Translation.

    Is that right? Yes, it is. Hello?

    No, I don't think you're in.

    He didn't come in.

    The.

    Yeah.

    Yeah.

    And our investors from abroad, please come up to the stage.

    We'd like to start off with a photo shoot.

    If you could all stand in the center of the room, please.

    Yes, Speakers Gather Together.

    Center of the stage and our gentleman, please step down.

    Can you please step down?

    Thank you and make sure that we can be in one angle.

    Please gather to the center of the stage, yes.

    Thank you.

    Yes, can we go towards the center of the stage and make sure that we can see your faces as well?

    Thank you.

    And can you please move to the other side of the stage?

    I think three. Yes, Mr. Lee.

    Thank you very much for your cooperation.

    Thank you. I think we're now ready to take photos together.

    We will have like, 2 rounds of photos first.

    Please look at the camera, this one is our center camera.

    Let's see your gentle smile towards the camera.

    Let's go!

    All right, let's do this in Korean way. So let's do this with your right hand.

    Fosterbridge.

    Yeah, look at the camera.

    One more 1, 2, 3, fighting!

    The hell I'm about to get some of that.

    Let's make one perfect photo together.

    Hi.

    Do it. 123 Go.

    Thank you very much, we'll take you to your seats.

    I think we can do a freestyle.

    Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the opening ceremony of the Fosterbridge 2024.

    Now, please be ready for the commencement of this meaningful event.

    Thank you very much for your kind cooperation.

    Thank you, your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.

    Good morning and welcome to the Fosterbridge 2024.

    Thank you once again for taking your valuable time to be with us this morning.

    My name is Jessica Lee and it's an honor to serve as your emcee of this very meaningful gathering.

    This event is especially special and meaningful for me as well, as I have the privilege of hosting this inaugural Fosterbridge 2024.

    While this initiative may be a little...

    Some of you,

    As its name suggests, Fosterbridge is a platform that serves as a bridge connecting the global ecosystem.

    It is a community where global venture investors, companies and Korean support organizations can come together, connect and collaborate.

    So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this inspiring community, building bridges for global innovation and growth.

    The slogan embodies the very purpose of Fosterbridge 2024.

    A platform where leaders from the global startup ecosystem can come together to drive innovation and growth.

    At Fosterbridge, representatives from 49 global investors across 23 countries have gathered to share their insights into startup investment trends and strategies.

    Startups in their respective markets.

    So ladies and gentlemen, please be with us until the very end and we ask for your active participation until the end as well.

    Without further introduction, let us begin the opening ceremony of the Fosterbridge 2024 with a video, which explains the inspiration and ideas behind the creation of Fosterbridge 2024.

    Let's draw your attention to the screen.

    Please give a huge round of applause to celebrate the 1st edition of the Fosterbridge 2024.

    Thank you very much once again.

    So after watching this video, I'm very confident that...

    Fosterbridge 2024 will serve as a platform to support the development of the startup ecosystem, also the growth of Korean startups.

    Acting as a bridge, connecting global accelerators and investors.

    So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you once again for joining us today.

    and celebrating the inauguration of this event. Thank you.

    With that, we do have our dignitaries.

    For joining us today to celebrate the Fosterbridge 2024, it is my great honor and privilege to welcome Her Excellency.

    Minister Woo Yong-ju of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups of the Republic of Korea.

    Who will be delivering her words of congratulations?

    So, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming her to the stage with a big round of applause.

    Please welcome her.

    OK, good morning everyone, I'm Young-ju, Minister of Semiconductor Industry of South Korea.

    I'm so glad to join you here at this very significant event for Fosterbridge.

    At Fosterbridge 2024 in Asia, which I believe will provide an excellent opportunity to connect Korea's vibrant startup ecosystem with the global community.

    And this special event, orchestrated by the private sector, brings together an impressive assembly of venture capitalists, accelerators and entrepreneurs from around the world.

    Your presence here from over 30 countries reflects the shared commitment to fostering innovation and bridging global markets.

    I want to express my profound gratitude to the Fosterbridge members for their tireless efforts and making this gathering possible.

    Your commitment is truly commendable, distinguished guests.

    As we proceed, let us use this platform for market discussions.

    They will lead to enduring partnerships, and those are groundbreaking.

    Project Korea Startup Ecosystem has rapidly gained international acclaim at this year's CES.

    A Korean startup triumph, claiming 7 out of the 27 innovation awards, the highest globally.

    and even surpassing that of the United States.

    Started like

    The 12 labs are at the forefront, securing strategic investment from global giants such as NVIDIA,

    As I know, Twelve Labs will make the keynote speech at this event.

    So, the recent accolade as the 9th best city globally for starting a business by Standard Zeno and our consistent ranking among the top five.

    Venture investment market worldwide.

    Highlight the vibrant and robust nature of the entrepreneurial environment.

    However, this achievement is not necessarily the fruits of governmental efforts but are the result of pioneering spirit and.

    Patience of entrepreneurs, investors and all stakeholders within our ecosystem,

    It is this committee in front of me today that transformed vision into reality as we navigate an era of rapid technological evolution.

    And the diminishing physical borders.

    Startups equipped with innovation and the pioneering spirit are indispensable. In response,

    The Korean government continued to fortify its commitment to startups by focusing on deep tech and international expansion,

    promoting expansive policies to foster these sectors. Firstly, our objectives.

    Here to establish Korea as a premier global startup hub, this involves attracting foreign talent and nurturing domestic startups to expand internationally.

    In July, we launched the Global Startup Center in Seoul to attract and support promising, outstanding international startups. This center offers...

    Comprehensive support, from office space and language services to visa assistance and corporate setup, streamlining the integration into Korea's dynamic ecosystem.

    Furthermore, by 2026, we aim to establish Global Innovation Hub in Seoul, provisionally named.

    Come. This service, designed to foster collaboration between deep tech startups, large corporations and investors, both domestic and international, is envisioned as a melting pot.

    Where cutting-edge technology meets enterprises, enhancing Korea's position in the global technological frontier.

    Secondly, our government is intensifying efforts to globalize our domestic venture capital landscape and enhance global investment collaborations.

    We plan to allocate additional $700 million annually into global funds with a target of $11 billion by 2027.

    Specifically aimed at engaging foreign venture capitalists to invest in Korean startups, facilitating their entry and expansion into international markets.

    Moreover, the first establishment of the Global Venture Investment Integrated Report Center will simplify the investment process for foreign investors.

    For establishing a more accessible and global-friendly investment environment,

    Next week, we will host Korea's largest startup festival, COMEUP 2024, under the theme of Innovation Beyond Borders.

    This will be followed by key Global Venture Capital Summit 2024, bringing together around the world.

    Domestic and international venture capitalists. In September next year, in conjunction with hosting the APEC summit in Korea,

    We will organize Global Venture Investment Forum, capturing the attention of the global economic leaders and further propelling Korea's data ecosystem forward through these initiatives.

    Our aim is to position Korea as Asia's foremost startup nation and among the top three startup ecosystems globally by 2027.

    The theme for 2024 in Asia is 'Building Bridges for Global Innovation and Growth'.

    It is our hope that through this platform, all participants will discover innovation and collaborative solutions that transcend borders and technological limitations.

    The Korean government is committed to support every facet of your journey within Korea's startup ecosystem.

    What's going on?

    I thank everyone involved in making this event possible and I wish you all the best.

    Best wishes to create success and afford the foreign participants a memorable experience in Korea.

    I thank you. Thank you Minister. Please give a big round of applause.

    Thank you for reaffirming the importance of collaboration and innovation.

    And due to unforeseen schedule of our Minister.

    He will now leave the hall.

    But ladies and gentlemen, let's show our appreciation once again for the Minister with a big round of applause.

    Thank you again.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, for your time.

    For your leadership and support, thank you.

    So we had a privilege to listen to the message from our minister of the Administration of SMEs and Startups of the Republic of Korea.

    And next, we'd like to welcome our keynote speaker to the stage, and tonight we have the pleasure of welcoming Mr.

    Edwin Lee, Head of Operations APAC at Brinc, to deliver his keynote speech.

    So let's welcome him with a warm round of applause.

    Please welcome him to the stage.

    Ah, hello everyone, good morning, thank you so much for having me.

    And I think, I know many of you have flown over from other countries to Korea.

    And if it's your first time in Korea, please try some good Korean food here while you stay here.

    And yeah, I would like to introduce my company 12 Lives as one of the Korean companies that has gone global and does business in the States.

    Let me see, let me go back.

    So to all, what we do?

    We are a foundation model, we build, train and deploy foundation models for videos by doing active research in multimodal video understanding.

    We are a Silicon Valley and Seoul based company, we're about 70 people company, we have both offices.

    That started in early 2021, when COVID released started to hit.

    And we are a Series A.

    A company that has raised $80 million to date from investors like NVIDIA and Y Combinator, Rakuten and Index Ventures.

    And we're also backed by many luminaries in the field like Faith Bay Silvio.

    And one of the authors of Transformers.

    And I'm not sure if this is common knowledge around the world.

    But all three men have to go to the military to do their duty.

    And this is where I met our co-founders, we have my co-founders, and we met in Korea.

    We met in a troop of Korea's Cyber Operations Command, which is very similar to Israel's Unit 8200, lots of cyber operations.

    And here we literally spent two years in the same place in Korea, sitting and eating together and where we dreamt of doing a startup together.

    After four years, we have become a 70-plus people company.

    Most of our team members are engineers and scientists, they either come from the engineering background or academic background.

    And we essentially marry video and language to make videos understandable.

    And we're expanding very quickly.

    As we partner with global partners like Amazon, Oracle for AI infrastructure,

    players like we also are working with large customers, companies like NFL and BlackRock and Blackboard.

    So before I dive into what we built, I want to briefly talk about what video data is, right?

    Everyone feels that video is being created more than ever, even at this very moment.

    But why is it so important?

    Why is it so popular?

    Why is it so easy to be consumed by humans, right?

    If you think about this space as a memory, you know, space and time as a memory. You don't think about words or language.

    You think about this almost like a snapshot of this video where you want to recall a few months later.

    Seeing and hearing them again, this is because...

    This physical world around us is stored in computers, is stored as data, and that's why it's also now called media.

    But unlike humans, for AI, understanding videos is extremely challenging for two main reasons.

    This is a very classic example. But you know, if you look at this picture, could you guess if this is a sunset or sunrise?

    Right, it doesn't know.

    Actually, it's a sunset, so I just rewound the video and even looking at the same picture,

    The context can change.

    Because to understand videos, you have to understand the temporal context of this, of the images and visuals around it.

    Grounding. So that's the first challenge, the second challenge is around understanding the music.

    If you hear this music with this video, it almost feels like, you know, a sad movie.

    Being protective?

    Crying. But if you have this other music that has this, it'll really have a party-like vibe.

    It's almost like if you're having a vacation on the beach.

    And that's the second reason.

    Second part of the video, that's the second point of making people understand challenges.

    It requires not only visual understanding, but also audio understanding with the visual understanding together.

    So video is really data, true multimodal data that requires not only image understanding, but adding in two more aspects: temporal context and audio information.

    And we believe, our company believes, that in order to address this data, you need a dedicated model.

    And systems are now called video language models.

    And previously, our customers have been tackling video understanding through predefined tasks and transcripts.

    And one of the main problems of this predefined tasks approach is that once your business context changes, these tasks essentially become useless.

    So for example, in this Matrix scene.

    In the beginning, the business might be interested in identifying.

    You know, can't believe this, but later you might be interested in how many bullets that this.

    And predefined tasks cannot handle these specific business use cases once the context changes.

    So we built and trained dedicated foundation models to address this.

    Too many models?

    One is something that we call Marengo, which is a video native embedding model, and the other is called Pegasus, which is a video English model that generates text.

    So, the first model?

    The model essentially takes in an archival video and a user's search query as natural language, and is able to retrieve the right timestamp.

    And the videos that correspond to that search query.

    So, for example, here, if you type in 'camera moving through the trees', it will retrieve not only the video, but also the start and end time.

    where that content is happening.

    The second Mark model is almost like a chat for videos, so you can provide user prompts like 'provide a summary of this video' or 'what are the logos in this video?'

    Like, questions like 'What are the logos that appeared in this video?'

    And the model will be generating text that responds to the user's prompt.

    And we believe this language can become essentially the interface where users and our customers can just provide a prompt and solve their business needs.

    And we have trained a model that outperforms all our existing computers.

    Even big techs like Gemini or OpenAI.

    And we're still continuing to do so, and this is mainly possible because all the existing elements were language.

    These players are primarily focused on, you know, putting video as a side feature, whereas for us, we just purely focused on optimizing and understanding videos.

    And our models are being adopted in various videos.

    In different cases: entertainment, public safety, advertisement, healthcare, and other industries where they have video contents.

    And what's interesting is that what we have learned is that even within the same company or the same industry, the use cases expand as the users understand.

    What the models can do and our models become better.

    One example here is from the entertainment industry, where you can essentially like, type in a prompt.

    Like, find the top three clips of The Show,

    Show, and our model retrieves those moments instantly and they're able to use them to create new contents by stitching them together.

    And a really good case study was made recently with Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment.

    They are one of the largest, they're the largest Canadian sports entertainment company that owns Toronto Raptors and Maple Leafs hockey from the NBA.

    And their problem was that they had a bunch of content stored within their archive, where they wanted to create new videos out of it.

    and get the fans more engaged.

    And previously, it took over 5 hours to just purely search and go through the videos.

    But after deploying our models to our system, they were able to reduce it to 99 minutes.

    making the content creation extremely fast and the brand engagement more.

    Making the advantage more.

    So we also work with NFL or any other video platform or industries in ads where videos.

    They have lots of videos stored, sitting down in their archives.

    So, yeah, if you know any customers or partners that have lots of videos, we are happy to talk with them.

    And, you know, last remarks, I think we are one of the founders that are Korea-based.

    But now expanded to the States,

    There are lots of other companies in Korea that follow similar paths or have already gone through that path. So I hope...

    Enjoy your time here and see you next year.

    Thanks, thank you very much for your presentation.

    Please give a huge round of applause to Mr. Lee.

    Thank you, thank you.

    So he has shared his valuable perspective on Korea's startup ecosystem.

    Thank you once again for your invaluable presentation this week.

    And ladies and gentlemen,

    Now we will be very happy to introduce you to the very first session of Fosterbridge 2024, marking the beginning of this inaugural event.

    And kicking off the session, we have Korean Venture Investment Corporation, or KVIC.

    Victoria, please join me in welcoming Mr. Koo Hyung.

    Sorry, the Senior Managing Director of the Global Growth Division from KVIC.

    To the stage, please welcome him.

    Good morning, it is a pleasure to be here today to talk about Korea Venture Investment Corporation.

    Also known as KVIC.

    Hello, my name is Arnold, and I'm the Korea representative for the Global Growth Division.

    Our company story review.

    My presentation consists of three chapters, beginning with an introduction of Korean Publishing Market and the Noble View of KDB.

    And our performance?

    Following that, I'll cover our Global fund.

    First, I directly discuss the thriving startup ecosystem of South Korea.

    What's unique about South Korea is that the government played a critical role in nurturing the startup ecosystem.

    And KB is in the middle of it.

    KB is funded by various ministries of the Korean government, including MSS, MCST, and KIPO.

    In recent years, we've seen particular outcomes resulting from our long term efforts with local success stories including companies like Kakao and Hybe/BTS.

    Let's talk about KBs pivotal role in the Korean business market over the past 18 years.

    In 2000, venture investment experienced a decline due to the IT bubble, and in 2005, KB was first established since then.

    which investment has grown by about 10 times from 0.663 billion in 2005 to 6.4 billion in 2021.

    The next part is about the status of Korean domestic venture market.

    And we're seeing a big round of Korean alternative investments.

    The past decade with a number.

    Double dip.

    The venture capital AUM increased five times.

    And Korea's best as a startup ecosystem.

    With 22 vehicles as of the end of 2023 and has also contributed to creation

    At this point, let me just keep it.

    A Korea Fund of Funds (KFoF) was established in 2005 as a result of Fund Investment Promotion Act for the purpose of promoting fund investment and supporting their growth.

    As an anchor capital provider of the fund, created by 10 government ministries, KFoF supplies capital to domestic and foreign VCs.

    Policy and we are the largest single investor for domestic funds.

    So far, KFoF has achieved extra financial performance as well.

    It has provided 255 billion to around 10,000 startups over the past five years.

    A total of 61% of KOSDAQ listed companies and 90% of unicorns were born out of KVIC portfolio. Initially,

    The top quartile portfolio performance has recorded over 22% IRR.

    I won the Sloket KBS Recurring Trade this year

    Global Prospect.

    Had established for about their offices as a friend of the tour.

    These offices are located in Silicon Valley, US, Shanghai, China, Singapore, and London.

    Additionally, we are setting up a new office in New York City next year to expand coverage to the East Coast in the United States.

    Overall, our global presence has continued to grow, and we are continuously seeking to expand global investment opportunities worldwide.

    Next, I'd like to introduce our Global Fund Foreign Investment Fund.

    Our fund supports global businesses with strong ties to Korean startup ecosystem.

    Therefore, our funders should invest in Korean companies more than one time of the global fund's commitment so far.

    Caveats.

    LPs are more than 67% outside of Korea.

    The equity size of the budget funds we are in grew to 947 billion U.S. dollars over the past 10 years.

    Brinc is the best.

    Is collaborating with partners across various sectors and strategies to support the Korean startups.

    Like PepsiCo's.

    we are striving to enrich and globalize the Korean startup ecosystem.

    This is our primary condition.

    GPs are required to invest at least the equivalent of our commitment amount in Korean companies, as per the cooperative Korean company.

    The details are outlined in the facts above.

    Our point selection process consists of four stages and it clearly begins in February, continuing through the first half of the year.

    This year, the prevented A2 track approach for general track and co-GPA track.

    The table you see here shows the final results of our 2023 port selection process.

    15 points have been selected and are currently in the process of being established.

    Let me highlight our investment plans for the upcoming year, focusing on three key themes: Incentive, new launch and Expansion.

    First, incentive.

