How a bootstrapped media company became 500 Startups’ first investment in Cambodia

Vichet In (middle), and his brothers Visal (L) and Vichea (R). Image credit: Khmerload.

“Often, you come across entrepreneurs who have no traction, no market position, and are asking for a lot,” Khailee Ng, partner at VC firm 500 Startups, told me recently.

Khailee, whose appearances at tech conferences in Southeast Asia have become famous, is known for not mincing words.

When Vichet In from Cambodia dropped him a message on Facebook a few weeks ago, Khailee saw this was a different story.

Vichet pitched Khmerload, a media company he’d been working on with his brothers Vichea and Visal since 2011. Without venture capital, the site had grown to rank among the most popular in Cambodia.

“I messaged him that we have a good startup, that it could possibly get to one billion page views,” Vichet recalls.

Within days of that first contact, they struck a US$200,000 deal. Khmerload became 500 Startups’ first Cambodian investment. The Silicon Valley-based VC firm has backed dozens of Southeast Asian startups since 2012, but Cambodia just hadn’t posed the right opportunity.

“What they achieved on a lean budget can only be magnified by additional venture capital investment. It’s not very often you come across this,” says Khailee.

Here’s a couple of things Khmerload got right.

Sense the opportunity

The startup officially dates back to 2011, but its story really begins one year earlier.

Vichet, together with his two brothers Visal and Vichea, and his sister Mayan, started their first online business – an ecommerce site called Little Fashion. They didn’t know this from the start, but growing both businesses in parallel would lead to synergies.

We did all sorts of things to get sales.

Vichet says he was searching for a gift for his girlfriend when he came across a wholesale retailer in China. He quickly did the math. If he ordered a minimum of 20 pieces, and sold the other pieces in Cambodia, he could turn a small profit.

It worked. “First we sold on Facebook, then our own website, then we had our first physical showroom,” Vichet says. As the orders got bigger, Little Fashion started stocking some of the most popular items so that delivery could be quicker.

Serving customers better

Playing two games at once

Making money

How to land a top VC

What’s coming