The growing Lazada mafia

What do YouTube, Tesla, and LinkedIn have in common?

All of them were founded by members of the so-called PayPal mafia, alumni of the payments firm that have gone on to start or back superstar companies. There’s also the Google mafia, who – though not as tightly knit – may be just as influential. These ex-Googlers occupy high-level positions at large tech companies, and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, is arguably the most well-known of the group.

As Southeast Asia’s tech landscape matures, scoring exits and billion-dollar company valuations, it appears that the region has churned out its version of the Valley mafias – Lazada executives and managers who’ve hung up their badges to venture out on their own or take C-suite roles at startups.

While the trend began a few years ago, it became evident after Chinese behemoth Alibaba acquired control of the ecommerce firm in 2016, and upped its stake to over 83% a year later.

“We went on our own earlier than many ex-Lazada folks,” says Loic Gautier, who established Vietnamese premium ecommerce site Leflair after leaving Lazada in 2015.

“A lot of them started only in the last two years when Lazada investors exited, and some of those guys were pushed out or they didn’t like the new management so they decided to do their own thing,” he tells Tech in Asia.

Former Lazada boss Max Bittner spent a bit of time figuring out what to do after departing the groundbreaking ecommerce startup he helped build. “I was still fairly young and full of passion and excitement for what I do,” he shared in a previous interview with Tech in Asia.

Bittner took the helm at French pre-owned luxury marketplace Vestiaire Collective in November 2018, a few months after being replaced by Alibaba co-founder Lucy Peng as Lazada CEO.

It wasn’t a question of whether to do another startup or take a position at an established firm, he says, but finding the right kind of opportunity. And that’s what he saw in Vestiaire.

It’s uncertain if Bittner has unloaded his Lazada shares, but he’s dabbled in angel investing, participating in recent deals like Vestiaire’s series F round and Hong Kong-based Easyship’s series A.

Many of Bittner’s former colleagues have taken the other route – starting companies from scratch. This comes as no surprise as a lot of them stumbled upon their business concepts after seeing real pain points while working at Lazada.

For instance, Easyship co-founders Tommaso Tamburnotti and Augustin Ceyrac had their eureka moment while setting up Lazada’s cross-border business. It was there that the duo witnessed the difficulties small merchants typically face when trying to get their goods from one country to another. So they developed a service that pools together shipment volume from Southeast Asian merchants to avail of discounted rates from shippers, who would otherwise just cater to enterprise clients.

It was the same story for Christopher Beselin, who got Intrepid off the ground. Spun out of Fram, a venture builder that he had also set up, Intrepid helps retailers go online and optimize their presence on ecommerce marketplaces. In a 2018 interview, Beselin recalled how the concept came from his days working as CEO of Lazada Vietnam, where he noticed retailers struggling with online sales.

Taking stock of the good and bad

The perks of being in the network

Aspire

Capssion

Crea

Easyship

Intrepid

Leflair

Pomelo

Prinzio/Gogoprint