    We plan to provide additional evaluation points as an incentive to the firms that have their offices in Korea.

    We wish to maintain their strong Korean company investment trend record.

    Second, we aim to allocate more to power sector segments: AI, impact, and secondaries.

    Finally, expansion via our channel track will broaden our scope to include a Co-GP track for both domestic and foreign VCs.

    I'd like to conclude with that.

    Thank you for the presentation.

    Concerning the five Korean football startups featured in this slide.

    They have been identified by KFA along the line, based on their growth stage.

    And they have successfully drawn funding and investment from multiple funds in the global market to facilitate global expansion of current startups.

    We will continue to make efforts to support startup investments.

    Thank you for your attention. Thank you.

    Thank you very much for your invaluable presentation.

    So we had an opportunity to successfully hear about thriving in a career as a startup, ecosystem and investment market as well.

    So this brings us to the end of the opening session. And now, without having a break, we will start a brief session before we start session.

    The session, let me once again outline the schedule and program of the Fosterbridge 2024.

    So ladies and gentlemen, we will be about to start the session named Bridge Station, that's our main session featuring a speech, really.

    With 28 global accelerators and right next to this stage, we have the Foster Session.

    And in this session, you will have the opportunity to hear more detailed presentations and market entry strategies from Fosterbridge Global Partners.

    And today's sessions by Horizon, NERO, CBS Startup Support and Korea will also be held at the adjacent stage.

    Hall 3.

    Down through the corridor, you will find a similar area where a networking lounge has been set up for you to connect freely with other fellow participants and colleagues.

    Whether you have a scheduled...

    Or simply looking to network?

    Please make sure that you can visit the networking lounge.

    We ask for your active participation and interest until the very end.

    Thank you. And now let's begin the Bridge Session, which is our main event of Fosterbridge 2024.

    So we just introduced the program in which 28 global accelerators, and now we will start the first presentation.

    I have the privilege to welcome Mr. Edwin Lee, who will be our first presenter, and Mr. Lee is Head of Operations APAC at Brinc.

    So let's welcome him with a big round of applause.

    Hello.

    Sorry, do I need to press the start button?

    Cool, hi, good morning everyone.

    My name is Edwin and I head the operations at Brinc.

    We are a global venture capital platform that is committed to supporting founders around the world.

    And I'm very excited to be here today and I look forward to connecting with all of you in the coming days.

    I'll give a quick background on Brinc for those of you who do not know who we are.

    Brinc was founded 10 years ago,

    in 2014.

    In fact, today marks our 10-year anniversary and our office, our first office was in Hong Kong.

    Our mission in 2014 was to support global IoT founders who wanted to move their manufacturing supply chain to China, but did not know how to.

    This led to the development of a bespoke hardware IoT accelerator program that was offered to founders around the world.

    Founders from Germany, Spain.

    The US and other countries would essentially relocate and set up companies in Hong Kong to participate in this program.

    The program itself would take them through the entire processes of prototyping, manufacturing, all the way to distribution,

    As well as introductions to local ecosystems of investors and corporates.

    Fast forward to today.

    Eventually, you know, our accelerator programs moved on to other sectors and now we're looking and investing in food technology, climate tech, healthcare and Web3.

    After running these programs for several years, through trial and error, we came to realize that

    There was a gap actually in the market on how investors can actually gain access to venture capital opportunities.

    Traditionally, you know, investors gain access to venture capital through two channels: either they develop their own deal sourcing channels and value-add platforms, or they deploy into VC funds directly.

    The former requires a significant amount of capital to build out the infrastructure, along with the necessary access to deal flow for quality investments.

    And the latter method provided minimal mandate control and limited investment committee participation for the investors.

    This left investors with very inflexible investment options into the VC space.

    So, in response to this complex and time-consuming nature of traditional venture capital, we designed an offering that would provide a more efficient and effective method to invest in.

    Early stage startups, an approach that would be more streamlined and accessible.

    Taking from our learnings from our accelerators, we established 4 key offerings: deal origination services.

    Essentially, we would be providing access to high quality deal flow through our own multi-channel sourcing processes.

    Startup programs that would de-risk investments for our investors and also secure attractive entry points for them.

    Portfolio management services.

    Such as post investment reporting and further fundraising support, and venture funds setting up single or multi LP funds, along with fund administration services.

    Essentially, what we did is we took the entire value chain of our accelerator everywhere, from working with corporates, understanding their problem statements to deal sourcing to due diligence.

    Investments, deploying capital, running programs, and then essentially moving into portfolio management.

    What we did is we prioritize each part of these areas of our value chain.

    Powering these offerings, we have a suite of our own in-house tech and infrastructure that we've built, and we leverage this for our own operations.

    But also as a service to third parties that would benefit from these value-added services,

    Our technology aspiration and goal is to digitize the entire founder and investor lifecycle in order for us and our clients to make better informed investment decisions.

    These are some of our partners and clients that we have worked with over the past 10 years.

    They would typically come in six categories.

    None that are new to you.

    Corporates, you know, that would want to develop strategic venture investing practices for access to a pipeline of future M&A targets.

    Institutional investors that are looking for access to pre-vetted deal flow, government organizations looking to build out ecosystems,

    Universities that want to invest in commercializing their own IP that was developed by researchers and PhD students.

    Tech parks that are looking for startups to utilize their space and infrastructure.

    And other accelerators and venture studios that want to scale and use our portfolio management.

    With our beginnings in IoT in hardware, we have now branched out in more specific sectors that have larger addressable markets,

    You know, we're making investments within agri-food, AI, carbon capture, climate and sustainability.

    enterprise, Web3, gaming, healthcare and education.

    As of today, we have close to around 300 companies in our portfolio.

    This is just a snapshot of some of the companies that have gone on to raise large sums of capital from our network of global investors.

    And they're based all over the world.

    So far we've invested in companies in 48 different countries.

    At Brinc, we are committed to establishing ourselves in these growing markets.

    India, MENA, East Asia and ASEAN.

    We currently already have operations in the indicated fields on this map.

    We just recently opened an office in Japan, in Tokyo, and we will be opening further offices in these regions in the coming years.

    Mostly, our goal is to create startup bridges.

    That's a strategic angle within these regions.

    We want our global offices to be able to create cross-border launch pads for our founders on our platform.

    To be able to easily access resources and connections in other global markets,

    But in order to do this, to create this startup bridge, we do need to first.

    Establish ourselves in these regions.

    I can give a few examples of how we've done this in the Greater Bay Area,

    which was our first office, with our first market offices in Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

    We run over 40 programs with governments, corporates and venture capitals, and we've reviewed over 2,000 applications yearly.

    We've run numerous engagements, and through these engagements, we've deployed over 20 million USD through our investment programs, and we've accumulated over 250 equity investments.

    From our portfolio standpoint, the average raised post-program for the startups subsequently after the accelerator is around 2.3 million.

    Our Brinc media office was launched in 2018, has now become actually our largest region with over 30 employees and with numerous engagements with corporates and governments.

    When we first opened our office in MENA in 2018, we worked with six companies that year.

    Fast forward to today, we did 800 plus startups this year alone.

    And from a commercial engagement standpoint, we had one engagement when we started in 2018, and today we have over 30.

    We also expanded our offices in the MENA region. We started in Bahrain and today we've expanded now to four other offices in the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

    We're planning to replicate the same thing in other regions.

    The ingredients are the same.

    Wherever we go, we want to build strong communities in the markets that we enter.

    Whether it be hosting China trips and launching events or conferences.

    For people to understand the services and the availabilities in these local markets,

    We work with local corporates and governments to have a strong understanding of what pain points and what solutions they're looking to resolve.

    And we host and leverage our large global investor network to partake in these local markets and invest in them.

    And ultimately we're supporting our founders so they have full access and capitalization for support and resources.

    Lastly, I'm excited to announce and share that we're starting in the New Year,

    We are looking to do the same here in Korea and support this vibrant startup ecosystem.

    So if anyone would like to learn more about how we can partner and work together, I'd love to meet you and have further discussions.

    Thank you.

    Thank you very much for your presentation.

    Please give a big round of applause to Mr. Lee.

    Thank you and ladies and gentlemen,

    It's time to welcome our second speaker of a brief session of Fosterbridge 2024 here at the site.

    We're joined by Colin Kleine, the founder at Scalerr, so we'd like to welcome our presenter to the stage.

    Please welcome him to the stage with a big round of applause.

    First of all, welcome to Korea everybody who hasn't been here before.

    I'm very excited to be here, I'm very excited to have the opportunity to present to you before we commence.

    So I am one of the co-founders of Scalerr, my passion.

    What we do is we help technology companies to scale and to go global.

    We've worked with around 500 tech companies.

    48 unicorns.

    And from 13 years of doing this, you study the patterns around what makes a company super successful.

    I take a lot of inspiration from my work with the fastest growing SaaS company of all time.

    So an Israeli unicorn called Deel.

    We helped them to launch in 14 markets and every...

    today entered, including Korea,

    They would break even in three months.

    So we've seen many startups raise a lot of money and then burn through it, and then we've seen a lot of startups be able to launch in a new region.

    Get profitability as quickly as possible.

    We've taken that inspiration.

    We started boiling it down into a formula.

    So in my 13 minutes, I'm gonna try and get through as much as humanly possible.

    So that's myself.

    I'm sure you can look me up on LinkedIn. You'll see me pretty much everywhere after that.

    Myself and my business partner.

    The core offerings for our consulting business and recruitment are: we help companies with Go-to-Market strategy and advisory boards.

    The reason why we chose those models is from all the companies we worked with.

    Success and failure ultimately comes down to a few things.

    Do they hire the right people?

    Do they know and implement the right go-to-market and do they hire?

    Absolutely, world-class people that are advising the founders.

    So that's why we chose to do those three, just to roll it along a little bit.

    We've expanded into 10 markets, so we practice what we preach.

    We've applied the same formula we've learned from our clients to be able to apply it to our own business.

    Some of the companies that we work with help do global expansion. These are some of the partners and governments we work with.

    But let me get to the fun part: market entry and market expansion.

    I'm going to cover why companies do it, what the considerations are, and what our recommendations are.

    So a lot of businesses get this wrong in assuming that the major reason why they should expand internationally is to get access to government grants.

    Or to be able to de-risk the future growth of the business,

    As, let's say, if there's a global economic downturn in one region, by expanding into another region, they get to be able to mitigate that kind of risk.

    Like diversifying a stock portfolio, the major reason why companies expand internationally is to grow the valuation whenever a company can get traction in the new market.

    It shows that this is a globally scalable business model, and it grows.

    The valuation of that company, which keeps your investors happy.

    The founders are very happy.

    And the other reason is access to talent.

    Many people have heard me talk about it this morning.

    I think the talent in Korea is absolutely world class.

    If you're a company involved in artificial intelligence, whether you're from Europe or US, Korea is a market that you should consider, one because it will grow.

    The valuations too.

    Because the talent that is here is absolutely incredible.

    So they're the primary reasons why companies expand internationally now: the considerations, the difficulty in landing a deal, the time, the demand, or needing to educate the market.

    Has anyone here tried to sell to Japan before?

    Maybe your experience is the same as ours, but Japan is one of the most weird and wonderful and interesting markets on the planet.

    They say the joke in sales is it takes 8 'no's to get to a yes.

    In Japan, it takes about 30 yeses to get to an OK, and you're still only halfway there doing the deal.

    The deal sizes are huge, but it takes a very, very long time.

    So that's a consideration.

    I know that Indonesia's a market that gets spoken about quite a lot, like, I live in Singapore.

    But the size of deals they're going to be doing in Indonesia, it's significantly less than you would be doing in, say, a London.

    So when you're expanding internationally, you need to factor these things into account.

    You want to break even, you want to hit profitability as fast as humanly possible.

    Do companies invest in that type of innovation?

    What are the deal sizes that you're looking at?

    Because if the unit economics don't stack up, it doesn't matter.

    If you're expanding there, you're gonna be pulled by your investors to be pulling out of the region.

    If it's just not going to be financially viable in time, commercial viability, how expensive is it going to be to do it?

    What are the deal sizes and are there potential regulatory headaches?

    So as an example, in Southeast Asia.

    Very interesting part of the world.

    Thailand has a completely different set of regulations from Indonesia.

    And if you're expanding to those markets, you need to be aware, otherwise you're going to run into quite a few challenges and difficulties.

    So these are things to consider.

    Opportunities: You go into a new market, there's significantly less competition.

    I think going into markets such as Korea, if you're an Australian company, you'll face significantly less competition than if you're a Korean company going into the US.

    Also, the government grants and partners that you can access.

    So this is working without reduction in OPEX.

    So, for example, if you're building a team in the emerging markets of Southeast Asia, there's some absolutely incredible talent that's there.

    Talent is going to be significantly less, which is great because it improves your profitability and reduces your costs.

    And then, of course, access to capital.

    If you're scaling or expanding into Korea, you can work with some of the Korean funds, and you can access capital you wouldn't have access to before.

    So now moving to the fun stuff.

    Why do companies fail in market entry expansion recruitments?

    They hire the wrong people.

    They hire people from what I've seen from large companies like your SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, which sounds great in theory, but they lack the startup experience.

    Like to be a startup founder, you've got to be a hustler, and you need to surround yourself with hustlers and know how to be able to build a scalable business.

    They both spend on hires.

    And now they're running out of cash.

    That's what we typically see.

    Like, the kind of person that knows how to take a company from zero to 10 is very different from the person that can take a company from 10 to 50 to 200.

    And we see startup founders making a mistake of when they're zero to 10, that they hire the people that do the 200 to 500.

    And then they wonder why they're running out of cash.

    Go-to-market strategy issues, just deploying the wrong go-to-market, inexperienced founders, and what?

    I more colloquially call it throwing away invested cash, financial mismanagement.

    So recruiting mistakes, that's what I was touching on before.

    Hiring people that don't necessarily have that startup experience that can guide you through the process, like hiring people too experienced.

    Or the kiss of death, which is hiring for the Rolodex, paying significant amounts of money for someone.

    Because they've worked at like a Microsoft or whatever it is, and they come with a great set of contacts.

    That doesn't mean they're going to utilize those contacts.

    Go-to-market mistakes and the wrong sales approach and not localizing it.

    You're probably not going to be using the same go-to-market approach that you would use for San Francisco in Korea.

    You need also to tailor it to the audience.

    So this is the problem that we try to solve for companies now.

    I've worked at 48 unicorns and I've seen companies that have basically the same business model.

    To give you an example, I've worked with Stitch Fix.

    And I've worked with WalkMe. They both have the same amount of headcount, they both make roughly the same amount of revenue.

    WalkMe has raised 6 times more than Stitch Fix.

    So why do they have the same revenue?

    Why they have the same headcount, it's because they weren't all in.

    Blazing on their global expansion over hiring, spending a lot of money on those hires, deploying a go-to-market that wasn't necessarily suitable for new market expansion.

    So they burned through a ton of cash.

    It would take them something like 4, 8 to 12 quarters to be able to break even.

    So investors get impatient.

    Its founders need to understand that.

    Investors aren't prepared to be waiting something like two to three years to see if there's going to be enough commercial viability in the market.

    And this is what we see time and time again.

    Why companies end up pulling out of a region and firing 90% of their staff there?

    So our philosophy: #1 establish a demand, #2 keep your cost as low as humanly possible, and #3, you break even as fast as humanly possible.

    And how do we do it?

    These are three aspects that have a partner-led go-to-market.

    Fun fact, 90% of tech unicorns and NASDAQ listed tech companies use partner-led go-to-market.

    Why? It's scalable, it creates an ecosystem effect.

    Companies can white label you, they can add professional services on top of you.

    You're starting to create multiple streams of income while you sleep, which I love doing.

    Hiring expansion managers as opposed to hiring the experienced managing director from Oracle.

    It's when you're launching into a new market. Hire someone who's, let's say, 27 to 37 years old, who's worked for a similar type of startup previously.

    Whether it's a deep tech startup or fintech startup, where they've been there for four to six years, they work in sales.

    They've been promoted several times, but they're not the leader just yet. They're an extremely competent and capable person.

    But they're just not at that leadership capacity.

    You target a person like that, you say, 'Join us as our Expansion Manager.'

    If you achieve milestones A, B and C, you get to become our country manager of Korea.

    So what you're effectively doing is you're creating extreme motivation, so the person comes across.

    They already know who the customers are. They already know.

    Partners are, but most importantly, they know the playbook and formula and cost you about 1/3 of hiring.

    Experienced managing directors combine their partner-led go-to-market, also hiring someone with extreme motivation, who's hungry and ready to go.

    This is how you start making money as fast as humanly possible.

    And the third one, you can call it a Fractional CRO.

    I more commonly call it a board advisor, it's putting someone on the advisory board who has either had an exit.

    Founder, so they've been able to achieve a $2 billion exit, a NASDAQ listing.

    They know what to do, they know how to scale a business, and they're willing to get involved in mentoring and working with a startup.

    It's having someone who's that proven go-to-market revenue leader such as my friend Andy Clark who launched.

    Helium in Korea,

    He was employee number one for HubSpot in Asia Pacific.

    He grew Datadog to a team of 200, turning over 180 million in annual recurring revenue in APAC across 10 markets.

    The company exited.

    Now if you spent the next year surfing and cycling and having a great time, as I probably would do exactly the same thing.

    But a startup?

    You're not going to pay someone $600,000-700,000 as a base salary to hire them full time.

    What you can do instead is get someone who's extremely accomplished, absolutely world class, that knows the formula and how to be able to scale a company.

    This is how we do our direct sales, this is how we do our solution selling.

    This is the solution selling methodology that we're going to be using.

    This is how we're going to be.

    Said, these are the channels that we're going to do.

    This is how we create this center structure.

    They know how to be able to do this, and they've done this for a similar category of startup before.

    Coming across into your advisory board, that's...

    Any company can be turned into something absolutely exceptional if they get those 3 fundamentals right.

    So just cycling through it.

    When I say establish demand first, I strongly recommend having a look at, do you have competitors in that market?

    If you do, that's a good thing because you can go into their website.

    You can click on the Partner section and it'll tell you who are the partners that they're using for that market.

    That there explains exactly how you go to market in pretty much any region.

