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Willis Wee · · 4 min readCommentaries: We watch unicorns grow 📈🦄
Dear Readers,
Founders are an odd bunch. Trust me, I’ve met a lot of them and I’m possibly one of the weirdos. That’s why betting on the right founder can be tricky because there are so many different qualities to look out for.
Recently, a venture capitalist with a strong track record explained how he picks the founders he backs. He has three simple criteria:
- Integrity – You need to honor your word. If you agree to a certain valuation but that changes after you shopped around, then you’re out. And for obvious reasons, please do not fake or lie about your funding.
- Self-awareness – You need to know your strengths and weaknesses and surround yourself with people more capable than you. That’s easier said than done, though.
- Versatility – You should listen to others but also be determined (even stubborn at times). You need to be both a generalist and a specialist. You have to focus on the big picture, but you’re ready to get your hands dirty and execute when you have to (e.g., finance, product, sales, etc).
Do you agree? Let me know.
You can find last week’s Commentaries here. If you’re a TIA subscriber, you can read all our Commentaries here.
Enjoy!
– Willis, Tech in Asia
Stories with commentaries
1. We watch unicorns grow. 🦄
It’s interesting to look back at history. Over the years, we’ve covered some of the fastest-growing tech companies in Asia.
Sea, August 2009 – The company made its trade debut on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017. The listing made founder and CEO Forrest Li very wealthy.
This picture was taken on William (left) and Leon’s (right) first year building Tokopedia.com
Tokopedia, February 2011 – Fun fact: At series B, the Indonesian ecommerce player was valued at just US$7 million. Such a good buy in hindsight, of course.
Bukalapak, March 2011 – It started out as a bike-related online marketplace. Today, it’s on track to hit US$5 billion in gross merchandise volume for 2019. In this report, we explored what was next for the startup, which became a unicorn in 2018.
Traveloka, September 2012 – You can find a fun and illustrated history of Traveloka here.
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