Nobody really understands Southeast Asia

Photo credit: Lukasz Saczek

Most people, when talking about approaching Southeast Asia as a market, will often go into unique tirades about how it should be attacked one or two countries at a time or that investors won’t touch companies unless they have a regional strategy. And more.

We’ve all heard the platitudes.

But I think most people don’t realize how drastic the differences are. The number of people who can name the key players in every ecosystem from Thailand to Singapore to Indonesia likely number under a hundred.

Experts on Southeast Asia are a rare breed.

Not even the top journalists and investors in Southeast Asia have a mastery over the region. They’ve got either niche knowledge or are still learning their craft and their domain. It’s a signal of how young the ecosystem is and how broad the undertaking is.

By contrast, in Silicon Valley, most of the activity centers in the Bay Area and most of it is well covered. Theoretically, it would take less time for a novice to get up to speed in the Mecca of tech. There’s simply more reading material already available and the zeitgeist is easy to access. Everybody knows who Mark Zuckerberg is and what Apple has done in the last few decades.

All of this underlines a rather intriguing insight into the so-called Southeast Asian startup ecosystem. If the investors and journalists, likely the most knowledgeable people in the ecosystem, don’t have a comprehensive understanding of the region, then we (including innocent readers, employees, and the larger community) likely are holding candles in the dark.

The ramifications for this are multifold:

• It’s hard to spot where the next trend is
• It’s hard to know who the winning companies are and what their business models are
• The people with the most knowledge are like kings and queens
• It’s hard to fully understand where each country is and how it is in relation to other countries
• Severe lack of data (although Tech In Asia and e27 both have their databases, they’re still catching up. And even though Techcrunch, Mattermark, and CB Insights are starting to track Asia, it’s just a start)
• All of this leads to a resounding point about Southeast Asia — it’s run by predominantly gossip and hearsay, with a pitter patter of news. The few funding announcements, breaking news, and investigative journalism that do make it to the public surface are just barely representative of an evolving whole.

So why am I saying this? It’s an important reflection to have when we’re examining our regional ecosystem. Don’t let the news and rumor cycle trick you into thinking you have a full picture of the ecosystem. Realize that there are plenty of stories under the surface.

It’s the wild west out here in Southeast Asia.