    I need to reinvent the wheel.

    You can copy what's already working and making money, and then focus on initially establishing that demand using a partner.

    Let's go to market by working with companies who sell to the same customer base as you, so same customer base, 100% complementary.

    And my favorite kind of deal, especially if you're an early stage company.

    Trying to break into a new region is, let's say, we're a FinTech, we're a FinTech in Singapore, and we want to expand into Korea.

    We sell to XYZ stakeholder, we can find a FinTech in Korea who sells to the exact same stakeholder, completely complementary angle.

    And we could essentially say, let's go and become partners.

    You don't have any customers in Singapore, we don't have any customers in Korea.

    We can help you enter into Singapore, you help us enter into Korea.

    Send zero money down deal.

    We can help you get traction.

    You do exactly the same.

    We announced that we're doing a partnership, it's going to create free PR and inbound deal flow.

    And you work on nurturing those partnerships, and what you'll start seeing is that the traction starts moving up.

    And inbound deal flow coming in.

    The formula that we learned from working with deals is that when you launch into a new market, you want to have something like 6 to 10 established channel partnerships.

    If you have that, you're now going to have a significant amount of deal flow coming in.

    That you should be able to hit profitability or break even relatively fast.

    Next step: hire the expansion manager.

    You heard me speak about this before.

    Young, hungry hires have scaled a similar type of category of startup previously.

    You've now got inbound deal flow coming in.

    Someone who's who?

    This is an opportunity to jump their career by about 10 years.

    It's a massive win for them.

    For you, you're gonna start seeing deals close relatively quickly and, of course, surround them with the right board advisors.

    This is what we found by deploying a mixture of this strategy.

    As opposed to needing to wait until the 2nd year or the third year,

    You hit profitability in a new market in anywhere from three to six months.

    Not to brag, but I'll brag.

    When we launched in Singapore, we hit profitability in eight days.

    Why? The exact same thing that I'm speaking about, that we've learned about, we help our startups with, is exactly what we deployed.

    My business partner took 13 days to hit profitability in London, which I still remind them about quite frequently.

    But it's not reinventing.

    Inventing the wheel, it's copying what?

    Some of Y Combinator's most successful ever startups have done, but applying that to businesses that aren't necessarily in Y Combinator.

    So, the framework summarized: if you're looking to go global, build traction first by using channel partners, same customer base, complete complementary angle, accelerate that traction using expansion managers. Relatively low cost.

    You're hiring for extreme motivation and skill, and they know what they're doing.

    Surround yourself with board advisors that have been able to scale a unicorn in a similar category, break even as soon as humanly possible.

    You hit profitability and then you ramp up and scale.

    As I run out of time, please add me on LinkedIn.

    Thank you very much for your presentation.

    Please give a big round of applause to Mr. Kleine.

    Thank you.

    Now you may go back to your seat.

    And ladies and gentlemen,

    This brings us to the end of our morning sessions of the Fosterbridge 2024,

    And lunch will be served to your seat here at this venue from 11:30.

    11:30 - So until then, please use this time to engage with other participants and fellow colleagues.

    And once again, this is a brief reminder for those who have asked for special dietary requirements.

    Those who asked for special dietary requirements in advance, please take your seat at tables 12 and 13 so that we can serve the right meal to your seat.

    Thank you once again.

    And the next session will be starting with this video from 1:00 PM.

    1:00 PM. So please enjoy.

    Lunch break and come back to this hall before we commence the next presentations of the Brinc session.

    Thank you.

    This session will conclude with

    and we're going to take a quick break.

    Lunch will be served at 11:30 in the same location, so please be seated by 11:30 if you wish to eat.

    And if you have any special dietary requests in advance, please be seated at tables 12 and 13 in the front of the room so we can accommodate you.

    The next presentation will begin at 1:00 here in the Bridge room.

    Please be seated by 1:00 so we don't run late.

    Okay, enjoy your lunch and we'll see you there. Thank you.

    Yeah.

    Ladies and gentlemen,

    Once again, I have your attention.

    Please, we will soon begin the Bridge session here in this venue.

    So now please enter the hall and be seated.

    And for your information, right next to this hall, the Foster session will take place.

    This session, you'll be able to hear presentations and market entry strategies from six of the Fosterbridge global partners.

    So if you want to join this Foster session, please move to the next hall. And we do have some sessions currently being held by Horizon Zero Startup Support.

    They keep up at Hall A3.

    So if you want to join these sessions, please make your way to Hall A.

    And once again, we do have a networking lounge at Hall A3 as well, so please join us if you want to have a free conversation with our participants.

    And in this session, we will soon start the presentation here in this video.

    Thank you for that.

    I'll tell you, in a minute, this is where the bridge session is going to take place.

    If you'd like to do a poster session, please move to the main hall, which is right next door.

    And if you'd like to go to the Horizon Europe CV startup soft cluster session, you can go to Hall 3.

    The networking lounge is located in Shilla Hall, so if you could all take a seat, we'll start our bridge session there. Thank you.

    Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Fosterbridge 2024.

    It's great to see all of you again.

    My name is Jessica Lee and ladies and gentlemen, I hope you all enjoyed your lunch break.

    And now it's time to welcome our presenter to the stage at the PepsiCo Station.

    As you can see, we do have a presenter on the stage.

    The first company to kick off this afternoon's British session is PepsiCo.

    And ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our speaker, Miss Alice Lou.

    External Innovation in Innovation APAC

    Director, who will be delivering her presentation on the stage. Please welcome her with a big round of applause.

    OK, good afternoon everybody.

    It's a great pleasure for me to be here.

    Actually, it's spending my sweet time to be here.

    So because perhaps Seoul,

    We are very excited about our career ecosystem.

    We think it's very open and mature.

    So I'm here to further explore the local networking with everybody here, to enable the collaboration with PepsiCo.

    So let me introduce myself. I'm Alice from Shanghai, China.

    My role is R&D general manager from the practical R&D Center in Asia,

    And first of all, let me introduce what I'm in now.

    What is PepsiCo?

    So, oh, sorry, just a...

    And so PepsiCo.

    So, what's the roadmap now?

    Call the two main areas: 1 is Global Beverage, another is Global Convenient Foods.

    So we have products for more than 200 countries, and last year our annual revenue is about $91 billion, so we have a very broad portfolio.

    So actually our strategy is also quite diverse and looking for cooperation with diverse equals and its impact.

    So this is about our particular history, actually.

    Our company was established in 1898.

    And then during the past, you know, many years, we had developed into a diverse company with portfolio covering beverages, convenient foods, and nutrition, food and nutritional areas as well.

    So here is one page introducing some iconic brands.

    Actually, we have many iconic brands that are over $1 billion brands, and at the bottom you can also see we have a lot of brands.

    That's between $250 million to $1 billion, a million to billion scale range. Very diverse.

    in the large food.

    Besides our diverse portfolio,

    let me introduce a little bit about the PepsiCo consumer program.

    So this is also our strategic point of the stability part.

    We cover actually 3 areas: one is positive agriculture, another is positive value chain.

    So, in a word, they are quite similar.

    And we are looking for sustainable production from the soil to the shelf.

    So we are targeting to reduce water usage, reduce CO2 emissions to keep our environment more healthy, and also we are targeting to provide consumers with positive choices.

    That means still delivering quite fun choices for consumers but less guilty and more healthy foods and beverages.

    Yeah, I'll just go over this a little bit.

    It's just a picture showing our very ambitious goals in these 3 pillars.

    OK, maybe some of you are not aware about this generation, so please allow me to introduce where we are.

    So the PepsiCo estimation actually is integrated into the PepsiCo army capability.

    So we are one of the critical functions of the whole R&D to produce products from agriculture, from seed to shelf.

    So we cooperate with internal PepsiCo and diverse functions closely from statistical points.

    I know that this conference, one of the main topics may be also about startup investment.

    So let's be interested in actually,

    There are three groups that have very intensive engagement with ecosystem.

    So I already introduced practical system innovation from R&D.

    R&D, so we are looking for, you know, companies or startups, or searching for whatever.

    They have advanced technology in green processing and packaging.

    We should cover it together and promote our approach to lending, and we'll be doing it.

    That is mainly my KPI, however.

    The other two.

    And the Group's one is a typical winner.

    So the PepsiCo venture means you're meaning to stop investment.

    The headquarters is based in New York,

    But also we have a branch in Shanghai in the APAC center.

    So we are looking for acquisition and investment opportunities in various micro snacks and also beyond the bottle.

    I can be the bridge between you and our investment team.

    So that is, we also cooperate with the team closely as well.

    So in the middle, actually, there is also another team, so these teams.

    They are also doing the technology scouting at large, but they are mainly focused on the marketing, the sales.

    Supply chain, so quite operational, with estimation.

    So that is how, you know, PepsiCo's team that engages externally, yeah.

    So our main goal for estimation is to

    Because we have our whole business, as I mentioned, like the macro snack and beverage, but we are also very amenable to the core.

    Transformation to create more advantage.

    So we need to do the collaboration with partners in different countries across the whole APAC and to build our technology cottage area and to align with our strategic goals.

    So let me introduce myself, because I'm the main person in contact.

    We in APAC.

    So there's two main roles for me. One is to bridge the ecosystems partners with.

    In countries like China, to do project collaborations to enter the market.

    And we can be in a win-win situation.

    Another way is to bring your bridge to Europe through our US based team.

    And they are also very ambitious about APAC ecosystem and landing in the US market, so that is pretty much my dual role here.

    OK, so I'm also very excited to share our needs and opportunities.

    So we are very excited to cooperate with anybody who is relevant to these areas.

    But before that, maybe you are wondering if there are any case studies for illustration?

    You can be inspired. So let me introduce a very simple story.

    This cause of sustainability is to reduce the water.

    Use that approach to, you know, convert wastewater into cleaner water in our manufacturing.

    So this is a case about that.

    We cooperate with EcoSites starting from 2020 and now and incubate.

    And nowadays kind of very diverse applications in manufacturing,

    So this is just an example how simulation cooperates with startups as partners to land.

    In the business case, we usually grapple together, like the old incubation, and then it's successful.

    successfully extended to as many countries as possible.

    These are 4 areas for PepsiCo's strategic areas.

    1 is that we are looking for

    You saw that, you know, again,

    Brinc is like advanced process and equipment, and especially in the digitalization, the future, healthy processing, and bio transformation and etcetera.

    And ingredient flavors?

    We are mainly looking for clean label solutions that reduce sugar, salt, and other more clean label flavors or new substrates.

    The third party, the packaging, the factory - actually two areas, but one is looking for packaging design that can bring consumers very differential benefits.

    Another one is both sustainability like recycling and biodegradable packaging material that is mainly our focus.

    Research and note is about agriculture.

    Agriculture is going to reduce CO2 emissions and reduce water usage and protect soil.

    That is, we have very diverse focus areas that we're looking forward to traverse.

    Anybody here that's relevant to us?

    Sorry, I'd just like to ask you a little bit, so just talk to you a little bit as well.

    I'll share this slide that gives more details about our technology needs.

    And I want to share...

    There also is indicated PepsiCo's mutual strategy.

    And how is our technology focus?

    And also the inspiration for anybody that could cooperate with us.

    So, as I mentioned, like the previous agreement, just to emphasize two very important areas, one is digital transformation.

    The bio transformation means like the fermentation and synthetic biology that can drive the consumer benefits and also the future healthy processing.

    Because at PepsiCo we offer foods and beverages, mainly for fun, for pleasure, but we want to deliver like a more healthy solution for them.

    Less guilty?

    So we are looking for some healthy processing methodology.

    Can deliver more, you know, healthy products for consumers, and for ingredients, it's more about clean label.

    So anything about clean label will be our next 10-year strategy. There will be innovations in the packaging and agriculture.

    We are looking for sustainability, but also for packaging innovation.

    We are also looking for advanced design to advanced materials to deliver differentiated benefits for consumers.

    Last slide is, you know, just to promote our PepsiCo open innovation portal website.

    We post our needs and briefs on this website so we can receive proposals from our different partners and pipeline leaders.

    So that is also another channel we can connect together.

    But I'm more excited to be here to connect with you face to face.

    If you think that your solution, your company, or revenue fits our needs, I'll be here for days.

    So you're looking forward to meeting anybody?

    So thank you so much.

    Thank you Ms. Alice for your presentation.

    And ladies and gentlemen, now it's time to welcome our next speaker to the stage.

    And next presentation will be delivered by Anthony Horman from the MENA 49.

    So he's coming to the stage. Let's welcome him with a big round of applause.

    Yeah. Hi. Uh, my name is Anthony Horman.

    This is my first Fosterbridge event.

    Hello everyone, my name is Anthony Horman.

    I'm a Seattle-based venture capital investor with Mach 49, advising corporations on making innovation investments globally.

    Today, I want to share with you some best practices for creating and running a globally competitive CDC team.

    I have a very eclectic background as a venture investor, founder as well as a tech executive in global tech companies such as Amazon Web Services.

    Currently in Seattle but working with many companies globally.

    On setting up VC teams, making investments strictly in startups, as well as all the related venture investment, innovation investment activities,

    We at MOD 49 are a global company.

    Agnostic in the industries in which we serve and have familiarity with,

    I'm sure you can recognize a few of these companies across all regions: Europe, US, and Asia as well.

    Specifically, there are four primary activities that we specialize in.

    First is venture building. Mod49 is a company was founded 10 years ago.

    Our founders actually wrote the book on how to pursue venture building inside corporations.

    This was taking their unique IP and, you know, smart individuals within the company to build revenue.

    Generating units out of ideas, venture investing.

    It has been with Mach 49 for about 3 years.

    And this is primarily focused on CVC teams' direct investments into startups as well as LP investments into venture capital firms.

    With Venture Strategy, we work with the corporate head office and executive leadership within organizations to think around.

    Initially, how to approach venture investment, innovation investment, and thereafter how to extract value from those investment activities.

    Finally, venture transformation is about cultural change, digitization, digitalization of non-innovative business units internally in corporations.

    So, you know, I've been a venture capital investor for about 15 years now, since about 2008.

    And even since that time, I think there's always been sort of a prevailing negative stereotype.

    Negative bias against CBDCs amongst incumbent venture capital investors.

    And that has limited VCs abilities.

    Corporation's abilities to invest into the top deals, the best companies, and be seen as a helpful partner in the ecosystem.

    Here's just some of those stereotypes that, I'm sure, you know, many of you are quite familiar with.

    But, you know, if you look at the first one, I think this is a story that perhaps is quite familiar here in Asia as well.

    that corporations are just doing innovation tours.

    Right, they give a little bit of money into the company, see what they're doing, maybe they'll copy it. For our foreign visitors here to Korea today,

    You might not be familiar with the story of KakaoTalk, but I think many Koreans here will be familiar with it.

    KakaoTalk was a company that I was part of, the investment team board, and KakaoTalk.

    When they were founded, they had amongst their investors, they had two corporate investors.

    One was Naver, which is kind of the Google of Korea, and the other was NHN.

    Well, you know, after their investment in KakaoTalk a few years later, you know, lo and behold, Naver creates LINE, which is a very big messaging app in Japan.

    Of course, and then throughout Southeast Asia.

    And then Tencent created...

    WeChat. And so, you know, that negative stereotype of these corporations being an investor into startups.

    Seeing what they're doing, then later copying it and doing, you know, launching a bigger version of it.

    It's not just a stereotype that's kind of come out of nowhere.

    There's precedent for this, right?

    And some stars that have been hurt by this before.

    There's this line of sense.

    If you look around the cap table, most startups, you know, have typical standalone VCs.

    They have one primary objective: it is to return as much money to their LPs as possible.

    That is really it.

    However, for CBDCs, most times financial returns are not the primary objective.

    It is a strategic value that they can bring back to their parent companies or other things.

    So, you know, from the standpoint of a typical financial VC, to have CBDCs on the cap table, you know, might be a little bit hindering.

    Opens up option inhibitors, right.

    Depending on the industry, there are certain industries that are very competitive.

    And I'll give you a real example from my work.

    I work with a lot of mining companies.

    BHP is the world's largest mining company, based in Australia.

    We have Rio Tinto.

    Anglo American mining companies are very competitive.

    And if one mining company sees another mining company on the cap table of the startup they like to invest in, they'll usually actually avoid investing in that startup.

    Whereas another ancillary or related adjacent.

    Industry vertical, oil and gas.

    They're very collaborative.

    So if a Shell or ExxonMobil Chevron, if they see each other on the cap table of a startup, that's actually a good sign.

    That means 'come on in, the water's warm' and we can do something together, right?

    So depending on the industry, it just can.

    It might inhibit a startup's ability to go after larger corporate customers.

    And, finally, growth detractors.

    I think this is a big one.

    CDCs are largely viewed as being beholden to the strategic objectives and priorities of their parent company.

    And rightfully so, that is their parent.

    And sometimes it is.

    Not in line with the strategic players in the startup.

    And you could have a co-investor on the cap table who is pushing forward a strategic benefit of a larger corporation rather than the startup itself.

    So you know all of these kind of negative stereotypes together, you know?

    There is one primary best practice that, you know, from my years of advising corporate innovation teams that I would recommend.

    It's primarily that the CVC must be very clear on what their value proposition is, especially outside of just providing capital.

    If you are clear on that value proposition, then perhaps a lot of CVC teams can get into competitive deals and be an actual value investor.

    And of the, you know, the variety of value propositions that the CVC can espouse, here's 4 examples.

    The one I wanted to dive into a little bit first is product code development.

    You know, we speak a lot with, you know, perhaps innovation teams in corporations.

    B2C teams and

    They all have a similar message.

    We can connect you to a so-and-so product team, we can connect you to our whatever team somewhere, and that's great.

    That should be part of the message.

    But typically, we found that it is just that, just introductions, and there's not much more after.

    And so, you know, when I'm advising corporate innovation teams, I'd like to dive into what exactly are the structural things that you have put in place?

    What are the mechanisms whereby you are incentivizing the right activities and motions to actually make those connections?

    And then have proof of partnerships that come from it, and if those corporations don't have that, that's...

    That's, that's what we particularly work on.

    Customer pipeline is another one, and you can see the second bullet here.

    Sales order should be also.

    To help grow the portfolio companies.

    Many times, you know CDCs, they'll go out there, find the best companies, they'll bring it into their corporations.

    And a lot of their colleagues internally will say, 'OK, this is nice, but what do I do with it?' Right? If I take time out of my busy day to help you?

    And your profile?

    What do I get out of it?

    And those are some of the 2nd order, 3rd order questions that a lot of these corporate innovation teams don't really think about.

    And again, that's another area to spend some time diving into.

    Exit options?

    I think one of the biggest rights of LPs in venture capital right now is DPI, distributed paid-in capital - right, liquidity.

    Where's my money, right?

    What happens, right?

    Typically, VC is 10 plus 2.

    You're waiting at least 10 years, typically 12 years to get your...

    Well, you know, in between, for the companies that need it, corporations are a great partner, a great exit option.

    And if you have that connection to the core depth team or the right teams.

    With the corporations to provide that capital, to provide that exit option, that is a very real value proposition, right?

    Many, many CVC teams don't have that.

    Actually, there's a very clear wall between corporate.

    Development, the M&A team and the CVC teams - you're looking at typically 8 to 10 years ahead.

    What's going to happen in our industry that can disrupt us in eight to 10 years?

    Corp Dev is: what can we acquire today or even tomorrow?

    That will affect us in three years, maybe five years.

    Well, you invest into a startup today and you blink and pretty soon that...

    10-year horizon has become three to five years from now, and that flow of time keeps going.

    And so for many CDC teams who just take a directive that, 'Oh yeah, we're different from Dev, and we just don't talk to Corp.'

    Dev, you're not even at the table.

    Finally, patient capital.

    If anyone here has done startups, you know, one of the hardest things is fundraising, obviously.

    And each subsequent round is another sort of, you know, energy expended time, sometimes wasted, trying to get, you know, investors back on your cap table.

    For this is where I think CBDCs can be quite differentiated and helpful if the CBDCs are coming in with a pre-established capital base.

    But their drivers aren't finance-related, rather...

    related, and you can show as a startup founder, as an entrepreneur, that you know the product you're developing.

    And the strategic value add back to the investor will take a little bit more time, I think.

    Corporations compared to more, you know, independent financial VCs might be able to provide you with that comparable patient capital.

    I wanted to dive in a little bit into this region, and so I want to highlight some limiting characteristics of some CBDCs.

    But these are actually limiting characteristics of some CBDCs that we've seen in this region in Asia.

    And so the top three sort of limiting characteristics we see from Asian CBDCs is one that many of these teams have very limited venture experience.

    And I think

    It's not just Asian corporations necessarily, but we do see a lot more corporate VCs.

    It's the executive leadership who are tapped to lead a new CVC team.

    Typically, they're not coming from a venture background.

    I think a lot of these corporations aren't going out there trying to hire experienced VCs because, to frankly speak, it's a little too expensive for these corporations, right?

    And so typically, they'll go to people they trust, somebody who's been at that corporation for maybe 20 years or so, and those folks definitely are not venture capital folks.

    And so when you have, you know, teams like that, with a very deep internal experience, but not much venture experience.

    That can lead to some limiting factors of that team.

    Second, unclear about the differentiation we...

    This is in the previous slide.

    But again, unfortunately, we do see a lot of Asian VCs who, beyond 'Hey, we have money to invest.'

    They're not really clear.

    What else they bring to the table?

    So that's one element that I'd like to highlight for agency CS.

    And then, finally, insular, geographically focused Asian corporations tend to just focus on Asian innovation, Asian startups.

    That's OK, but there's also a lot of great entrepreneurs in other regions of the world as well.

    And so, to address some of those characteristics, my recommendations here #1.

    I think it might be good to partner with experienced external experts that could be advisors like myself.

    We've heard from a number of venture-as-a-service firms.

    That's another great idea to start there but also.

    Towards learning something, building something internally so that the corporations can operate such teams themselves, right?

    #2 Incentive alignment internally, again, is a very big area that I spend a lot of time and energy with when I work with corporations.

    Typically, they just want me to tell them how to set up funds.

    How do you do term sheets?

    How do you value a company?

    How do you do a valuation of a startup?

    And those things are pretty straightforward, but the real hard work is internal, right?

    If you already got the internal buy-in of executive leadership to start this corporate innovation investment initiative,

    You need to do extra work to align the incentives correctly with other internal stakeholders.

    And, finally, LP investments.

    I think this is an excellent way for...

    To expand the global reach.

    Many, unfortunately, Asian corporations, I think their preferred method of global reach is to set up an office.

    Typically, they'll send somebody to the New York office or a San Francisco office, and then that's great.

    But, you know, there is a limiting factor of those folks that are sent internationally, primarily is that they're not from there, right?

    And so, you know, even those folks, regardless of how great their language ability may be, they're also starting off from zero.

    Pretty much, right, building out their network and et cetera.

    Whereas if you find a very good regional expert or an industry vertical expert and you make an LP investment there, you're getting...

    Very good deal flow and introductions to great entrepreneurs in whatever regions of the world that you're looking for.

    So that concludes my best practices presentation. My email and name.

    Please reach out to me.

    Thank you, thank you for listening.

    Please give a big round of applause to you, Mr. Holman.

    Herman, thank you, ladies and gentlemen,

    Let's move to the next presentation.

    It's prepared by Tenity, so Julie Youngju Choi, the Partner Director of Tenity, will deliver her presentation on the stage.

    So for that introduction, let's welcome our presenter with a big round of applause.

    Hi, good afternoon.

    Oops, I'm so excited to be here to represent Tenity.

    Umm, it's so nice to see some familiar faces and also new faces, and so thank you.

    I would like to say a thank you to the Fosterbridge organization for offering this wonderful opportunity to get global startup ecosystem startups and investors together here.

    Before I introduce Tenity, I would like to... oops, sorry about this one.

    Who am I? I'm Partner Director at Tenity, based in Singapore.

    My primary focus is helping Korean startups tap into Southeast Asia with Singapore as a launchpad, and also help them to go to Europe.

    Where are we? Tenity has a presence in Switzerland, Spain and UK.

    Before joining Tenity, I was also a program manager for CASE out of Centre Singapore and also worked as operation manager for Swiss Chamber.

    Versus Singapore,

    I have worked and lived in Switzerland, Korea and Singapore.

    So now, today, uh, my slides are two parts of what is about Tenity.

    The second part is about the Tenity investment mandate.

    Who are we?

    Sorry, Tenity.

    We are a global innovation ecosystem and early-stage investor.

    Our mission is to create the future of finance and beyond.

    So you will hear a lot about finance.

    Tenity was founded in 2015 as the innovation arm of a Swiss stock exchange company called the SIX.

    Since then, we are operating 6 physical hubs in Singapore, where I'm based, Zurich, Switzerland, where our headquarters are, and Italy, London, Istanbul and Madrid.

    We are 53 people.

    Um, from 14 nationalities.

    And so we work with over 65 corporate partners.

    At Tenity, we believe that corporates and startups have a great synergy to innovate in a more efficient and effective manner.

    Why? We all know that startups are a driving force creating innovation.

    According to McKinsey, 70% of the digital transformation projects failed.

    We incorporate corporate's select capabilities to innovate effectively.

    So here we believe magic happens when startups and corporates come together.

    Embrace open innovation.

    So what are the corporate partners of Tenity?

    Has Tenity because we founded it in Switzerland.

    As a part of the Swiss Exchange Company,

    So we have a strong corporate partnership with Swiss financial institutions like UBS and Julius Baer generally.

    Also, Franklin Templeton, Credit Suisse, also Korean partner KB Financial Group and many more.

    So we have worked with over 2,050 corporate data collaborations, and we have over 120 million in AUM, and we have run 100+ corporate innovation programs.

    And we are working closely with over 65.

    Corporate clients.

    Tenity we serve as an intermediary, bridging the gap between the entrepreneurs and the corporations.

    How do we bridge the gap between the entrepreneurs and the corporates to create value and unlock the power of innovation?

    Ten:ity gather insights about the industry trends relevant to corporates and the startups, and shape their innovation strategy by offering C-level updates, innovation events, and startup database.

    Like I said in the previous slide, that's when the magic happens, when

    The corporates and startups embrace open innovation, so we also provide corporate innovation tailoring, Corporate Innovation programs, POC planning and so forth.

    And.

    Like I mentioned at the beginning, we're early stage investors, we have our own fund and we invest in our portfolio companies.

    We also work as ABC as a service. We work operating the six fintech venture, our founding partners fund running as ABC as a service and we also offer the deal advisory.

    We also provide the most vibrant ecosystem of corporate partners, startups and mentors.

    Experts and investors in 2023 attended more than 300 days of our exclusive community events and conferences.

    Leadership workshops, executive events and the Startup Database.

    I would like to show you some of the case studies that we did with our corporate partners,

    Julius Baer in 2023,

    We ran the Web3.0 Accelerator program, it's a three month program that we offer.

    The emerging day.

    There's 4 sessions and the networking events, and then five startups are selected and they created 2 POC explorations.

    Also, UBS, our global strategic partner since 2023, is also an anchor investor in our current fintech global Fund.

    And so, together with UBS, we achieved.

    Over 1000 startup applications have been deployed, and also 47 startups made funded deployments.

    And the five joint events and one best book startup market scan delivered.

    Also our founding partner has 6 university partnerships in 2015.

    Um, 6 has been a founding partner of the entity and part of the corporate partner network since our foundation.

    Together, we delivered over 40 POC collaborations and over 1,000 startups.

    has been screened for fund deployment and also 40-47 startups were selected for fund deployment.

    So, enough said about what Tenity is.

    So now I would like to cover investments in services and mandate.

    I'm sorry.

    So far, we have 403 companies in our database and 226 as portfolio companies, and we have invested in 72 startups in our incubation fund.

    To, like you said, in this hub, we have our own incubation program, which is our flagship program.

    It's called Elite now.

    The fintech acceleration program previously was called the Tenity Incubation Program.

    We run this four-month program out of our headquarters in Zurich and Singapore, where I'm based, and Tallinn in Estonia and Madrid.

    So it's because we found it in...

    So most of the startups are graduated from the Zurich hub.

    And so, because we are the pre-seed early stage investor, the startups we invest in are quite young, mostly founded between 2019 and 2022.

    By country, we have mostly from Switzerland and also Singapore, the UK, Germany, Spain, etc. For the verticals, we have mostly...

    They are in the crypto and Web 3 area, process and infrastructure.

    And wealth management and payments, investment, regulatory ESG and PropTech.

    So I'd like to share a little bit more on the investment journey, like I said.

    Founded in 2015.

    And then we were running the first VC mandate with a seed fund.

    Partners Fintech Ventures as a VC.

    Since they founded the fund it's 50 million.

    And then we grew our fund in 2022.

    Not only opened a new location in Singapore, but also we raised a 35 million fund.

    Incubation 1.

    But here's a more exciting part.

    In 2023, we opened a Nordic hub where actually program is running from Tallinn, Estonia.

    And we are at launch of Tenity Incubation Fund 2, which is a global fund.

    It's targeting Swiss franc 100 million, so we already closed our first closing last year, late last year, about the 40 million with having an anchor investor, our founding partner.

    Julius Baer and UBS, et cetera.

    I will touch base on some of the success stories and case studies of the alumni later in more detail.

    Here, I would like to mention a little bit more on our flagship program, which is Fintech Insurtech Early Stage program.

    Are there any fintech startups here?

    No fintech startups, any fintech startups?

    So this is our accelerator program, similar to Y Combinator.

    If that's easier for you to understand, so it's an InsurTech, FinTech.

    It doesn't focus on either particular sectors.

    But if you have a finance use case, you can be.

    You can apply for our flagship program, Tenity Acceleration Program.

    And then, if you're selected, you get 50K Swiss Francs, which is about 75K Singapore dollars, as seed money.

    And then we get the 2.5%. And then after the four months of program you finish...

    Fundraising-wise, we are aware that our second global fintech fund is coming in.

    We invested up to 200 to 250K USD as our own investment.

    Um, if anyone here is interested.

    Because now we're still currently receiving applications for the next batch of the Fintech Acceleration Program, our flagship program.

    If you're interested, please come and talk to me.

    I'm happy to share more about the program.

    By providing tentative accelerator program, the corporate program, and the market entry program, along with different growth stages.

    Tenity covers a whole startup life cycle and offers dedicated corporate service along the way.

    For corporates, we offer them deal flow, educate them with a culture of digital transformation, and create an opportunity for corporate innovation for startups.

    So we provide startup services from ideation to exit, especially with a Tenity global presence.

    with a physical presence in six different countries.

    Also help our startups in Tenity's global hubs as a local launchpad and expanding to different continents.

    And with Tenity's fund, we help the startups to cooperate.

    incorporate, so we support their innovation costs.

    So I know my time is up, so just let me quickly share the one slide that's a CoverGo.

    PepsiCo Singapore's Scalerr program, they graduated in 2020.

    They successfully raised 15 million US dollars as a Series A, and Key Rock raised 72 million from Ripple and Six Adventures.

    One more Yokoy, which is a #1 fintech startup in Switzerland.

    They managed to raise 18 million from Sequoia.

    and Swisscom Ventures.

    I want you to remember this.

    The entity is a global accelerator, startup ecosystem builder, corporate innovation provider, and early-stage investor focused on fintech and insurtech startups.

    So why, Tenity?

    We are focused, so we know where we are strong, what our strengths are, and so we focus on areas where we have strength.

    And then we cover the whole innovation life cycle.

    And so we, our management are both invested in the company and interested in every success.

    So we have skin in the game.

    Each of the ecosystem members and the program.

    Thank you for listening.

    Let's unlock the power of innovation that keeps innovating.

    Thank you, thank you very much Ms. Julie Choi for your presentation.

    And ladies and gentlemen, now it's time to listen to NonPublic's presentation.

    Let's welcome Adriel, the Head of Investments at NonPublic, to deliver his presentation.

    Please welcome him with a warm round of applause.

    Hi, uh, let me test.

    OK, great everyone.

    Uh, my name is Adriel.

    I lead our investments at NonPublic Group, which has a few sub-entities, such as Angels, which is one of the largest angel investor networks in Asia.

    And the Oval Asia Fund, which invests in Southeast Asian early stage companies. Um, part of the NonPublic Group, is also a new technology platform.

    Where individual Indian investors, family offices can invest in all sorts of private market deals on an invite-only basis.

    So maybe just to talk you through things.

    Chronologically, NonPublic first started with the Ascend Angels Network 3-4 years ago, which was roughly when.

    And that was hot with the last bull market,

    The founder of Sun Angels Milan started it, as you know, he got to know many other founders in Southeast Asia.

    who wanted to, you know,

    give back to the Southeast Asia startup ecosystem, not just with capital, but also with expertise, and building companies, selling companies across Asia.

    So, in a short span of three years, we syndicated over $30 million in special purpose vehicles across 102 deals.

    We have over 500 angel investors who have made at least one investment with us.

    OK, it's more like 12 community events in 2024.

    So people often joke that it's my full time job.

    Actually joining parties around Southeast Asia,

    So I think what makes us a bit different from a typical angel investor network is that we don't just...

    Do you know angel investment deals with cute little pitch decks from startups?

    We do a full spectrum from early stage.

    Proceed only side that only founders all the way to.

    Like some of the pre-IPO or secondary deals like Xiaohongshu, growth stage.

    Companies like TransCelestial, which is like a Series B company, or even Eagle Commerce, which is a Series A company.

    We are also LPs in several funds in the US and Southeast Asia, so in Southeast Asia we're LPs.

    LP's in Kopi Ventures, which was a fund started by the Kopi Kenangan founders.

    Openspace Ventures, which is a fund as well.

    Ourselves in the US, we are LP's in Rebel Fund One and Fund 2, and then on the Web3 side, we are LP's in Play Future Fund.

    So that's roughly our stance.

    After 2-3 years of, you know, building up Asand, scaling it, you know, the founders of Asand were like,

    Hey, why not start an early stage fund to capitalize on all the deal flow that we are seeing in Southeast Asia?

    So that's how the genesis of the Oval Fund came about.

    It's the first fund that we started under NonPublic.

    We have done over 44 investments over the last 2 1/2 years.

    Out of which we have had 17 markups.

    Companies were EBITDA positive at the time of investment and we have already exited one of our positions.

    Um, we are very fortunate to co-invest with many of the tier one regional and global funds.

    Um, you know, whether that's P-15 and recent WaveMaker Capital.

    WaveMaker, Sequoia and Capital.

    Um, yeah, so you know, from all those perspectives, um.

    We started a fund in, you know, mid-2022, when the market was sort of going downhill.

    Um, and, you know, in Southeast Asia, where power law,

    Technology investing has been done over the last 10 years, hasn't really played out or driven the sort of return profile that we see in the US.

    So all those strategies are really more like risk-off...

    To invest in companies on the B2B side, so we have done a lot of B2B software, B2B marketplaces, and we have done some consumer brands.

    But these tend to be extremely high growth or profitable at the time of investment.

    The other thing about our ville is that we don't lead rounds.

    We usually aim for 1% ownership and we could invest with some of our friends from the other larger funds.

    Just recognizing the sort of ability we have to be hands-on with the portfolio and all that as well.

    Consequently, we don't take board seats as well.

    From a return perspective, you know, we typically look at selling secondaries at different opportunities.

    So we're not hold-all-the-way-to-IPO-or-exit type of investors we are.

    In terms of entry point and exit point, it goes to drive consistent DPI for investors.

    Yeah, so these are some of the companies we've invested in, you know, in Indonesia.

    We invested in a mortgage-type company at the pre-seed stage.

    RingKast that is, you know, about 2X after 1-2 years.

    Thailand, we have invested in HD Mall, which is like a marketplace for pharmaceuticals.

    Elective surgeries, you know, that's also around doing the 2X in position.

    And yeah, we have also invested in Club Kitchen, which is a company started in Manila but has expanded into the US.

    The last one was led by Andreessen and Peak.

    Yeah, so this is the team, the partnership behind OMVC.

