my parents, I was one of those kids that a little bit strange in a way that I know we're really fit in completely

in a Thai culture. And I told my parents that I wouldn't come to the U.S. for grad school. They don't have money. So the only way to be able to come to grad school is I have to get a scholarship. So they borrow, you know, a little bit of money from friends and family to buy the plane ticket for me to come over here. And I stopped. My first stop was Michigan and Arbor.

We paid, you know. Why Michigan? It was at the time, believe it or not, I didn't even know that from college you can actually go straight to get a PhD. I thought you have to get a master's first and then get a PhD. I thought it was kind of like a stepping stone. Nobody told me, oh, actually the way to get a PhD is you get master's along the way. Okay. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to get a master degree, which is really hard to get a scholarship.

Sure. But I applied my parents, you know, borrow money to pay for the first year, which I, you know, return. But then after that, I figure out a way. to get the scholarship. And I remember the person who helped me and wrote me a letter of recommendation was Professor Corinne Charles, who is the current dean at Yale School Management. And, you know, I was also his research assistant. And he told me that, jeep, you dream of helping the country improve the economy, not just Thailand, but also Southeast Asia. Why don't you try? something a little bit bigger.

And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, why don't you try go work at a World Bank? I was like, are you kidding me? Nobody's going to hire me at a War Bank. But it's kind of like planned a seat in my mind. So every single long weekend, I actually saved money from my stipend from Michigan and flew myself to Washington, D.C. Pitch, I code call and I pitched economists to hire me.

Wow. I got like 49 rejections. I was like, are you crazy? because usually they hire people who have a PhD in economics from Ivy League school. And I didn't have any of those. And then one person said, yes. I worked for free. I agreed to work for free for three months.

But of course, you know, in a month, he hired me. And then the rest is a history. I met with top-notch economists from Larry Summer, Paul Krookman at that point in time. as you remember, all top policymakers would have an office at a World Bank. And then three years in, I was, this is not the way it's supposed to be. I was also exposed. What do you mean by that? What I meant by that is, one, the way that the international organization works is a little bit slower, in my viewpoint.

the way that they do funding, the competitiveness is not there, coupled with the rise of the technology industry. So to give you a specific example, there was one mission. So when we go on different countries, we call mission, right? So I serve ministries of finance in emerging markets, in America, in Asia, in Eastern Europe, and also in Africa. There was one mission. I went to Tanzania. I was in Dar Islam. Yeah.

And that was 20-something years ago. I remember at 5, the electricity went out in a capital city. People came in front of the house. They lit the candle, right? Wow. But at the same time, they used the phone. And at the time, it was a feature phone, not even smartphone. You remember Nokia with like buttons.

And they send payment to their parents and, you know, relatives in different provinces using digital payment back then before PayPal became famous. And I thought to myself, technology was going to be big. But as the world banker, we never really touched technology. We're going to miss the big shot. So I decided to leave the best job in the world in three years. And I've packed my bag and I came to Silicon Valley. What sort of message would you have for young, aspiring students?

who are still thinking about pursuing a career at a multilateral institution, such as the World Bank or the IMF or any kind. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad place to be. I learned so much. I even asked Paul Krookman a tough question about Southeast Asia. Right. That's the kind of opportunity that we had. But at the same time, it's about who you are.

For me, it's all about what kind of impact I can drive. And I was sure. young and I wanted to take risk. And I was not afraid to take ricks. Because I came from a humble background. I also failed many times before. I was a competitive swimmer, but I never won. So it's like failing.

It's sort of like in my DNA, you know, and I'm going to keep doing it into I win, right? It's appetizer. Yes. It's sort of like a practice. And then when I was in college, you know, I want to go. And I was like, oh my God, this is the best thing in the world. It took me 10 years of swimming like three kilometers a day. But anyway, so that's the sign of.

So looking back, I'm actually glad I did that. And, you know, as you mentioned right before we start a conversation, I'm the only Thai. And I think we have a long way to go. I'm the only tie sitting on your famous podcast here. You were the first time, you know. And so, you know, the first person who actually launched impact-driven venture capital investment in Silicon Valley from my country. Why? Why did you come up with that idea?

Or how did you come up with that idea? Yeah. Was it the Tanzania experience? That was 1997 was the first pivot point in my life. Tanzania, I would say the second pivot point, that technology was going. to be big. And then it came here. And I was so lucky that I met at a time Dean, who at Haas, a school of business at Berkeley, who came from Goldman Sachs. And he said, gee, you need to come to Berkeley. We're going to give you subsidies, scholarship. I was like,

how could say no to MBA in top 10 business school with this kind of education? So I came and And along the way, I realize that the mentality of people in Silicon Valley and technology industry are actually different. And it match who I am. So the way that you ask, is it, yeah, there are a building box that come along the way. But at the same time, I was also very lucky that I was recruited after graduating from Berkeley. I was recruited by the CEO of Intel at a time, Paul Tallini. And he created a leadership program. He handpicked 15 students, MBA students from top 10 business schools.

And I was so lucky that I was one of them. And I'm the only one from Southeast Asia. I hope we'll have more, well, in different capacity. That's a dream for many. Yeah. I was trained by the leaders, not just at Intel, but in Silicon Valley. And I learned that the mentality is very important. So to give you specifically, I was taught, you know, even Paul himself, Andy Grove, who was still alive at the time.

The principle at Intel was that, you know, to build the ecosystem, like technology ecosystem, you don't do everything yourself. This is the opposite of, you know, quote-unquote economics that have learned to maximize profit. Yes, Intel is about profit maximization, it's a corporation. But if you think about it, the company was created from a microprocessor. They could have done shells, you know, computer shells by themselves. They could have created everything by themselves because the hardest part of making a computer was microprocessor, not the screen, not the shell, you know, not the memory and everything else. But yet, they said, in order to create a true ecosystem, I'm not going to do everything by myself. I'm actually going to create this ecosystem in Taiwan so they can be OEM.

I'm going to do this, you know, lithography in Europe. Denmark is one of the countries that got that basically innovation. And that's how they create the power and influence and let everybody win. And they call themselves a platform company, not a vertical company. And to me, it was mesmerizing that you don't have to capture every single dollars and every single profit. There's still one big for the longest period of time. I mean, the company has been around from 50 years. And we know that right now is sort of like in the pivot point.

