Tech in Asia Tour goes to Bangkok in search of the next rockstar startup

Bangkok is the fourth city Tech in Asia will be hitting in search of the next GrabTaxi or Xiaomi as part of our Tech in Asia Tour. Five startups will get the chance to pitch to a panel of highly esteemed investor judges, but only one will receive a free pass to fly down to our Tech in Asia Singapore conference on May 6 and 7.

First up on the panel is Moo Natavudh, founder and CEO of Ookbee and an angel investor. As the founder of Thailand’s biggest e-book store with market share of over 85 percent, Natavudh knows a thing or two about how to succeed locally, and he will certainly be keeping an eye out for it in the pitches. Next is Tom Kim, founding partner and CEO of Inspire Ventures, one of the few VC firms that is active in the Thai startup scene.

Then there’s Michael Lints, venture partner at Golden Gate Ventures, who once ran an IT business himself; and Kuo-Yi Lim, managing director of Monk’s Hill Ventures, that recently made its virgin investment in Singapore, and then Indonesia in quick succession.

Together, the four will open the session with a fireside chat discussing the finer points of running a startup and fundraising in the region, and will also offer their insights on each of the startups in the hot seat.

In case you’ve forgotten, here’s what the winner will receive: free flights and accommodation, conference passes, and an exhibition booth for two members at Tech in Asia Singapore 2015. The event will happen at Playspace @Pocket PlayLab on March 12 – be there or be square. More details below.

Registration

Location

Playspace @Pocket PlayLab
Bangkok 555/12-15 SSP Tower, Building 1, Floor 10, Sukhumvit Soi 63 (Ekamai). Khlong Tan Nuea, Wattana, Bangkok 10110

Agenda

6:30pm-7:00pm: Registration
7:00pm-7:05pm: Welcome by Tech in Asia
7:05pm-7:35pm: Fireside chat with investors
7:35pm-8:30pm: Pitches by 5 companies (5 mins pitch, 5 mins Q&A)
8:30pm-8:35pm: Peek into judges’ backstage discussion
8:35pm-8:45pm: Announcement and closing
8:45pm-9:30pm: Networking

Judges

Moo Natavudh, founder and CEO of Ookbee

Moo Natavudh is a tech entrepreneur with over 12 years experience in founding, funding and managing tech companies.

He is currently the founder and CEO of OOKBEE, Thailand’s biggest e-book store with market shares over 85 percent. OOKBEE’s two most popular apps are “AIS bookstore” and “B2S e-book store”. Since the launch, both apps have been in the top 5 Top Grossing iPad Apps in the Thai Apple AppStore everyday for the past 2 years. Besides these two apps OOKBEE has over 180 more apps on the App Store. OOKBEE now has over 4 million downloads and 3 million users and is adding more than 10,000 new users every day.

OOKBEE raised US$2 million in Sep 2012 from InVent (a venture capital arm of In Touch.)

Besides Ookbee, Natavudh is also the founder and CEO of IT WORKS, one of the leading software companies in Thailand. OOKBEE was started as a project in this company and was spun-off in March 2012.

Tom Kim, founding partner and CEO of Inspire Ventures

Tom Kim is a Founding Partner and the CEO of Inspire with responsibility for execution of Inspire’s ASEAN investment strategy including the private venture and public capital markets investment portfolios.

Previously, Kim was one of three Partners of Indochina Capital, a leading fund manager and property developer in the Indochina region, most notably Vietnam. Kim was the Firm’s Co-Chief Investment Officer responsible for directly managing over US$700 million in institutional funds invested in private and public equities markets.

Before relocating to Asia, Kim was an investment banker with the Goldman Sachs Group in New York. While at Goldman Sachs, he executed M&A transactions and new money issues totaling over USD 5.4 billion for healthcare clients and was a member of the internal team that executed Goldman Sachs’ historic US$33 billion IPO in 1999.

Tom holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota with accreditation from Georgetown University for two semesters working full-time in the Executive Office of the President in the White House.

Michael Lints, venture partner at Golden Gate Ventures

Michael Lints is Venture Partner at Golden Gate Ventures.Michael studied Management and Control of information science. After his graduation, he worked briefly as a consultant and project manager at one of the largest insurance companies in the Netherlands, after which he started his own IT business, an IT System Maintenance Company. In 2007, Lints founded his own venture fund focused on Dutch SME’s before joining Golden Gate Ventures as a venture partner.

Lints has had various positions on a societal and administrative level as a result of which he has been able to build an extensive international network. Lints is a former vice chairman of the Economic Development Board Rotterdam and studied Financial Analysis for Business Valuation at Harvard Business School.

Kuo-Yi Lim, managing director of Monk’s Hill Ventures

Kuo-Yi Lim was the CEO of Infocomm Investments, a $200M venture fund based in Singapore investing in technology startups globally. Prior to Infocomm, Lim has been a founder, early employee, mentor and angel investor of early-stage technology startups spanning the US and Asia. He was a senior sales executive at Encentuate (acquired by IBM) and Reputation Technologies (acquired by Security Sources), and co-founder of SportsHook, a sports-focused SaaS platform. Lim graduated from MIT with B.S., M.S., and PhD degrees in electrical engineering.