    Many would know Mohan Belani as the founder and CEO of e27, one of the leading tech media platforms in the region.

    And then Milan founded the Sand Angels and was running Viu Smart, which was a Series B advertising tech company.

    Um, you know.

    Backed by Amongst Ventures and Kickstart Ventures, which he eventually sold off to Show Heroes Group in Germany.

    Umm, yeah.

    And then to take you guys to the last part of the journey on NonPublic.

    After 2 1/2 years of building Zenoval, Milan, sort of, you know, was reflecting on his journey as both a founder and investor.

    and felt that the private markets

    still very lacking in three main issues.

    First is transparency.

    So, you know, finding deals is massively hard.

    And then, even after you find a deal, accessing them is tough.

    You know, you get different... you get different.

    Access to information and due diligence based on your personal networks and information access.

    Due terms, from the legal to the financials, tend to be very opaque.

    And then the last part is liquidity, right?

    You might have invested in a great company that's 10X on paper, but how are you going to sell that?

    So, yeah, we've built the platform where investors can get access to private market deals through our networks.

    So beyond deals that we have sourced through the same network or the OMVC fund, we also partner with.

    Independent funds across Southeast Asia and the world.

    Um, you know, tracking your own portfolios is a massive pain in the ***, so um.

    We obviously have built like a really good back-end and dashboard for people to just see where their positions are from a, you know, few clicks of a button.

    Um, this is very painful from a data cleaning perspective.

    And I think that's the last slide.

    Yeah, I think that's, um, so yeah, very excited to just share about what we're doing.

    Um, at NonPublic.

    Whether it's our angel syndicate, early stage fund and all the technology platform that we're working on.

    If you are a founder, you're looking to expand and raise capital from Asia, happy to chat and see how we can support you with our different outfits.

    Thank you, thank you Mr. Adriel Yong.

    We are very happy to have your presentation here at this site.

    And representing the next Bridge session will be Senior Analyst Mr. Shawn Kit Chan from Reefknot Investment.

    So he's here at the podium. Please welcome him with a big round of applause.

    Testing, testing.

    All right, great afternoon everyone.

    My name is Shawn, I'm working with Investments.

    So, Reefknot is a global supply chain and logistics VC based out of Singapore, investing in startups for transformative impact in the industry.

    At Series A&B, we've been investing since 2018 with $50 million US dollars.

    Owned by Temasek in Singapore and Kuehne+Nagel, which is the second largest logistics company in the world.

    And we have first-hand visibility into cutting-edge players around the world, with our portfolio companies counting startups in the US, Europe, Israel and Asia.

    We are pleased to be here at Fosterbridge to share the ideas and opportunities emerging in the supply chain and logistics sector.

    So since COVID, the Red Sea disruptions ended,

    The talks around terrorism, trade restrictions are coming up.

    The US supply chain and logistics has been a central theme for corporations and governments all around.

    Whether it is talks about cost reductions, revenue growth or resilience, we see the opportunity in the space as something that we strongly...

    So, the theme of this session is on Investment Opportunities Shaping the Future.

    And another thesis, global supply chain and logistics, is mission critical to enabling the global economy as a supply,

    As a second focus fund, we are one of the few in the world that are deeply invested in the supply chain and logistics sector.

    With, and only one in Asia doing global investments at Series A & B.

    Series A & B. So how we operate as a VC can be covered in four features.

    Number one,

    We are sector-focused and have built a deep conviction around a set of top-down theses on what meaningful problems are in the sector and what it takes for founders and companies to make a meaningful impact.

    Second, we are tech-centric investors, meaning that we carefully evaluate.

    and prospects based on the strength of their technological innovation and relevance to the industry.

    Third, we invest at an early growth stage and practically partner with startups through strategic portfolio support, leveraging our sectoral expertise and connections.

    To build an unfair advantage for our portfolio to succeed.

    Lastly, we have the advantage of being a first mover as a global supply chain and logistics fund based in Asia.

    With more than five years in studying and investing into the space with a unique brand equity and ecosystem to deliver value.

    So where are we situated in this ecosystem and how we operate consists of a wide network of corporate partners.

    Industry-specific VCs, a strong set of co-investors and industry-agnostic VCs in both Singapore and further abroad.

    Our global footprint enables us to get in touch with key players within the space, and with corporate partners.

    We have invested significant time building relations with C-level and C-1 level entry points to globally significant entities.

    So, on top of Temasek and Kuehne+Nagel,

    We count the leaders in the logistics world, such as MSC, PSA, DPW, Post and CMA CGM, as well as beneficial cargo owners or BCOs.

    such as railway firms in Hong Kong and the US within the network.

    Represent not only sources of validation for our investment thesis, but also potential customers and acquirers who we actively socialize our portfolio to our co-investors.

    Thanks to our portfolio,

    We are able to enter competitive deals alongside esteemed funds like Google Ventures, QTel, Qualcomm Ventures and Bessemer,

    Working with them to provide value to our shared portfolios through our unique industry edge.

    Third, we work closely with industry-specific VCs in the supply chain and logistics board.

    Who are investing at an earlier or later stage than us?

    These are the likes of leading seed funds like Tiger Adventures in the US.

    Adept in Israel and CBInsights like Massgrave in Europe and Samsung Capital Investments in the US lastly.

    Novo, and Reefknot Investments.

    With industry VCs in close collaboration, counting familiar names like Vertex, EraseIO and Innovation Endeavors.

    This circle of partners provides us with both a strong upstream pipeline of deal opportunities and downstream prospects,

    As customers, follow-on investors, and even potential acquirers to build an unfair advantage.

    How we make our investments in Fund One is through a top-down thesis approach to the sector, looking for gaps that have transformative impact and evaluating their investability.

    These, we have termed as solution areas, and we identify the leaders in those solution areas prior to winning an entry into them.

    This process can take up to two years, but we make sure that we have created a platform where we are able to secure.

    Trusts, as well as a means of post-investment support.

    Our portfolio represents the outcomes of the search and our leaders in their respective solution areas and is globally dispersed to capture the best opportunities in the sector.

    One of our investments, I'll highlight.

    We should have executed, introduced...you need to...

    Recently made headlines three months ago as our first unicorn outcome in the funding round of 200 million at 1 billion valuation.

    I'll be happy to talk to you about those in greater detail after the slide.

    But for now this is just a flavor of what we've seen and what we've backed.

    How we succeed, and this is particularly important to us.

    How we succeed and win is not just in choosing the best founders and companies, but supporting them to be the best through optimizing their growth and success.

    As a supply chain and logistics leader within the fund, we have set aside dedicated portfolio management resources to execute post-investment activities.

    We draw on the strengths of our global networks and unique strategic nature of the fund to drive value creation.

    Introducing them to financial corporate customers and supporting high-end structuring in the region, for example,

    We run bi-weekly industry product strategy and planning discussions with some of our deep tech portfolios in the US.

    and we facilitate GTM workshops for portfolios looking to expand actively across Asia.

    Positioning and structuring to help tackle closed enterprise clients globally,

    So, an investment from Reefknot is not simply an investment designated by the value of capital, but in a strong portfolio support mechanism.

    That will continually be delivered over the years.

    The team is lean and agile, with my senior colleagues commanding years of experience in the supply chain and logistics sector as operators and investors.

    Reefknot is led by Mark, who was a familiar.

    Who was the founder himself of a supply chain software setup that exited to Goldman Sachs and later CEO of a regional supply chain technology company?

    Before founding Reefknot in conjunction with Temasek and Kuehne+Nagel, he has been investing, has years of investing experience, conducting M&A and corporate venture transactions before leading investments at Reefknot.

    Now for the past four years.

    I myself have been able to fund for the past four years.

    And I'm honored to represent us here in Korea today,

    to meet with everyone and anyone who is interested in the opportunities that we have to offer in the supply chain and logistics space.

    Our vision is to back the next wave of startups transforming the global supply chain and logistics sector. With seven years.

    Sorry. With seven investments and one unicorn under our belt,

    We are ready to do much more by building on a solid foundation that we've created over the past five years.

    We're excited to speak to everyone, whether you're a founder or an LP looking for exposure to the sector.

    So please do reach out and hope to exchange ideas and opportunities over the next two days.

    Thank you.

    Thank you very much for your presentation.

    Please give a huge round of applause to the presenter.

    Thank you Mr. Shawn Kit Chan for your presentation.

    And ladies and gentlemen,

    Now it's time to meet our 8th speaker of the Bridge Session.

    And this time, we will be welcoming Techstars' Miss Jessica Wang, Senior Operations Associate, to deliver the presentation.

    Please welcome her.

    Hello everyone, I'm Jessica Wang.

    Thank you for the Fosterbridge invitation.

    It's my pleasure to be invited here.

    Currently, I'm the Senior Ops Associate in Techstars, I've worked with several programs in Taiwan, Japan and Abu Dhabi.

    So today I will share what Techstars is doing and what's behind the scenes of how Techstars supports.

    Startups to grow, scale, and thrive would be beneficial to everyone.

    So, Techstars?

    Begins with three simple ideas: entrepreneurs create a better future for everyone.

    Collaboration drives innovation, and great ideas can come from anywhere.

    So, our mission is to enable everyone on the planet to benefit from and contribute to entrepreneurs' success, in addition to operating the accelerator and venture funds.

    Reconnect startups, investors, corporations and cities to help build the thriving startup ecosystem.

    Can we do this by identifying founders' needs and always cultivating the right structure for them?

    Capital, plus programs, plus connections equals opportunities.

    So, since 2017, Techstars has run over 45 accelerator cohorts worldwide, 400 early stage startups, over 10,000 mentors and 400 accelerator founders.

    Making us the most active pre-seed investor in the world.

    So then this year we have invested in over 700 startups, so together these companies have raised over $28 billion in their collective value.

    Now it's $116 billion.

    Currently, we are running in 45 cities in 12 countries.

    And there are two accelerators right now in the Asia Pacific region, Sydney and Tokyo. And the partners who lead the Tokyo accelerators are here with us today.

    Nowadays, we have 21 portfolio companies achieving valuations over 1 billion, and we have several innovation partners like JP Morgan's Drive, AWS and Ecolab, etcetera, etcetera.

    We don't just invest in ideas, we invest in people helping them scale their business and achieve their dreams.

    And here are some of the programs that entrepreneurs can join.

    So we start from the community side.

    The Startup Weekend is a three-day program where aspiring entrepreneurs get experience.

    Set up life by learning the ins and outs of launching their own startup.

    Over the three days, they will pitch their ideas, team up with co-founders and develop their products.

    Develop the prototypes and get feedback from mentors, present to industry judges, and celebrate at the party.

    Um, and for our pre-accelerator founders, Calves, it's a 10-week program that provides early stages.

    entrepreneurs with training, tools, mentorships, and network to prepare them for the next level,

    The program cultivates the community of ambitious and innovative entrepreneurs, who are all highly motivated to support each other's success.

    This is a part-time, primarily virtual experience.

    It's perfectly suited for founders who are looking to hone their entrepreneurial skills.

    better understanding their target customers and thinking deeply into refining their solution.

    The word is for aspiring founders to early-stage entrepreneurs.

    Their vision to scale founders' vision into a thriving business.

    And here comes the accelerator.

    So each year Techstars selects more than 700 companies to join our programs,

    Investing $120K and access to the Techstars global network for life.

    During its three month programs, we surround companies with the best mentors in the entire network of corporate partners, investors and alumni.

    In the first month, the startups will go through mentor madness, where founders will meet with around 70 to 150 mentors.

    Share their ideas and receive valuable feedback.

    And the second month focuses on...

    Execution during which some startups may pivot based on the insights.

    Again, they learn from their mentor interactions.

    And finally, in the third month, the startups will showcase their progress during Demo Day, with many beginning their fundraise efforts.

    And one of our unicorn companies, MYT, underwent a significant pivot during the startup journey.

    Originally, it was a robotic toy company.

    Zipline shifted its focus to providing vital deliveries through the world's fastest and most reliable autonomous aircraft delivery service,

    Automatically saving countless lives.

    Basically in our pre-accelerator and accelerator, we have these three key elements - resources, mentors and community - that we provide startups with.

    Workshops and resources focus on fundraising, product development, go-to-market strategies and scaling funds, actionable insights and effective, practical tools to refine their business models.

    And drive growth tracks.

    Mentorship is the heart of our give-first ethos.

    Our mentor and program team generally share their expertise and insights, creating lasting impacts across our network and nurturing meaningful relationships through mentorship.

    Through two primary ways,

    A dedicated pool of carefully selected mentors and personalized 1:1 takes our office hours.

    Our experts from our network bring top tier support.

    Expertise in regional impact and for communities.

    When startups graduate from the program first, they can join the Texas University.

    It involves founders to tap into the power and sector expertise of the Techstars network.

    And engage with a community of thousands of Techstars founders, mentors, VCs, and hundreds of partners.

    Spending, geographies and industry.

    So, with Techstars' guidance and access to the global network of mentors and industry leaders, it takes our quick startups with the knowledge and support needed to succeed.

    Let's dive into one of our founder Kelly's pre-accelerator programs.

    So this enables our founder Kelly's.

    To strengthen self-support for children aged zero to 8.

    in nurture everyone, every young child to flourish to their full potential in safe and family-friendly environments.

    UAE government established Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority, called ECA,

    Focusing on four pillars: health, nutrition, family support, early care and education, and child protection.

    The ECA program drives innovation in early childhood development by empowering growth stage global startups to localize solutions that address critical early childhood development.

    Challenges across Abu Dhabi and UAE.

    And Anjal Z refers to the generation inspired by the founder of UAE, and also means Generation Z in Arabic.

    So for the...

    For the past two years, Techstars has partnered with ECA, running 3 cohorts to source top global startups innovating in early childhood development.

    Here are the three elements of the program: Telethon workshops, and we also combine the Startup Weekend for cohort founders to mentor and guide aspiring entrepreneurs.

    Six selected startups from the cohort will receive 270K in funding.

    And it's not equity-free spend.

    The last month of the program is in Abu Dhabi.

    And explore pilot opportunities with local organizations while building connections and resources in the Middle East market.

    The initiative has raised significant awareness in the sector.

    Funders eagerly joined waiters for upcoming cohorts and those not selected.

    Over nearly all of the initiatives.

    participants continue their journey in the growth track and even to our full accelerator programs.

    And the second case is our general immersion program, the JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization).

    So, the program was designed to connect with Penni's aerospace foundry to the US defense and aerospace industry and startup ecosystem.

    But it went beyond simply connecting founders with the US defense and aerospace communities.

    It provides the founders with the skills and confidence needed to successfully navigate the complexities of the US ecosystem.

    We spent two immersive weeks in Los Angeles and Denver.

    The hubs of aerospace resources and Los Angeles.

    We focus on developing a growth mindset and mastering the nuances of US networking and business etiquette.

    Miss Pool and deep tech

    Scaler was prepared for meetings with investors and laid the groundwork for key events at Denver Startup Week in Denver.

    We shift focus to applying and refining what they learned through investor meetings, pitches, practice, and immersive events.

    Participants gather feedback and sharpen their strategy for the US market.

    And here's what the founder will get: experiences, network emergence, strategic connections, mentorships, and tailored master classes.

    So, throughout the program, we emphasize building meaningful relationships and provide a framework for turning initial connections into long-term supportive networks.

    Understanding the cultural nuances between Japan and US was central to the experience.

    The founders could come for the week, pursue funding, seek clients, or establish their presence in the US market by the end of the program.

    Our founders left not only with valuable connections, but also with the skills and strategies to leverage those networks for future growth.

    The goal was to provide more than just a two-week experience.

    We wanted each participant to feel fully prepared and supported.

    And taking the next step towards expanding into the US market with confidence and lasting relationships.

    There's a book written by Brad Feld, the co-founder of an early investor of Techstars, and Ian Hathaway, another tech star.

    It's called 'The Startup Community Way.'

    There's one sentence in the book that resonates with me.

    We need entrepreneurs and their ideas to keep our...

    be moving forward at all,

    We don't just invest in startups, we invest in the people behind them because we found this drives we.

    They create solutions that change the world.

    Also, we don't just survey startups, we create ecosystems where innovation thrives.

    Connect with the mentorship, resources and communities they need to solve the world's.

    Challenges. This ecosystem inspires collaboration across industries, nations and cultures, driving innovation that ripples far beyond any single startup.

    And Fosterbridge is doing an amazing thing to support the ecosystem.

    Thank you.

    Thank you, Miss Jessica Wang for your invaluable presentation.

    Now, let's move on to our next presentation, and we'd like to welcome David Ventzel, the General Partner of Accelerace, who will be delivering his next presentation.

    Please welcome him with a warm round of applause.

    Thank you for that.

    To be honest, I'm a little bit jet lagged.

    I flew here from Denmark and Scandinavia, somewhere far away from home, but in some sense, I'm also very close to home because I was born here in Korea.

    But I was adopted in '83, so unfortunately don't speak Korean anymore.

    But can I just say, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all of the Koreans who live in Korea and have made my life as a Korean abroad much, much easier.

    Because for the most part of my childhood and growing up, people always asked me if I was Chinese and I would have to explain to them what Korea was.

    And today, they assume, 'Are you Korean?'

    And I would say, yeah, yeah, I'm Korean. And they're like, yeah. So I just love Korean culture, Squid Game, Physical 100.

    And is it true with all?

    Koreans are so beautiful.

    I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's true. So thank you very much for that.

    So my name is David, I'm a general partner at Accelerace and I should say, we're a first generation VC fund and accelerator.

    Was actually a couple years ahead of us.

    We started in 2009, out of Denmark, Copenhagen, because we've existed for so long since.

    We did the Prime Accelerator VC Fund at the early stage in our region.

    And won multiple awards.

    And we are really, really nerdy about accelerating companies.

    So the first question I always ask of accelerators is, how do you accelerate companies?

    What?

    What do you mean by accelerating?

    You accelerate, because to me, being accelerator and VC, especially the word accelerating, definitely means that you need to know what you're doing in order to actually move a company forward.

    Compared to if you hadn't done anything.

    And that is something we've been extremely focused on, and we used to teach companies a lot of important things in these physical gatherings.

    Have been so for years.

