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In the event you comply with Southeast Asia funding, you’re in all probability accustomed to iSeed SEA. A number of the startups the fund has invested in because it launched in 2020 embody Dat Bike, Skuad and Upmesh. What you may not know, nevertheless, is that iSeed SEA is a solo GP fund. Now that solo GP, AngelList alum Wing Vasiksiri, is again with a brand new fund, referred to as WV Fund II.
The second fund brings Wing Vasiksiri’s complete property below administration to $14 million. The core thesis of iSeed SEA and WV Fund II is to shut the hole between Southeast Asia and Silicon Valley, since most of Vasiksiri’s community and lots of of his LPs are within the U.S. This implies investing in seed-stage startups from a variety of sectors, and introducing them to LPs or operators within the U.S., or bringing them onboard as co-investors.
Vasiksiri usually writes checks between $100,000 to $500,000, relying on whether or not he’s the lead investor or not, and the valuation stage of an organization.
The 30 startups in Vasiksiri’s portfolio have raised a mixed complete of over $85 million in follow-on funding from a who’s who of buyers, together with Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, AlphaJWC, AC Ventures, East Ventures, Jungle Ventures, Openspace Ventures, Monks Hill Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures and MDI Ventures. Some examples of his investments embody Humble, HD, Digital Internships, Mio, Delos, Staffinc, Rukita and TCC.
Buyers in Vasiksiri’s second fund embody institutional LPs equivalent to Republic Capital, EGR Companions (Elisabeth de Rothschild’s household workplace), Kamco Make investments and Central Pattana. Particular person LPs embody Duo founder and CEO Dug Music, Albert Wenger and USV managing associate Susan Danziger, Doordash and Sq. govt Gokul Rajaram, former Airbnb China COO Kum Hong Siew and operators from Dropbox, Discord and Github.
The solo GP mannequin is new to Southeast Asia, however has gained traction in Europe and the U.S., the place Elad Gill, Lachy Groom and Josh Buckley are examples of buyers operating funds on their very own.
Vasiksiri informed TechCrunch that solo GP funds first began within the U.S. with angel buyers who have been getting allocations to good offers and proprietary networks, and wished to institutionalize their investing. So that they raised capital from different sources to speculate at a bigger scale.
Earlier than launching his personal funds, Vasiksiri labored in operations at AngelList, the place he acquired near AngelList India founder Utsav Somani, who now serves as certainly one of his advisors and is the founding father of micro-fund iSeed. The 2 thought of launching AngelList Southeast Asia, however then the pandemic acquired in the best way of their plans. They continued speaking to buyers and founders, nevertheless, and acquired enthusiastic about developments they have been seeing within the area. These included a comparatively excessive GDP per capita, a rising center class and extra individuals coming on-line. The primary era of startups have been going public, together with Seize and Bukalapak, and the issue of downstream capital was being solved by funds like Tiger.
Vasiksiri mentioned advantages of a solo GP fund embody velocity and transparency since he’s the one determination maker and may decide to a spherical inside days, and even hours.
“There are each execs and cons to this mannequin, however I feel the most important professional is the form of your relationships with founders is drastically completely different when the connection is fully with you. There’s no sort of hierarchy to it,” he mentioned. “You concentrate on a conventional fund, what a founder does is speak to the analyst, the top-tier affiliate, possibly speak to a associate after which they speak to ICs or GPs. Oftentimes, the founder is telling the identical story.”
With a solo GP fund, nevertheless, the GP performs all these roles. “You may dig deeper, you may actually construct up extra of an genuine, real relationship with the founder by spending extra time with them. I feel it eliminates the principal/agent drawback fully.”
One other profit is {that a} solo GP can relate to the experiences of founders. “I contemplate myself a founder, too, simply as an alternative of beginning an organization, I began a fund. I feel having that top empathy for the entrepreneur journey, pondering by means of related issues and understanding how laborious it’s to be a brand new entrant competing with incumbents on this area.”
Being a solo GP can be useful when working with different buyers as a result of Vasiksiri isn’t preventing to get excessive allocations and he doesn’t have possession necessities. This lets him collaborate as an alternative of compete with different funds. “As you scale up your fund, your collaborators and opponents change at each stage of them sport,” he mentioned. “I feel remaining disciplined and small, this fund measurement permits me to do issues like brazenly share offers, keep away from adversarial choice from different funds, and construct off different relationships in a win-win approach.”
Vasiksiri focuses on Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia as his core markets, and in addition appears to be like for alternatives within the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Vasiksiri is sector agnostic, and as an alternative appears to be like at massive contributors to GDP in every nation. For instance, this embody agriculture and aquaculture in Indonesia, so Vasiksiri invests in firms like Delos, a startup growing sensors and different tech to assist shrimp farmers enhance their yields.
Different areas he’s taken with embody fintech, notably funds and infrastructure, and gaming. “I feel Southeast Asia is uniquely positioned for both an enormous sport writer or a sport developer to emerge,” he mentioned. “There are a variety of customers right here, particularly with cellular video games, and a variety of gamers are situated in Thailand, the Philippines, a variety of artistic expertise as effectively.” Local weather tech can be one other essential sector, since Southeast Asia is anticipated to turn into a web importer of pure fuel by 2025, and must transition to inexperienced vitality.
Whereas there are solely a handful of solo GPs in Southeast Asia, Vasiksiri expects extra to emerge because the ecosystem matures, particularly as founders of profitable startups turn into angel buyers.
“I feel a supply of solo GPs may emerge it turns into extra institutionalized, from writing private checks to elevating funds,” he mentioned. “That is the primary era of solo GPs right here and I consider because the ecosystem matures, we’ll see much more.”
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