It's a slum. Yes. But 50 years is long enough to create Silicon Valley. That's why we call Silicon Valley because of the Silicon. Right. So I spent my time at Intel for seven years. Two years in, I launched one of the first Android tablets for the world, the $99 tablet. And that is a perspective coming from emerging markets, working emerging markets. When Steve Jobs launched the first iPad, I remember telling the senior leaders at Intel that the vast majority of the population, they're not going to be. going to be able to afford it. The version one was very expensive. And Intel at the time already missed the smartphone market. So the way that we should enter this IOT, if you call

market, is we launched the low-cost market. And it turned out it became an impact device. So kids say in India, in Indonesia, in Thailand, I went to Indonesia to launch a product and also in Thailand and so many other countries, kids use it for education for the first time. Wow. And how much was this? $99. Still steep?

Yeah. Yeah. It's got to be at least, at most, $10. Yeah, I mean. For this to work. Yeah. Now, if it's possible, it should be free. Yeah.

They should just give the hardware out for free. And then they monetize maybe from education content and whatnot, right? That would be the ultimate goal. But I agree with you. Hardware has been commoditized in the past 10 years. But it's a long way to answer the question that no matter where I go and what I do, I have the lens of the global market. I have the lens of emerging market simply because of the training that I had and also

because the way I grew up. And now I'm a managing partner and also founder. at Razor Web Ventures. Same thing. This is an impact-grimid venture capital investment for Southeast Asia. Are you comfortable with the kind of exponentiality of technological innovation that you're seeing in the context of how not only it's going to be applicable to places like Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, much less those in Africa, but how they're also not going to be

to catch up. How do you juxtapult, how do you combine those two, you know, views that are somewhat conflicting, right? That's right.

You know, unfortunately, technology create more disparities. Yeah. Between the countries, you can look at the data in the last two decades

in the last 20 years. People who get access to technology, they became really, really wealthy and well off, even within a Silicon Valley, right? Like we see

high income and also low income people who get access versus not, but also true in emerging markets. And this is why we in Southeast Asia should really focus on tech. It is the nature that we can't escape. So to give you some stats, I'm going to talk about a few pieces. One, technology. Two, what can we do about it? from the point of view of Southeast Asia. On the technology perspective,

if you look at the data in the U.S. alone, more than 50% of the market capitalization in the stock exchange today, those companies used to be once backed by venture capital. But venture capital industry is only 1% of the U.S. GDP. This is how much influence the VC have on the entire industry and globally. Right.

Okay. And it's going to continue to rise. Now, NVDA, as you know, is $3 trillion in terms of valuation, right? Ten years ago, it was only like how many billion. Now, because we have passed a phase that, you know, we are not there yet in terms of the technology, ecosystem, and industry that we need to be built. Now we are in 2025. We mean Southeast Asia, what do we need to do? I also believe, I've been in the industry for almost 20 years now,

I also believe that Silicon Valley has made a lot of mistakes. We invested in ideas and things that doesn't create productivity in the economy, right? Cryptocurrency. To me, it's a speculation. I know that we talk now, you know, is the rise in the fall now, is the rise again. I want to see real productivity in the real sector, right? Or companies such as we work, right? That's, to me, not improve producting.

We need to improve productivity in our region, number one. So the question is, how do we use VC as a tool or a method to improve the region? economic-wise and technology-wise. And this is why impact-driven VC becomes very important. And when we talk about impact VC, a lot of people thought, oh, you know, this is like towards non-profit or impact. No, no, no, no. And this is what I teach.

I'm a professor at a high school of business. I'm teaching impact-driven venture capital investment. And what I teach is essentially, we are still in a VC asset class and we have to make money. nonprofit in this venture doesn't work. Pure profit with greed that you invest in anything and everything at all costs also doesn't work because it creates a lot of negativity in the society. We still have to work with a capitalist in the capitalism society in a way that we mobilize the investor's money. And at the same time, we demand positive impact socially, environmentally,

and economically. So this is why, you know, I found at Reso Ventures. It's actually my fourth investment fund, but it's the first fund that I would like to focus on, of course, investing still in the U.S., but also Southeast Asia. It meant to be the catalyst to build the long-term tech ecosystem in our region. I want to peel the on in a bit more, but before we get there, Do you sense that Silicon Valley has learned, the VC space has learned from its past mistakes as to not overly invest in things just based on FOMO or hype, things that are not allegedly or supposedly productive, as you may allude to? No.

It's going to keep repeating, right? Yes. And because I think it comes from the approach. Is it just because there's too much money? It's a lot of money and is the mentality. The big funds that used to be the small fund, say 10, 15 years ago now, they get bigger and bigger and bigger. Right. So, and then they keep, you know, to have dry powder to deploy those money in a way that they think it's make them win to create massive returns.

Yeah. Okay. And those I call conventional traditional funds or VC funds. What is missing is they should have done. demand the impact return as a bonus on top of the profit that they make. This is a new area. When I launched one of my first funds, I actually invested in land America. I know.

You're supposed to go around a way. Yes. And I invested in five countries in land America. It was impact-driven VC fund. And I remember at the time when I raised fund, my investors did not know what impact-driven VC is. Really? They didn't. This was 20 years ago.

Yeah. It was so new. It was so new. It was not 20 years ago. It was around seven years ago, but the concept was new, still new to them. And I said, you know, I'm just going to change my pitch. This is a typical VC fund. I'm just going to generate top-tier returns.

I'm simply going to invest in Latin America. Massive opportunity. And then I raise money. I start deploying money. I generate returns. But then in my reports, quality reports, annual reports, by the way, you get a bonus.

It's called impact returns. And that's how I started educating my investors. That's actually a better way to do it. Yeah. And that's how I also got invited to become. It better credentialized you. Yeah. Right?

Like, look, you get free bonus. You make an impact and you get money. Why wouldn't you like that? Right? And that's how things got started. But also, there are a lot of other influences globally that help that get started. Like, as you know, right now, we talk a lot about Net Zero by 2050. International Organization also tried to push towards Paris Accord.

You are also a part of it to help drive this agenda, sustainability agenda. So there's a lot more push from different pieces globally. So this year, right now, it is not like seven, eight years ago when this concept is new. But it's also our time that we have to teach the next generation investors, like the MBAs here at Stanford and or so at Berkeley. If you want to be a VC, you better be an impact VC. You make money and you make impact. Hang on. Why don't you do that?

Why Latin America? At that time? Yeah. Because you saw more opportunities there? Yeah. I actually wanted to come to South East Asia since then. Yeah. And because I'm Thai.

Yeah. I wanted to start in Thailand. I was too early in the market. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Indonesia was there. There were some companies that are very successful, mostly in SaaS.

as a service. Singapore, some companies are successful, but not much in Thailand. I just need to get start where people can relate to me. So I went to Latin America and the way they look at me, they don't care whether or not I'm Latin America. I don't speak Spanish or Portuguese. And they're like, oh, you're from Silicon Valley. Oh, you're a person. And while, oh, you are a professor. You have done this before. And I look at your track record. You work at the World Bank.

You work at Intel. You've done this and that. You know, I'm just going to invest. It's very strange behavior economics. Wow. So, and that's why it's an opportunity. And the investors were mainly from the U.S.? Mainly from the U.S., also from Latin America, to a certain extent, also from Europe,

like in Spain. But the investment goes to five countries, all Spanish-speaking. country. So I didn't invest in Brazil. Okay. So that's why it got started. And, you know, let me just ask you if it had something or anything to do with the fact that for recycling purposes, the capital markets were. In the traditional VC firms.

Yeah. Ready? They were more ready? Yeah. Okay. And when the firm get really big, if you have $20 billion, say, firm, right? You're going to have a lot of GPs, general partners. or fund managers who manage the money.

You no longer really do the hands-on work yourself. You can pivot in time. All you do is you create a mandate and then those GPs go execute and invest the money. It's very hard when you are a $20 billion fund and you say, oh, you know, I'm going to change right now. I'm no longer going to be conventional funds, even though this is kind of like my fund 10,

and then I'm going to be impacted in fund. you can't just change the image overnight. And the approach has been done all along because of the founders and so on. It's kind of like a big company, why small startup company disrupt them? Because they can pivot. They can change. And I hope that there's going to be a lot of fund managers, new fund managers, who see the opportunity like this in the market, especially in Southeast Asia, because we have really, really good. We just need to invest in ourselves.

But did the exit opportunities? Were they pretty clearly defined? Still very challenging? In Latin America. Oh, you mean Latin America? I thought in Saudi Asia, in Latin America. Yes, it's still very challenging. But at least the proximity with the U.S. market helps, number one.

And number two, when I invest, at least they have to be registered as a C-Corp Delaware alongside the risk. the registration in the local country. Because if Google want to buy them, easy. It's going to be much easier. So they have to structure correctly since they won so that they can scale outside their own country, at least within Latin region, or come to the U.S.

or go to Europe, Spain, and whatnot. If it's going to get acquired, it has to be very, very easy and very clean. Is that something that's being adopted? other geographies? Yeah. Because this big. Yeah. South East Asia is very challenging in terms of the exit market.

Yeah. But we can build it. We can build it. This is why we are working together also with you and with the stock exchanges. We have a lot of opportunities. We talked about this briefly before. Singapore's stock exchange. Yeah.

Stock exchange of Thailand. These should be the IPO hubs for the Southeast Asia. And we should attract the companies here. to list in Southeast Asia as a bridge financing before they go to NASDAQ, or they can also do dualist thing like Alibaba. Yeah. Right. This is our shot.

But it's kind of tough to find a company in Southeast Asia that has kind of scale. Yeah. That Ali has. Yes. So we're going to have to, so we're going to have to find their approach. So this is an approach in my funds as well, right? I invest in the U.S. if they want to scale,

I would love South East Asia to be the platform for scale. And the way to do that is, you know, of course, it has to map with the thesis. For example, if we do climate tech, we invest in EV, right, battery, food tech, agriculture tech and whatnot. And these companies, usually they have manufacturing plans or they have hardware that they have to get made. So they would locate somewhere typically in a past, it was China. But because of the geopolitics, it's very hard to do that in China right now. So our region automatically becomes a star region.

And we have to talk about this, that this is our advantage. We have good enough engineer to manage the plant. We don't need like Stanford engineer to do that. And we have lower cost, lower cause of living. lower wage. So when they scale, we should be the smart manufacturing hub for the high growth company that are reduced to scale here. Let's start with some of the structural impediments that people in places like the U.S. have with respect to Southeast Asia and identify those. And how do you think those could be remedied in the short run and long run? I mean, if you're

looking at the Southeast Asia region through the lens of Silicon Valley, right? What are some of the issues that are pretty structural, you think? Yeah. I mean, the opportunities are there. I'm with you, right? In terms of reshoring, French shoring, offshoring from China. But I think there's some structural issues. Yeah. I think it also depends on what countries, which country. I mean, Singapore is an outlier. We admit that. But Singapore is also very small and also very expensive now. GDP per capita is the same as US GDP per capita. No higher. Yeah. It's amazing. It's 85, 90,000. I think. It's crazy. It's crazy. Crazy good. Yeah. So that an outlier. And then we have, I call the middle of the pack. Okay. Like Thailand,

the Philippines, Malaysia, and a certain extent, Indonesia that has also the land area and population advantage. Right. what people are worried about is definitely number one politics. Right. Right. What would be the political instability that they have to encounter? And I think that is one of the biggest issues. And, you know, I would love to hear your thoughts on Indonesia, but Thailand,

that has been the biggest issue in the last 20 years. That's why the GDP growth has been so minimal in the last 20 years. Could be much higher. Way higher. So that's most important. Two, rule of law. People don't want to come into the country and, you know, not just,

it's so hard to get the company registered and whatnot. But if there's problems, right, with the workers, with the laborers, they want to make sure that there's fair rules and how they're being treated. It's as simple as that. The infrastructure in terms of the law has to be there to make sure that we attract for indirect investment.

The third area, which we argue, talents and education. And this is why we have to focus on the middle market or middle talent first, not the very top talent. Yeah. Okay. The vocational. Yes. Skills. Yes.

So when I talked about smart manufacturing hub, I want to see, for example, South East Asia to be the microprocessor hub. But I'm not talking about designing ships. I'm talking about packaging, assembly, things that we can leverage our local engineers to work right away. And at the same time, those opportunities would create technology. transfers from the U.S. So people and the talents that we have in our countries can learn. And hopefully from that, we reskill and upskill and use it to create an innovation on top. But we have to start there.

It's not going to be the top, you know, we're going to create like another LLM model. We are not there yet. But education, the quality of education is one of the biggest. things, right? So these are top three things, but of course there are other infrastructure that you might argue, you might argue, oh, healthcare is so important when people want to move that, sure, but those kind of things will be created if these three things are in place, right? The stability, the education, rule of law. And the rule of law. Are you optimistic? Super optimistic. I'm super optimistic. Okay. What's the basis?