    But then COVID hit and essentially, we could no longer gather people in a room like this. And we had to accelerate the companies at a distance.

    And that really changed the trajectory of acceleration.

    That is really why I'm here.

    Because today we're building on an online platform that enables us to collaborate with other entities, not just in our country, but in...

    countries,

    And I hope so one day here in South Korea.

    That is my idea and I have a concrete proposal with me at the end of my presentation.

    For some of you hopefully who would like to speak to me about that.

    What we do, and I'm going to now talk about how we are a little bit different, is that we think that we have spotted an incredible, untapped source of startup talent.

    and societal impact from somewhere that people haven't really looked for startups.

    In Denmark, we have a lot of strong universities.

    They rank really high in terms of research and science.

    Who is the Nobel Prize winner in physics?

    We have a DTU that was just ranked as the best technical university in Europe.

    We have a lot of research and these universities, they create what we call university IP, and that means they own some of the IP and they have a patent on it.

    And if you want to deal with them, you have to go to the Tech Transfer Office and make a deal with them.

    What we have realized since 2009, and looking into our investments of having done more than 1000 companies now, is that surprisingly...

    large part of these are what we would call university associated IP.

    And if you Google it, you wouldn't find a name, or you wouldn't find a term.

    Because it's something we basically came up with because we didn't know what else to call it.

    But University Associated IP is IP that originates from the university but is not patented and owned by the university.

    And the tech transfer offices, and that is a much, much larger portion than the companies that are actually among the university IP.

    Just how much bigger?

    We don't really know what form they are, but we are operating.

    It is almost six or seven times the amount of companies. So we know that 147 companies are coming out of Denmark based on university IP from 8 universities.

    But we estimate.

    About 950 companies annually are coming from the universities with what we call associated IP.

    Again, products and services that arise from research, that arise from know-how within the university but is not patented, and that is for several reasons.

    One is that the researcher might have actually worked with this in his spare time or her spare time.

    It can be that it's students that are actually leading the startup, of which the university cannot take ownership over.

    Or it is simply because the patent office deems it not relevant to take patent over.

    And we see that a lot, so we have a number of companies we invested in.

    So when we look at Associated IP, we mean that we really stay away from the tech.

    Trends are really, really heavy.

    The deep tech there's.

    Focusing on that in Europe.

    And then we also stay away from the latest.

    That would be like niches and you know, ideas for doing marketplace, for example.

    So we are trying to find a sweet spot where there is some IP, but it's not owned by the university.

    And that's really what we are talking about when we call associated IP.

    The founder-owned IP investments, and this is from our latest fund, and they do incredibly well.

    So here you see some of the universities they're coming out of, and you see a little bit of what they're doing.

    I think the most remarkable thing is that people have this idea that if you invest into these companies that originate from student incubators.

    Sort of cute, they're like toys, they're like fun, but you can't really make any money off these.

    And that's probably not true.

    What we have seen so far is that our fund, we have currently a 35% IRR on those seed funds.

    Unrealized numbers because the fund is from 2020.

    But it just goes to show that there is real value to be found among these university associated IP based startups.

    I think what is equally important is that when you invest early stage, pre-traction pre-seed, as we do, you do it.

    Of course, to make a return, but for our LPs, we also do it to create impact.

    If we're just in it for the money, I'm sure we would find another stage where we could deploy a lot more money and take much more management fees.

    We're also doing it for impact, and that's also what our LPs are possibly looking to create.

    The incredible thing is that when you look into the startups arising from university, they are working with sustainability solutions to a larger degree than the normal population.

    Why are we not really sure?

    But we think it's because within the culture of universities and the age group that are within universities, they are much more cognizant of the potential climate.

    We also see that these are distributed throughout the country, we see that in other countries as well.

    So you don't have the situation where all the money just goes to the capital, which is proper.

    Because universities are distributed throughout the entire country.

    LPs that have a regional focus or at least a national focus, or pan-national focus.

    If you go to EIF, the European Investment Fund in Europe,

    They will also say that it would be important to get capital distributed to all parts of Europe and all parts of the countries.

    And that is true if you invest in these companies.

    And there's a lot more females here within the universities, because in Denmark anyway, 54% of all university students are female.

    Unfortunately, not a lot of females are getting funded.

    Which we tap into this specific population.

    We do see a lot more female founders.

    If you want to move the needle on geographic expansion or geographic deployment of your capital, on sustainability and on representation of people who receive capital.

    This is a really good place to look.

    Like I said before, we came about through acceleration, and I'm sure all accelerators do, but we have numbers to prove that.

    What we are doing works, so when we take a company through our program, they accelerate their revenue by almost 100%, and their employment as well.

    And these numbers are verified by the Danish Government Statistical Bureau.

    So we do a lot to help these companies and it works.

    So how do we collaborate with universities?

    I hope that some of you here are potentially from the university and know people who are within the university.

    or maybe you just want to get inspired and collaborate with us in order for us to go here and expand our model to Korea.

    Collaborate with the university.

    It's just that we are now talking to the new people at the universities.

    It's not the old tech transfer offices where there's a lawyer sitting, but we are now talking to the incubators and startup programs.

    And the funny thing about this is, if you take some of the people that are working, these are newly hired people.

    So that means generally you can actually talk to them and they're willing to try new stuff.

    So the way that we work with, for example, I'm just going to take one of our 12 universities that we're currently collaborating with, Copenhagen University.

    The way that we collaborate with this, is that Copenhagen University has an incubator called Lighthouse, gathering all of their startups.

    not just the ones coming off the tech transfer, but also their student startups. And they attract these through university syncing programs.

    Well, but I probably just really don't have the lead track, and I cannot invest in the company.

    So we collaborate with universities, placing an elite acceleration program that really accelerates these companies, both on employment and on revenue.

    And then we provide counsel to these.

    And that will create what we call the vicarious effect, basically inspiring the next generation of students to partake in the entrepreneurial innovation economy.

    So that is what we do.

    But one thing that makes us a little bit special is that we set up these universal proposal committees.

    We work very closely with students at the universities and people on the ground that are helping us to spot the good companies.

    So to speak, and helping us, you know, propose companies.

    And that goes into our investment process.

    Our investment strategy out of our current fund is that we're basically looking for these companies in the discovery layer of the universities,

    I would say we invest very early.

    There needs to be a complete team, but then just a prototype.

    They don't need any customers. We take a 7% ownership.

    And they will follow up with a real Present investment, expanding our ownership.

    And then we'll sit still and hope they'll go all the way to exit.

    And that's something we've done now with a couple of funds and we hope to do here in Korea.

    So currently we collaborate with 12 universities in the Nordics in Sweden and in Denmark, and we're in talks with universities around Europe.

    All in the same situation.

    They all have invested heavily in entrepreneurship, in innovation.

    They have all built infrastructure that means physical incubators, they have built programs that build a lot of things to help these startups.

    Yet they feel they need a link to risk capital, and many of the companies that come out don't get the attention that they really deserve.

    That is where we come in with our focus, we give them the attention.

    We help find out which companies are worth investing in from a venture capital standpoint and give them the help and acceleration these companies need to move to the next stage.

    So that is why I am here, beyond just loving being in Korea and eating a ton of food.

    I hope, of course, that we could find.

    Find universities, find accelerators, investors who could help us explore the possibility to take our model to Korea.

    Thank you very much.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Bantel, for your valuable presentation.

    And next, it's time to listen to āltitude's presentation.

    We do have Videesha here at the site, so please join me in,

    welcoming representative to the stage with a big round of applause. Please welcome her.

    Hi everybody, my name is Videesha Boeckle.

    I'm a General Partner at āltitude and it's so great to be back in Seoul.

    I actually came here for the first time in 2017 on honeymoon with my husband.

    So it's nice to come back in a different context.

    At āltitude,

    We are Europe's SME tech fund, where a €30 million fund investing €100K to €1,000,000 in pre-seed companies that help small and medium sized enterprises become more productive and efficient.

    I've been in the venture capital ecosystem in Europe since 2012 and I'm happy to share a little bit more about what we do.

    SMEs in Europe make up 99% of all businesses. They contribute 65% of employment.

    By SMEs, and they contribute 50% of GDP.

    You can see here that the top industries for SMEs in Europe are construction, retail, and tourism.

    And I did a little research to find out what the top SME segments were in Korea, and they're actually very different.

    They're the top.

    One is wholesale and retail, and the second is real estate and rental, the third is transportation, the fourth is manufacturing, and the fifth is construction.

    And that's really interesting for us because as we evaluate deals in Europe and think about where these companies are expanding to.

    So the common knowledge, or the common thought, is to expand into the US.

    50% of our portfolio right now are US domiciled.

    But what we're seeing is there's, for certain verticals, a huge interest in coming into Europe.

    So into Asia, sorry.

    So what's the three core reasons why SME tech is taking over Asia right now?

    The first is regulation.

    There is so much new regulation coming in that's wholly focused on small and medium sized businesses.

    We define these as organizations with between 10 and 500 employees.

    You can see here everything from anti-money laundering through AML to asset service.

    We actually did a deal in this space called Life very recently, and it covers everything, including corporate social responsibility.

    So regulation in Europe is really driving a lot of the SME tech movement that's happening there.

    The second reason is something that we haven't seen for a very long time, which is just capital has become really expensive.

    We hit a 23-year high on interest rates and that just made it very difficult for small businesses to operate in this inflationary period.

    and the high interest rates impacted most businesses in the way that they do business, making it very expensive for them.

    And the third is really about technology adoption.

    So if you think about 2005, when AWS launched, making it much cheaper for companies to build on the cloud,

    Then you have the iPhone launch and mobile phones in our hands and pockets.

    And that drove a lot of innovation in Europe for on-demand activities and platforms like Bolt.

    Sorry, in Europe.

    And then you had Stride, Stripe and Adyen integrating payments and making it much easier to do that.

    And then the rise of social media has been massive, especially for small businesses on platforms.

    Such as Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn.

    And then you had the rise of APIs that have made it easier for companies to build on the back of other solutions that are already in market.

    And what we think will be huge is the rise of artificial intelligence, and we have seen the number of AI copilots for various things.

    Including sales increase in the last few months.

    I don't know if other people are seeing that in their deal flow.

    SME tech represents a huge opportunity.

    It's actually one of the areas in terms of software where SMEs are completely underserved.

    We think that this will be a massive opportunity.

    Indeed, and in Europe, only one in five SMEs is highly digitized, and 1/3 of businesses will transfer ownership in the next 10 years.

    Most people think that SMEs transfer ownership, trying to digitize after sales happen. That's not the reality.

    The reality is that when small business owners want to sell their businesses, they try and digitize prior to doing that.

    And in Europe alone, it will be a 15 trillion opportunity.

    So I've talked to you a little bit about the opportunity in the background and the drivers to SME tech.

    But what does that look like in reality?

    On the left-hand side you can see how.

    Let's think about spending money in our businesses in any given year.

    And you can see that the number one place where they spend money is on their employees.

    And our portfolio, āltitude, is looking at solutions that either augment human activity or completely replace them.

    So we invested in a company in 2023, pre-revenue.

    Three-person team and they scaled to 3 million in ARR within 12 months.

    That success?

    It's a debt collection business for small businesses, and we also invested in a company called Oodles.

    I don't know if you have something similar here in Korea, which is Device as a Service, making it really easy for small businesses to buy technology.

    And specifically hardware.

    And the final thing that I'd like to highlight is something in healthcare, which I know is very prominent here in Korea.

    It's a vertical solution for patient transfers, which is in Europe a €95 billion market.

    And I don't know whether that's similar here in Korea or not.

    This is something probably relevant to the audience, maybe something that you might want to get involved in.

    We run something called SME Tech Leaders.

    It's our platform activities, it's our way to basically engage with small and medium sized business owners.

    Founders that are building in this segment with individual LPs that are interested in this, family offices, and also other VCs specifically at growth stage.

    Over the last year, we've partnered with a number of growth stage funds.

    Next week, watch out for our EU SME Vertical SaaS 50.

    that we're publishing in.

    Collaboration with Eight Roads, which is an $11 billion global fund.

    And so we're really excited about the trends that we're seeing in Europe for that kind of thing.

    This is us as a team, I'm not alone, I'm based in London.

    Berlin and also our director, who is based in Zurich.

    And we've been involved in over 450 transactions, each of us has been in venture capital for more than a decade.

    And we have returned a significant value back to our investors.

    So if anyone's interested in the SME segment and this little taster that I've given, please reach out to any of us here.

    Thank you.

    Thank you very much and a wonderful presentation.

    So, ladies and gentlemen, we have attended presentations at this Fosterbridge session and now we will have a short break until 3:30 PM.

    So please join us again here at this venue from 3:30 where we will be having meaningful presentations.

    Thank you once again for your participation.

    To see you soon, please enjoy some coffee in the lobby and also use this time to mingle with our participants.

    Thank you.

    Everyone, we're going to take a quick break now.

    We've got coffee and refreshments, so please enjoy them and be back here by 3:30.

    This is a short coffee break.

    We do have some refreshments and coffee in the lobby, so please enjoy them.

    And please come back to this hall at 3:30 as we will be welcoming our presenters to the stage.

    Thank you.

    BJP's Manoj Bajpayee.

    So.

    Show me.

    PM Modi's birthday celebration.

    CPTCR

    2.

    Oscar's Leonardo DiCaprio wins but spotlight's on Priyanka Chopra.

    BJP

    Open Music

    Akhilesh.

    Okay, everyone, a quick announcement.

    We're going to continue with our Bridge session right after this.

    If you're still in the lobby, please come in, and if you're standing, please take a seat.

    Residents and audience

    We will soon commence the Bridge session pitching.

    So now please enter the hall and be seated.

    Thank you very much for your kind cooperation.

    And we do have some meaningful presentations ready for you, so we'd like to welcome you all to the Fosterbridge session once again.

    We will start the session in about 5 minutes momentarily, so we ask for your cooperation.

    Thank you.

    Ladies and gentlemen,

    Once again, for those still in the lobby now, please enter the hallway and take your seats.

    We'll soon commence the presentations of the Brinc session of the Fosterbridge 2024.

    Notable.

    I'd like to invite you to join us for today's Brinc session presentation.

    If you're not already in the room, I'd like to invite you to enter and join us.

    We'll get started shortly.

    Hi.

    Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Fosterbridge 2024.

    We are now having presentations at the Bridge session.

    Now it's time to welcome our 11th speaker of the British session.

    Now, please welcome Mr. Thomas Oliver Fairburn, co-founder of the Baobab Network, to the stage for his presentation.

    Please welcome him.

    Hi.

    Thank you all so much and thank you for the introduction.

    Also like to shout out to Jay for organizing this.

    I think he's done an awesome job, so thank you, Jay, for bringing it all together.

    My name is Tom, I'm one of the founders at Baobab Network.

    We are an early stage investment company and accelerator, investing only in African startups.

    So really happy to be here today.

    and introduce you to our company and tell you a bit about what we're doing.

    Africa is the greatest investment opportunity on the planet.

    The market is in growth, driven by tech adoption.

    A dynamic young population and a fast-growing middle class.

    Some of the statistics that we see are kind of mind-blowing.

    Mind-blowing.

    Mind-blowing?

    Mind-blowing?

    Mind-blowing?

    Mind-blowing?

    Mind-blowing?

    Mind-blowing?

    Mind-blowing.

    Mind-blowing.

    Mind-blowing? By 2040, there are going to be 2.4 billion people in Africa.

    60% of the population are currently under the age of 35.

    There's about a 45% urban population.

    And six out of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world.

    Are in Africa. Some other stats down there at the bottom.

    The ones that get really exciting for us are the tech stats.

    You see $180 billion worth of the Internet economy by 2025, and more than a billion mobile phone connections are already present on the continent.

    Yet current investment models in Africa are failing.

    A lack of angel investors leaves a significant capital gap for entrepreneurs.

    Traditional VCs,

    We look at their models, they're time-constrained, they're inflexible, and that limits returns for LPs.

    LPs. African founders also need more than just checks. They need access to markets, experts and operators, all needed to help them scale.

    Venture in Africa is not typical.

    This is how most people think the venture system works in Africa.

    Traditional with Angel and pre-seed at the start, going all the way up to exit.

    In reality, it's however,

    Most African founders never get that first check that they need to build something meaningful.

    There is still a huge gap at pre-seed and angel level, which is leading entrepreneurs in Africa struggling to raise that first angel or pre-seed round, despite progress.

    The ecosystem remains extremely nascent versus other emerging markets such as LatAm and Southeast Asia.

    And raising money as an entrepreneur in Africa is a painful process.

    And support networks and communities are really hard to come by.

    Baobab Network was launched in 2016 to solve this gap.

    I grew up out in Kenya, I spent the first 15 years of my life in Nairobi.

    And that was a lot of the reason behind setting up the company back in 2016.

    We built the leading early-stage investor and accelerator for African tech entrepreneurs.

    Over the next decade, we will invest in 1000 category-defining companies across the African continent.

    We've spent eight years learning what it takes to invest successfully across Africa.

    Since we started, we've backed 65 companies across 16 African countries.

    Who collectively have gone on to raise more than $55 million in VC funding.

    Our most recent cash exit in dollars was 12X, and we've over the last four years invested in 15 different sectors.

    The crazy numbers that we're seeing are on the pipeline side, you can see on the bottom right here.

    Since 2022, we've had more than 40,000 applications for funding through our accelerator.

    Our capital has been catalytic. For every $100 we've invested,

    Top global VCs and VCs in Africa have invested $23 into our portfolio companies.

    And you can see here on the left-hand side,

    Some of the leading names that you'll all know well have backed our companies.

    And on the right-hand side, potentially names you know less well.

    These are some of the most active VCs in Africa at the later stage.

    And Flatt & Wave.

    Who are unicorns who acquired one of our companies in 2021.

    All these guys have co-invested with us, and we're excited to continue building this network of people that are backing our companies.

    After we've gone in with the first check.

    Our holding company is well capitalized and is built to last for the next 100 years.

    That's the vision we've built for our business: to be around for the very long term.

    We're already backed by investors across 5 continents, including Africa, US, Europe, Southeast Asia, where we have LPs and investors in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

    And also more recently in Australia.

