Something new we tried for Season 3 of On Call with Insignia Ventures in 2021 was to go on call with more startup and venture investors, from angels to the Southeast Asia investment leads of global investment firms to the founding partners of VC firms in other emerging markets.

Are you looking to build a career backing unstoppable founders and building great companies in Southeast Asia? Send us an email to join the team at Insignia Ventures. 

On the other hand, if you’re looking to learn the ropes, grow your network and gain a track record of investing in Southeast Asia, Cohort 3 of Asia’s first experiential venture capital accelerator, Insignia Academy, is still accepting applications! 

In particular, we feature insights from:

1. Eric Acher, co-founder and managing partner of monashees, Brazil first venture capital firm
2. Rajive Keshup, previously venture backed entrepreneur and startup operator who became investment director at the global venture capital firm Cathay Innovation
3. Sanjay Zimmerman, career venture capitalist and principal at global VC firm White Star Capital
4. Mark Sng, previously part of the founding team at Go Ventures, now VP of Investments and Portfolio Management at Gentree, an early-stage VC fund focused on the Philippines launched by the family behind the SM Group
5. Mohammed Alabsi, ex-Amazon engineer, former Senior VP of Engineering at Bukalapak and now full-time startup advisor and angel investor
6. Andy Hwang, former GTM leader at Facebook for Asia, also ex-Google and Stripe, now full-time startup advisor and angel investor
7. JJ Chai, CEO and co-founder of Rainforest, and also an angel investor on the side

Throughout these conversations we not only got to see the perspectives of these investors on various markets and sectors, but also got a peek into their mindsets and approach when it comes to investing in startup founders and fast-growing tech companies.

In this podcast episode, we compiled their answers to two questions: “What are the top three traits / skills of a great VC / angel investor?” and “What’s your advice for aspiring VCs / angel investors?” and just like our compilation of founders’ fundraising advice, piece apart 5 key themes across their shared insights:

1. 01:42 Good investors invest in companies, but great investors work with and learn from founders.
2. 06:12 It’s not just about finding the best company but being the right investor for a company.
3. 07:29 There’s no one path, but the best paths build startup and founder exposure.
4. 10:28 Investing is an education in itself; it requires constantly opening up to what’s new.
5. 13:37 Great investors are grounded and driven by a clear understanding of motivation — why do you invest?

(1) Good investors invest in companies; great investors work with and learn from founders.

On Call with Insignia: What are the top three traits/skills of a great VC?

Eric: First is actually resilience and patience. The first cycle for any VC will take 10 years and you have to really want to do it and help entrepreneurs. And not really think about the rewards too soon. Of course, you can win the lottery. in two years, have an incredible exit, but it takes time. And so resilience and patience to go through good times and bad times are key.

Second I’d say it’s very important to have a collaborative approach to build lasting relationships with founders and always thinking about maximizing the long-term not maximizing the short term. It’s not being transactional, being collaborative. You may lose here and there in a short time, but it will really build the relationships and the reputation that you need in the long run as a VC and especially in Latin America, where traditionally financial investors had all the bargaining power and were never collaborative. That makes a big difference.

The last one is the ability to move fast, make decisions fast, identify patterns, make connections across many parallel channels. There’s a sea of information but you have to move fast and that’s very important.

Rajive: Empathy, objectivity when things are right and wrong. And a little bit about being a dreamer. I think you need to be overly optimistic, and a bonus one and maybe it’s just me is a bullshit meter, and being able to call out bullshit very quickly. Sometimes people will tell you, check out so-and-so company, it’s amazing, and then you look under the hood and not so much. and sometimes founders will say things on their deck that may or may not be accurate. So being able to detect that pretty quickly helps with time management.

Sanjay: Empathy, intellectual curiosity, and being a connector.

Mark: I think it’s always being eager to learn because honestly you’re only as good as the founders you meet. Being in VCs [involves] a lot of pattern matching, especially for someone like me with more of a finance background. I don’t claim to be a founder. I co-founded the one startup with my friend, it was more of a passion project. It was more of a fun thing we wanted to do; we hired devs for that and stuff. So that was really fun. But I’m not a founder. I think that’s one thing.

So I think the most key skill for me as a VC is having the ability to really have a good rapport with founders, because these are the guys that provide your returns to the fund. They’re the ones who are teaching you as well. They teach me a lot about the complexities of [running a] business as well, from their experience. And I want to be as supportive as possible, at least on the fundraising side, [and] really connect them to the right people to talk to. If I have networks through Gojek, say they need some product management support, [if I would] be able to connect them to the right people who could provide advice, I try to do that. For me, it’s all about being helpful. It’s all about being available to your founders, and it’s all about being eager to learn from them as well.

(2) It’s not just about finding the best company but being the right investor for a company.

On Call with Insignia: What are the top 3 Skills of an angel investor?

Andy: Long time horizon. Two, have good instincts. And then also to be focused on the areas that you know.

Mohammed: Evaluating founders, in my humble opinion, I would say is the most important thing, [Then] understanding and evaluating markets and possible product-market fit in the competitive landscape, that would be two. And then three [is] being able to provide value to the startups besides just cash.

(3) There’s no one path, but the best paths build startup experience and founder exposure.

On Call with Insignia: Advice for anyone looking to break into VC in Southeast Asia?

Rajive: I’d say there’s no one traditional path. There’s a bunch of paths that you can kind of go to. Any path where you’re doing a really good job in building a ton of founder respect and founder trust will get you there faster. And so whether it’s being a good product builder, whether it’s being a good go-to-market person, the salesperson, there’s been so many different careers that have sort of led to VC.

If I think about Peter at Sequoia, slightly a-traditional versus some of the other guys at Sequoia versus Yinglan versus a whole host of others, there have been so many different paths to get there, myself included. So I don’t think there’s one particular path. And so don’t try and hone in and find, if I check all these boxes, this is going to happen. Here I’m going to make a shameless plug for Insignia [Academy] and say, if they take your 12-week course you may have an elevated chance at doing it.

The other thing I will say, candidly is there’s actually been a democratization of capital and investment into startups. And so put your money where your mouth is. You want to do this? Go angel invest, 2k, 5k, 10k. Do a little bit of that and put a little bit of a portfolio together and see how it does. And if you really enjoy that process, then this may be cut out for you. And if you don’t, then maybe stick to whatever it is you were doing.

Mark: I guess there are two routes here, right? There’s the financial route, which is a bit harder these days. That means you join a VC firm as an analyst or intern analyst, and as you go up to associate, then VP thereafter. That’s one route, the other route is obviously to start a startup yourself. Get the experience. You can do VC at the start, do a start-up, and then come back in because then you get the operational [experience] and ability to understand how a company hyper-scales or how a company fails. You can provide that advice to founders as well. Those are the two typical routes that I typically see and actually, there are more. There are mid-career switches and stuff like that.

The easiest way obviously is, if you’re a fresh grad, is to naturally first get an internship or an analyst role in a VC fund. I think that’s super important, because it keeps your leg in, right. And then after, whether or not you stay all the way and grow within the organization or you go out and do a startup and then come back in, the path is up to you. You learn different things in different ways, but I think the startup route becomes one that allows you to provide additional insight, right? If you join a Corp Dev team of a very fast-growing startup or you join the product management team of a fast-growing startup, you learn a lot. That experience, when you make the jump out and come back in, probably helps a lot.

(4) Investing is an education in itself; it requires constantly opening up to what’s new.

On Call with Insignia: Any advice for tech operators out there who are looking to angel invest, especially here in Southeast Asia?

Andy: One of the first pieces of advice, and I try not to give too much advice a lot of time [because] that may be wrong, and I know for each of us, we have a different path, but I really am a believer that the best way to learn oftentimes is through doing. And so the analogy I’ll give is this.

For many of us, we went to school in university and when we paid our tuition to the university, we paid a certain amount of money [and] in exchange, we learned something. When we were done learning from the university, we would have never gone to the university and said, “Hey, I want some of my money back.”

What the tuition was in exchange for learning, and that was, for the most part, theoretical learning, but with angel investing, I do think the best way to learn about this is not to just read about it, but it really is to invest in a couple of companies and then learn about the journey and the experiences, and then learn the mistakes, but in a real-world setting and then adjust and iterate as you grow.

It’s not necessarily about making 50 to 100 bets initially, but it is about making the first couple of choices because doing it in actual companies and trying to work with the founders is a lot more valuable than holding a virtual portfolio.

Mohammed: I would say, definitely feel comfortable to go outside of your comfort zone. I know the pivot from an engineer or from a tech operator to an investor will require understanding certain topics and concepts that are not technical in nature, to feel comfortable to do so, and to potentially focus on particular domains or areas where your tech experience or operations experience can add value to the startups that you’re potentially looking at investing in. In addition to that, it also helps you utilize that domain level expertise in evaluating the opportunity that [the] startup is trying to go after, as well as evaluating the competitive landscape.

(5) Great investors are grounded and driven by a clear understanding of motivation — why do you invest?

On Call with Insignia: Advice for aspiring angel investors?

JJ: I think the core thing for investors [is] to understand what’s your underlying motivation. What are you trying to do here? Is this an asset-allocation game [where] you’re packing your funds in different places or is it financial outcomes that calls to you or is it something around keeping in touch with the scene, understanding what’s new or are you keen to come in and help build the next generation of entrepreneurs? So I think understanding what your core is, and then sticking to that when you make decisions, is the core piece. Because if you’re tied to those financial settings, then you have a different set of criteria, right?

For me, it’s this intersection between helping local founders here particularly around the less likely ones. For me I like the idea of finding the underdog, the not quite that obvious McKinsey, MBA, and Harvard guy getting funded. I know that guy will get funded and for me, it’s the idea of finding some entrepreneurs that’s not considered mainstream going to be successful and helping them, giving them a chance particularly to come in and solve the right ideas. So understand what your motivation is. For me, the core piece is around, “Can I also put in to help nudge some of these entrepreneurs that on average may not have gotten funded?

On Call with Insignia: What is the biggest thing that keeps you going in your career?

Eric: I know probably several VCs say things along these lines, but what we do is basically we want to generate, you know, attractive returns to our investors as a consequence of helping entrepreneurs build world-class tech companies in Latin America. This is what we do, but I have to say, this is not why we do it.

Both Fabio and I from the beginning, we really believe in this entrepreneurial revolution as a possibility to change the region. Every time I look around and I see the deep inequality that exists in Brazil and Latin America, it gives us incredible motivation to continue to — together with the other players — democratize access to capital, to the best entrepreneurs with the right values, from any background so they can solve the important problems and the inefficiency in the region, create jobs, improve people’s lives, inspire other entrepreneurs and young people. And of course, generate attractive returns. So we continue this virtuous cycle and we can reshape our region. I think behind everything that’s the force that motivates us and the whole team of Monashees.

Are you looking to build a career backing unstoppable founders and building great companies in Southeast Asia? Send us an email to join the team at Insignia Ventures. 

On the other hand, if you’re looking to learn the ropes, grow your network and gain a track record of investing in Southeast Asia, Cohort 3 of Asia’s first experiential venture capital accelerator, Insignia Academy, is still accepting applications!