For your optimism for Southeast Asia, in the long run, at least. We are in a right place and right time. Okay. And you sense the young generation takes ownership. Yes. What's important, right? Yes. I wouldn't say this seven years ago or ten years ago.

Yeah. We are in a right place and right time for so many reasons. So one, as I mentioned before, the geopolitics between U.S. and China, it actually benefit us. Yeah. We should be the region that absorb all of the economic development and the scalability that would come from the U.S. Two global mandates, and you are part of it. We talk about the World Economic Forum. We talk about Paris Accord.

We talk about sustainability. Because of the global agenda that try to push the world towards net zero by 2050, what it means is we have to invest. in deep tech and hard tech. Anything that involve hardware and energy, otherwise we are not going to achieve net zero by, I mean, even that, we still don't. Exactly. We still don't know if we can achieve it.

But we have to invest in these areas, right? And if you were thinking about this area, anything that involve like labor and hardware is good for us because we have lower cost. And number three, Southeast Asia, we are neutral. And we can work as a team. Last year, in November, I actually gave a talk at the I Know Economic Forum.

And I was a keynote speaker. And I talked about the concept of one C or one Southeast Asia. Singapore has two leading academic institutions, NTU and the NUS. Well, there's another one, SMU. Yes, and SMU as well. And they're very good in deep taken research. They have IPs. They have IP office to manage it.

It's a great start. But they don't have market size. So for the entrepreneurs in Singapore to win and attract money from VCs, from Silicon Valley, they need to get access to Indonesia, Thailand, just to make sure that the market size is big enough. Footprint is there. It's a footprint. And we have to work together with them. For Thailand, I think stock exchange is in a prime position.

If they can adjust the infrastructure and attract high growth tech company to be listed there and be the bridge finance before going to NASDAQ because the market cap is lower. Singapore is great too and they're adjusting. But traditionally, as you know, they're really heavy on real estate. Indonesia, you have the market size. If any company's startup companies that were created in Bangkok, in Indonesia itself or in Singapore, can get access to Indonesian market as the customer base, they're going to win. You have hundreds of millions of population. So the concept of 1C is we take advantage of each country's strengths and we work together. and that's how we're going to track for indirect investment,

including the VC like myself. And the good news is because the rise of the VC does another factor, VCs are not solo investor. And I've been in the industry when I invest, and if the company in South East is grow to the next stage and if they want to raise funds, I would love to invite my co-investors in Silicon Valley to co-invest with me, but we have to lead around.

If we want the USVC to lead around, it's not going to happen because they have million other deals that they can pick into. The only thing is they can follow. We do all the work. We lead the deals. We do the diligence. We write up the memo and we tell them why they should invest. And that's how we create foreign direct investment to the region. I want to go back to the three.

Structural issues you alluded to education and for, I mean, political stability. and rule of law, right? In some ways, the rule of law and political stability or lack thereof are correlated with the quality of educational attainment, right?

If you go to most countries in Southeast Asia, 80 to 90% of the households are led by people with Leston university education. Politicians, you know, they don't come from planet Mars. They come from the society.

And if the society is subject to or susceptible or exposed to households that are not with good tertiary education or even no tertiary education, it's kind of a tough thing, right? Yep. To move the needle. Absolutely. Then I'm just curious as to what your views are with respect to, you know, when the kids leave home, they go to the school. they go to the places of worship, they go to the social institutions. I think there needs to be some sort of a disruption

so that they get much better education. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. I think this is one of the biggest bottlenecks. Right. And Singapore steadfastly recruits teachers from the top percentile.

I know. They try to recruit me too. And we are here together in Stanford. No, you. You. But, you know, you go to the other countries in Southeast Asia, you know, the guys that end up teaching are usually those that don't get accepted at the World Bank, at Intel, at Google, Amazon, or what, you know, so they're likely to be, I mean, not a generalization, but they're likely to be coming from the bottom percentile of the academic institutions until and unless it gets fixed. Yep. you're going to be exposed to, you know, perhaps political instabilities and less robust rule of law.

That's right. You know, so I think it's just one variable. Yeah. You know. Agree. You need to be able to convince the people in the United States or anywhere that that needle is going to move in the right direction. That's right. Why do you think Vietnam now, I know.

Oh, my gosh. Why do you, how did they disrupt, right? like people from the bottom of a pyramid. Why do you think that is? Is it mentality or is it because of the government? I think to some extent the diaspora has played a role. The diaspora in the hundreds of thousands

that fled in 1975 onward, they were hungry for opportunities. That opportunism, I think, drove them to a level that other Southeast Asians probably were not thinking about. And that rubbed off. to their fellow countryman. That's right.

In the past few decades. Agreed. I mean, the Vietnamese are just so different. They would mortgage their house to send their kids to school. Yes. They're so committed. Yeah. And people who went to local school, you know, they use device like smartphone or tablet

or iPad to access free education online. People speak English and they try. If you go to Vietnam, as I'm sure you know, you know, they would come and speak English to you. It's just a way to practice. I'm like, wow, this is their mentality. I think one is the institution that the infrastructure is not there. But I would love to see people become very hungry because they know that they are actually competing in a global stage, not within the region, not just within a country. it's hard

it takes extra time but there's always a way to get ahead or build a foundation how do you spread that hunger for opportunities and knowledge that's a great question right

it's the minds it's the entrepreneurship you know I think the most important skills for kids in the next generation is yeah I mean some people like oh mathematics and you know

technical skills, yeah, I mean, part of it you're going to learn that in school. But what going to carry so far, in my personal opinion, throughout their lives is actually entrepreneurship skills, which is how to solve the problem. And which right now we are in the AI age, right? Things are going to move really fast and change really fast. Are you on top of it? How can you get access to those opportunities? How can you use technology? Right now, almost everybody has some sort of like smartphone or maybe like feature phone and whatnot. It is really low cost right now. Do you use it to your advantage?

Do you build yourself? Do you see the opportunity that others see? And I think that's the thing. They have to see the opportunity and they also have to see threat. You know, we've just witnessed a sputnik moment with Deep Sikh. Yes. Right? Do you see that sort of stuff happening in Cambodia, Thailand?

Two great. Myanmar, Lao, Indonesia. To get those kind of company, not yet. I mean, if it happened in China for six bucks. I know, seriously. You don't? Well, we can argue with it or not. It's actually $5 million.

Okay. How about four? Right? So maybe the ties could do it for a buck. Yeah. Yeah. Right? I wish.

