Ask TIA: Is Southeast Asia today the China of 2005 and the India of 2010?

Hey Southeast Asia folks,

have you read this report published by Golden Gate Ventures last week? It comes to the conclusion – based on numbers! – that Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem is approximately at the stage of China’s ecosystem in 2005, and that of India in 2010.

One set of data they looked at is the number of Series A deals over the past 15 years. They then compared the growth curves of China, India and Southeast Asia. This is the corresponding graph from the report:

(I find this graph a little inconclusive, because it doesn’t even plot the 2015 projection)

But that aside – what do you think of this analysis?

I’ve heard the “timelag” theory before, and of course it makes common sense. Golden Gate now has some handy graphs to back it up. But what does it really mean that we’re “10 years behind China” or “5 years behind India”? And also, doesn’t this mean we’ll never catch up?

How does the calculation of the growth curve factor in population size, or other determining factors? Is it even fair to lump Southeast Asia into one entity, though the individual countries are so vastly different?

Overall, i wish the report got into more detail on the methodology and interpretation. What do you think?