After more than two decades of investing...
I believe we’ve found the next big hidden opportunity:


Most LPs exploring venture capital funds as an investment vehicle are concerned with media sentiment.

"Capital at risk"
"Growth at all costs"
"Long-term"

The numbers don't lie. If well managed, venture investing reaps very attractive ROI versus most other alternatives.

And, you won't even need to find the next unicorn to do that.

Today, sustainable, sticky growth is the holy grail for any investment office looking for longevity with attractive returns.

Some years ago my partner, Murli, and I started Tin Men Capital in pursuit of that.

Our fund's unique focus:
- B2B and Enterprise Tech Startups
- With a strong focus in Southeast Asia
- Who are in Series A stage and beyond

Our thesis:
SouthEast Asia's legacy industries are still largely undigitised.
B2B tech in large TAM > High-gross margins > Sticky recurring revenue > Quicker pathway to profitability

We've already proven that these ideas our sound with measured results from our inaugural fund.

Family offices and institutions that work with us appreciate our ethos in running the fund:

⚙️ DISCIPLINED DEAL-SOURCING : 
Carefully scrutinising every deal for the right valuations, founder mix, and expertise. No exceptions.

⚙️ HIGH-CONVICTION: 
We only invest in a handful of teams that apply. Sounds counterintuitive, but It's seeing above-market returns with below-average failure rates.

⚙️ EXPERIENCED B2B OPERATORS AT THE HELM: 
Murli and I bring collectively more than 40 years of experience in investing and management, having sat on boards and brokered large M&As. Our thoughts have also been featured on TechInAsia, Peak Magazine, and more.

Some of our portfolio companies:

🔵 Hubble (Series B)
Resource management platform for parties in the construction value chain to track and optimise processes

🔵  Zipline (Series A)
Australia's #1 workplace management platform for the aged care and health sectors

🔵  GlobalTix (Series A)
Software and marketplace software for tourism attraction operators and travel product distributors 

We’re always on the lookout for new partners and startups to join us.

If keen to chat, shoot me a DM/email or head over to our website to drop us a line.

Jeremy Tan

What no one tells you about running a VC fund (until you find out yourself).

People who’ve founded, or started, a VC fund know this:
It doesn’t just take a good investing team to run a fund.
You need an army of professional services firms to keep the clockwork going.

Most people see the obvious work.
 - Fundraising
 - Sourcing
 - Investing
 - Exiting

But there’s so much more running behind the scenes.

+ Capital calls
+ KYC / onboarding investors
+ Periodic reports to Limited Partners
+ Regulatory filings
+ Audit

None of these are optional.
If we want a well-functioning ecosystem, we need dependable service providers who can do these at a cost structure that makes sense.

However, that’s not we see today.
Come audit season, we’re still getting questions like:

“Why are your startups burning cash?”
“Can I have a DCF model for your investment?”

Audits are important. They’re a third-party opinion on how we value the portfolio.

But many auditors here are still (stubbornly?) looking at VC portfolios with a mature company lens.
And the pricing often follows: ~US$2k per year per company for a fair market valuation.

For VC funds (typically smaller than PE funds), that adds up fast and eats painfully into net returns.

It’s not sustainable. 
We’re in severe need of a step change in approach.

One bright spot for us has been working with good folks like those at Carta. (this is not a sponsored post 😅)

They’ve taken a tech-enabled approach to an archaic part of fund admin.

🔺 Capital call calculations done faster, with fewer errors.
🔺 Financial details available online, with enough granularity.
🔺 Onboarding, KYC, subscriptions, all in one platform.

To be clear, they’re not perfect.
Beyond the tech, the people we interface with…
They listen. They hear the pain points. 
And they keep iterating.

Eventually, investors should be able to access investment-level financials seamlessly, straight from source data.

If SEA wants a world-class VC ecosystem, the services layer around fund management, legal, accounting etc. has to keep evolving.

As it is right now, there is much room for improvement. 

For an aspiring financial hub of Southeast Asia, I don’t think this is too much to ask.

PS. If you know good individuals who are bright spots in the services layer of tech in SEA, do tag them in the comment section for visibility.

Backing brilliant B2B founders 🦓 in Southeast Asia | Co-founder at Tin Men Capital | Linkedin Top Voice

Chief of Staff at Docquity

A few things I believe:

- Velocity is everything. The faster you execute, the more you learn. Speed increases your interactions with reality.