I mean, do you foresee a future where a sputnik moment could occur in Chiang Mai or in Kuala Lumpur? I would love for us to get there. I actually, this is actually a very hot topic. I'm going to go on another interview in the next few days talking to us about, because people want to hear, I invest in AI and also Deep Take as well, and going to talk about deep seek. But anyway, so interestingly, I think Deep Seek is good for us. Because now we know that the trailblazer, the first mover, might not be the winner.

It's about who can optimize. As with many other things. Yes. Who can optimize those kind of function in a way that improve efficiency, improve productivity, and reduce cost massively. Now, we can argue whether it's four or five or maybe a little, but still is lower cost than the model that we have here or the companies that we have here.

In my view, I think this trend that we see is going to even first, democratize and optimize and encourage a lot of entrepreneurs to explore the benefit of the model and a concept in a way that it is much faster and much cheaper than even Deep Seek. Now, how soon this is going to happen in our region and whether or not the founder is going to be in our region? I don't know. But what I know right now is it's good for us because it creates more competition in the market. Not only open an eye or anthropic, like only a

handful of companies going to win, no. And I don't want that because otherwise only tier ones, conventional firms in Silicon value wins. Now is also our shot. I think this is a good wake-up call for a lot of

ECs and also for our region that you know, you can actually do it. Can you actually explore doing it the right way, okay, not malicious way. It's inspirational. Yes. Because if you figure out the way how to do that, I mean, you know that Jen San Juan also went to

our region like maybe six weeks or seven weeks ago. He was in my country, my country, your country, Vietnam, Singapore. Yeah. They want to build cloud infrastructure because the demand of the GPU. They can build it, but they're going to need the energy. They're going to need energy. It comes right to the energy now. Oh, my God. We just got to build the energy faster, much faster.

Yes, and we need that. Yeah. We need that. Because the demand is higher. We need more cloud, you know, and farms. And to operate those, they need more energy. And when we don't have enough existing energy companies, we're going to have to figure out how to power more energy into, like, all of these demand.

Let's, you know, Sam Altman was in India recently, right? And he was asked, you know, is it possible to do something like whatever he's done with $10, $10 million? And he laughed and asserted that, you know, it's foundationally hopeless. The fact that it's been disrupted by some guy for $4 million or $5 million or $6 million, I mean, he's got to feel pretty odd right now. But I'm sure millions of people in not just Southeast Asia, but in Africa, in South America, Eastern Europe, I think are feeling pretty good about what lies ahead, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's highly inspirational.

It's a race to the bottom. Yeah. And if China can do it, we can do it. So let's talk about impact, right? What can you do to be impactful for that sort of opportunism? within Southeast Asia. Oh my God, there's so many opportunities, so many things. Maybe I can talk about from the perspective of my fund.

I found it I launched Reserventures September 4th last year. In 12 weeks, I invested in five companies. And I didn't do pre-deals. I don't like pre-deals. So I launched a fund, money in a bank account. Then I started doing dear sourcing and then diligence and then invest. for me, in order to narrow the gap between the U.S. and Southeast Asia, we have to be the bridge on the technology part. And so the investment that I do, I talk about the scalability. If I invest in the U.S., if they do, if they do hardware, I hope, you know, I cannot force my portfolio companies.

but because I'm one of the investors, I can encourage them to take a look at our region instead of going somewhere else. And that, those kind of opportunities create technology transfer, employment. If the company is a little bit more mature, I would encourage them to take a look

at the stock exchanges that we have in the region that, you know, can act as, you know, almost like the middle market, the mid-market IPO because the market cap is smaller than NASDAQ, that is, you know, one also financial opportunity that they had. I also invested in microprocessor company, H-A-I company, full-stack robotic companies,

software robotic companies, cyber security. Right now, deep seek and whatnot, this is also a hot topic. Every investment, from investor perspective, every investment that we do, it has to be strategic initiative for Southeast Asia region, because that's my mandate for the fund. But at the same time, those standalone companies, it's an impact company. Meaning, let's say, if I only invest in the U.S. and nothing to do with South East Asia, I have to be able to see social impact, environmental impact, and or

economic impact from each of the company that I invest in. And this is why I do not invest in cryptocurrency or some of the sectors that do not have clear positive benefit in terms of productivity, efficiency, and whatnot. So I think from my point of views, it's simply because of where I am in my career as a fund manager and also professor, I can do this. For other people, you can absolutely engage in this, right? I hope that the younger generations can see entrepreneurship as opportunity. I don't know how long the academic institutions, either, you know, Berkeley, Stanford, and what are not going to be relevant. They can get knowledge anywhere. Yeah. at any time.

If you don't have the opportunity to come to the U.S., learn from your device. Yeah. In my generation, when the device was... Watch this podcast. Yes, and watch the podcast. When in my generation, when the device was not there, you know how I learn to speak English? Because I went to Thai schools, I turned on CNN at home, and I repeat. I repeat it.

done okay. Yeah, well, I'm just very lucky. I watch a lot of cowboy movies. Now, amazingly, we met here. We've done all right. I'm just very lucky, but yes, you watch the podcast. Are you suggesting that the relevance of university education is diminishing? I think that the education sector,

even the top 10 university like ours, it has to adjust. And you don't think it's adjusting fast enough? No. I don't think so. That's troubling. Yes. I can tell you that not just at Berkeley, I mean Stanford as well, and also top 10 MBA schools, the application has been declining. Yeah.

It's a fact. That's a fact. Yeah. Because people don't see the relevancy. Yeah. Right. I mean. Especially, you know, tech companies.

Yeah. I mean, it's still hard to get in. Don't get me wrong. But they prefer engineers over MBAs nowadays. Exactly. Yeah. It is. So the question is what the students get to learn.

I mean, even in engineering school, right? Right now, do you need to, I mean, we, the word coding was so hot 10 years ago. Oh, I need to know how to code. You just learn how to code. Chatchipti can do that now. Deep Sea could. Yeah. D.C can do that now.

So, and it's only 10 years. And this kind of learning and development going to be very, very fast. Actually, to give your kids in point, there was one student from Southeast Asia trying to apply to Berkeley. And he wanted to learn the graphic design, product design, and so on.

He wanted to get into the master's program. And I told him that, you know, if you invest in a two years' education, actually chat GPT can do the job. They can design what you want to design. Not that they're not going to get a job, but in a big company, if they used to hire 200 people, it might be down to 10.

