Asia still lacks Silicon Valley’s ‘pay it forward’ culture, says this VC

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Asia VC Cast hosted by Daniel Song where we publish the revised transcripts from the podcast’s interviews with inspiring entrepreneurs and experienced VCs. This is heavily revised from the show’s original transcript. For the full interview, go here.

Christopher Quek is the managing partner at Trive, an early-stage VC in Singapore that focuses on Southeast Asia. Having invested in over 13 startups, Quek is a fourth-generation serial entrepreneur-turned-VC. He has been regarded as a thought leader in the startup community, helping build communities and writing over 100 articles on Tech in Asia, e27, and Beam.

In my interview with him, Quek discusses Silicon Valley’s pay-it-forward culture, pitch decks, and potential investments.

How did you come to found Trive?

I would consider myself as a serial entrepreneur by profession. I’ve been doing startups for I think close to 20 years now. I enjoy the adrenaline in getting up every day to build a new company and trying to get it up and running.

I became a VC by accident. Seven years ago, the government appointed the incubator I was involved with to start dishing out government grants of about US$100,000 per startup here in Singapore. Eventually, we got involved in the technology sector even though most of us didn’t know anything about tech at the time.

Then, we thought, “Hey, some of these companies are quite good. Maybe we could try to play the VC angle and do it at the early stage.” That’s how we founded Trive.

How do you think we can replicate Silicon Valley’s pay-it-forward culture in Asia?

We have two challenges that we need to address here in Asia. I think the first one is that many of the startup ecosystems are still very young. The second one is that a lot of Asians still believe that we should keep our knowledge to ourselves. We should be reserved in giving comments to each other and in helping each other out. We are a bit worried about fishing for and giving advice.

So, the pay-it-forward culture is not really within the Asian culture yet. But I feel that it’s starting to happen; we just need to give it a little bit more time. We just need to have more ecosystem champions who have exposure to the startup scene in the Bay Area. We just need to be more open and share, and you will be amazed by how this whole movement can become infectious and fun.

What would be your advice for pitching founders?

Basically, the success in pitching is not really about the technicalities, the science behind your solution, or how beautiful your deck is. It’s really about how you pitch.

When I judge pitches, I spend time observing the founder—the body language, tone, character, etc. I try to see whether the founder is committed, trustworthy, and lovable. I think that’s what I mean by the art of pitching: how a founder conveys their character and their trustworthiness to a VC.

So, what exactly do you look for as a VC?

I want to see a founder who’s energetic and has a strong sense of leadership and direction.

When it comes to the team, I do agree to a certain extent that it’s necessary to have a diverse group. But I don’t put too much focus on that because when a startup moves to series A, 30 to 50 percent of the original team would most likely have left.

Regarding the product, I’d like to see the entire thought process or research behind how the founder found their market.

What can we expect from Trive this year?