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Kaya Founders managing partner Paulo Campos recently sat down with colleagues Ray Alimurung (Kaya Founders), Andre Yap (Ignite House of Innovation and 100XVC.IO) and Christina Björnström (Nooroot AI and 100XVC.IO) to discuss the state of the country's startup ecosystem, why Fortune 500 companies are relocating Asian headquarters to Manila, and their plan to build the next great generation of Filipino startups. #EsquirePHVideo #EsquirePHInterview
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00:04Hi guys, great to be with you all this afternoon. I know on the Kaya Founders side we're very
00:09excited to be welcoming Andre and Christina of Ignite House with us so perhaps we could
00:14get the conversation going and I'll throw it first to Ray, my partner at Kaya Founders of
00:18course. Ray, to Kaya and Ignite, our relationship has been one that has been a very active one in
00:26the last few years. Perhaps you could take us back to the beginning of our partnership and how
00:31we first met Andre and later Christina and take us back in time to the beginnings of the Kaya and
00:37Ignite partnership. So that's an interesting question Paolo now so when I mention to people
00:41that I'm in venture capital in the Philippines people tell me venture capital isn't that kind
00:47of early right to which I say well if it's early then it's great right because I would hate to
00:53be
00:53late to the party and yes Philippines is early when you look at global venture capital over
00:59the last 10 years probably around three and a half three three and a half trillion dollars has gone
01:05from VCs into startups and of that massive number I can't even I can't even imagine what that number
01:13looks like probably five percent of that is coming to Southeast Asia and within that Southeast Asia
01:19number only about 10 percent has gone into the Philippines so that's about under 10 billion
01:24dollars right that's gone into Philippine startups over the last 10 years that's a long time right
01:30but what this tells you is that there's a lot of opportunity in the Philippines right that means
01:35that the Philippines is potentially voiced for explosive growth right there are entire industries in the
01:42Philippines that have yet to be disrupted or affected by technology into the Philippines that we are making
01:49with both Kaya and Ignite I'll just talk about a couple things that happen so right around I would say
01:57towards the end of 2023 I started getting text messages from people in my social circle etc saying things
02:07like you know Christina what do you think is going on because these fortune 100 fortune 500 companies that
02:17for right now have their Asian headquarters or let's say eastern hemisphere or side of the world
02:25headquarters in China Hong Kong Singapore etc I'm not allowed to say anything but they are shifting to
02:35Manila they're going to Clark etc and I started to get hear noise about this I'm like what's going on
02:43because a lot of times when people see things in the news you're seven years behind what's actually
02:48happening on the ground so I started to pay attention to what's happening so that's one thing right
02:56but in the context of when we say Y Combinator Techstars for those that don't know those are the
03:03creme de la creme when it comes to top startup incubators accelerators on the planet etc
03:10and what I realized there is that well it'd be super interesting to have that type of an experience
03:20I would say in Southeast Asia where we're seeing a lot of activity massive growth a lot of things
03:26that people are not going to find out about until a couple years later the other trend that I saw
03:32there
03:32is the fact that well here you guys understand the market so there's a massive difference there are
03:40things that are done differently Kaya and Ignite went to Naga it was a three-day affair it was very
03:47well
03:47organized Ignite was spearheading the visit collaborating with some of the local startup
03:56ecosystem stakeholders in Naga and we were fortunate to meet we were the pleasure of meeting Mayor Lenny
04:04Mayor Lenny Robredo pretty progressive and forward thinking in terms of technology and startups but we
04:12also got to meet the Naga business community the founders the mentors and the technology incubators in
04:22Naga so we we got we got the full lay of the land when we were there we were pleasantly
04:27surprised and
04:28amazed to meet fantastic founders right founders who already have significant traction running technology
04:37startups that actually are national in impact they're not just some local uh becol or not Naga or even becol
04:45operation as well as we met other founders with fantastic ideas in problem solving but very
04:52deep and mature kind of thinking and so what this tells what this told me is that there is a
04:58lot of
04:59potential outside Metro Manila in the Philippines uh in Naga particularly in becol but again in other cities
05:06um and maybe i'll end the this section around the context of the opportunity we collectively see the four
05:13of us uh you know really addressing the question around where do you see the biggest gap today between capital
05:20and real and real problem solving in the country um perhaps Ray you want to take a stab
05:25I'll kick it off and then pass it to Andre
05:29for me the biggest gap really is that there just simply isn't enough capital going into
05:36the the problem solvers that are startups there is capital going into other types of problem solving but
05:43not into this uh this entity we call a startup right and really what is a startup a startup is
05:49a small
05:49business with an intent to scale it's very different from an MSME it's uh it's just coming in with
05:57a totally different mindset on problem solving and it typically uses technology uh to to leverage
06:05uh its solutions uh and to be able to scale without necessarily increasing costs proportionally right
06:11and there just isn't enough I talked about the 10 billion uh or so over the last 10 years that's
06:17gone into philippine startups from vcs but really how much uh what we call dry powder or investable capital
06:24is existing today focused on philippines there is about five or six philippine focused venture capital
06:31firms and then you have the funding that comes from the government which is either the NDC startup