At my funds, to give you case in point, typically if I, you know, say five years ago, I might have to hire three or four associates, basically MBA grads. Now we need one. Every jobs will be replaced one way or another

or maybe a fraction of it because the industry changed so fast. So we have to be on top of it. And for our countries in Southeast Asia, if we don't capitalize on this new revolution,

the AI revolution, we're going to be left behind, far far behind. Then the smartphone That's pretty scary. It's very scary. Because we have hundreds of millions of people that are likely to be exposed to this dislocation, right? That's right.

11 countries, hundreds of millions of people. And this is why we need to be the bridge between the two regions. And we try to close a gap. And we have to also leapfrog. We shouldn't make the same mistake as the second what it has made. And we have to focus on impact. Are you having a tough time convincing your LPs with regards to what might have happened with the tech companies in Southeast Asia that have not performed as well as, you know, people would have expected them to? That's got to have some impact, right?

Yeah, that's a great question, Kita. You know, when I'm talking about resour ventures and the mandate on my goal, this is. this is how I give back to where I come from. Which is this fund. I actually don't need to do this. And we talk about this earlier. And a lot of people ask me why not investing 100% in Southeast Asia? Because as I mentioned, the vast majority of money I still deploy in the U.S.

But I want to allocate a fraction to invest in superstars company. in Southeast Asia and groom them, going to spend more time with them and help them become successful. And the reason is because we are not ready. The LPs or the investors in a fund, if I raise money and I said, oh, I'm going to invest 100% in Southeast Asia,

they said, Jeep, why do you this? This is way too high risk. And you have done a lot of enough. In fact, you teach it has. you can just like deploy the money in the U.S. It's you already have the network. You can do this easily. And I was like, no, no, no.

We have to do that because we have to close a gap. But I can't do it all at once yet. So vast majority is still have to happen here. And we absorb the knowledge. And a fraction we still have to do that to create a catalyst. And they have to get the exposure here. And that's how we kind of blend things together. And they get to learn from each other.

And that's how it's also become more adjustable to the investors that, ah, okay, at least, you know, you deploy the money where you know how to deploy where you have the network. And I'm okay, you know, having a little bit of the risk in the region because you already did it in Latin America. Now, the track record kind of, you know, came in place. And, oh, you know, I think this is a good business model. But over time, I hope I'm going to increase more percentage to invest in Southeast Asia. But we have to build the exit market and we have to build the ecosystem together. And different countries have to come together as a team. You know, the past few minutes, I've just been thinking, you can tell the stories really well, right?

And I've been telling people that Southeast Asians are generally not great in telling stories on a global stage. Right. I mean, what sort of tip do you have for the young generation in Southeast Asia as for them to be better storytellers, right? On a wolf stage. I mean, I know Southeast Asians, they like to tell stories to each other. but they need to be able to tell stories to the world a lot better. I don't know, actually. Thank you, but I don't know if I'm a good storyteller at all.

No, wouldn't it be nice if we had storytellers from Thailand, Lao, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam. I think it comes from a perspective of being an entrepreneur, being a VC, you have to be an optimist. you have to be an optimist. Yeah. And if you are an optimist, you see comparative and competitive advantages of your own country. You know the strengths, but you also know the weaknesses. But we can fix all the weaknesses, but we have to use our strengths to our advantage. So that's number one.

And number two, it has to be real. It has to be true. Yeah. And it is to be mad like why you are motivated to do that. And that's how you're going to go through all the challenges in your career and your life. Someone asked me the other day, you know, I failed before and how I go through all this. And now that, you know, people see sort of like the 1% success that I have, but they didn't know that 99% was failure. Like, oh, you're, you know, first women professor, like Thai professor and so on.

Failures are, you know, appetizer, before you get to the main menu. Everybody failed before. And I think this is something we have to be aware in our culture. And you think failing fast is better than failing slow? I think it depends on what you do. Okay. I wanted to clarify that because I interpret it as if you prefer people to fail fast. Yeah.

I'm sort of like in a fail slow. Yeah. I think it depends on what you do. In venture capital, because you take VC's money, you can't just keep. raising money when you know it's not going to work because it's going to burn the bridge. That is more, it's an art, not science. So in the tech industry, because things evolve so fast, if you know you're not going to be successful, it's actually better to tell the investors that, oh, you know, let's say I have new competitors,

I don't think I can compete. Or, oh, Amazon actually decided to launch the product at competing with me. I don't think I'm going to survive. So the investor know and then they stop funding because they also know the market change. They are there already to take rigs. And I think that's why the concept of fail fast usually come from the VC industry.

Now, in general, people learn a lot from failure. Steve Jobs, right? I mean, he failed. I know some who don't. But for our culture, I want to come back to this. Hey, I think there's something about Asian culture in Southeast Asia that we don't talk about this. Or we feel embarrassed or failure is bad. And sometimes it's the expectation we had from our parents, right? Oh, you've got to get like, you know, 4.0, whatever it is. Right. Like, it's like a little bit of everything's in life that you want to be a perfection. It is not about that. Being an entrepreneur. you have to hustle. Sometimes you made mistakes and you are okay about making the mistakes.

Right. And you learn from it and it makes you 10x, if not 20x better in the next thing you do. And I think this is what it's all about when I'm talking about failure. Yeah. Well, you know, I just want the young generation to understand that failing slow, I think allows you to digest wisdom. a little bit better, right? And I've seen so many, you know, members of the young generation kind of like moving from

one to the other very quickly without actually deepening their insights. Yeah. You know, about what's to learn from that particular failure. I see. Right. And that, that tends to repeat, you know, in the next gig or episode. And that, I think, is quite unsettling. You know, to me by way of just really absorbing, you know, the experience a little bit longer.

I think it allows you to gain more, if not a lot more insights. Yeah. And that's going to help you, help prepare you for the next episode or whatever. Agree. There's this hopping mentality amongst the young generation. Yeah. It's unsettling. No grid.

They don't have any grid. Like, oh, I don't like this job. I quit in three months. Absolutely. They even like to move from one apartment to another very quickly, the young generation. You know, I mean, I'm comfortable with this. Moving is such a pain. How could they do that?

Look, you mentioned the Paris Accord. Trump has just decided to pull off, right, from the Paris Accord. How do you think that will impact, you know, the sustainability narrative? Absolutely. I mean, unfortunately, you know, we are. The U.S. is the leader in a world, in a global market. And anything that we do always have repercussion. And you know that.

One, I believe that other countries that pledge and be a part of this, they still be a part of it. Okay. But the fact that the U.S. is not committed, it sends the message that the momentum is declining. and you're going to start seeing the replica chart, at least from my perspective in a private sector. Usually when we invest in climate tech, right, food tech, agriculture, EV, batteries, green materials, anything that we do CO2 emission. Those companies, they also receive grants, non-dilutive grants from the government, one way or another.

