Are SEA’s leading VC funds truly winning?

IN FOCUS

In today’s newsletter, we look at:

• These VC funds lead SEA, but are they truly winning?
• AI agent pitches to – and then wins funding from – a VC firm

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Hi there,

Are geniuses born or made? This is something me and my friends and family often talk about when we get into a few drinks. In a recent round of discussions, we touched on Lazlo Polgar.

The Hungarian educator set out to settle the debate about whether geniuses can be raised. His experiment showed that you could.

At a young age, Polgar’s three daughters were trained in chess. All of them became masters, with the youngest, Judit, achieving grandmaster status at 15.

I was reminded of this as I was writing our Big Story this week: These VC funds lead SEA, but are they truly winning? The piece looks at VC funds focused on investing in Southeast Asia that have achieved a higher internal rate of return than others we found through publicly available data.

I learned that while some VCs go for the tried-and-tested verticals like ecommerce and fintech, others try to invest in more cutting-edge technologies and still manage to see good returns.

Like Polgar, these VCs nurtured their funds with the belief that with a strong investment philosophy, they would deliver the returns they aimed for. However, unlike Polgar, not all of them built winners. You have to read the rest of the story to find out why.

As for this week’s Hot Take, my colleague Collin explores the potential red flags when VC firms let AI agents do the fundraising for startups.

– Elyssa

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BIG STORY

These VC funds lead SEA, but are they truly winning?

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Hot Take

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Deep Reads

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Emerging News

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