06:38venture fund the DOST the DTI the ICP you put that all together and this is really roughly only about
06:44100 million dollars available that is a very small amount to go into problem solving in all the nascent
06:53industries I mentioned and so I to me that's that's the biggest gap right there but uh Andre in 2024
06:59for
06:59example so I was going to say I don't think it's a lack of capital right in 2024 um through
07:06ignite and
07:07our shareholders we invested in 10 startups right the average is about 200 300 000 us dollars some as
07:12much as 500 000 us dollars some as little as 100 000 us dollars um we would have invested more
07:22in 2025 which was last year certainly we look forward to deploying more capital this year
07:28those are puny amounts in the context of what's being invested uh elsewhere but my point is when
07:34you mention problem solving especially scale problem solving to me that's the biggest gap to me
07:41money is like the animal kingdom where the food is the animals will go where scale problem solvers are
07:49solving high quality scale problems their investors will go right i don't think capital
07:57is discriminatory in that sense and certainly this bears out in the ongoing um uh lp capital race that
08:05christina and i are are spearheading where first and foremost we're going to global sources of capital
08:11and um we're we're finding that especially in the early adopter segment those more more progressive
08:17investors especially those who are who built their own businesses and that's the source of their
08:22wealth the contrarian thinking is very much in the philippines and for the philippines it's not a
08:28question of oh it's not indonesia it's not singapore it's not even vietnam it's there are no shortage of
08:36scale problems to be solved in the philippines absolutely what we have a shortage of
08:43scale problem solvers so i go back to the quality and the caliber and the velocity of scale problem
08:49solving which happens to be the gap that we're very much focused on in 100x which is why we
08:57whether you like it or not we pulled kaya in right um uh because i i the first i think
09:06step to recognizing and attacking and overcoming that gap is to find other serious problem solvers
09:15and so all credit to kaya right um we've talked to uh we've obviously been exposed to peer vcs in
09:23the
09:23country and it was really with gaia that paula and ray in particular that we struck a chord about
09:28you know let's get serious about scale problem solving capital is not the problem it's in a sense let me
09:34be direct i'm talking about the quality of people we have that but the for example um there there's
09:44there's wishy-washy standards in terms of the the quality of first principles thinking when you're
09:50solving very big problems that are multi-layer that have complexity you have to be an incorrigible
09:56relentless maniac at first principles and we have very for poor first principle problem solving here
10:02and now that we recognize it and we're attacking these gaps mismo per se that's when we're finally
10:08getting uh somewhere and and seeing a full head of steam yeah so that's going to be one of the
10:14uh you
10:15know anyone who is familiar with your methodology you talk about the nuke so perhaps uh elucidate the
10:21nuke for us and what is it and by the way i i find myself asking the startups the nuke
10:26the nuke right
10:26they present to us and ray has already adopted your link here i hope so no main structure there
10:31well nuke is uh um spelled n-u-k-e okay which is a misnomer because the um it should
10:38be an acronym for
10:40narrowest viable use case yeah that allows you to address the most important problems of your most
10:45important customer so the first step for a startup to to create a beachhead remember remember startup
10:51by definition you're starting from nothing you're starting up from nothing yeah so you've got to be
10:56able to create a critical mass right you can't be like all over the place right to create critical mass
11:02you've got to find your most important customers not all customers again power love who are the 20 that
11:08will drive 80 of the usage the revenues focus on them focus on their power pains
11:14and address those that's what the nuke is right so to me you can't start building product and product
11:21market fit if you haven't figured out the new the second bucket so the way we attack that is first
11:26of
11:26all we go in cohorts we look for our 40 first principal founders we work in cohorts builders and
11:36investors 16 weeks week after week we're not learning nobody's teaching there's no curriculum
11:43there's no theory it's all live battlefields what are you working on and how are you progressing and
11:49navigating and getting stuck or getting unstuck along the 24 first principles how are you applying the power
11:55law or not applying the power law so and you're learning with and from each other yeah and you're doing
12:02that week after week 16 weeks straight what that does is it collapses feedback loops from three months
12:10six months to 12 months to weekly and it's not just feedback loops about what you're doing you're learning
12:16from the mistakes and uh and the right this is i often talk about you need to be able to
12:23generate a
12:24delta delta is change right before you came versus after right as a founder your delta the magnitude of your
12:31delta
12:31has to be at least 10x i think that's the key to 100x valuation you can't just be a little
12:35bit
12:36better than the status quo you're not talking about faster better cheaper you're talking about
12:40these are this is the most important problem of my most important customer and i just 10x their
12:45experience yeah right and if there's a lot of them there's your 100x valuation i mean to me that is
12:49that simple right yeah so i think we've 10x created a 10x delta in the experience of both founders and
12:58and and and investors because now you're not waiting six months and you can't afford six months
13:03in the era of ai yeah you can't because ai is making things possible weekly that used to take
13:12years yeah so if you're not figuring it out and getting feedbacks and learning how to figure it out
13:18on a weekly basis somebody else will and now they have the tools at their disposal and they need much
13:24less capital and they need much less time and they need much less people to make it happen there are
