What’s next for the Philippine startup scene: a Q&A with Kickstart’s Minette Navarrete

Innovation is picking up in the Philippines, driven by startups offering digital products servicing both domestic and overseas clients. There have been startups in the country for well over a decade, yet the ecosystem got a significant boost starting in 2012, when institutional funds and local angel networks emerged. Fast forward to 2015, close to a hundred startups have received funding from investors and these startups are leading the way in innovation. In an interview with Tech in Asia, Minette Navarrete, president of incubator Kickstart Ventures, reflects on the milestones and what’s next for the Philippine startup scene.

Tech in Asia: Please briefly describe Kickstart, the role it plays in the Philippine startup scene, and the vision behind it.

Minette Navarrete: Kickstart is an early-stage digital investor and incubator and a 100-percent subsidiary of telecom firm Globe Telecom. Entering into our third year of operations, Kickstart invests in seed-stage to Series A digital startups, creating access to capital especially for early-stage innovation. Kickstart team members spend 40 to 50 percent of their time mentoring startup founders, and opening up their business networks to provide market access to affiliate companies in the Globe Telecom, Singtel, and Ayala Corporation circles. We have a portfolio of 19 digital startups in the e-lifestyle, ecommerce, SAAS, and social impact spaces.

We take our role as a startup community builder and thought leader seriously, the same way when we invest time, talent, and resources for our portfolio companies. Unlike typical corporate incubators and venture capital initiatives, there was no top-down instruction. Kickstart, at its heart, is a corporate hack: a way of breaking through protocol and bureaucracy to accelerate collaboration between enterprise and startups, and a platform to create the environment and the momentum for ecosystem-wide innovation.

Generally, what kinds of startups does the Kickstart team seek to incubate? What characteristics do you look for in founders you’d want to help?

Kickstart looks for startups whose idea or product falls in any of these categories: digital media businesses, digital technology innovations for traditional businesses, web and mobile platform plays, and disruptive business models.

In an ideal world, we would want a founder who’s a “T-shaped” individual with deep expertise in a specific team role but has multi-skilled capabilities; who’s results-oriented and data-driven; has grit and no ego.

What significant changes/developments have happened in the local startup scene since Kickstart’s launch in 2012? Where are we now?

When we started in March 2012, the local startup scene had lots of talent and passion, but not a lot of mentors with experience as well as capital for risk investing. Fast forward to 2015, we estimate that close to 100 startups have been funded or given grants by institutional investors in the last three years, with maybe the same number supported by the various angels who are supporting entrepreneurs in a private capacity. A number of these funded startups have received follow-on funding, and reputable investors from overseas have started to participate in these early funding rounds.

Where do you see the startup economy over the five-year horizon? What trends are we going to see? Do you see more real innovation happening?

The Philippine startup economy will evolve over time, and it is likely to go through the classic stages of group development proposed by Bruce Tuckman in the mid-1960s: forming, storming, norming, and performing. We’re in the beginning stages, somewhere between forming – when everyone is positive and trying to get to know each other and build community identity – and storming – where people have built enough familiarity and confidence to challenge each other and express differing positions and perspectives. We need to get through these early stages in a constructive manner to evolve community norms – standards of quality and excellence, a sense of right and wrong, good practice and bad behavior – in order to eventually become a high-performing startup ecosystem.

Some groups and communities get caught up in the personality politics and don’t manage to break out of the storming phase, which is a pity because they don’t get to peak performance potential. It’s a risk because in early stages, there is avoidance of conflict on one hand, so people don’t ask tough questions or call out bad behavior, and on the other hand there are personal and tribal affiliations that mar objectivity.

That being said, the opportunity for the Philippines is to leverage what we’ve got: pockets of innovation cropping up in different cities; local angels and startup-friendly businesses; diverse talents and personalities; and a natural gregariousness helped along by social media! Because the startup ecosystem is new relative to other industries, and because the community members come from such varied backgrounds, there is no way it’s always been done. We have a real opportunity to create a new, high-performance culture here. If we can do that, we can get real innovation originating in the Philippines, and expanding to the rest of the world.