    Impact has been central to our DNA as an organization for a decade.

    And our portfolio companies are already impacting the lives of consumers and SMEs across the continent.

    Sorry for the slightly small chart, but you can see in the top right here.

    Some of the sectors we're in, the biggest ones being Fintech, Logistics, B2B SaaS, Healthcare, E-commerce, AgTech and Education.

    Our portfolio has gone on to create more than 1,250 jobs.

    And the most important statistic for us is that 100% of our companies are owned and run by African founders.

    That's something that differentiates us.

    with other funds in the region. We'll only back companies that are launched by African founders.

    We spent the last eight years building a really strong moat through our brand positioning and pipeline.

    With more than 13,000 applications to the accelerator last year,

    Pipeline grew over the last three years by more than two and a half thousand percent.

    We became the first choice investor for African founders in 2024.

    We've already seen more than 20,000 companies apply for our accelerator,

    and last year there were only 54 countries in Africa and 51 of them were represented in our application pipeline.

    So our brand is really, really diverse and getting all across the continent.

    Which is really exciting from a pipeline perspective.

    Over the last 12 months, our brand has skyrocketed, with organic reach up 10 times in the past year.

    And you can see the chart of just how quickly that's grown, with LinkedIn being our biggest acquisition channel for founders.

    Some of the statistics here on the right-hand side showing that our brand and press coverage has really expanded.

    And for us, this is amazing because it's not telling our story, it's telling the story of the African continent and how it's an amazing place to be.

    investing in the early stage right now as we speak.

    What this brand has meant is a bit of a flywheel we've been building, so we're perfectly now positioned.

    Leverage network effects driven by this.

    What do I mean by that?

    More success stories from our portfolio mean more companies apply, more investor appetite comes from that, and better startup supply if more investors are coming in.

    So you saw on that previous slide some of the best investors that have backed our companies.

    That's helping us drive this flywheel and improve the ecosystem more generally.

    More founders come through.

    We're writing more checks, which is what we love to do.

    Baobab's opportunity to lead the market is now.

    This is one of my favorite slides that we're sharing at the moment.

    On the right-hand side, we have a chart here showing the number of startups in Africa in Y Combinator cohorts from 2018 to today.

    You can see in '21 and '22 in each cohort with YC, which is the biggest accelerator in the world,

    They were trending well above 25 or 30 companies in '23 and '24.

    that number per cohort has come right down and this is the sort of vacuum that we talk about that our brand is now filling.

    Where do the top founders go for that?

    First check: if Y Combinator are pulling back?

    We like to think they're coming to us and that's really been shown in the pipeline in the last two to three years.

    A lot of people ask us, how are we dealing with 40,000 applications or 20,000 applications a year?

    Which is a good question because we've only got a team of 10.

    We're using tech to do this, and we built in the last year a proprietary tech stack that allows us to invest at scale.

    We call this Baobab OS, it's our operating system, and it harnesses AI in a really smart way to unlock faster insights, smarter selection, and a more stable investment process.

    Really it's the beating heart of our business now, and it's enabling us to scale up what we do.

    more founders and ultimately understand markets better.

    If you look at the bottom here, this is kind of what OS is allowing us to do.

    Identify white spaces, manage our pipeline data much more efficiently.

    Pick winners, support companies and match with investors.

    And this is something that we're very proud of. And to be honest, VCs are knocking on our door too.

    They see this from us.

    And we're telling them at the moment, not quite yet.

    We're still training it, but it's something we're very excited about.

    OS and how that can enable early-stage investment.

    More broadly, not just in Africa.

    Sorry to show my ugly face on stage and on the screen, but this is our team.

    We're led by an industry recognized team of managing partners.

    And earlier this year, we actually acquired a strategic branding agency in South Africa, which has further enabled our ability to support founders.

    Not something we hear much of in terms of VC brands making acquisitions like that, but it was truly game-changing for us.

    And Klein, on the right-hand side, was the main guy behind that brand that we picked up.

    You can see on the bottom.

    Some of the companies that our managing partners have been involved in.

    Niama Abubakar, on the left-hand side, took a company through Y Combinator in 2017.

    Ultimately to exit as a Moroccan marketplace.

    So just to kind of wrap up and share a little bit of what we're doing next.

    Having spent the last eight years building the leading early stage investment platform in Africa, we're now launching $100 million fund to continue backing the best founders at pre-seed across Africa.

    This is an ambitious play, but we know we have the pipeline, the team, the tech stack and the track record to make this a possibility.

    And as you saw from that YC slide, a lot of people are pulling back.

    So we believe there's a big story to tell LPs at the moment.

    This is a 10/20/30-year play to back incredible companies in Africa.

    to say, 'Look,'

    but no one else is really doing it at the earliest stage as we are.

    What will the fund do?

    The fund's going to be high cadence, it's going to invest into between 250 and 300 companies at early stage over the next four years.

    And it's going to follow on into the best companies up to seed.

    The investment lens will continue on the way we've been doing in the past.

    Which focuses on any company that touches the consumer or the SME.

    We believe the consumer and the small business really is the beating heart of the African growth story.

    All of this will be proprietary deal flow driven by our tech stack, which we believe will drive superior returns.

    We'd love to connect with anyone here in Seoul this week.

    And share more about our journey and vision, and also share our favorite saying.

    At the moment, we believe that venture capital was built for San Francisco.

    Baobab was built for Africa.

    Thank you all so much. Happy to answer any questions or catch me after the session today.

    Thank you very much for your presentation.

    Please give a huge round of applause.

    Thank you.

    So we're having some real pitching from our participating companies here.

    Bridge session and ladies and gentlemen,

    Before we invite our presenter to the stage, we will have a short break for about 5 minutes.

    So we encourage you to please stay in this room and use this time to have some conversation with other participants.

    We will soon reconvene with the presentations here on the stage.

    stage. So please be seated for about 5 minutes.

    Thank you very much for your kind cooperation.

    Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your patience.

    We will now commence our presentations, so this time we will be welcoming the presenter from OMVC here at the site.

    We're joined by Mr. Marc Palet, Associate of OMVC.

    So ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome him to the podium with a big round of applause.

    Thanks very much.

    My name is Jason Best.

    I'm the co-founder and managing partner of our venture capital.

    I apologize in advance, I seem to be losing my voice today.

    But we were.

    We invest at the seed and Series A stage into fintech, deep tech and climate tech deals in the US, Asia and the Middle East.

    If there's one thing that the last five years have told us very clearly, it's that venture capital is changing, and so is the industry and the ecosystem.

    From the highest highs to the lowest lows.

    Within all of the changes that have occurred in the ecosystem, agility and flexibility are certainly keys to success.

    Those are the issues that we founded our venture capital on, which is our experience of disciplined approach.

    Our agility and adaptability and, most importantly, a collaborative nature with our founders we've invested in.

    As well as the LPs who invest in our fund.

    Let me tell you a little bit about our team.

    My co-founding partner, Mark Munoz, lived in Hong Kong for 18 years before moving back to the US.

    He has built and sold 5 fintech companies in his career, two in the US and three in Asia.

    One of his exits included an IPO,

    So he has a tremendous amount of founder experience.

    Myself, I was a part of two successful healthcare tech exits in the US.

    And then went on to be one of the co-authors of the JOBS Act.

    That legalized equity and debt crowdfunding in the United States and also opened up the capital markets for the first time to retail investors.

    It was one of the biggest changes in US securities laws in 80 years.

    And that has now delivered over 2.5 billion dollars to over 7,000 companies across the entire United States.

    And growing following the work in the US, I began working with governments and regulators around the world.

    And over the next seven years I've worked in.

    35 countries on FinTech policy and regulation with the World Bank, the US State Department, the different country governments and regulators, and financial services firms.

    So gaining a good understanding of how regulators think and why they act.

    So with that experience, we're now supported by our team.

    And Ben Hoxie in New York, Marc Palet in Singapore.

    And then our marketing team and communications team in the US as well.

    We're also supported by a great network of venture partners.

    venture advisors who help us with deal flow and regulatory oversight.

    One of the things we do is work very collaboratively and closely with our founders.

    Right, hands-on,

    We are typically board members, board observers, or advisors to our companies in one form or another.

    Sometimes we found being an advisor is actually the more powerful position.

    Because then you're the phone call before the board meeting and the founder wants to tell you what's really going on.

    Caroline Tran is one of our founders, based in Australia.

    She just announced today she's leaving her company.

    Hello Clever has become the

    second fastest growing startup in Australia this year, it's a payments company.

    And they are able to. They're now expanding into Southeast Asia.

    And one of the things we've helped her with is her management team, really helping her to build out hers.

    COO, CFO and other operational support teams allow her to focus primarily on customers and product.

    So our focus areas include fintech, deep tech, which is AI and blockchain opportunities, and climate tech deals. And climate tech really is where there is a fintech angle included.

    This map gives you a sense of our network where we have operations.

    Whether it be our team members, our portfolio companies or our partners, we have great representation across East Asia.

    Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the US.

    Another one of our founders, Anand Gomes.

    Interesting story.

    When I first met him, I was coming off a stage of speaking engagement in San Francisco.

    And he came up to me literally with a piece of paper, with an idea he had for how to change the way.

    derivatives were traded in the world over the next 18 months.

    He had no experience as a founder.

    Over the next 18 months, I worked with him as a mentor, helping him shape his ideas and shape his go-to-market.

    And when it was time to take an investment, we were his first institutional check.

    He now runs the leading trading platform for crypto derivatives for institutions.

    And this month, they crossed half a trillion dollars in market traded securities.

    And they've done all this with a team of 42 people.

    We have built a proprietary tech stack that helps us to analyze deal flow and also manage our portfolio in a more efficient way.

    We started off this year by saying, 'How can we avoid hiring another analyst for our team?'

    As we wanted to build a way to do deal sourcing in a more efficient and more scalable way, so now we're able to

    We built a piece of proprietary AI technology that allows us to scan the web every day for the best founders and the best companies to filter and stack-rank them.

    So our associates have

    Prioritized lists that they can then go after each day, and what could have taken a full week's time.

    that can be done in a few hours each week.

    Second, we wanted to do a better job at analyzing outcome analysis.

    How were these investments performing?

    And so we built a piece of technology that allows us to spend 2 hours.

    For the founder, doing a bottom-up market mapping analysis of their company, looking at the risks and opportunities of this investment,

    We then look at the life stage assessment which helps us understand how they will move through from startup to scale up and to exit.

    And then we enter the data into our models, which does a tornado analysis.

    In a Monte Carlo simulation and runs 56,000 permutations of those data points.

    Which then gives us a probability-weighted return on invested capital, which we found quite helpful in making our final decision on investment.

    The third piece of technology we've been using is a forecasting tool that enables us to do portfolio management in a more efficient and effective way.

    That's more transparent for our LPs as well.

    So this year, we've seen over 1,000 deals, we've evaluated 376, done 20 deep dives and done 2 new investments and three follow-on investments.

    And we anticipate with the tech stack we have in place now, we should be able to double deal flow next year.

    At the founder's story is our founder, Patrick Reed.

    Who's the founder of your startup?

    which is an AI product for registered investment advisors in the United States to help their clients manage their own portfolios.

    They started out with one business and had to do a hard pivot two years ago.

    They successfully managed that pivot and with our help, were able to get new clients.

    And now we'll be raising their Series A next year.

    And it will be profitable as well.

    And so why we want, like all VCs, we want fast growth, we also want to make sure we have manageable growth.

    So managing gross margin, customer acquisition costs very, very important to us.

    So we have a rigorous and not rushed kind of approach to our investments, so our investment process typically takes about six weeks.

    And so if investment companies are coming to us and expecting us to write a check in five days, we're not the right investor.

    We want to be careful.

    custodians of our investor capital. We want to make sure that we make the best decision we can with the right facts available.

    Happy to go through our history on an individual basis.

    The team that was working together has been investing for 10 years together.

    So what if every founder picks us?

    Why do funders, founders select us?

    And competitive decisions to join their cap table is number one.

    Since most of our deals are FinTech, we've already invested, co-invested with some of the largest investment banks in the world.

    That makes a difference when you're looking at market understanding as well as exit potential opportunities.

    Second, we've actually made regulatory changes which have delivered billions of dollars to thousands of companies globally.

    This helps us understand how regulators think and why they act.

    That's a very important thing to have.

    We've also been founders and exited companies ourselves.

    And finally, we built the tech stack that makes us more efficient and effective at our jobs every day.

    I want to thank everyone for their time today and I'm happy to answer any questions or follow up over the next couple of days.

    Want to thank Fosterbridge for organizing this event and allowing us to be a part of it.

    And then incredible opportunity to engage in an ecosystem that's very vibrant, and look forward to learning more about it over here.

    Thank you so much.

    Thank you very much for your presentation.

    Thank you for being part of this meaningful journey, Mr. West.

    Thank you.

    And next, we'd like to welcome our next presenter to the stage.

    We have Allison Hui May Nam, the Chief Commercial Officer from Nandina Remanufacturing here on the stage.

    So we'd like to welcome her to the stage with a big round of applause.

    Hi everybody, I'm Allison here from Nandina.

    Remanufacturing.

    We are in a very interesting business.

    So my business is basically recycling airplanes, so literally the whole plane.

    As everybody is fully aware, we're running through a pretty challenging time with the supply chain, especially when it comes to critical materials.

    and all the trade wars are coming in so.

    There is a critical lack of critical materials and such huge demand across so many different sectors.

    Political geopolitical tensions are driving up the cost, and many of the countries are underinvested when it comes to creating circular economy.

    Or when it comes to recycling critical materials,

    So literally, this is what we do.

    Has anybody asked the question what happened to planes when they stopPDFlying?

    I'm sure all of us came through planes, somebody, all of us would have sat on a plane, right?

    But very few people actually ask that question.

    What happens to planes when they stop flying?

    So literally, currently, there are 8000 planes sitting in the boneyards around the world, more than 5000 of them are actually sitting in the US.

    So literally when planes stop flying after 25 years, they will just fly to boneyards and park there.

    And if there's no space in Arizona, they will just crush it. They will bring the excavator, they'll crush it.

    Down-cycle it as construction waste.

    So what we do very differently is, we don't crush anything.

    So we literally get the plane and then we slice it up and lay it layer by layer, peeling it in order.

    Ultimately we want to keep the value of the materials as high value and from there we can actually reprocess it to go back to different supply chains.

    So in a plane, there's lots of materials, right?

    So we have the...

    Aluminum in the fuselage, the floorboards, the beams is all made out of carbon fiber.

    The engines are made out of lots of precious metals, and the landing gear is made of steel titanium.

    And looking at the demand side, every single one of us has somehow played with a golf club, and these are all different.

    Industries that are in need of all these types of similar materials.

    So what Nandina business does is mainly to do material matching.

    Between the demand and the supply.

    So we are the only one in the world who are able to bring the carbon fiber to meet aviation specifications.

    This has been tested by the aviation supply chain, be it Boeing, Airbus or the downstream suppliers.

    So we launched this company in February 2020.

    Sorry, in July 2023, and we did this.

    official launch of the circular carbon fiber in.

    Singapore Air Show back in February 2023.

    So the key thing is in our tech stack, so...

    The thing about recycling is you have to reverse everything that is being built, so first thing we have to do is we have to do a reverse build of material.

    To understand and characterize the different materials and parts that come off the plane.

    And then we have to do performance data.

    What happens to material when it degrades over 20-30 years?

    And start to do the recovery of the different materials.

    And work with partners to do product development.

    Right, work with the airlines.

    How do you bring the textiles back to their uniform, or how do you bring the parts and remelt them into new parts?

    To go back to a plane, right?

    So the whole product development has to come through this whole partnership.

    There is lots of carbon fiber on the plane if you look at the older planes.

    Since 1990s the whole aviation industry has been using carbon fiber.

    It started off at the very small percentage, 2-3-5 tonnes.

    If you look at the latest plane, it's all carbon fiber, 53% of it.

    And have you ever asked yourself how long does it take to decompose carbon fiber?

    Two months ago Youth.

    It's impossible. It's a forever material. It's even worse than plastic.

    And so that is the biggest problem.

    And it's used everywhere, it's used in planes, pressure vessels, the wind turbines.

    Golf clubs, tennis rackets, badminton rackets are used everywhere, so there's a huge abundance of material that is available to recycle.

    And we know we cannot do this alone.

    So the flywheel that we've created is we created a consortium.

    We launched this in April 2024.

    The first airline to say, 'Hey, I want these circular materials back in my plane' is Qantas.

    And from there we managed to convince their Tier 1.

    GECO GECO basically is a subsidiary of Itochu.

    Everyone of us would have touched a GECO product.

    They have 80% market share in all the galleys and lavatories.

    Um, so we've actually created this whole consortium with the intention that we're going to bring the materials back to aviation.

    With the regulators certifying the parts.

    And also we're working with banks and financial institutions to drive green loans, to get the manufacturers cheap interest rates financing.

    To be able to manufacture and certify and retool for bringing the parts back to aviation and the buyers for the materials.

    It's not restricted to just aviation. We can be selling it to F1 cars or selling it back to space.

    Because we start with such high-grade materials, there's a lot of space to work around for downstream.

    Uh, to downcycle to other industries as well.

    So we've done it, we've literally worked on planes, we are in our twelve planes now.

    This is a Boeing.

    Umm, sorry, this is an Airbus 320, so we literally cut it, we melt it, and this is the new pipe.

    We're in the midst of getting it back to a plane from Qantas.

    So look out for the news in February that's coming up.

    Um, and the wonderful thing about what we do with the carbon fiber is we can actually meet aviation specifications and it uses a lot less energy.

    Our recovery is through a solvolysis process.

    Uh, typically virgin materials take about 1000° to synthesize and produce from.

    By product of petroleum or coal, we use 40 to 60°C, so it's a lot less energy consuming.

    And it actually matches the virgin at 91% in terms of the integrity.

    And we can actually produce it a lot faster, which means, from an aviation sector perspective,

    Parts that are currently using aluminum can use recycled carbon fiber for lightweighting.

    So we're working with different manufacturers to look at replacing even aluminum parts with recycled carbon fiber.