Now, we might see that those grants are reduced, or if not, not completely. Already. Yeah. Depending. Like NIH, yes. Yeah. The US aid has already been pulled out. Yes.

The private sector like the VC, we are still here to support or to invest in those companies if they're really good. But it actually hurts the entrepreneur that if you're trying to do something really novel and take times and use IP to commercialize that might take longer than other, say, just peer software company. then it's going to hurt their chance to survive longer in order to get funding from private sector. This is from VC perspective. From global perspective, I think we're going to start to see some of the consequences,

the momentum that we have already built in past years that is going to be reduced. I don't think that other countries is going to pull back immediately. but unfortunately, you know, we have to see what's going to happen. I get the sense that he's 2.0 seems to be surrounded by more competent people. Just generally speaking, right? And it seems to send the right message to, you know, investors from around the world as to put money into the U.S. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you believe the rhetoric, right, you know, MBS has decided to put $600 billion. MSA from SoftBank decided to put $500 billion into the U.S. and all that. These are crazy amounts, right? Huge. Yeah. And that's got to have an impact on capital allocation. two other parts of the world, right?

One of which is Southeast Asia. You're not troubled by that, right? You know, actually, to tell you the truth, I think that Trump administration is good for business. Yeah. In the U.S., in the VC industry. Yeah. Yes, I mean, there's going to be the certain grants that got cut and so on,

but overall, say overall theme. I'm still troubled by some of the things that happened, but overall I'm so positive in a way that you're going to see more companies. I expect to see more companies going through M&A because it's easier to do so. The companies that didn't get to IPO in the past few years because the market was down, they're going to come out and start to, you're going to start to see more IPO. In our region, as you mentioned, because the. administration is pro-business, I think it's upon us to develop the relationships with

the U.S. I agree. Because we still have, we mean the U.S. and China, we still have geopolitical problems. But Southeast Asia, we do not. So if we develop good business relationship with the U.S., it's a good upside for us. Yeah. You're going to see a lot of things that we don't want to see, but overall, it's also a pro-business environment. You know, I always tell friends there that Southeast Asia is sort of like on the periphery of global consciousness.

It's a region of 700 million people, a $4 trillion economy that nobody talks about. I thought we had an epic center of everything. Well, we need more storytellers. we need to be able to communicate with China and the U.S. Yes. You know, in terms of how we could actually be relevant and useful and helpful. And at the rate that the U.S. and China are going to get more and more increasingly decoupled, this region of 700 million people, I think, could play a role in interlocutting between the two, right?

Yep, absolutely. And if I get asked, what's the... logical intersection between Southeast Asia and the U.S. and China. I said, it's, you know, there's many, but the two obvious ones are AI and energy transition. Yeah. And I would have thought that the U.S. was going to be much more proactive in AI, but having seen Deep Seek, being a Sputnik moment just recently, well, maybe China could play a more proactive role on AI with Southeast Asia. But on energy transition, I'm a big believer that China is going to be a big player in Southeast Asia because it's just so damn cheap.

Yep. You know, whatever they make. And they have the asset. They have the land area. They have money. Yeah. No, I agree with that. We need to really think more.

And this is something I would like to learn from you as well on an energy transition on what we need to do in the region, given that the energy consumption now is like exponential. And even if there's a new AI model that is more power efficient and so on, I mean, there are global population, a lot of people, the vast majority of people, they don't deploy the AI yet. And it's kind of like the first time when people have the Internet. The vast majority of the population didn't get access to the Internet, but now, say, almost everybody is on the Internet. So it's going to be the same as AI. So we need to, I would like to know, learn from you what we need to do as a region to. get, you know, to the transition.

Well, you know, I've been saying the technology is there for energy transition purposes, but the money's not there. In terms of the affordability, whatever technology is available, it's at this level. The affordability is here. Yeah. Big gap, right? And to acquire that technology, it's not cheap either. And if you take look at the capital formation in Southeast Asia, money supply to

GDP ratios, they're all suboptimal, with the exception of some countries, but the large-scale countries like Philippines and Indonesia, money supply to GDP ratios are way less than 100%. Indonesia is at 45%, Philippines at 80%. This, I think, is reflected on how difficult it is to recycle capital within the capital markets. The pipeline is full of things. that don't exit, you know. You know, just recently in the last year, the capital markets in Malaysia are just killing it. Much better than that in Indonesia,

even better than that in Singapore. And it's all, I think, to some extent, a function of how much money you have locally. If you don't have money locally, then you've got to get money overseas. How do we get money from FDI? Well, it goes back to your mantra, right? Rule of law, political stability, and education.

But it's all about directionality. It's not about, you know, whether or not this is good today. But if it's better tomorrow than today, if it's better day after tomorrow than tomorrow, if it's better next week than day after tomorrow, then I think the thinking of the investing community will be quite favorable. But again, going back to that Southeast Asia being at the periphery of global consciousness, there needs to be much more robust storytelling. Agreed. I think. I want to ask you about crypto, because I hold a slightly different view, particularly with respect to Bitcoin.

And this is on three attributes. The first is somewhat philosophical. It just seems to be a logical intersection between what travels over time. and what travels over space. Over time, gold, over space, impressive button, it moves from one end to one point to another. Second is technological. It's never required a CEO

ever since the white paper came out in 2009. Masa yuishi. Satoshi Nakamoto, right? And the third is the finite nature of supplying. Yeah. And at the rate that the supply is finite, with an intuition, the intrinsic value per unit should be well preserved. And this, I think, goes against the fact that in the last few decades, we've seen overly massive quantitative easing.

And that, I think, is troubling. It has inflated economic activities unnecessarily. aside from all the other cryptos, but if I take a look at Bitcoin, it seems to fit the bill. I think Bitcoin is one of the early ones, as you know, from the technology perspective, VC perspective.

What I don't like about the overall cryptocurrency was because it's from speculation, and people thought they could launch any kind of at one point they could launch any coin, like Doge coin, whatever coin, and then manipulate the market, you know, drain someone else's savings and whatnot that coming from, you know, the underground market. I do not like that aspect of it. Okay.

