These are the three ways the startup playbook in Southeast Asia may need to be adapted in light of today’s harsher global environment, according to Mr. Lee Chuan Teck, Executive Chairman of Enterprise Singapore.

He spoke about these three ways in his opening address to our 7th Annual Limited Partners and Founders Summit earlier this month.

The three mantras speak to how entrepreneurs can rethink business growth, but how should they act? Practically, what avenues are there for them to translate these mindsets into concrete results?

Think Global. Act Local.

We’ve all heard this before, but one thing we learned from our portfolio companies like Intellect and Carro about the way localization is best executed is in finding the right partners to work with across markets. That means also being flexible to different approaches in go-to-market.

In our latest podcast with Intellect VP of Partnerships & Solutions Cassandra Loh, she shares how they tapped into key partnerships to expand into Japan and the US. She also explains how mental healthcare adoption can be very different in these markets, compared to Southeast Asia countries like Vietnam or Singapore.

Another aspect of localization we learned from our portfolio companies is the importance of having a structured template for growth in individual markets. The word template here is key as it implies flexibility for local country leaders to vary deployment of certain systems and products depending on what is best for the market.

In our documentary Against All Odds, we follow the story of Carro Indonesia‘s challenges in driving pricing automation for their used car marketplace and how flexibility around Carro’s core template for used car retail enabled the local team to work with these challenges.

Think Technology. Act People-Oriented.

It’s not enough to have the resources to develop AI/ML or generative AI algorithms to automate your operations and/or customer experience. A more holistic approach is to also consider (1) how sustainably data is acquired and (2) how the benefits of AI are being delivered/ trickled down to the end customer.

This thought exercise with AI can be replicated across frontier / deep technologies, whether it’s next generation batteries or cancer treatment detection devices. Supply and demand of technology still often originates and ends with people. 

These are questions that companies like WIZ.AI in generative AI, igloo in IoT for smart access, or Fazz (StraitsX) in blockchain are addressing for businesses.

In our documentary Against All Odds, we follow the story of Tianwei Liu, whose chance encounter with then Payfazz CEO and co-founder Hendra Kwik, allowed him and his team to find new meaning in the work they were doing developing blockchain infrastructure for cross-border payments.

Think Profits. Act Mature.

Achieving profitability is not simply a matter of cutting costs, though it is one step in that direction.

A company can cut costs, but without really going into why these costs are being incurred in the first place and how that impacts the overall business and organization, the tradeoffs may not be worth the cutting or costs may emerge in other forms as the company grapples to produce the same quality of product or service.

A more sustainable way to think about profits, especially for a rapidly growing company, is as an exercise in maturing value creation. Any business can achieve profitability at the right scale (i.e., make less, spend less, but then sell less), but the real challenge is in still being able to achieve global ambitions with positive unit economics.

The value creation for a company may be initially be rooted (solely) in customer love (i.e., the more customers like my product, the more they will spend, right?), but that is not enough for a company at scale.

Value creation needs to be an intersection of scale ambition (think global, how many more customers can love your product?), operational efficiency (think technology, is there a more efficient way for them to love your product?), and resource allocation (think profits, how much are your spending to get them to love your product?).

Only upon understanding this dynamic can the company get a better picture of the path to profitability. It’s less about reducing costs and more focusing on what costs / spend makes the most return for the business in terms of scale, operational efficiency, and resources.

In our documentary Against All Odds, we follow the story of Steven Wongsoredjo, whose company SuperApp faced a particular challenge of finding out how to build a sustainable company while still remaining true to the roots of their business in social commerce.