13:30things that you can take the market simply by doing things better yeah doing things correctly being the
13:40reliable trusted source being like so-called cutting edge in a way that would be almost impossible to
13:49achieve with let's say that level of i don't know effort capital etc in almost any other market so
13:57there's that and then when i and that's why i got so excited to meet andre because imagine that
14:03opportunity combined with basically like top great silicon valley level thinking and approach and then
14:13you're you're really approaching a eureka moment and the key here is not giving anyone any answers
14:19you know we've you've run cohorts into in 2025 you're looking to do a very exciting cohort which
14:26we'll speak more about this year take us under the hood of exactly how that the program will be
14:33structured and what founders can expect if they were to be interested in learning about the 100x program
14:39i'm not going to throw shade to any program but the difference in my opinion because i've been a
14:46mentor judge for a lot of these i would say eminent startup incubator accelerator programs in the world
14:53is that when andre says peer-to-peer learning to me that's very different from like in y combinator
15:02tech startup uh tech stars you enter a program and you get matched with domain expert
15:09mentors and the first session is about business modeling the next one is about fundraising and
15:14you have the managing partners directors of excel ventures sequoia etc chiming in on your financial
15:23projections etc etc whereas with andre and what we do at 100x is he gets to the very core of
15:31what is it
15:32that you're doing why does it matter how does it impact the customer so if you really care about
15:39that problem you do want to improve and identify ways to improve etc and and this is the biggest
15:46takeaway where when we work with the fellows speaking of delta the before after snapshot or change
15:54within a matter of weeks there's a visible and when i say visible in terms of numbers and traction and
16:02visibility etc and impact there's a massive difference delta before after working with one
16:10for that in a in a really short span of time through this process this framework they would refine
16:18while on stage they're thinking and they would go away completely i would say completely transformed
16:24i think that's some of the magic andre so you know back to my question right sorry what does a
16:29100
16:29day cycle in the 100x court really feel like right um so using technology in the process we'll come back
16:36to that so they will have the 24 cells which we've turned into a game board so there are 24
16:41cards
16:42uh virtually sorry very good point uh via google meets yeah um we take three founders more or less
16:49on average each week and where are you in the dashboard what are you building where are you getting
16:54stuck how are you getting yourself unstuck we critique the good the bad and the ugly in front of everyone
17:01obviously it's up to each individual's better judgment what they disclose and what they do not
17:07disclose in the interest of protecting you know proprietary stuff afterwards if you miss the
17:13session the synchronous session that week or if you happen to want to go to go back and review we
17:18have
17:19of course the uh full recording the ai uh minutes uh key takeaways uh action items all bullet pointed
17:28you're doing that week after week which collapses what's the alternative the delta is before us you're
17:35not building to 24 clear standards you're you're you're you're winging it most founders are winging
17:40making it up as you go they're making it up they're reading this article that article they're listening
17:45to you to you to me and all of us are talking about different things at different times on different
17:50stages yep they're winging it and now we've created that common standard 24 clear what the execution sequence
17:59is and um you're meeting about it week on week week to week uh you mentioned the 2026 cohort you
18:07mentioned you're looking to recruit these 50 fellows into the program uh take us through what's the next
18:13step what is uh i think first where does it all kick off next to the 100x expedition well we're
18:18doing
18:18an open house now ai will help us in shortlisting and analyzing and then we will interview every one of
18:24them to come up with our 50 when we have our 50 we will build invest with them 16 weeks
18:30week after week
18:31and then uh right now we are also um in the process of um it's a fascinating uh journey that
18:39we've been
18:40through or that we're going through which is bringing in global capital right talking to people
18:46who've been there done that in particular built their own big business right entrepreneurs and they're
18:52seeing um they're excited about the philippines and excited about the arbitrage the gap that we've
18:59zeroed in on which is there are scale problems all over the place any industry any vertical every layer
19:06of it anywhere you look in the philippines and the philippines as the first of emerging markets right
19:10the gap here is scale problem solvers yeah and we are attacking that gap everything we've spoken
19:18about in the last hour is attacking that gap yeah to them they codify it as the market opportunity is
19:25there there's a leadership gap yeah we'll come to the investment process andre because indeed you
19:30mentioned the culmination of the program yes indeed uh the participants potentially then being eligible or
19:37for funding either from ignite or from kaya so we'll come to that portion sorry let me clear
19:43go please ignite kaya yeah and or the 100x fund itself which you're we are we are you mentioned
19:49you're going around the world trying to probably like um for confidentiality purposes and stuff
19:56keep it um anonymized the entity but i do think it'd be good for us to talk about the most
20:03recent example
20:05uh other than the us deploying capital into these startups which as we just explained is
20:12of course the point of uh venture capital and then what we do as firms um in the ecosystem uh
20:19andre
20:19looking ahead to this year's expedition uh what would success really look like for you beyond the
20:26fact that we would get to deploy capital in some of these startups define success you know i think
20:31this is a very important question which is very stark uh for me at the beginning of 2025.