    For fiber, the market is huge.

    There's going to be 15,000 planes that are going to be retired by 2040.

    So every year 700 planes are mandatory to be retired, and there are lots of critical materials.

    Carbon fiber is a crown jewel.

    Um, like I say, we are.

    The person who spoke today explained the know-how objectively.

    Meets aviation specs and is in continuous form.

    Is not chopped.

    Fiber is in as long as the size of the reactor can fit.

    Where we are now, we're building out our facilities in Singapore.

    We are looking to produce 5 tonnes of CF2 by the end of Q4 next year.

    And the intention to scale to the US where all the planes are.

    By 2030, 90% of our

    Revenue will be generated from the US.

    And this is the team, one of the co-founders, we have Karina, who's been sustainability expert.

    We also have Doctor Desirée Prahl in material science, and these are the team of our founding team.

    Nice to meet you all if you'd like to know more about what happens to planes.

    Um, more than happy to share more. Thank you.

    Thank you very much for sparing your valuable time to join us.

    And delivering your meaningful presentation.

    And next we are ready to welcome Mr. Alexander Piskunov, Managing Partner at KAAN Ventures, to give us his presentation.

    Ladies and gentlemen,

    Now please welcome him to the stage with a big round of applause.

    Hi everybody, so today I would love to tell you more about my own experiences as a foreign investor.

    Collaborating with and talking to a bunch of South Korean corporations and startups.

    Especially when it comes to facilitating the international expansion and investment activities.

    So, briefly, a bit about me.

    I am a partner at Conventions, and throughout my investment experiences are mainly focused on later stages.

    So CBS Ventures in the field of deep tech, which includes such areas as robotics, space tech, AI/IoT, and a bunch of other related fields.

    I've also worked in investment banking and private equity and run my own company in the field of wine imports.

    So, other than my current investment work, I am also engaging with a bunch of governments in several emerging markets,

    Like, for example, in Pakistan, in South Africa and in Russia.

    to help them build up their local innovation ecosystems, often from scratch, which involves setting up acceleration programs, helping to

    Launch relevant governmental and corporate initiatives and things like that.

    So from my own experiences in South Korea, and this is my, I think 5th or 6th time here in Seoul, I felt that.

    One of the major problems with the South Korean VCs and corporate venture capital arms faced when trying to expand to the UK, to the States.

    Or a bunch of other developed markets.

    Was the fact that they are too focused on setting up R&D initiatives, which

    Purely benefiting themselves, rather than instituting a more mutually beneficial arrangement for other parties,

    as well as for the startups and governments across the board,

    which obviously in the global context is problematic because it does limit their ability to source relevant tech to attract.

    IP which is ultimately recognizable internationally and,

    Once again, throughout my experiences, I helped in the collaboration between Russia and Germany in the AI sector,

    Where?

    They, from the get-go, decided to structure a program which benefited Russian companies who are trying to expand to the European market, mainly Central and Eastern Europe.

    by giving them access to not only financing

    But also R&D initiatives, government support, and legislative measures.

    Some of which even work to this day, given the current situation.

    And for the German market, it was a great opportunity to access talented entrepreneurs.

    Cybersecurity researchers and AI professionals based out of Russia, Ukraine, and a bunch of Central Asian republics.

    So from my experience, I think what would really benefit the South Korean corporate venture capital funds is not to chase after...

    A big and developed market straightaway, like, for example, back in the Valley or in London?

    But rather focus on the emerging deep tech world countries, like, for example, Taiwan or Russia, or some parts of Latin America.

    Because overseas, they face very similar problems.

    When it comes to expansion and fundraising as the South Korean institutions and as a result.

    One benefit which could benefit the South Korean side is through

    Building a more niche tech leadership, helping not only startups but also corporations find their own.

    Platform and sector in which they can expand internationally.

    And really build up a reputation because from my own perspective.

    South Korea tries to chase after several verticals at once, and not every field.

    So far it has been super successful also.

    It will help to unlock new sources of revenue.

    It's scaling across international borders and establishing new investment channels with big players across the world.

    Another thing which I felt would be really beneficial as a small piece of advice for the South Korean side would be to focus on corporate venturing.

    Not primarily through the prism of getting.

    financial returns, but rather as a means of achieving

    market penetration on the international level.

    So far, a lot of the South Korean institutions and venture capital funds which I've spoken with, they have been primarily financial investors.

    When it comes to overseas deals, rather than pursuing a more strategic approach,

    which really limits their ability to co-invest.

    In the best startups when it comes to the international level.

    So one way in which their approach can be updated is, for example, expanding their metrics beyond purely the financial ones, like the return on investment.

    But rather focus on things like measuring the research and development, localization levels, as well as transfer rates and adaptation speed.

    And when it comes to looking at the investment deals themselves.

    Try and learn as much as possible from, not only

    their core investors that the South Korean companies have, but also the founders themselves.

    And this can be done through embedding investment professionals, as well as business development and strategy people in the teams of those startups.

    And from my own perspective, it has really been.

    Very beneficial when it came to the development of the technology sector in South Korea.

    And their close collaboration with the UK investors and startups.

    So another thing I would like to bring to your attention.

    is to help South Korean corporations leverage better understanding of the international markets.

    And obviously as I've mentioned before,

    Often times, it might be counterproductive to look at the biggest markets like Silicon Valley or

    Germany or the UK?

    Straight away.

    But at the same time, this is where the majority of the money is.

    This is where, you know, a lot of the international investments still.

    Happen in the majority of cases, right?

    So one way...

    In which Asian CVCs have not really performed as well as they could have.

    From my own experiences, it's through building good networks in the very, very developed hubs.

    Like once again, Silicon Valley.

    And this is because they don't really aim to integrate as well.

    They have very, very different understanding of the innovation trends, of the fundraising dynamics, of the way due diligence is done.

    And as a result, in often cases they miss out on the best deals,

    They are really doing due diligence, not to the extent which the founders are used to.

    So there is a lot of...

    Miscommunication happening.

    And as a result, you know, it's difficult to get the best deals once again.

    And one way, and this can be fixed, is through making sure that the corporate venture capital funds.

    Don't only, you know, send skeleton crews to Silicon Valley or to London,

    but rather, play a much more active role in the development and continuous innovation processes that happen within those ecosystems,

    Right? Like, for example, bringing back my own experiences in Pakistan.

    What these guys, you know, displayed.

    The many problems that the innovation sector does face, which they have managed to do quite successfully, is to integrate themselves on the...

    Deep tech level within the international...

    Tech circles, especially with the States, where many Pakistani institutions, corporations and VC funds have shown success. They help learn.

    About new trends that help to understand,

    You know, the way due diligence is done and, as a result, adopted properly to benefit the whole Pakistani ecosystem.

    Back at home, even though if you compare it, for example, to the neighboring Indian.

    Or even to some things which are happening here in Korea,

    It's still very much in its infancy stages.

    So another thing which I would like to talk about is to build a better cross-border talent exchange pipeline.

    which from my own perspective right now is relatively problematic for the South Korean CDCs and startups because

    Once again, sometimes you know they have very, very interesting technologies.

    They have very smart people, but they are not really as aware about the trends.

    They don't understand how to sell cross-culturally, and as a result, when it comes to international expansion, they do spend much more time and money.

    And often, in this case, you know, they just miss out on the market by failing to compete as effectively with foreign players.

    Which is a shame because from my own perspective, you know, when you look at AI, when you look at healthcare, when you look...

    Like the field, for example, of logistics and autonomous cars.

    South Korean economy and the startups are very, very innovative, even if you compare it to the Western markets, right?

    So one way in which, from my experience, it can be accomplished, for example, is when you move away from Pakistan and look at the neighboring India.

    They have a program.

    Called MATES with the Australian government where a lot of the graduates and...

    Tech talents from the STEM field, they have an opportunity not only to learn about the way things are being done in a more developed, technological Australian state.

    But also to have, you know, work experience, fundraising opportunities and things like that.

    And as a result, there is an opportunity to combine the technical training with the cultural immersion.

    To build the Indian economy in this example.

    And South Korean economy ideally into more of a melting pot situation,

    Which is beneficial not only for the local entrepreneurs, but also for the guys from overseas who are coming in with the ideas and trying to build up the South Korean innovation scene.

    Thank you.

    Would love to talk to more of you guys in more detail personally and to tell you more about my own experiences and share my own understanding.

    Of the South Korean ecosystem.

    Thank you very much for your presentation and thank you for sharing your knowledge and insights.

    Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

    Now it's time to welcome our next speaker, and the next speaker will be Gerald Ko, Senior Investment Manager at Gobi Partners.

    So we would like to welcome him to the stage with a warm round of applause. Please welcome him.

    Hello, hi, good evening, thanks for having me and I appreciate everyone taking your time out for the session today.

    I know it's been a long day, so maybe I'll keep this a little light-hearted and more digestible.

    So my name is Gerald, I'm with Gobi Partners out of the KL office in Malaysia.

    Maybe just a little fun fact before we dive into details.

    I'll show you a little bit about the origin of our name.

    So, we are an Asian Regional Fund venture fund, currently dual HQ in both Hong Kong and Malaysia, our funding partner.

    Thomas was actually an American, came to Asia in the late 90s after financial crisis, and we started Gobi in 2002, right after the burst.

    dotcom bubble.

    So when we started Gobi, we started looking to the West for inspiration, at least on the naming side.

    We couldn't help but notice Silicon Valley.

    And given it was the place that flourished because of silicon, because of semiconductors, because of computer chips.

    When we came to Shanghai, we looked at the largest desert in Asia.

    And given silicon is the most abundant element in sand, so we landed on the name Gobi Partners.

    So this is a brief overview of who we are and where we are today.

    So we've been around for slightly over 2 decades in the Asia region.

    Slightly less than one decade in Southeast Asia.

    So when we first started in Shanghai, we ran a couple funds for Alibaba from the government in China and Hong Kong.

    Some institutions and corporates in Macau and the West as well.

    Eventually, we moved our HQ to Hong Kong, and in 2015, when no one or no venture was in Southeast Asia, we decided to move our second HQ to Kuala Lumpur.

    Malaysia.

    So.

    It's been nine years in the making, and today we can sort of proudly say we've planted a flag in pretty much every single country in Southeast Asia.

    So from the south, we have Indonesia, we have Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, and now that we have sort of established our presence in the Asian region, we're slowly moving westward.

    But, counter-intuitively, north.

    Across the Pacific Ocean, we spend more time in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

    and for those who we've been today.

    In GCC and Saudi Arabia.

    The numbers here are slightly outdated.

    We're looking at closer to 2 billion under management today, slightly over 20 funds raised and managed.

    Someone disclosed yet somewhere in the works.

    This is more sort of a timeline of what has happened over the years.

    Right when we came to Asia in 2002, we explored Singapore.

    And unlike most ventures, we decided that Malaysia is a very exciting space for venture capital.

    So in the end, we expanded to Hong Kong, and now we are in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

    Primarily driving.

    auto tech thesis, which I'll elaborate a little bit further later, but it's more on the TaqwaTech framework.

    Economy. And now we're rebranding our efforts in the Greater Bay Area.

    We think it's a reference to the San Francisco Bay Area,

    But we see a lot more sort of advanced manufacturing happen in this side of the world, hence a lot of opportunity to be captured there.

    as well as Venture Fund.

    And this is more about our thesis, right?

    So it's again a lot of movie references.

    Today, it's a reference to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

    But the thesis has always been that.

    For decades, Asia has always been the factory of the world,

    And so we start seeing a lot of technology coming out in what we like to call the not-so-sexy industries, right outside of software, outside of Internet.

    In manufacturing and logistics and consumer stuff in industrial, right?

    So we came out with this term called Crouching Panda and the inspiration in Southeast Asian market, where most people didn't look at back in 2015

    We call it the hidden Tiger.

    And until we have a great marketing term for MENA in the Middle East, we're just going to have it blanked out for now.

    So the market parallel is a thesis where we see a lot of exciting tech coming out of Asia.

    And unlike typical sort of plug-and-play methodology, we see there is a lot of localization required to adapt to the local market.

    In whatever region that you branch into.

    And given Gobi's experience in the Asian region and the rest of the world,

    we think would be a good partner for you to sort of bring your tech outside of Asia.

    Outside of East Asia, specifically into Southeast Asia, and slowly, gradually towards the rest of the world.

    This is just a quick snapshot of what we've done over the years, over the past 22 years, across different regions.

    Some companies we have invested in.

    Again, more stats of exits in each of our regions.

    And that's it.

    So before I leave you, maybe I'll share a little bit more about our thesis as well.

    So essentially at Gobi.

    We broke our thesis down to four major pillars, and I'll focus on two today.

    So the number one thesis is what we call championing the underserved emerging market.

    So we came to Asia when no one decided to touch it right after the dot-com bubble, we went to Southeast Asia in 2015.

    One of the earliest there, and similarly, we're in Pakistan and Bangladesh today.

    when we don't see a lot of VCs in the market.

    We like to do that because we think there's a lot of exciting opportunities to be discovered in these emerging markets.

    Where the valuation is still at a reasonable price.

    And we don't see a lot of competition on the funding side as well.

    And we like to be the investors that are there since day one to help build the ecosystem and alongside grow with the companies that come from these regions.

    And secondly,

    We like to call ourselves pioneering and trailblazing in the emerging startup ecosystem.

    We have seen and learned a lot from our past days in China, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

    And given the macro today, we like to see these companies move out of these regions into Southeast Asia.

    Which, frankly, I don't think is a developing country anymore.

    I think Southeast Asia itself has reached a certain level of maturity.

    Where companies are incredible and there's a market demand for it as well from the consumer side.

    So,

    To fully elaborate on these two theses there.

    There are 6 main pillars or industries that are more interpretable for founders out there.

    If you're in the room today, in the early 2000s, we talked about globalization a lot, right?

    It's the world becoming one.

    As economies open up here in the East, the West starts trading with the East and into Asia.

    Today, we believe there's a second wave of globalization, which we call the RE-globalization.

    Right in the first wave, when we talk about globalization, it was very much from a Western perspective. It was about Asia finally being ready for foreign capital to come in and invest in Asia.

    And credit where it's due.

    It has built Asia into the manufacturing hub.

    Giant it is today.

    But when it comes to the second wave that we try to focus more on today on the re-globalization, we think there's this dichotomy.

    In technology in the world today, in the software side, the West is still leading, but on the eastern front,

    We see a lot of prowess in manufacturing industry, industrials and engineering.

    And we see this today in a lot of the fundamental resources that we hear about everyday, right?

    So you know, in semiconductors, Intel may have invested in and invented the technology behind it, but we see a lot of fabrication focusing.

    Here in Asia.

    And the same goes for batteries, so battery production is primarily controlled, not just the battery itself, but also the raw materials that go into the battery.

    So the separators are also primarily manufactured in Asia,

    So this is where we think there's a lot of excitement for startups to play in these spaces and cater to these manufacturers here in Asia.

    And grow it together.

    And secondly, it's what we talked about earlier on.

    Called TaqwaTech, TaqwaTech was a term coined by the founder Thomas a while ago when we started exploring the Muslim economy.

    Statistically speaking, we're looking at about 2 billion people.

    2 billion Muslims in the world today. So one in every five persons is a Muslim.

    And given our strategic position in Malaysia, we see ourselves as this central hub.

    To sort of aggregate technology from all of Asia and slowly export that to the MENA region.

    And then the last thing that I might want to spend some time on is diversity investing, right? So.

    The tenant here I have is women.

    Entrepreneurship or representation VC,

    This is an outdated stat, but I'm sure you all have heard a lot about this.

    I think in 2021, about 2% of all funding raised in venture capital went to women, and that's all.

    Our perspective here at Gobi is we think diversity goes beyond gender, it goes beyond religion and race, right?

    Diversity goes into...

    We care a lot about diversity in thought and perspective and socioeconomic background in your upbringing.

    And we say this because when we were in China in the early days, we noticed that.

    Founders who come from a typical background tend to have very unique perspectives about the world, and hence build very enduring and gigantic businesses.

    And we like to see that continue being realized, not just in Asia, but throughout the world.

    So we started in Asia, in East Asia, we're starting to see that.

    Southeast Asia, and we have mandated funds to focus in these areas, and as we go to the West, we focus on this.

    So that is a tenet of our thesis very much as well.

    So yeah, so that's a quick summary of Gobi Partners, and it's a little catchy line.

    So this is Gobi Partners and we look for oasis where no one's looking.

    So thank you very much, thank you very much.

    Please give a big round of applause.

    And ladies and gentlemen, that was our last presentation of day one of Fosterbridge 2024.

    And we'd like to extend our sincere gratitude to all of you for staying with us until the very last moment.

    And before we end this session, we have some important housekeeping announcements.

    So, ladies and gentlemen, I kindly draw your attention to a brief announcement that we will have FB's night event, which will take place on the 31st floor at King's Vacation.

    And this is an exclusive event for invited guests, and we will provide free drinks and some refreshments.

    And we have prepared a magic show for you to enjoy.

    So we ask for your active participation.

    This Fosterbridge event, which will take place on the 31st floor once again.

    And until then, please enjoy the Foster session as well.

    And if you need one-on-one meetup, please make your way to Chillahorn as well.

    And tomorrow we do have Day 2 presentations here at Bridge session as well.

    So, ladies and gentlemen, we hope to meet all of you tomorrow as well.

    Once again, thank you very much for your presence.

    Thank you and see you tomorrow.

    Yes, I'd like to take a moment to recognize our domestic attendees.

    Everyone, our Bridge session is over, but we have a post session going on.

    Or if you'd like to have a one-on-one meeting, we'd like to invite you to go to Shilla Hall where we have a meeting lounge.

    We also have an invitation-only VIP night starting at 6:00 p.m. on the 31st floor at King's Vacation.

    where you can enjoy drinks, food that we've prepared, and there will be a fun magic show.

    We hope you'll join us and we'll be back here tomorrow.

    We'll see you there with the pitches.

    So, folks, stay tuned for the program today and for day two tomorrow. Thank you.

    I didn't replace this.

    Ha ha ha ha.

    Ha ha ha ha.

    HaHaHa

    We're testing your microphone.