SeedPlus & Venture Capital with Michael Smith & Tiang Lim Foo

Michael Smith Jr and Tiang Lim Foo, partners from Seedplus joined us in a conversation to discuss their recent closing of US$20M for their fund and where they are heading next. We also chatted about their daily lives as venture capitalists, how they worked with startups across Southeast Asia & India from market expansion to team management and their thoughts on the startup ecosystem with respect to profitability vs growth across Southeast Asia.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

• Michael Smith Jr, Partner (@dreampipe, LinkedIn, personal blog) and Tiang Lim Foo, Operating Partner (@tianglim, LinkedIn) from SeedPlus Venture linked to Jungle Ventures.
  • Tiang: Can you talk about your background as the head of business development for Evernote in Asia Pacific [0:47]
  • Tiang: How did you end up in the venture capital? [2:25]
• SeedPlus [3:40] (@seedplus)
  • Can you talk about SeedPlus Venture Fund and its link to Jungle Ventures?
  • Recently, SeedPlus closed a US$20M fund, and what will be the verticals that the new fund be focusing on? [Note: the official closing for SeedPlus is at US$20M as Smithy mentioned in this podcast as compared to the news which reported it on US$18M.]
  • What will be the SeedPlus fund be focusing on? Where will you be deploying the capital? [5:28]
  • Who are the LPs to the SeedPlus fund? Cisco & IFC. [8:12]
  • What’s the daily schedule of a partner in SeedPlus like? [9:53]
  • Tiang: Specifically, what is your role as an operating partner? How do you advise startups? [13:23]
  • What are the difficult tasks that venture capitalists have to do with their startups? [15:23]
  • What are the startups in your portfolio? [17:55]
    • Moglix
    • AppKnox
    • Homage
    • Staack
    • Mimetic.ai
  • How do you think of Southeast Asia in the form of market expansion? [21:40]
  • With the recent acquisitions, the exits for Southeast Asia illustrated that the market value profitability over growth and traction, what are your perspectives in terms of looking at the startups in your fund? [23:38]

Editor’s Note: My apologies to Tiang on pronouncing his name wrongly on the episode summary & introduction on the show. It should be “Tiang Lim Foo”. 

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The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk on Indiegogo (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, Altizen and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack.