This Stanford grad is one of the few female VCs in Southeast Asia

Remember when Venturra Capital launched last year? The venture fund’s team looked like this:

Venturra Capital managing partners John Riady (left), Rudy Ramawy (middle), and Stefan Jung (right)

Scratch that image from your mind. The US$150 million startup fund is now led by a team of four. The new partner is Plern Tee Suraphongchai.

New partner at Venturra: Plern Tee Suraphongchai (second from left).

The addition to Venturra’s leadership team is noteworthy for two reasons. First, Venturra positions itself as a Southeast Asian fund, but up until now the partners’ closest professional ties have been in Indonesia. Tee is from Thailand and as such brings in a fresh network. Her appointment strengthens the fund’s regional ambition. Tee says she will likely split her time evenly between Indonesia, Thailand, and other parts of Southeast Asia in her new role.

Second, she’s one of the few female VCs in the region. Given the lack of reliable data I can base this assumption only on personal observation. A recent study in the US confirmed that there, the venture capital industry indeed struggles with a glaring gender imbalance. It also found that 10 percent of the handful of women who do become VCs went to Stanford – which, coincidentally, is where Tee got her business degree.

Silicon Valley bug

She grew up in Bangkok but left the city when she was 12 to go to boarding school in the US. That part of her upbringing had a big influence on her, and she later returned to study at Stanford Business School. Situated right at the epicenter of US tech innovation, it was impossible for Tee not to catch the Silicon Valley bug. When she returned to Bangkok in 2011, she wanted to do something tech-related. But it was too early.

You can do ecommerce, but expect to sit in a room in the back by yourself for the next three years.

She took what was available, a job she had previously had at a big retail company. She wanted them to consider ecommerce, but was rejected. “They said something like, sure you can do ecommerce, but expect to sit in a room in the back by yourself for the next three years,” she laughs. “The infrastructure wasn’t ready.”

Tee kept her feelers out and attended tech-related events. “I went to conferences like Tech in Asia and Echelon and started talking to people. That’s how I met Adrian Vanzyl,” she recalls. Adrian is the CEO of Thailand-based venture capital firm Ardent Capital. This meeting led to a job offer. She worked with Ardent for two and a half years before joining Venturra.

“I didn’t expect to become an investor,” Tee says. “They wanted me in an operational role, but I ended up helping Adrian on the investing side. First I drove the fundraising process for aCommerce [one of Ardent Capital’s companies]. I met investors across the region. Being on this side of the table I learned a lot, I saw how investors approach the due diligence process. At the same time I had startups pitching to me so I also got the other perspective,” she says. Soon after, she found herself leading Ardent Ventures, Ardent Capital’s early-stage fund.

Getting into the later stages

During this period, she met Stefan Jung on several occasion. Before he became part of Venturra, he was one of the partners at Monk’s Hill Ventures. She was intrigued to learn about the formation of Venturra and the opportunity to get on board.

She describes her personal investing style as founder-focused, seeking founders who are passionate about building.

Window of opportunity