20:37right we definitely we want to be at the clip of 15 investable at the rate of 500 to a
20:44million
20:44dollars per year by 2027. to what extent can we get there in 2026 we'll see yeah but to me
20:52emphasis
20:53always first principle process yeah process process process process that's great news for the ecosystem
20:58andre i think those aspirations will you know that rising tide should lift all boats locally i'll ask
21:05the same question to you christine and i think your perspective um having engaging some of these
21:10potential investors who are interested in the philippines you know global perspective such as yourself
21:15looking outside in into our market uh you know for you with the context of those discussions in mind
21:22how do you see success for you know what uh 100x becomes in 2026 and beyond i'm all ears
21:30andre's also wants to know i have to be first dibs but not in this convoluted disorganized way
21:38in a highly process driven structured proven way so i see that as a super important component and it's
21:47actually why these global investors right now when i say global primarily from the best most ambitious
21:55hardest working problem solvers in the country slash slash region and support them ray i'll throw
22:02it to you christina sharing the global perspective her own and those of some of the investors she's
22:06spoken to around the world uh we're doing this also for to further our mission at kaya helping the
22:12philippines develop the next generation of transformative and generational companies
22:20how do you measure success from our perspective on the kaya side in supporting andre and christina
22:25and the fellows as part of the program and our overall mission on nation building and national
22:31development so the way i see it my vision for what kaya's building is that we transform the philippines
22:39from the current situation where startups seem like a novelty right we want to transform it into
22:48an environment where working at the startup invested by real money or real capital is actually a viable
22:57career option right and that when you graduate from college or even if you drop out which is common in
23:04the startup world the options of startups where you can work is uh is numerous it's not just choosing
23:11from four or five and hopefully we hear the college graduates starting to say different names of
23:19companies that they want to work for because as i recall for the last 20 years it seems to be
23:24always
23:25the same company yeah but everyone wants to work big companies big corporate and so actually transforming
23:30the philippines to a place where working at a startup and and also putting up a startup are real viable
23:37career options and that there are hundreds hopefully thousands of startups out there and that they're
23:44disrupting and improving and solving complex problems in every industry at every stage of that industry
23:50yeah i think that's the vision i'm looking for and that would be what success would look like for kaya
23:55and we hope that uh through our collaboration that we can level the playing field take the three
24:00five as you said ten year view of the journey um you know i think we all plan to be
24:05doing this
24:07in that you know for that length of time um what do you envision uh the impact of 100x will
24:14be in
24:14the philippines yeah uh you use some keywords there in just the last sentence which is
24:22we the four of us we the four of us plan to be doing this for a while that's right
24:27yes that built
24:29all the household names build certainly 100x type businesses that are now lords of the land right
24:37that was the next that was the last great generation of filipino startups they built pretty much from
24:44nothing i think we are in a very different context but presented with the same i think generational
24:51inflection point um given the kind of talent that that we represent that are starting to coalesce
24:58and really look at how do we enable scale problem solving because the scale problems are there
25:06it's not like that we're running out of scale problems that are eminently 100xable themselves
25:11right the problems are clear we just have to solve them the problems are no longer a mystery to me
25:17after 12 years doing this it's it's clear it's clear thank you christina andre ray i think it's been
25:24a great uh hour diving into your perspectives on the local ecosystem and the impact we hope to have
25:30running the 100x program with that thank you everyone thank you thanks
25:34thank you thank you
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