Growth is easy, distribution is hard

Welcome to Tech in Asia’s Sunday newsletter, your weekend brief on the biggest moves in Asia’s tech and startup world. Not on the mailing list? Register here. Got a story tip? Send it to editors@techinasia.com.

In focus

• Peter Cowan on the distribution pains facing startups today
• Meet the chips SEA firms want but can’t have
• A look a where China’s funding data is now and where it may go soon

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Hello reader,

“Build it, and they will come.” That mantra may work for fictional baseball parks in movies like Field of Dreams, but our top stories this week are a reminder why it doesn’t hold up in business.

Having a great product or soaring demand for your services isn’t enough – you need to get it into customers’ hands and hearts. In other words, growth might be easy, but distribution is hard.

Take my colleague Scott’s story on AI chip manufacturer Cerebras. The company makes GPUs that it says comfortably outperform those from rivals like Nvidia, but selling them to customers outside the US is tough thanks to export rules.

There’s a similar dynamic playing out for home services startups, as Samreen’s article explores. While startups in the space are seeing surging demand for things like on-demand cleaning and repair, scaling those services means solving a far messier problem: recruiting workers, maintaining quality, and earning enough trust for customers to let strangers into their homes.

Finally, Miguel’s exploration of Philippine digital bank Tonik’s financials shows that even in fintech, success depends on distribution. The company has reached cash-flow breakeven by focusing on lending rather than chasing user growth, but it still faces the challenge of getting credit into the hands of the right customers.

Not to get too meta, but journalism also faces big distribution challenges, and this newsletter is one of our ways of getting the stories that matter to you. Let’s dive in.

Peter Cowan, engagement editor

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Editor’s picks

1️⃣ Cerebras builds gigantic AI chips. Can SEA get its hands on them?

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Short cuts

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One visual story you shouldn’t miss

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Weekend deep dive

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Singapore’s fintech benchmark is rising.