- Small teams win. Fewer people mean faster decisions, fewer meetings, and no need for political fragmentation. No room for mediocrity.

- The only real limits are the laws of physics. “I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest of caution.” — Werner von Braun

There are two ways to reduce economic inequality:
- Lift the floor.
- Lower the ceiling.
I’d rather work on lifting the floor.

- Most problems come from not having found your life’s work yet. Once you do, most questions disappear.

- Fight entropy. A product that isn’t improving is degrading. It's always Day 1.

- Relentlessly add value to great people in my network.

- Take full ownership. No excuses, no passing the buck. End-to-end responsibility in everything I do.

- Default to trust. Approach problems with intellectual maturity. Give credit in public, criticize in private.

- Optimize for impact over status.

---

If you're interested in startups, I share insights from the frontlines every once in a while: https://viktor.substack.com.

---

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of my employer.

Viktor Kyosev

Anyone who has ever worked on a new product or inside a startup has felt the intense resistance of the world pushing back. This dynamic was captured quite well centuries ago by Machiavelli:

“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new…”

Later, the same idea was echoed by Isaac Asimov:

“I discovered, to my amazement, that all through history there had been resistance—bitter, exaggerated, last-ditch resistance—to every significant technological change… Usually the resistance came from those who stood to lose influence, status, or money as a result of the change—though it was always framed as concern for the good of humanity.”

And then Douglas Adams distilled the whole idea into these amusing technology rules:

"Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary.
 
Anything invented between fifteen and thirty-five is new, exciting, and you can probably build a career in it.

Anything invented after thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

This is the game we play.

Going against the “natural order” is hard. It attracts resistance, skepticism, and even outright hostility. But if you succeed, it’s also one of the most rewarding experiences you can have.

CPO at Docquity | Building at the intersection of AI and healthcare

Excited to visit one of my favorite cities, Tokyo, next week and share our learnings building AI across human and animal health.

A fun (and slightly painful) stat: our first Japan launch took 1,000+ localization iterations!

Turns out, “just translate it” is not a strategy...

Thank you Julie for all of your support 🙏

Last year, together with A'alda Ltd., a leading veterinary healthcare group in Japan, we helped launch "AnyMall Vets Ask AI" - an AI platform bringing real-time, reliable insights to veterinarians and pet owners across Japan’s growing pet health ecosystem. Powered by Docquity’s clinical AI, the platform supports better, more informed everyday pet care.

Next month, we take this collaboration a step further.

Docquity will join A’alda and Microsoft to host a closed-door roundtable in Japan, bringing together leading veterinarians, pet health innovators and AI experts to exchange perspectives and explore opportunities in a rapidly evolving animal health landscape.

At Docquity, we continue to focus on what we do best: enabling healthcare professionals and caregivers, across diverse care environments, with localized AI that improves decision quality and ultimately, patient outcomes.

Open article: Tokyo IPO targeted by Singapore's doctor-networking platform Docquity by asia.nikkei.com

Tokyo IPO targeted by Singapore's doctor-networking platform Docquity

I finally got my hands on "Breakneck" by Dan Wang, and so far I’m enjoying it quite a bit!

One story in the book that really stuck with me comes from Dan’s visit to a tech manufacturing factory just outside Shanghai. Over a cup of tea in the owner’s office, they talked about why the US struggled to ramp up production of basic PPE during COVID.

As Dan recounts it:

“American manufacturers constantly asked themselves whether making masks and cotton swabs was part of their ‘core competence.’ Most of them decided not.”

The manufacturer put down his teacup, looked at him, and said:

“Chinese companies decided that making money is their core competence. So they go and make masks, or whatever else the market needs.”

That line immediately reminded me of a conversation I once had with my Chinese Indonesian then-girlfriend, now wife. I asked her what she was passionate about.

“Money,” she said. “I’m passionate about making money.”

At the time, I thought she was joking.

Turns out, she was just being honest 🙃

Two things can be true at the same time:

1. The success of any organization is the result of the collective effort of the entire team.

2. The great man theory is real. In every organization, a small number of people exert a disproportionate influence on the trajectory of the business.

If you want to understand how clearly someone thinks, let them work on product.

It quickly becomes obvious whether they can communicate clearly, expand and compress context, see the big picture, and zoom into tactical execution.

The only role that demands comparable clarity is the founder role, which is why so many founders hold on to product for as long as they can.

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