There are a lot of companies try to pitch me using some form. I'm not pitching you, by the way. But maybe we can do this together in a right way. I would be in that venture, by the way, if doing it with you. So there was some company pitching me a few years ago. And if you remember, a few years ago, Venezuela failed as a country, democracy. Right. So I told the startup company that instead of trying to do any other coin and create more speculation and consume,

like mining and electricity and power. If you can use cryptocurrency to solve macroeconomics problem, the failure of macro problem in Venezuela, imagine if you grew up in that country, you have all savings in local currency. And then when you are retired, everything is gone. Hyperinflation.

the country basically went bankrupt. If we can use this kind of like third, you call third party, third currency, to secure, right, be the backbone of those kind of, and in those kind of environment, I would invest. That would be a good use, right, of market failure to solve market failure problem. It's just that the way it has been used in so many,

companies in Silicon Valley. It's kind of like a wrong purpose. Bitcoin is not actually one of them. Yeah. Okay. Stable coin. I mean, Ethereum. I mean, there are only a few pockets of them, right?

That did not involve, you mean, largely did not involve in those kind of speculation activities. Interestingly, as you mentioned, these years, starting last year, the cryptocurrency industry started to pick back up. To the level that the policymakers in different countries thought about this. But to me, it is still unclear why we need it. I'm talking about stable countries, not like Venezuela, which I think that can be good use cases, and I would love to see the implementation there.

El Salvador. Or sale, yes. They've basically adopted it as legal currency. Yes. A Bitcoin. Yeah, because it's, you know, trying to solve the market failure problem. And I think it's a great idea, by the way. Or, you know, currency fluctuation, like in Argentina, you know, one day is up, one days down, one day is, it's just like so hard to manage.

This can be a good instrument. Yeah. But in a vast majority of cases, I would like to dig a little bit deeper in a stable country, like in our region. We don't have, honestly, we don't have hyperinflation like in Latin America. Yeah. I mean, it's a good thing. We used to in the late 90s. That kind of like, 1997 when we started a podcast.

I was there. I was there too. So anyways, yeah. So I think we have to think we have to think a little. bit harder. I think it serves the purpose of store of value. It serves to some extent the purpose of medium of exchange. Yeah.

But it's not to the level where you can actually buy shampoo easily using Bitcoin. Yeah. But, you know, if we take a look at the current government in the U.S., they're mulling over the adoption of it for the strategic currency, right? strategic reserve. I think it seems to resonate at the rate that the fiat has gotten carried away with printing too much. And that I think is correlated with the inflating of the economy.

I mean, you know, when I went to university in the 80s, you know, it would cost a lot cheaper than how much I'm paying for my daughter's education, my kids' education, right? And I think to some extent that's got to do with quantitative easing, you know, the application of interest rate and all that. Yeah. So. Yep. You can argue also that it created diversity. So you don't pay just only, you know, on a large currency like U.S. dollars and whatnot.

Right. So you have, we have more diversity in the region. Yeah. I mean, if you take a look at the global asset classes, right, I mean, real estate is what, valued at above 300. trillion dollars and fixed income at about 140, 150 trillion dollars. Equities, 130, 140 trillions. Gold, probably 10 trillions. Bitcoin is only two trillions. It's so small. If I take look at these asset classes, I think real estate is exposed. It's due for correction. Well, that's why Asian economy crisis start from real estate. And the next asset class,

just fix income, I think that's bloated. Yeah. Because of the printing of money, right? I think what's got room to grow is equities, because that's propelled by increasing productivity on the back of AI. So if I take a look at these asset classes, I think the ones that have room to grow would be equities in crypto or Bitcoin. I'm not sure about gold because gold, you can only dig the ground at a certain rate.

And it's never gone up. You know, the supply side has only grown about 1.4% per year, whereas money has grown at a rate of 14% per year for the last 60 years. So that explains the seemingly overvaluation of the fixed income, you know, asset class. I see your point. We've got to be careful. And then I'm in. For the good cause, I'm in. I'm just philosophically.

Yeah. You know. Anyway, any other message, cheap, for our listeners about the world, about Southeast Asia, about tech, about, you know, carbon neutrality or sustainability, anything? It's really a pleasure to be here. This is the first podcast that I do for Southeast Asia. I am very optimistic about our region. We are really in the right place at the right time. We have to work together.

And I would love to see the next generation build our region in a way that, you know, much, much better than my generation or your generation have built. Most importantly, I want us to work together like a one country, almost like an EU. And that's how we're going to win. You think that's possible? Not to the extent as EU, but I think it's possible that we tag team and take advantage of each other strengths and show this to the U.S. that we are capable.

And we have a lot of good assets and they should take a look at us. We are the epic center. We are not peripheral. One final question. How do you convince your friends anywhere outside Southeast Asia? that diversity within Southeast Asia plays to our strength as opposed to weakness. Because I don't know, I get the sense that when I talk to some people, the diversity of Southeast Asia could be disadvantageous as opposed to advantageous.

Meaning, you've got a country that earns less than $2,000 per capita per year, another one, $85,000. That's diversity. some people call it divergence right but should that play to our strength or to our weakness how do you how do you craft the story in that it serves more as a strength as opposed to weakness one C one South East Asia depends on what they want to do I would highlight I would start by highlighting competitive advantages of each country say if they want to do manufacturing, you know, like Nvidia, microprocessor, I would highlight

Malaysia and Thailand. They don't want access to the broad market with large population. I would highlight Indonesia. Philippines. And the Philippines, Vietnam. If they're looking for the financial market and the headquarter,

I would recommend Singapore. And then they use Singapore as a hub to travel to different countries because it's very easy, like an hour or two, and then you get to everywhere in Southeast Asia with direct flight. I think it depends on what they're looking at. If they're looking at listing, Singapore and Thailand, if they're looking at food and travel, now we have to argue which country is better. Guilty is charged.

Not Bali. No, you know, you go to the airports in Thailand, particularly Bangkok, the way they package the foods. Oh. It's just on a different planet. You know, and it tastes better, I think. I mean, you guys have taken... I'll take you off a dinner tonight. No, no, you guys have taken everybody else's lunch when it comes to agricultural products.

In agricultural products and, yeah, I mean, and tourism and whatnot. No, but... But the way I pitch is the same way that I pitch to my portfolio companies. Yeah. Why they should come to us instead of others. And this is how I pitch them. That simplifies the story. So that it allows them to just, you know, zoom in on, you know, which. Depending depending on what they're looking for. And I said, take a look at us. We can't force you. But we want to make sure we are the option. And we are very good option. Because when we are working with the investor and we have, you know, You know, you are also in a network, they will be taken care of. And that's how we got start.

Very good. Thank you so much, Jeep. Thank you. That was Jeep Klein from Racewell Adventures. Thank you. This is Endgame.